Body Languages — Early Sporting Animation

Abstract

If the opening question of the introduction to this discussion was ‘Why animation?’, implying that it might seem unusual to bring sport and animation together, the first question of the opening chapter is the very opposite. What was it that seemed to attract proto-animators and those who later became established as professional animators to sporting activity, and more specifically what did they identify as ‘sport’? This enables me to ask the broader questions about what distinguishes sports from games and other leisure pastimes, and how far these possible distinctions are also embraced by animators in animated films. The ‘What is sport?’ question, of course, has been intrinsic to most histories and theoretical accounts of sport, and while I do not wish to dwell on what might be viewed as a problematic theoretical question here, it is nevertheless worthwhile exploring some of its key aspects. Clearly, the recognition of a sporting activity is crucial to the maker of an animated film, in that the deployment of a sport in a narrative assumes that the audience shares knowledge of that sport, and the rules and conventions that define it. This assumption alone, though, suggests that sport has particular rules and conventions, which, for example, distinguish it from a game, or a pastime, or, indeed, a non-sporting activity.