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 PIXAR’S
AMERICA
The Re-Animation of
American Myths
and Symbols

DIETMAR MEINEL
Pixar’s America
 Dietmar Meinel

Pixar’s America
The Re-Animation of American Myths and Symbols
Dietmar Meinel
Department of Anglophone Studies
University of Duisburg-Essen
Essen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

ISBN 978-3-319-31633-8 ISBN 978-3-319-31634-5 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016950070

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland
For my Friends
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In many ways, the following words of gratitude cannot do justice to the

immense support, encouragement, and inspiration I have received from so
many people in the writing of this book. While writing is a rather solitary
endeavor, the intellectual work behind it never is. The assistance, care,
and sustenance of an amazing community brought the following pages,
indeed the writer of these lines, into being. I am grateful and indebted to
all of you.
First and foremost, I thank Winfried Fluck. His thinking shaped the
very idea of the book and his intellectual rigor enabled me to develop a
voice of my own. In particular his insistent encouragement to explore the
aesthetic and narrative complexity of the cinematic material became an
essential tenet of this book and my work in general. Similarly, with her
keen observations and her sharp theoretical thinking, Laura Bieger pro-
foundly influenced the content of this book, from its structure to its close
readings. As a scholar and an instructor Laura fostered my intellectual
vocation—from my very first seminar as an undergraduate to the comple-
tion of this book. I am also grateful to Donald Pease whose sense of pro-
fession taught me an unprecedented passion for intellectual exchange. His
generosity in wholeheartedly engaging with my work from the beginning
of the project onward provided me with confidence during moments of
doubt; his dedication to my journey also offered me opportunities and
experiences which I hold dear.
Ahu Tanrisever and Sonja Longolius read and commented on indi-
vidual chapters at our wonderful reading group meetings; my cohort at
the Graduate School of North American Studies—Ben Robbins, Dorian

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Kantor, Florian Plum, Kate Schweißhelm, Lina Tegtmeyer, Natalia

Klimina, Nathan Vanderpool, Rebecca Brückmann, and Ruth Steinhoff—
lifted me up when spirit, health, or faith were low. The Graduate School
of North American Studies and the John F. Kennedy Institute gave me
the opportunity to write my thesis in an intellectually stimulating environ-
ment in Berlin, Germany, and abroad. With her heart-warming presence
and her patience, Gabi Bodmeier often saved me from my bureaucratic
incompetence.
At the Department of Anglophone Studies of the University of
Duisburg-Essen, I am indebted to Barbara Buchenau for her faith in and
support of my work. Of my friends and colleagues at the University of
Duisburg-Essen, to all of whom I am grateful for creating a stimulating
and supportive environment, I particularly acknowledge Elena Furlanetto,
Zohra Hassan, and Courtney Moffett-Bateau. Their astuteness, knowl-
edge, and openness have taught me to thrive as an intellectual and as a
person.
At Palgrave Macmillan I have been lucky to find highly profes-
sional support for the book, and thank in particular Lina Aboujieb and
Hariharan Venugopal. I am especially grateful for the thoughtful and per-
ceptive comments provided by the anonymous reviewers. Earlier versions
of Chaps. 6, 7, and 8 were previously published in Animation Studies,
Volume 8 (2013), NECSUS European Journal for Media Studies (Spring
2014), and European Journal of American Culture, Volume 33, Issue 3
(2014), respectively. A section of the introduction appeared in the volume
Rereading the Machine in the Garden (2014) edited by Eric Erbacher,
Nicole Maruo-Schröder, and Florian Sedlmeier. I am grateful for the per-
mission to reproduce material here.
The friendship of many wonderful people has inspired and uplifted me
during the research and writing. I deeply appreciate their belief in me. My
parents and my sister supported me even when my path appeared hazard-
ous and disheartening. I thank Hajo and Kay, for without you, none of
this would exist.
 CONTENTS

1 Exceptional Animation: An Introduction 1

From Failure to Fame: The Pixar Studio
and Digital Animation 3
Animating Revolt or Monstrous Beings? 9
All Ages Admitted 19
“Every Line Drawn, Object Moved, and Shape Changed” 20
Animating the Myths and Symbols of American Culture 22
Remediating the Myths and Symbols of American Culture 28

2 “You Better Play Nice”: Digital Enchantment

and the Performance of Toyness in Toy Story (1995) 45
Fearful Sheriff Dolls and Oblivious Space-Ranger Action Figures 47
Stupid, Little, Insignificant Toys 50
The Space-Traveling American Adam 52
The Enchanting Performance of Toyness 55

3 An Animated Toast to the Ephemeral:

The Multicultural Logic of Late Capitalism
in Toy Story 2 (1999) 61
The Multicultural Myth of Woody, Buzz, and Bill 63
A Postmodern Toy Story 66
The Digital Logic of Late Capitalism 70
A Toast to the Ephemeral 71

ix
x CONTENTS

4 A Story of Social Justice? The Liberal Consensus

in Monsters, Inc. (2001) 75
Monsters of Plenty 77
The Liberal Consensus of Monstropolis 79
A Good Society of Monsters: Individualism, Meritocracy,
and Affirmative Government 83
Animating the Good Society? 85
The Green, One-Eyed Schlemiel 88

5 “From Rags to Moderate Riches”:

The American Dream in Ratatouille (2007) 97
Pixar’s Animated American Dream 100
Class, Space, and the Animated Dream 105
Hyper-White Food Critics and Non-White Chefs:
The Villains in Ratatouille 107
Learning to Perform: Middle Class,
the Ratatouille Restaurant, and (the Aesthetics of)
Ordinary Whiteness 109
An Exceptionalist Rat? 112

6 “Space. The Final Fun-tier”: Returning Home

to the Frontier in WALL-E (2008) 119
The Significance of the Post-Apocalyptic Frontier 120
Mediating the Frontier: Consumerism, Nostalgia,
and Digital Cinematography 122
Gendered Robots: Male Garbage Compressors
and Female Drones 124
The Brave, New World Aboard the Axiom 127
Earth. The Final Frontier 130

7 Empire Is Out There!? The Spirit of Imperialism

in Up (2009) 139
The Imperial Fantasies of James, Carl, and Charles 142
Adventure Is in Here: Rewriting the Imperial Fantasy 147
The Spirit of the Informal Empire 150
 CONTENTS xi

8 “And when everyone is super … no one will be”:

The End of the American Myth in
The Incredibles (2004) 163
“Celebrating Mediocrity” 165
The Incredibles: A Voluntary Association 166
Victimizing the White, Male Superhero Body 171
From Heroine to Homemaker … to Heroine, Again 173
Leaving Suburbia 175

9 Driving in Circles: The American Puritan Jeremiad

in Cars (2006) 187
Narratives of Individual and National Decline 190
Imagined Pasts: The Jeremiad and the Golden
Age of the 1950s 195
Imagined Spaces: The American South 198
The Sound of American Myths and Symbols 200

10 Animating a Yet Unimagined America? The Mediation

of American Exceptionalism in Toy Story 3 (2010) 207
Errand into the Daycare Wilderness 210
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Garbage Incinerator 214
A Yet Unimagined America? 215

Bibliography 219

Index 231
 CHAPTER 1

Exceptional Animation: An Introduction

“It’s a Pixar World. We’re Just Living in It.”

Roberta Smith

From anxious sheriff dolls, obnoxious race cars, bleeping and buzz-
ing garbage compressors to irritable old men; from cities powered with
the screams of children, rat-infested cottages to post-apocalyptic garbage
landscapes; from the elaborate sounds of “speaking whale” to the immo-
bilizing shout of “squirrel!,” the world of Pixar expands “to infinity, and
beyond.” As soon as the little desk lamp Luxor Jr. hops onto the screen,
audiences of all ages eagerly await to be drawn into an oddly familiar, yet
unexpectedly distinct, universe. As Pixar’s digital animation is so beloved,
even ill-tempered ogres, singing princesses, and sabre-toothed squirrels
obsessed with acorns are often assumed to populate their world as well.
When Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith co-founded Pixar Inc. along
with thirty-eight other founding members and investor Steve Jobs in 1986,
however, the world was not Pixar. Actually, outside the film industry, few
people had heard of the small company and its previous work. Even in
Hollywood, many would have probably been hard-pressed to describe
what these few individuals contributed to the blockbuster trilogy Star Wars
(1977–1983) or why high-tech entrepreneur Steve Jobs invested five mil-
lion dollars in some forty computer scientists with PhDs. About ten years
later, as audiences of all ages flocked to the theaters to see the first film pro-
duced entirely with the use of computers, the world had begun changing.
© The Author(s) 2016 1
D. Meinel, Pixar’s America,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31634-5_1
2 D. MEINEL

As personal computers, cell phones, and the internet came to be an integral

part of everyday life, in hindsight, a digitally produced film seemed to be
the logical consequence of the increasing technological interpenetration of
human life. And an additional ten years later, as the Museum of Modern
Art opened its venues to host a show about digital animation, the curators
opted to dedicate their entire space to the work of the Pixar Animation
Studios. When The Disney Company bought the studio for 7.4 billion
dollars only two years later, Pixar and its worlds had become the pinnacle
of contemporary American culture. Today, another ten years later, an entire
generation of young people have grown up watching the adventures of
the sheriff doll Woody and the space-ranger action figure Buzz, traveling
Route 66 with race-car Lightning McQueen, or experiencing global envi-
ronmental annihilation with the cleaning robot WALL-E along with their
parents and grandparents. Today, indeed, we live in a Pixar world.
Notwithstanding the immense critical and popular acclaim of the ani-
mation studio, scholars have only gradually engaged with digital anima-
tion and primarily published essays or dedicated single book chapters to
Pixar. While the perception, as Roberta Smith wrote in 2005, “that there
is nothing to say in print about the artistic implications, stylistic differ-
ences (and shifts in quality) or social significance of Pixar’s films or their
place in the animation continuum is little short of ludicrous,” may not
be entirely true today, book-length analyses of the Pixar worlds continue
to be few and far between. This book aims to bridge this gap and situate
the animated films in their broader cultural, political, and social context.
With interventionist sheriff dolls and space-ranger action figures liberat-
ing oppressed toys, exceptionally talented rodents hoping to fulfill their
dreams, aging wilderness explorers fighting for South American freedom,
or Mid-Western small town values forming an all-American champion,
these cinematic texts particularly draw on popular myths and symbols of
American culture. As the following chapters examine, whether comment-
ing on the American Dream in light of white privilege, the frontier myth
in light of traditional gender roles, or the notion of voluntary associations
in light of neoliberal transformations, these close readings analyze two
interdependent notions: the (aesthetic and narrative) refashioning of tra-
ditional American figures, motifs, and tropes for contemporary sensibili-
ties, and their politics of animation. This book hopes to explore the ways
in which Pixar films come to re-animate and remediate prominent myths
and symbols of American culture in all their aesthetic, ideological, and
narrative complexity.
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 3

FROM FAILURE TO FAME: THE PIXAR STUDIO AND DIGITAL

ANIMATION
In the late 1970s, the notion of digital technology, from personal comput-
ers to smartphones or the internet, may have been the prominent theme
of a science fiction novel or, at best, constituted a fringe phenomenon
peripheral to most people. The idea of integrating computer-generated
imagery into films or even animating an entire movie using computers
must have seemed similarly unthinkable. To invest tens of millions of
dollars into a film to project previously unimaginable worlds on the sil-
ver screen was not a viable option for film companies at that time, as all
larger studios still reeled financially from the breakup of the lucrative yet
monopolistic Hollywood system. As Pixar Inc. (which would later become
Pixar Animation Studios) developed within a rapidly transforming cultural
industry shaped by novel technological advances and business models, to
write about the Pixar Animation Studios entails writing about the develop-
ment of digital technology, blockbuster Hollywood cinema, and animated
film of the last forty years. But even as the Pixar company may be one of
the pinnacles of contemporary popular culture, without the technological
savvy, the creative vision, and the commercial gamble of Ed Catmull, John
Lasseter, and Steve Jobs, this story could not have been told.
Almost all histories of the development of the contemporary Hollywood
blockbuster system begin with the surprising success of the first Star Wars
(1977) film in which audiences were captivated by the adventures happen-
ing in a galaxy far, far away. While the narrative told the familiar, fairy-tale
inspired story of the battle between the forces of good and evil, most
viewers flocked to the movie theaters time and time again to experience
fantastic extraterrestrial worlds and dynamic space fights. Even though
audiences and critics celebrated George Lucas, director and producer
of the film, for his artistic vision, most of the captivating space scenes
depended on two novel technological inventions, “a computer-controlled
camera that allowed for dynamic special-effect shots and an elaborate opti-
cal compositing system [that] gave the movie an unprecedented feeling
of realism” (Paik 19). To further develop and profit from this integration
of film-making and computer technology, George Lucas founded a com-
puter division at his film company in 1979 to develop a digital video edit-
ing system, a digital audio system, and a digital film scanner and printer
(cf. Paik 20). For this Graphics Group, Lucas hired Ed Catmull, a young
and aspiring computer graphics researcher from the New York Institute
4 D. MEINEL

of Technology with a PhD in computer science, to lead the Lucasfilm

Computer Division. The small group of digital software and hardware pio-
neers Catmull assembled to develop digital film production tools for audio
mixing, film compositing, and film editing would eventually become the
first cohort of the Pixar company (cf. Price 35).
Instead of limiting their work to the development of digital instruments
for film production, however, Catmull and his team were determined to
explore the visual and narrative potential of digital programming from the
beginning. But as George Lucas did not trust the potential of digitally pro-
duced special effects or computer-generated imagery, Catmull had to find
and develop projects to demonstrate the capabilities of digital animation.
Although the team was successful in producing some scenes for Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan (1982) and the highly celebrated short film Andre and
Wall B. (1984), “Lucas thought the film was awful […] [which] reinforced
his feeling that his Computer Division shouldn’t be making films […] [and
gave] him a low impression of computer animation” (Price 59). Facing con-
tinuous doubts about the potential of computer-animated film from within
his company, by 1985 Catmull hoped for a buy-out of his small section.
In need of a potential investor, the Computer Division eventually con-
vinced Steve Jobs to acquire a computer graphics section which, in 1986,
was not generating profits. Recently fired from his position as executive
vice president at Apple, Steve Jobs had the time, vision, and money to
invest in the idea of digital graphics that, in his words, “could be used
to make products that would be extremely mainstream. Not tangible,
manufactured products, but something more like software—intellectual
products” (Jobs quoted in Paik 51). Whether the ambition to monetize
the digital potential of computer software was a brainchild in hindsight
or born out of the work the Computer Division had done in produc-
ing extraordinary digital imagery such as computer-animated knights for
Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) can never be settled entirely. At first, how-
ever, Jobs decided to continue fostering the development of his acquisi-
tion into a hardware company, since Catmull and his team had created a
computer “that could scan movie film, combine special-effects images with
live-action footage […] and record the results back onto film” (Price 62).
Named after its first device, Pixar Inc. was supposed to do what Macintosh
had done for the personal computer: “Graphics computers would start
in the hands of a few early adopters and then make their way into a vast
mainstream market” (Jobs quoted in Price 85).
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 5

But the Pixar Image Computer could never fulfill these expectations.
Plagued with technological inconveniences and limited commercial suc-
cess, the computer became a funding sink for Pixar and Jobs. Although
in dire financial distress, Pixar stayed in business because in the late 1980s
the company had expanded its portfolio by developing film software
and producing TV commercials. For example, the Computer Animation
Production System (CAPS) computer program, useful to color ink-and-
paint cells, was an immediate success with the Disney Studios. Later, the
RenderMan and IceMan software—developed to enable the rendering
of 3-D graphics and the digital processing of photographs—eventually
came to transform computer animation and special effect productions.
Even as the programs established Pixar as a leader in technological innova-
tion, their 3-D rendering and image processing software remained “niche
product[s]” (Price 100). With their technological knowledge and experi-
ence, however, Pixar was able to gain a foothold in the market for televi-
sion advertisements—having acquired some reputation for their software,
the company produced several TV commercials. Starting in 1989, Pixar
was able to create and increase revenue in this way to offset its losses in the
hardware and software business. But by 1991 the annual deficits compelled
Jobs to shut down the hardware production entirely and to concentrate
all of the company’s resources on expanding its software development and
advertising productions.
While the RenderMan software continues to define Pixar’s technologi-
cal superiority in the present, its days of producing commercials are long
gone. Today, audiences love, cherish, and admire Pixar for its many feature-
length computer-animated films. While the first-ever full-length computer-
animated film Toy Story (1995) delivered the company from its financial
distress in 1995, in those early years only a few people believed in Pixar
as a film company: Ed Catmull possessed the technological vision, Steve
Jobs provided the funding (although Jobs did not believe in the idea of a
cinematic endeavor [cf. Price 104]), and John Lasseter offered the creative
talent. A former student at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArt),
Lasseter had been trained in the late 1970s by those artists he admired
most: longtime Disney animators. Although Disney employed Lasseter
in the early 1980s, his growing fascination and passion for digital anima-
tion found no resonance at the studio.1 When his superiors persistently
ignored the ideas of the young animator and eventually shelved his project
The Brave Little Toaster, in January 1984 a frustrated Lasseter joined the
Graphics Group at Lucasfilm. His collaboration with Catmull proved to
6 D. MEINEL

be the creative foundation of the company’s later success. Supported by

Catmull in his attempts to explore the technological boundaries of com-
puter animation, Lasseter produced several short films throughout the
1980s, each of which contributed to Pixar’s growing esteem in the film
industry, demonstrated the ever-increasing possibilities of digital technol-
ogy, and allowed Pixar to establish their commercial business. Beginning
with Luxo Jr. (1984), Pixar continuously produced short animations and
eventually won the Oscar for Tin Toy in the category of best animated
short film in 1988. While these films showcased the potential of Pixar’s
rendering software and functioned to advertise their technological capa-
bilities, they also helped to gradually position Pixar as a film brand. With
the financial dedication of Steve Jobs, Pixar accumulated technological and
artistic capital which eventually paid off in the early 1990s when the previ-
ously disinclined Disney Studios began to float the idea of a cooperation
for a full-length theatrical release. With the support and know-how of the
animation studio in Hollywood at that time, Catmull, Jobs, and Lasseter
had finally set Pixar on its course to become the culturally, commercially,
and technologically leading computer animation studio of the present.
Teetering on the brink of financial collapse and wrestling for nearly ten
years with finding a profitable business model, Pixar Inc. had attempted
to develop graphics computers for the mass market, invented sophisti-
cated rendering software, dabbled in television advertising, and produced
critically acclaimed shorts until finding its path. Although Ed Catmull’s
technological vision, John Lasseter’s creative talent, and Steve Jobs’ busi-
ness acumen had primarily shaped this improbable course, the liberty and
the opportunity to re-position a company in various competitive markets
over the course of a decade from a cutting-edge technology developer to
a profitable entertainment business may be hard to imagine outside the
cultural, economic, political, and social atmosphere of California, Silicon
Valley, and Hollywood. Even as the people at Pixar pursued a clear vision
of producing an entire feature film digitally, the success of a computer-
animation film studio in 1995 needs to be situated within the broader
context of a transforming film industry, the renaissance of animated film,
and consolidation of The Disney Company in the 1980s and 1990s.
In the tumultuous early years of the company, the first cohort at Pixar
already established the predominant ideas for which the animation stu-
dio would become famous. As Pixar developed cutting-edge animation
software and hardware from the beginning, the studio could offer novel
cinematic experiences previously unseen on the silver screen. This strategy
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 7

to stir interest in films through novel visual imagery coincided with and
profited immensely from the shift to the blockbuster production system
in Hollywood in the late 1970s. With Jaws (1975), the Indiana Jones
(1981–1989) and the Star Wars (1977–1983) trilogies, Steven Spielberg
and George Lucas had fundamentally transformed the film business—and
the people at Pixar were deeply shaped by (and had shaped) the transition
from the New Hollywood period to the blockbuster era, as James Clarke
reasons in The Films of Pixar Animation Studio (2013):

In understanding the allure of the Pixar movie, there’s a rewarding connec-

tion to make with the fantasy-film successes of a number of films produced
in the 1970s and 1980s. These are films that many of the Pixar staff would
be very familiar with, informing their sense of characterisation, plot, tone
and subject choice. Indeed, of the filmmakers synonymous with the fantasy
film, we must cite George Lucas and Steven Spielberg—and, critically, both
expressed strong feelings towards the tradition of the Disney studio’s ani-
mated films of the 1940s and 1950s. (Clarke 38)2

Parallel to a thriving film industry invested in refining their blockbuster

formula, from the mid-1980s Hollywood also experienced a renaissance
in animation. Films such as the Spielberg-produced An American Tail
(1986) and the Spielberg and Lucas co-produced The Land Before Time
(1988) were surprise box office hits and invigorated the genre with novel
appeal.3 At that time, The Walt Disney Company, however, seemed to
have lost its ability to produce appealing animation films—during the
1970s and early 1980s the studio had slipped into a creative and economic
slumber after the death of its founder, Walt Disney. From a cultural, com-
mercial, and innovation perspective, the Disney tradition so fundamen-
tal in shaping the film industry for decades had lost its allure. Only after
Michael Eisner became CEO of the company in 1984 and installed Jeffrey
Katzenberg as the chairman of Disney’s motion picture division did the
company begin to release critically acclaimed and financially successful ani-
mated films again. Beginning with The Little Mermaid (1989), in short
succession Disney was able to release films which helped recover its finan-
cial and cultural capital: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The
Lion King (1994), and Pocahontas (1995) not just (re-)established The
Walt Disney Company as a major entertainment business, but also4 rekin-
dled the popular fascination with the animation genre (cf. Clarke 36–37).
While this renaissance prepared audiences for a computer-animated
viewing experience, the Disney tradition also profoundly shaped the artistic
8 D. MEINEL

aspirations and ideals at Pixar, beyond the individual training and involve-
ment of John Lasseter and his admiration for The Walt Disney Company.
In their first collaboration with Disney, Toy Story (1995), the Pixar employ-
ees learned a huge amount from their cel-animation heirs, appropriating
the financial, organizational, and artistic approaches to a point where sev-
eral of Disney’s senior executives professed “that Pixar had made a film
that contained more of the ‘heart’ of traditional Disney animated films
than they themselves were making at that time” (Price 155–156). In her
enthusiastic review of the film for The New York Times, journalist Janet
Maslin welcomed this dedication to the Disney animation tradition as “[t]
he computer-animated Toy Story, a parent-tickling delight, is a work of
incredible cleverness in the best two-tiered Disney tradition” (Maslin).
In fact, many film critics celebrated Toy Story for “the purity, the ecstatic
freedom of imagination, that’s the hallmark of the greatest children’s
films” and its appeal to an all-age audience: in the words of Entertainment
Weekly, its “spring-loaded allusive prankishness […] will tickle adults even
more than it does kids” (Gleiberman). This fascination with Toy Story fur-
ther included the technological savvy of the production with its combi-
nation of “three-dimensional reality and freedom of movement that is
liberating and new” (Ebert). Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger
Ebert described his viewing experience as “a visionary roller-coaster ride”
and foretold “the dawn of a new era of movie animation” (Ebert).
With the immense critical and commercial success of Toy Story, Pixar
blazed a trail for computer-animated film and quickly inspired other film stu-
dios to launch or develop their animation department. The last twenty years,
therefore, have seen a tremendous increase in computer-animated films as
these movies matured into a viable and lucrative avenue for profit in the
industry. Within the diverse and popular field of computer-animated films
today, Pixar competes with a variety of other studios for audience attention
at the box office. While in the 1990s Pixar profited from the novelty of com-
puter animation, the last two decades have seen intensified competition in the
market: 20th Century Fox has produced the tetralogy Ice Age (2002–2012),
Sony Picture Animation Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and a sequel
(2009, 2013), Universal Pictures Despicable Me and two sequels (2010,
2013, 2015), and Walt Disney Animation Studios Tangled (2010), Wreck-It
Ralph (2012), and Frozen (2013). Among the numerous competitors to
Pixar, the DreamWorks Studios with their Shrek (2001–2010) tetralogy and
the Madagascar (2005–2012) trilogy5 have been particularly successful in
developing a recognizable and individual brand of animation. From its first
animated feature, Antz (1998), DreamWorks explicitly intended “to pro-
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 9

duce films that were hipper, smarter, and less sentimental than the tradi-
tional Disney animated film, aimed at an audience of children assumed to be
more intelligent and sophisticated than Disney had apparently long assumed
children to be” (Booker, Hidden Messages 142). While DreamWorks may
seem similarly well suited for an exploration of the aesthetic and narrative
complexity of animated films, just as all previous examples speak to the flour-
ishing and diversity of computer-animated films independent of any particu-
lar production company, this book concentrates exclusively on Pixar—not
because the studio still maintains a leading position at the box office6 or in
the technological field but because Pixar has, over the decades since its foun-
dation, developed into a synonym for animated film.
While commercially still the most successful studio, Pixar has also
become a cultural icon unmatched by its rivals. The technological innova-
tion and aesthetic appeal of the company has not merely created a highly
visible brand and household name for animation; in its exhibition on digi-
tal animation, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exalted the Pixar
Animation Studios to canonical status. As Roberta Smith summarizes
the Pixar: 20 Years of Animation exhibition in The New York Times: the
MoMA “has mounted the largest, most object-oriented exhibition in its
history devoted to film: a show about the runaway phenomenon of digital
animation. Well, some digital animation. O.K., the digital animation of
one hugely successful, pioneering company, the Pixar Animation Studios”
(Smith). In addition to the numerous feature-length and short films, the
MoMA also exhibited “more than 500 drawings, collages, storyboards
and three-dimensional models by some 80 artists” (Smith) to display the
variety of visual designs and art integral to (Pixar’s) animated film produc-
tions. Since the show traveled to Great Britain, Japan, Australia, Finland,
South Korea, Mexico, and Taiwan—and its follow-up exhibition Pixar: 25
Years of Animation went to Germany, China, and Italy (cf. Pixar: 25 Years
of Animation 182)—the retrospective celebrated the studio as a mediator
of high art, innovative technology, and commercial success globally.7

ANIMATING REVOLT OR MONSTROUS BEINGS?

Fundamentally shaped by American popular culture, the Hollywood film
industry, and the Disney animation tradition, Pixar not only met with
favorable reception. By the late 1990s, after first amazement at the novel
visual technology had vanished, the studio increasingly encountered
questions and doubts about the moral and political integrity of its films.
Particularly when The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar Animation
10 D. MEINEL

Studios in 2006 for 7.4 billion dollars and John Lasseter became chief
creative officer of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation and principal cre-
ative advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering (a section working closely with
the Walt Disney theme park division), people increasingly perceived the
previously independent studio as “convey[ing] an ideology that is rather
similar to the mainstream ideology of Disney films” (Booker Hidden
Messages 78). Although not yet charged with disneyfying (or pixarfying)
popular culture,8 the Pixar Animation Studios encountered increasing dis-
approval which accused their films of simplification, superficiality, sanitiza-
tion, and trivialization. For example, in his Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden
Messages of Children’s Films (2010), Keith M. Booker condemns Pixar’s
A Bug’s Life (1998) for expressing conventional and conservative ideas:

The film […] delivers a message about the power of collective action and
even potentially yields a radical class-oriented political message, with the ants
playing the role of the exploited proletariat and the grasshoppers playing the
role of the bourgeoisie, who feed on the labor of the workers without doing
any productive work of their own. The ant victory thus becomes a virtual
workers’ revolution except, of course, that the film itself is not at all inter-
ested in delivering this message, instead focusing on the very mainstream
American story of the lone individual (Flik) who makes good and saves the
day, delivering independence to the ants (who maintain their own royalist
internal political structure). The political issues raised by A Bug’s Life are
thus unlikely to deliver an effective radical message to young viewers. (82)

While such assessments exemplify the increasingly dismissive tone towards

Pixar, others celebrated Pixar as an independent, technologically innova-
tive, and artistically savvy film company. Because of the non-fairy tale set-
ting, the explicit avoidance of “cartoony” appearances (cf. Clarke 18), the
disregard for trademark musical numbers, and the portrayal of “adultlike
characters with adultlike problems” (Price 155), people also embraced and
applauded the Pixar films for opposing the conventional aesthetics and
normative politics of representation often associated with Disney (cf. Price
151–152). The cinematography with its photorealist quality exemplifies
this more adult approach to animation, as John Lasseter and his team
opted to use “many live-action aesthetic techniques, such as the use of
shallow focus, whereby foreground characters are placed in focus and the
background is indistinct, thereby allowing the audience to concentrate on
the characters above all else at a given moment” (Clarke 16). When critics,
therefore, either wholeheartedly celebrate Pixar productions as “offer[ing]
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 11

hope, imagination, beauty and a degree of purity and innocence that is

countercultural in our age” (Velarde 9) or scorn the films for utterly failing
to articulate a profound message of change, this dichotomous assessment
of the Pixar Animation Studios rehearses broader debates surrounding the
function and potential of (animated) film and of popular culture in general.
The medium of hand-drawn film animation provoked such contradic-
tory and opposing evaluations right from its early inception in the 1920s.
Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein, for example, considered Walt Disney
and his work to be “the greatest contribution of the American people to
art” (1), because his films “are a revolt against partitioning and legislating,
against spiritual stagnation and greyness” (4). In exploiting the creative and
imaginary potential of animation, Eisenstein maintains, Disney provides the
suffering and oppressed millions in the factories with a sense of escape from
the monotony of menial work at the assembly lines. The unruliness of the
animated animals, their uncontainable forms, and the disobedience of the
drawn lines provide optimism to those facing the drab, gray realities of an
alienating and exploitative capitalist system (cf. 4). Walter Benjamin simi-
larly applauded actor performances in general and the early Mickey Mouse
productions in particular (1928–1937), because both offered people the
opportunity to assess notions of humanity in the face of increasing com-
modification of life. “[T]he majority of city dwellers, throughout the work-
day in offices and factories,” Benjamin writes, “have to relinquish their
humanity in the face of an apparatus. In the evening these same masses fill
the cinemas, to witness the film actor taking revenge on their behalf not
only by asserting his humanity (or what appears to them as such) against the
apparatus, but by placing that apparatus in the service of his triumph” (ital-
ics in original, 31). While the film star allegorically symbolized a triumph
of the people over their subjugation by modern technology (the factory,
the office, etc.) through modern technology (the film), the unruly perfor-
mances and physical disruptiveness of a Mickey Mouse prepare its human
audiences for the survival of this form of civilization, reasoned Benjamin (cf.
338). In this anarchic, disobedient, and uncontrollable animated mouse,
“the public recognizes its own life” (Benjamin 338) and, hence, a liberat-
ing potential.
With the introduction of color to film in the 1930s and the increasingly
“gloomy and sinister fire-magic” of the Mickey Mouse shorts, however,
Benjamin also perceived a threat to animation (Benjamin 51). Severely
disturbed by the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy, Benjamin wrestled
with the power of popular art forms to strengthen or challenge these
12 D. MEINEL

political (mass) movements. Because “[t]he logical outcome of fascism is an

aestheticizing of political life” (italics in original, Benjamin 41), the aes-
theticizing quality of colored animation gradually erased its anarchic and
disobedient features and exemplified “how easily fascism takes over ‘revo-
lutionary’ innovations in this field too” (Benjamin 51). Although similarly
interested in the transformations animation went through in the 1930s,
David E. James in The Most Typical Avant-Garde (2005) attributes the
demise of unruly narratives, disobedient figures, and social subversiveness
in the Disney films to “the increasing rationalization of [Disney’s] tech-
niques necessitated by his own industrial development” (271). The grow-
ing complexity of film sound, color, multiplane camera, and the expansion
of production led Disney to introduce the division of labor into his studio,
as his highly specialized workers began to manufacture films in a system
which used Fordist principles of standardized assembly line production to
maximize efficiency (cf. Booker, Hidden Messages 34–35). By 1937 the
Disney animations were mirroring this standardization of the production
process, as “animals had been endowed with the emotional and psycholog-
ical characteristics of humans, and the Disney style had solidified around
codes parallel to those of the live-action commercial feature, abandoning
the medium’s utopian potential and establishing realism as the norm in
animation” (James 271). The release of Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs
(1937) marked the highpoint of this development (cf. James 271–272),
concluded Disney’s transition into “a corporate film factory,” and initiated
“the end of Disney as a pioneer in the exploration of genuinely new artistic
territory” (Booker, Hidden Messages 15). Scholars subscribed to this view
of Disney and (hand-drawn) animation well into the next millennium (cf.
Giroux, The Mouse That Roared).
Benjamin’s fear of fascism did not play a vital role in debates surround-
ing animation, but the idea that animated animals, objects, and figures
could transport normative ideas about culture and society gained momen-
tum with the global expansion of American popular culture in general
and the Disney Studios in particular. In their Dialectic of Enlightenment
(1944/2002) Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno famously decried
the totalitarianism of the culture industry as a form of mass deception.
For the German intellectuals, popular culture, from jazz music to radio
shows and films, entrapped “the defrauded masses” in a capitalist system
of exploitation and seduced the people to “insist unwaveringly on the
ideology by which they are enslaved” (Horkheimer and Adorno 106). In
their dismissal of all forms of popular culture, Horkheimer and Adorno
explicitly refer to Donald Duck as one symbol of this mass delusion
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 13

(cf. Horkheimer and Adorno 106) that a later generation of scholars

trained in critical theory continues to elaborate.
In How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic
(1975), Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart not merely seem to refer to
the Dialectic of Enlightenment in their title but develop a more detailed
criticism of the American culture industry and its perpetuation of imperial-
ist ideologies particularly in Disney comics. They maintained that Disney,
exploiting the potential of hand-drawn cartoons,

uses animals to trap children, not to liberate them. The language he employs
is nothing less than a form of manipulation. He invites children into a world
which appears to offer freedom of movement and creation, into which they
enter fearlessly, identifying with creatures as affectionate, trustful, and irre-
sponsible as themselves, of whom no betrayal is to be expected, and with
whom they can safely play and mingle. Then, once the little readers are
caught within the pages of the comic, the doors close behind them. The
animals become transformed, under the same zoological form and the same
smiling mask, into monstrous human beings. (Dorfman and Mattelart 41)

For Dorfman and Mattelart this entrapment extends beyond its young
audience as the “‘American Dream of Life’” (95) imposes its “monstrous”
view of other cultures and countries upon their (reading) inhabitants. In
this logic, Latin Americans, for example, come to see themselves as infan-
tile and unruly due to their illustration as infantile and unruly in Disney
comics. Following a Marxist perspective, Dorfman and Mattelart conclude
that “Disney expels the productive and historical forces from his comics
[as much as] imperialism thwarts real production and historical evolu-
tion in the underdeveloped world” (97–98). With their often compelling
reasoning, Dorfman and Mattelart fostered a Cultural Studies tradition
of reading cartoons and comics—and mainstream American culture—as
imperial texts promoting cultural, political, and social norms.
This Marxist analysis developed within an academic tradition that under-
stood popular culture to be an essential part of an ideological apparatus.
The work of Louis Althusser in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with its
notion of interpellation, not only came to mold the study of culture at that
time but fundamentally shaped the study of popular films for later genera-
tions. For the French theorist, ideological (and state) apparatuses interpel-
lated individuals into subject positions as these “cram every ‘citizen’ with
daily doses of nationalism, chauvinism, liberalism, [and] moralism” and
“drum into [the children] […] a certain amount of ‘know-how’ wrapped
in the ruling ideology” (On Ideology 28–29).
14 D. MEINEL

Film scholars would refine this notion of a mimetic transfer of meaning

from apparatus to subject to suit the particular conditions of film con-
sumption at the movie theater. Seen in this light, mainstream culture and
Hollywood films would mimetically transfer their imperialist or normative
ideas onto their viewers through the apparatus of the cinema. As Winfried
Fluck notes, the entire movie theater experience came to be understood
in terms of an ideological apparatus since “[t]he ideological effect no lon-
ger resides in the content of the film, but in its cinematic mode of rep-
resentation—its implied spectator position, its ‘transparent’ images and
its characteristic forms of narration and editing” (“Aesthetic Experience
of the Image” 26). Laura Mulvey, in her seminal essay “Visual Pleasures
and Narrative Cinema” (1975), not merely presumed a mimetic relation-
ship between film and ideology, but understood the experience of the film
theater, the visual and narrative conventions of Hollywood cinema—what
would be seen eventually as the entire film apparatus—to interpellate indi-
vidual spectators into a subject position. As the viewing and reception of
Hollywood film became “the site where the ideological effect takes hold
almost imperceptively and, therefore, most effectively” (Fluck, “Aesthetic
Experience of the Image” 28), the imperialist reading of Disney cartoons
by Dorfman and Mattelart expanded into a critical assessment of popular
(animation) film in general.
This sense of an all-pervasive imperial ideology gained particular trac-
tion in American Studies in the following decades as scholars engaged with
the Cultures of United States Imperialism (1993). The contributors to the
seminal essay-collection edited by Amy Kaplan and Donald Pease analyzed
and questioned “the multiple histories of continental and overseas expan-
sion, conquest, conflict, and resistance which have shaped the cultures of
the United States and the cultures of those it has dominated within and
beyond its geopolitical boundaries” (Kaplan, “Left Alone with America”
4). These “New Americanists” further maintained that US imperialism
could not be comprehended merely by disclosing and analyzing impe-
rial practices abroad, but had to be situated within similar procedures at
home.9 American culture, in their view, profoundly contributed to the dis-
semination and pervasiveness of US imperialism by perpetuating fantasies
of American superiority.10 In portraying America as the bearer of liberty
and democracy, canonical and popular texts define the United States as
inherently anti-imperial—a country that opposes the expansionist poli-
tics of its imperialist rivals such as the Soviet Union (cf. Kaplan, “Left
Alone with America” 12). America had been exempt from the historical
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 15

trajectories of social instability and lapses into totalitarianism, this excep-

tionalist logic maintained, because the United States had not experienced
a feudal past or possessed a landed aristocracy. Formed at an expanding
frontier that fostered a liberal individualism, this “empire of liberty” had
been immune to “the inner, dialectical engine of history” (Rodgers 29).
From the Monroe Doctrine to the frontier thesis, the absence of class
tensions, and the American Dream, intellectuals and the greater pub-
lic grouped these individual (at times even competing) notions about
American culture under the umbrella phrase “American exceptionalism,”
as the New Americanists assert. In consequence, this exceptionalism helps
to frame American imperial expansions as humanitarian interventions to
protect or expand liberty, justice, and democracy, in contrast to the totali-
tarian motivation of other evil empires. Thanks to its wide appeal, in this
view, popular culture transmits these imperialist ideas and interpellates
citizen-subjects into an exceptionalist ideology.
In a Marxist understanding of popular culture, then, the Disney pro-
ductions and those of their subsidiaries such as Pixar Animation Studios
with their 100 million dollar films qualify as essential instruments of
American exceptionalism, since mainstream texts, in this view, promote
the cultures of US imperialism (while subversion and opposition would be
located exclusively at the social, political, and cultural margins) (cf. Voelz
188). Seen from this perspective, Pixar exemplifies the threat of cinematic
interpellation, as the animation studio markets its seemingly naïve and
harmless entertainment products to the most susceptible of their all-age
audience: children. As mainstream popular products, then, the sheriff doll
and the space-ranger action figure in Toy Story (1995) or the American
explorers in Up (2009) interpellate their viewers into an exceptionalist
and imperialist ideology.11 Indeed, with its portrayal of Carl and Charles as
fearless adventurers journeying into a South American wilderness to pur-
sue their masculine fantasies, Up may exemplarily illustrate this imperial
ideology by animating a contemporary version of the Monroe Doctrine.12
Whether considering the imperialist motifs in Up, the portrayal of white
privilege in Ratatouille, or the animation of conventional gender roles in
WALL-E, scholarship from critical theory to the New Americanists offers
vital approaches to interrogate the norms and ideologies in Pixar films.
This book, therefore, aims to question these seemingly innocent con-
sumer products as problematic cultural, political, and social texts. Yet, can
we attribute the international box office and home video success of Pixar
films exclusively to the ignorance of the unenlightened masses dubbed
16 D. MEINEL

into an American ideology and willfully spending their money on cultural

products that “cram” an imperialist or exceptionalist ideology down their
throats without being dismissive (and condescending) towards millions
of viewers worldwide? Does not the disobedience, revolt, and unruliness
Eisenstein and Benjamin attributed to early hand-drawn animation con-
tinue to survive in present-day computer animation in spite of or in an
uneasy closeness with discriminatory norms and conventions?
In recent years, scholarship has shifted from the interpellatory poten-
tial of popular culture and mainstream Hollywood film to highlight acts
of appropriation and meaning-production in the process of consumption.
In “Circulating Empires: Colonial Authority and the Immoral, Subversive
Problem of American Film,” for example, Brian Larkin considers the ways in
which the cinema apparatus (in the form of American films and the anonym-
ity of movie theater experience) threatened the pervasiveness of British impe-
rial rule in India around 1900. Although the British imperial administration
considered films as vital tools to promote an ideology of white superiority
and non-white inferiority (cf. Larkin 158), with its depiction of underprivi-
leged, poor whites the increasingly popular Hollywood films were feared to
jeopardize British hegemony. Their wide-ranging portrayals of “‘backstage’
images of white culture and morality […] undercut the dichotomy separat-
ing ‘depraved’ natives from ‘civilized’ rulers” (Larkin 158) and imperiled the
prevalent racial hierarchies of British imperialism. In making the previously
“visual unavailability” (Larkin 171) of white colonizers “‘available to the
native gaze’” (Arora in Larkin 171), the space of the screening, the movie
theater, further complicated seemingly stable colonial dichotomies. The
colonized subject experienced a form of empowerment through the act of
seeing, while remaining concealed from the policing of the imperial gaze in
the poorly lit cinema.13 As these examples from British India suggest, Larkin
concludes, “[t]he cinematic experience is never simply an abstract exchange
of meaning between a technology and its addressee” (178).
In her contribution to Globalizing American Studies, Elizabeth
Thompson also explores the appropriation of Hollywood film within local,
regional, and transnational contexts. She examines the reception of Gone
with the Wind (1939) throughout Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria during World
War II to maintain that audiences linked the themes of the film to their
social, political, economic, and cultural experiences; “historical context,”
Thompson contends, “shaped reception of Hollywood’s universal vernac-
ular” (185). As the turmoil of World War II destabilized the established
political system of the region, “the reign of the old landowning elite was
 EXCEPTIONAL ANIMATION: AN INTRODUCTION 17

crumbling under the wartime pressure of labor, nationalist, and Islamic

movements that gave voice to popular grievances” (Thompson 197).
Middle and working class audiences found vivid images in the Hollywood
production for their hopes and ambitions “to overturn the patriarchal
world of privilege ruled by landed elites and to capture the state at inde-
pendence” (Thompson 197).14 The links between life in Egypt, Lebanon,
and Syria in the first half of the twentieth century and the cinematic rep-
resentation of the US American South in the 1860s, Thompson asserts,
were made possible by “[t]he global vernacular invented by Hollywood
[which] opened GWTW to contested local readings” (202). In Beirut,
Cairo, and Damascus the popular cinematographic text helped to establish
“a vital and separate public sphere” (Thompson 202).
Lastly, in his essay “Watching Shrek in Teheran” (2010), Brian Edwards
juxtaposes the popularity of Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiorastami in the
United States with the widespread appeal of the Hollywood animated film
Shrek (2001) in Iran. The director of films like Taste of Cherry (1997) is
embraced for his nuanced yet critical perspective on Iranian society and
the Islamic political regime in the West, while at the same time dismissed
as “an art director whose films are far removed from politics or any sense
of contemporaneity” and as “another pawn in the West’s media game”
(Edwards 5) in Iran. Another product of this Western media game, Shrek,
on the other hand, is a part of the vital Iranian film culture. Thanks to its
various (illegally) dubbed Farsi versions and its appropriation to a distinct
cultural context, the DreamWorks production enjoys immense popularity
and, in many respects, “isn’t an American film at all” (2).15 Indeed, Shrek
in Iran and Kiorastami in America “resonate in ways that their producers
could hardly have predicted” as “[t]he Iranian Shrek and the American
Kiorastami do not represent, in their new homes, what they represent in
the film worlds where they originated” (Edwards 8). Larkin, Thompson,
and Edwards exemplify transnational approaches to the study of popular
film which do not conceptualize American silent films, Gone with the Wind,
or Shrek as forms of cultural imperialism. Instead, transnational scholarship
explores the various ways in which audiences appropriate the meaning of
cinematic texts to their individual experience and environment.
From the movie theaters in colonial India to the cinema palaces of
North Africa and private screenings in Iran, these examples encourage the
understanding of films in terms of the interactive practices they generate.
Whether participating in the public sphere of a twentieth-century movie
theater or watching illegal copies downloaded from the internet on a
Another random document with
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 E.
Ea est accipienda interpretatio quæ vitio caret.
That interpretation is to be received which is not
defective.

Ea quæ dari impossibilia sunt, vel quæ in rerum natura non sunt, pro
non adjectis habentur.
Those things which cannot possibly be given, or which
have no existence in the nature of things, are
considered as things not included.

Ea quæ raro accidunt, non temere in agendis negotiis computantur.

Those things which seldom happen are not rashly to
be computed in transacting business.

Ea sola deportationis sententia aufert, quæ ad fiscum pervenerit.

A sentence of transportation takes away those things
alone which come to the treasury.

Eadem mens uniuscujusque præsumitur quæ est juris, quæque esse

debeat, præsertim in dubiis.
The intention of every one is presumed to be the same
as that of the law, and as it ought to be, especially in
dubious cases.

Ecclesia ecclesiæ decimas solvere non debet.

 The church cannot pay tithes to the church.

Ecclesia semper in regis est tutela.

The church is always under the protection of the king.

Effectus sequitur causam.

The effect follows the cause.

Ejus est non nolle, qui potest velle.

It does not belong to him to refuse who can be willing.

Emptio et venditio contrahitur, simulatque de pretio convenerit.

Buying and selling is contracted as soon as the price is
agreed upon.

Eodem modo quo quid constituitur, eodem modo dissolvitur,—

destruitur.
In the same way in which any thing is constituted, in
the same way it is dissolved—destroyed.

Ephemeris annua pars legis Anglicanæ.

An annual diary is a part of the English law.

Equitas naturam rei non mutat.

Equity does not change the nature of a thing.

Error placitandi æquitatem non tollit.

The error in writing does not take away equity.
Error, qui non resistitur, approbatur.
The error which is not resisted, is approved.

Est boni judicis ampliare jurisdictionem.

It is the duty of a good judge to extend his jurisdiction.

Et est pactio duorum pluriumve in idem placitum consensus.

The agreement of two or more in the same will,
constitutes an agreement.

Excambium non potest esse rerum diversæ qualitatis; neque

excambium inter tres partes datur.
Excambion, or exchange, cannot be of things of a
different quality; nor is it granted among three parties.

Exceptio probat regulam, de rebus non exceptis.

An exception makes good the rule about the things
that are not excepted.

Exceptio quæ firmat legem, exponit legem.

An exception which strengthens the law, expounds the
law.

Excessus in re qualibet jure reprobatur communi.

Excess in any thing is reprobated by common law.

Ex diuturnitate temporis omnia præsumuntur solemniter acta.

 From the length of time, all things are presumed to be
done by usage.

Ex facto jus oritur.

Right or law arises from deed—fact.

Ex frequenti delicto augetur pœna.

Punishment is increased from the frequency of a
transgression.

Ex judiciorum publicorum admissis, non alias transeunt adversus

hæredes pœnæ bonorum ademptionis, quam si lis contestata et
condemnatio fuerit secuta; excepto majestatis judicio.
On account of admissions made at public trials, the
punishment of confiscation of goods does not
otherwise pass against heirs, than if a contested suit
and condemnation followed; excepting in the case of
high treason.

Ex maleficio non oritur contractus.

Contract does not arise from injury.

Ex malis moribus bonæ leges oriuntur.

Good laws take their origin from bad practices.

Ex nuda submissione non oritur actio.

An action does not arise from a bare submission.

Ex nudo pacto non oritur actio.

 An action does not arise from a bare agreement.

Executio est executio legis secundum judicium.

Execution is the performance of the law according to
judgment.

Expressa nocent, non expressa non nocent.

Things expressed hurt; those not expressed do not
hurt.

Expressio unius est exclusio alterius.

The expression of one is the exclusion of another.

Expressio illorum quæ tacite insunt nihil operatur.

The expression of those things which are tacitly
implied, is unnecessary.

Ex qua persona quis lucrum capit, ejus factum præstare debet.

From whatever calling any one derives profit, he ought
to discharge the duty of that calling.

Expressum facit cessare tacitum.

What is expressed makes what is silent to cease.

Exterus non habet terras, habet res suas, et vitam, et libertatem.

A foreigner has no lands, he has his own effects, his
life and liberty.
Extinguitur obligatio quæ rite constiterit, si in eum casum inciderit, a
quo incipere non potuit.
An obligation which has been sealed in due form, is
extinguished if it fall into that situation from which it
cannot arise.

Extra territorium jus dicenti impune non paretur. Idem est, et si supra
jurisdictionem suam velit jus dicere.
One cannot with impunity obey one executing justice,
beyond his province; the same happens if one
presumes to administer justice beyond his own
jurisdiction.

Extrema potius pati, quam turpia facere.

Rather suffer extremities, than do infamous things.
 F.
Factum a judice quod ad officium ejus non pertinet, ratum non est.
An act of a judge which does not belong to his office, is
not binding.

Facultas probationum non est angustanda.

The faculty of furnishing proofs, is not to be
circumscribed.

Falsa orthographia, sive falsa grammatica, non vitiat concessionem.

Erroneous orthography, or grammatical errors, do not
vitiate a grant.

Fama est constans virorum bonorum de re aliqua opinio.

Fame is the constant opinion of good men concerning
any thing.

Fatetur facinus qui judicium fugit.

He confesses the crime who avoids the trial.

Favorabiliores rei potius, quam actores habentur.

Accused persons are held more favourable than the
accusers.

Feodum simplex ex feodo simplici pendere non potest.

 A simple feu cannot depend on a simple feu.

Fere in omnibus pœnalibus judiciis, et ætati et imprudentiæ

succurritur.
Almost in all penal trials allowance is made for youth
and imprudence.

Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum.

Let justice be done, if the sky should fall.

Fictio cedit veritati.

Fiction yields to truth.

Fictio juris non est ubi veritas.

There is no supposition of right where the truth is
evident.

Filiatio non potest probari.

Filiation cannot be proved.

Flumina et portus publica sunt.

Rivers and harbours are public.

Flumina pene omnia, et portus, publica sunt.

Almost all rivers and harbours are public.

Fœminæ ab omnibus officiis civilibus vel publicis remotæ sunt. Item

impubes omnibus civilibus officiis debet abstinere.
 Women are removed from all civil and public offices.—
Likewise those under age ought to abstain from all civil
offices.

Fœminis et infantibus per vicarium multis muneribus licet fungi.

It is lawful for women and children to discharge offices
by proxy or substitute.

Fortior et posterior est dispositio legis quam hominis.

The disposal of the law is stronger and later than that
of a man.

Fractionem diei non recipit lex.

The law does not admit of the fractional part of a day.

Fraus adstringit non dissolvit perjuriam.

Fraud binds—does not dissolve perjury.

Fraus æquitati præjudicat.

Fraud is prejudicial to equity.

Fraus est celare fraudem.

To conceal fraud is fraud.

Fraus est odiosa et non præsumenda.

Fraud is odious, and not to be presumed.

Fraus et dolus nemini debent patrocinari.

 Fraud and craft ought to be a protection to none.

Fraus legibus invisissima.

Fraud is most odious to the laws.

Fraudis interpretatio semper in jure civili non ex eventu duntaxat, sed

ex concilio quoque desideratur.
The interpretation of fraud in the civil law is not always
desired from the event merely, but likewise from the
intention.

Frustra expectatur cujus effectus nullus sequitur.

That is expected in vain of which no effect follows.

Frustra legis auxilium implorat qui leges ipsas subvertere conatur.

He implores the assistance of the law in vain, who
endeavours to subvert the laws themselves.

Frustra probatur quod probatum non relevat.

That thing is proved in vain, which, when proved, is not
relevant.

Fundi non debent inalienabiles esse.

Farms ought not to be unalienable.

Furiosi, vel ejus cui bonis interdictum sit, nulla voluntas est.
The will of a madman, or of him who is interdicted from
the administration of his goods, is nothing.
Furiosus solo furore punitur.
A madman is punished only by his own madness.
 G.
Generale dictum, generaliter est intelligendum.
A thing said in a general sense, is to be understood in
a general sense.

Generale dictum generaliter est interpretandum. Generalia verba

sunt generaliter intelligenda.
A general saying is to be interpreted in general.—
General words are to be so interpreted.

Generalia præcedunt, specialia sequuntur.

General things precede, special things follow.

Generalia specialibus non derogant.

General things are not derogatory to special.

Generalia sunt præponenda singularibus.

General things are to be preferred to single things.

Generalibus specialia derogant.

Special things are derogatory to general.

Generalis gratia proditionem et homicidium non excipit pœna.

General favour does not exempt treason and homicide
from punishment.
Generaliter, cum de fraude disputatur, non quid habeat actor, sed
quid per adversarium habere non potuerit, considerandum est.
When there is a dispute concerning fraud, we are to
consider in general, not what the actor may have, but
what he could not have had by his opponent.

Generaliter probandum est, ubicunque in bonæ fidei judiciis

confertur, in arbitrium domini aut procuratoris ejus, conditio, pro boni
viri arbitrio hoc habendum est.
We ought to prove in general, that in whatever case a
condition is imposed upon the will of a master or his
agent, in bona fide trials, this is to be considered
according to the judgment of a good man.

Grammatica falsa non vitiat chartam.

False grammar does not vitiate a writing.

Gravius est alternam quam temporalem lædere majestatem.

It is more grievous to hurt an alternate, than a
temporary authority.
 H.
Habendum in charta vel auget vel restringit, sed non novum inducit.
What is to be regarded in writing, either increases or
restricts; but it does not induce any thing new.

Hæredi favetur.
Favour is shewn to an heir.

Hæreditas, alia corporalis, alia incorporalis: Corporalis est, quæ

tangi potest et videri: Incorporalis, quæ tangi non potest nec videri.
Inheritance, one kind is substantial, and another
unsubstantial—the substantial is what can be touched
and seen—the unsubstantial, what cannot be touched
nor seen.

Hæreditas est successio in universum jus quod defunctus habuerit.

Inheritance is the succession to the universal right
which the deceased had.

Hæreditas ex dimidio sanguine non datur.

Inheritance is not granted from half-blood.

Hæreditas nihil aliud est, quam successio in universum jus quod

defunctus habuerit.
Inheritance is nothing else than the succession to the
whole right which the deceased may have had.
Hæreditates recta linea debent descendere, sed non ascendunt.
Inheritances ought to descend in a direct line; but do
not ascend.

Hæres est aut jure proprietatis, aut jure representationis.

One is an heir either by right of property, or by right of
representation.

Hæres est eadem persona cum antecessore,—pars antecessoris.

An heir is the same person with his predecessor—a
part of that predecessor.

Hæres legitimus est quem nuptiæ demonstrant.

He is the lawful heir whom the marriage demonstrates
to be so.

Hæres est nomen juris; filius est nomen naturæ.

An heir is the name of right—son is the name of
nature.

Hæres non tenetur in Anglia ad debita antecessoris reddenda, nisi

per antecessorem ad hoc fuerit obligatus, præterquam debita regis
tantum.
The heir is not bound in England to pay the debts of
his predecessor, unless he hath been obliged to this by
his predecessor, except only what is due to the king.

Hæredem ejusdem potestatis jurisque esse, cujus fuit defunctis,

constat.
 It is certain that an heir hath the same power and
privilege which belonged to the deceased.

Hæres hæredis mei est meus hæres.

The heir of my heir is my heir.

Humanum est errare.

Man is liable to error; or, to err is inherent to human
nature.
 I.
Ibi semper debet fieri Triatio, ubi juratores meliorem possunt habere
notitiam.
Trial must take place, where the jury may obtain better
information. [See Transcriber’s Note.]

Id certum est quod certum reddi potest, sed id magis certum est
quod de semetipso est certum.
That is certain which can be rendered certain, but that
is more certain which is certain of itself.

Id perfectum est quod ex omnibus suis partibus constat; et nihil

perfectum est dum aliquid restat agendum.
That is complete which consists of all its parts; and
nothing is perfect while any thing remains to be done.

Id quod est magis remotum, non trahit ad se quod est magis

junctum, sed e contrario in omni casu.
That which is more remote does not draw to itself that
which is more closely joined; but the contrary in every
case.

Id quod nostrum est, sine facto nostro ad alium transferri non potest.
That which is ours cannot be transferred to another
without our own deed.

Idem agens et patiens esse non potest.

 The same person cannot be both the agent and
patient.

Idem est facere et non prohibere cum possis, et qui non prohibet
cum prohibere possit, in culpa est.
It is the same to do and not to prohibit when you can;
and he who does not prohibit when he can prohibit, is
in fault.

Idem est nihil dicere et insufficienter dicere.

It is the same thing to speak nothing, and to speak
insufficiently.

Idem est non esse et non apparere.

Not to be, and not to appear is the same.

Idem semper antecedenti proximo refertur.

The same thing is always referred to the nearest
antecedent.

Ignorantia facti excusat.

Ignorance of a fact or deed excuses.

Ignorantia judicis est calamitas innocentis.

The ignorance of a judge is the calamity of the
innocent.

Ignorantia juris non excusat.

Ignorance of the law does not excuse.
Ignorantia juris sui non præjudicat juri.
Ignorance of ones own right is not prejudicial to that
right.

Ignorantia legum neminem excusat, omnes enim præsumuntur eas

nosse quibus omnes consentiant.
Ignorance of the law excuses no body, for all are
presumed to know those things on which all agree.

Ignorantia non excusat legem.

Ignorance does not excuse the law.

Illud quod alias licitum non est, necessitas facit licitum; et necessitas
inducit privilegium quod jure privatur.
That which is not lawful in another case, necessity
makes lawful; and necessity induces a privilege which
is taken away by the law.

Imaginaria venditio non est pretio accedente.

It is not an imaginary sale when the price is paid.

Imperator noster servis rescripsit, in ambiguitatibus quæ ex legibus

proficiscuntur, consuetudinem, aut rerum perpetuo similiter
judicatarum auctoritatem, vim legis obtinere.
Our emperor wrote back to his subjects that in the
ambiguities, which proceed from the laws, the custom,
or the authority of cases constantly decided in the
same manner, should obtain the force of laws.
Imperitia culpæ adnumeratur.
Unskilfulness is reckoned a fault.

Impersonalitas non concludit nec ligat.

Impersonality is neither conclusive nor binding.

Impius et crudelis judicandus est qui libertati non favet.

He is to be considered a wicked and cruel person who
does not favour liberty.

Improbi rumores, dissipati sunto.

Let wicked reports be silenced.

Impotentia excusat legem.

Inability excuses law.

Impunitas semper ad deteriora invitat.

Impunity always is an inducement to do worse.

Impossibilium nulla obligatio est.

There is no obligation to things impossible; none is
obliged to do impossibilities.

In actis publicis collegii sive corporis alicujus corporati consensus,

est voluntas multorum ad quos res pertinet simul juncta.
In public acts of a college or any incorporated body,
the will of many to whom the matter belongs joined
together, is the consent.