7:30 p.m.
Dear all,
On the 21, it is time for my ‘final PhD seminar’, where professor Kim Schrøder will act as
discussant, and we will go through and discuss my thesis draft. If any of you are not
familiar with the Swedish concept of ‘final seminars’ for PhD students, I can inform you
that it is an extended text seminar, normally held about 4-6 months before a doctoral
defense, where a close-to-finished thesis draft is discussed. There will normally be a
short introduction to the thesis by the PhD student, and then a discussant will go through
the whole text. In the end, there will be time for general discussion. The seminar will be
between 2 and 3 hours long.
I have tried and have been unable to send the thesis draft to you via this email list, my
guess is the file is too large to go through, so if any of you are interested in reading
the draft before the seminar, please send an email to ims at lnu.se<mailto:ims at
lnu.se>, and I will send the draft to you personally.
Abstract:
This thesis is an audience reception study of film music and animation film, centered
around the ways that animated characters are constructed as psychological beings which
children can understand and identify with – as if they were real humans. The analysis
considers the narrative context of a character but is particularly focused on the musical
and multimodal construction of a character, meaning particular attention is put on how
character traits are communicated by the use of music, voice, colours, camera perspective,
etc. This analysis of the construction of characters is then compared to actual child
audiences’ expressions of their experiences and interpretations, obtained through
observations and interviews, in order to highlight how children understand and relate to
the material they are presented to.
Understanding and interpreting an animated film is conditioned by the structure of that
film, but interpretation is also conditioned by the communicative situation and social
position of the audience, as well as personal experiences, and as such no ‘absolute’
interpretation can be made, not even within a uniform group. This does not mean that we
shouldn’t aim to understand how people process and relate to media, however, or to
understand how children experience the animated films that are so immensely popular,
overflowing our mainstream culture. By analysing the multimodal semiotic potential of
three selected films, Frozen (2013), Up (2009) and Shrek the Third (2007), and comparing
these analyses with children’s multimodal expressions (children often communicate through
gestures or by humming or signing, necessitating multimodal interview transcriptions) of
their understandings and opinions, it is the goal of this thesis to shed light on the ways
that children relate to and use filmic form, particularly music, in negotiating the
content, particularly characters, of the film, in a process where meaning is created in
the active reception process of a child in a communicative situation
The seminar is, as mentioned, on the 21. Note that it starts 1 hour early at 9.00 CEST. As
always, the seminar will be on zoom: https://lnu-se.zoom.us/j/940933326
I hope to see many of you there!
Best wishes,
Signe – on behalf of myself and of IMS
Signe Kjaer Jensen
PhD student in Comparative Literature
Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS)
Linnæus University
Department of Film and Literature
351 95 Växjö
Sweden
https://lnu.se/personal/signe.kjaerjensen/
signe.kjaerjensen at lnu.se<mailto:signe.kjaerjensen at lnu.se>
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