Animated Film and Disability: Cripping Spectatorship

While many live-action films portray disability as a spectacle, ＂crip animation＂ (a genre of animated films that celebrates disabled people’s lived experiences) uses a variety of techniques like clay animation, puppets, pixilation, and computer-generated animation to represent the inner worlds of people with disabilities. Crip animation has the potential to challenge the ableist gaze and immerse viewers in an alternative bodily experience.

In Animated Film and Disability, Slava Greenberganalyzes over 30 animated works about disabilities, including Rocks in My Pockets, An Eyeful of Sound, and A Shift in Perception. He considers the ableism of live-action cinematography, the involvement of filmmakers with disabilities in the production process, and the evocation of the spectators’ senses of sight and hearing, consequently subverting traditional spectatorship and listenership hierarchies. In addition, Greenberg explores physical and sensory accessibility in theaters and suggests new ways to accommodate cinematic screenings.

Offering an introduction to disability studies and crip theory for film, media, and animation scholars, Animated Film and Disability demonstrates that crip animation has the power to breach the spectator’s comfort, evoking awareness of their own bodies and, in certain cases, their social privileges.

Slava Greenberg is Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and Casden Institute. His research explores the potential of mainstream and emerging media forms to offer transformative experiences in reference to disability studies, trans studies, and gender. He is currently working on a second book project focusing on the history and visual culture of gender dysphoria through the lens of trans and crip theories.