Related works:
Movies and Animations
There is a four and a half minute uncut footage of a woman eating a whole pie. Her spouse just passed away, she was tidying up her house, and she grabbed a whole pie and sat on the kitchen floor. The whole scene doesn’t have any background music and relies heavily on the sounds from the woman, breathing heavily, crying in some part, fork aggressively tearing up the pie. The scene was just her. The scene itself went for too long, making us feel unsettled, as if we’re invading someone’s privacy when they’re in deep grief.
Insatiable is a dark comedy Tv series on Netflix. In the end of Episode 10, there was a two minutes scene showing the main character relapsing back into her binge eating. She was struggling in the show concerning her body image and weight.
(article) Berndt, V. (2018). Flavours of youth: Emotion and animation. Offscreen, 22(12) Retrieved from http://ezproxy.its.rmit.edu.au/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/docview/2185519105?accountid=13552
(it’s relation with food on screen without fail in every single one of their animation movies) http://www.ghibli-museum.jp/en/exhibitions/013127/
(article) Mishra, M., & Mishra, M. (2014). Animated Worlds of Magical Realism: An Exploration of Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress and Paprika. The American Review of Public Administration, 9(3), 400–418. https://doi.org/10.1177/0275074011404209
Specifically on the watercolour sequence where the main character dove into her dream, and it has very significant transitions and fluid movement. It inspired me to use the difference in style to signify the difference between the surreal and reality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uuxyb2Tv9U
There is a specific scene where the main character goes through an emotional turmoil, yanking herself out of reality by thinking and imagining different unrelated things from her past, while also at the same time dabble with the actual reality that happened to her. She keeps on rocking back and forth between her ‘real’ past and her imagination, her what ifs. This emotional turmoil is represented by the sudden change of the animation style which highlights scribbly, child like look. It also plays with the negative space and create a big contrast when the screen goes dark, compare to the rest of the movie which have very light pastel like colours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnuwHzAEXZA
Articles / book references
(Keywords : Emotion; Animation; binge eating; eating psychopathology; )
“Points to remember when animating emotions:
1. Make sure the emotional state of the character is clearly defined.
2. The thought process reveals the feeling. Sometimes it can be shown in a single, held drawing or a simple move. Other times there should be gestures, body moves, or full action. Determine which is best in each case.
3. Be alert to use cutting and camera in helping to accentuate the emotion.
4. Ask yourself constantly:
- what am I trying to do here?
- What do I really want to show?
- How do I want the audience to react?
5. Use the element of time wisely:
to establish the emotion of the character,
to convey it to the viewers,
to let them savor the situation.
Don't be ponderous, but don't take it away from them just as they start enjoying it.” (Thomas and Johston, 1995)
F. Thomas and O. Johnston, The Illusion of Life, Disney Animation. USA, New York: Hyperion, 1995.
“Negative emotions are a correlate and unique predictor of self-reported emotional eating urges and unhealthy food intake in non-clinical and clinical populations as well as college students. The affect regulation model proposes that increases in negative emotions trigger emotional eating, which functions as an attempt to reduce negative emotions through providing a temporary distraction, emotional numbing, and/or a sense of comfort…
The current study provides new insight into the area of emotional eating. The findings presented here address an important gap in the literature regarding the potential underlying psychological process of emotional eating by suggesting that negative emotions may be associated with increased levels of emotional eating through experiential avoidance. At the same time, experiential avoidance only accounted for a moderate amount of the variance in the relationship between negative emotions and emotional eating, suggesting that other mediating constructs should be explored in future research, such as self-efficacy” (Litwin, 2017)
Litwin, R., Goldbacher, E.M., Cardaciotto, L. et al. Negative emotions and emotional eating: the mediating role of experiential avoidance. Eat Weight Disord 22, 97–104 (2017). https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.rmit.edu.au/10.1007/s40519-016-0301-9
“Constructed Emotion Theory insists that humankind moves from a position of ‘experiential blindness’ extremely quickly, forming concepts about emotion that in essence make it a shared situational phenomenon rather than a common aspect of all human experience per se. I wish to suggest here, then, that Constructed Emotion Theory offers the best explanation for why animation is especially conducive to the construction and expression of emotion as well as why its rhetorical and enunciative condition enables the audiences worldwide to construct common emotion concepts that enable narratives in one culture to translate more readily to another.” (Uhrig, 2018)
Uhrig, M. (Ed.). (2018). Emotion in animated films. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com
Solo Dining is Bad For Mental Health and for the planet “Research is revealing the negative impacts of eating alone, which has been found to be linked to a variety of mental and physical health conditions, from depression and diabetes to high blood pressure. So it’s cheering that hundreds of food sharing initiatives have sprung up around the world which aim to improve food security and sustainability while combating loneliness.”
“It is sometimes hard to keep positive in the face of social, economic, environmental, and political instability. It is then heartening that people are organizing in solidarity with others around the most basic of human needs: food. Acting together in this way has been shown to be an empowering way to deal with issues of eco-anxiety. By their very existence these food sharing initiatives provide a demonstration effect for others.”
https://qz.com/1738347/eating-alone-is-bad-for-our-mental-health-and-the-planet/
By Clarice Tan
Email Clarice Tan
Published On: 08/06/2020