Article:
Empire is out there!? The spirit of imperialism in the Pixar animated film UP

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dc.creatorMeinel, Dietmar
dc.date.accessioned2018-09-26T11:48:25Z
dc.date.available2018-09-26T11:48:25Z
dc.date.issued2014
dc.description.abstractThe animated feature Up (Pete Docter, 2009) tells the story of wilderness explorer Charles Muntz in search of a rare species of bird in the South American valley of Paradise Falls and widower Carl Frederickson hoping to mend the pain of losing his wife by fulfilling their lifelong dream of traveling to the same valley. Both men pursue their fantasies of adventure in South America. I situate this narrative within discourses of imperialism and the Monroe Doctrine. Whereas Charles has usurped Paradise Falls in his zealous decades-long hunt the film offers an alternative to his imperial fixation by portraying the redemptive experience of Carl during his travels. As the latter learns to define adventure as a spiritual endeavor, Carl sheds his imperial obsession and rescues his South American friends from Charles. I argue that Up attempts to critique the damaging effects of imperialism ‐ and by extension the ‘War on Terror’ ‐ through the figure of the fallen hero Charles but disavows the ‘informal’ qualities of U.S. empire embodied by Carl. This disavowal of the informal features of (U.S.) imperialism in Up allows me to explore the persistence of the ‘tenacious grasp’ of U.S. exceptionalism, while the imagery of a queer, transnational community also suggests alteration in the tropes of U.S. imperialism.en
dc.identifier.doi10.5117/NECSUS2014.1.MEIN
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/15135
dc.identifier.urihttps://www.necsus-ejms.org/test/empire-spirit-imperialism-pixar-animated-film/
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/3318
dc.languageeng
dc.publisherAmsterdam University Press
dc.publisher.placeAmsterdam
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:2213-0217
dc.relation.ispartofseriesNECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
dc.subjectAmbiguitätde
dc.subjectAnimation <Filmtechnik>de
dc.subjectIdentitätde
dc.subjectIdeologiede
dc.subjectImperialismusde
dc.subjectqueerde
dc.subjectPixar Animation Studiosde
dc.subjectambiguityen
dc.subjectanimationen
dc.subjectidentityen
dc.subjectideologyen
dc.subjectimperialismen
dc.subjectqueeren
dc.subject.ddcddc:791
dc.titleEmpire is out there!? The spirit of imperialism in the Pixar animated film UPen
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dcterms.bibliographicCitationMeinel, Dietmar (2014): Empire is out there!? The spirit of imperialism in the Pixar animated film UP. In: NECSUS. European Journal of Media Studies 3 (1), 69–87. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5117/NECSUS2014.1.MEIN.
dspace.entity.typeArticleen
local.coverpage2021-05-29T05:23:03
local.identifier.firstpublishedhttps://doi.org/10.5117/NECSUS2014.1.MEIN
local.source.epage87
local.source.issue1
local.source.spage69
local.source.volume3

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