The Queer Uncanny: Reframing the Gothic Moving Portrait Through the Discourse of Animation

Abstract

This paper establishes a new critical term which I call “the discourse of animation” in order to understand the uncanny as a queer sensibility instead of simply a revival of past “primitive” desires or repressed fears, which Sigmund Freud theorizes in his text, “The Uncanny” (1919). At its core, the discourse of animation disrupts binaries, allowing us to explore the boundaries between the rational and the supernatural, between the past and the present, and, importantly, between the normative and the queer. Throughout my argument, I analyze the appearance of uncanny, animated portraits (and similarly flickering, shuddering images) in Gothic novels, early animation devices like the thaumatrope, phantasmagoria/magic lantern shows, early cinema, and finally this motif’s revival in recent stop-motion films. Because of their uncanny animation, these portraits similarly disrupt binaries; that is, when it is uncertain if they are animate or inanimate, they uncover the hidden spaces between life and death, between the familiar and the unfamiliar, and even between the normative and the queer. Through the discourse of animation, the uncanny becomes a complex interaction between opposites, between a spectator and an uncertainly animate object, and between opposing modes of thought. This new way of understanding the uncanny allows us to recognize the boundaries that have been placed and the possibilities that exist when we break these boundaries—ultimately creating a relationship between the past, the present, and the future.