Chapter 4
Exploring animality and childhood in stop-motion animation Prokofiev’s Peter & the Wolf
This chapter presents animality as a way to illuminate interconnected relations between children and animals in film through an analysis of stop-motion animation Prokofiev’s Peter & the Wolf (Templeton 2006), adapted from a symphonic fairy tale by Sergei Prokofiev (1936). It argues for animality as a core concept in preserving animal essence and credibility while exploring how animal characters integrate the human and nonhuman. Interdependence between animals and children is considered through notions of “significant otherness” (Haraway 2003) and “childhoodnature” (Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Malone, and Barratt Hacking 2020). The chapter also examines how the film’s material qualities accentuate its production of animality.
Article outline
- Understanding animality
- “Childhoodnature” and “after childhood”
- Animals in animation
- Visual and musical depictions of animality
- Companionship, playfulness, humor, and death: Preserving animal integrity
- Developing childhoodnature encounters and celebrating animality
- Conclusion
-
References
References (65)
Primary sources
Prokofiev, Sergei
(composer) Richard Baker (narrator) Raymond Leppard (conductor) & New Philharmonia Orchestra
1971 Peter and the Wolf. EMI, compact disc. Originally recorded in 1936.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Templeton, Susie
director 2006 Prokofiev’s Peter & the Wolf. Produced by
Alan Dewhurst,
Hugh Welchman &
Zbigniew Zmudzki. BreakThru Films.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Templeton, Susie
.
The Making of Peter & the Wolf interview. In
Templeton, Susie (director) Alan Dewhurst,
Hugh Welchman &
Zbigniew Zmudzki (producers) Sergei Prokofiev (composer) Mark Stephenson (conductor) & London Philharmonia Orchestra
2006 Prokofiev’s Peter & the Wolf. [Motion Picture]. BreakThru Films.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Secondary sources
Ardnt, Sonja, Semenec, Paulina & Diaz-Diaz, Claudia
2020 Interview with Sonja Ardnt. In
Posthumanist and New Materialist Methodologies: Research After the Child,
Claudia Diaz-Diaz &
Paulina Semenec (eds), Singapore: Springer.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Baker, Steve
2001 Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation. Manchester: Manchester UP.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Baker, Timothy
2019 Writing Animals: Language, Suffering, and Animality in Twenty-First-Century Fiction. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Barad, Karen
2003 Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.
Signs: Gender and Science 28 (3): 801–831.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Boyd, Brian
2007 Tails within Tales. In
Knowing Animals,
Laurence Simmons and
Phillip Armstrong (eds), Leiden: Brill.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Budach, Gabriele & Sharoyan, Gohar
2020 Exploring ‘vibrant matter’ in animation making.
Language and Intercultural Communication 20 (5): 464–481.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Ciszewska, Ewa
2019 Who Benefits from the Past? The Process of Cultural Heritage Management in the Field of Animation in Poland (The Case of the Se-Ma-For Film Studio in Łódź).
animation: an interdisciplinary journal 14 (2): 117–131.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Clottes, Jean
2016 What Is Paleolithic Art? Cave Paintings and the Dawn of Human Creativity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cole, Matthew & Stewart, Kate
2020 Socializing Superiority: The Cultural Denaturalization of Children’s Relations with Animals. In
Research Handbook on Childhoodnature: Assemblages of Childhood and Nature Research,
Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles,
Karen Malone &
Elisabeth Barratt Hacking (eds). Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Coole, Diana
2013 Agentic Capacities and Capacious Historical Materialism: Thinking with New Materialisms in the Political Sciences.
Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41 (3): 451–69.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Coole, Diana & Frost, Samantha
2010 Introducing the New Materialisms. In
New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics,
Diana Coole &
Samantha Frost (eds), Durham, USA: Duke University Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Amy, Malone, Karen & Barratt Hacking, Elisabeth
2020 Childhoodnature: An Assemblage Adventure. In
Research Handbook on Childhoodnature: Assemblages of Childhood and Nature Research,
Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles,
Karen Malone &
Elisabeth Barratt Hacking (eds). Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Dasgupta, Partha
2021 The Economics of Nature: The Dasgupta Review. London: HM Treasury.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Derrida, Jacques
2002 The Animal That Therefore I Am, translated by
David Wills. New York: New York Fordham University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Deszcz-Tryhubczak, Justyna
2012 Thinking with the Wolf: The Deconstructive Ecopedagogy of Suzie Templeton’s Animated Adaptation of Peter and the Wolf
.
Filoteknos: Children’s Literature – Cultural Mediation – Anthropology of Childhood 3: 179–194.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Dickinson, Elisabeth
2013 The Misdiagnosis: Rethinking “Nature-deficit Disorder”.
Environmental Communication 7 (3): 315–335.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Dunn, Matilda Eve, Mills, Morena & Veríssimo, Diogo
2020 Evaluating the impact of the documentary series Blue Planet II on viewers’ plastic consumption behaviours.
Conservation Science and Practice. A Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology 2 (10): 280: 1–10.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Flanagan, Victoria
2017 Posthumanism: Rethinking ‘The Human’ in Modern Children’s Literature. In
The Edinburgh Companion to Children’s Literature,
Clémentine Beauvais &
Maria Nikolajeva (eds). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Frank, Hannah
2019 Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons. Oakland: University of California Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Fudge, Erica
2002 Animal. London: Reaktion Books.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Furniss, Maureen
2007 Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics. Barnet: John Libbey Publishing Ltd.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gamble, Christopher N., Joshua S. Hanan & Thomas Nail
2019 What is New Materialism? Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities 24 (6): 111–134.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
García-González, Macarena
2020 Post-representational Cultural Memory for Children in Chile: From La Composición to Bear Story
.
Children’s Literature in Education 51: 160–178.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
García-González, Macarena & Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak
2020 New Materialist Openings to Children’s Literature Studies.
International Research in Children’s Literature 13 (1): 45–60.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gillett, James
2017 Adoption, Custody, and Protection. In
Childhood and Pethood in Literature and Culture: New Perspectives on Childhood Studies and Animal Studies,
Anne Feuerstein &
Carmen Nolte-Odhiambo (eds), London: Routledge.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Global Rewilding Alliance
2021 Rewilding: An introduction to a practice and a new vision for the planet.
Rewilding Global. 2–5.
[URL] (3 October 2021).
Golding, Johnny
2018 Friendship. In
The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies,
Lynn Turner,
Undine Sellbach &
Ron Broglio (eds). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Gunning, Tom
2019 Foreword: Hannah Frank’s Pause. In
Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons,
Daniel Morgan (ed), xi–xviii. Oakland: University of California Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hałgas, Iwona
2011 Peter and the Wolf – Susie Templeton, translated by Roberto Galea.
Culture.Pl. [URL] (3 October 2021).
Haraway, Donna
2003 The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Others. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Haraway, Donna
2008 When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Heise, Ursula, K.
2014 Plasmatic Nature: Environmentalism and Animated Film.
Public Culture 26 (2): 301–318.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hohti, Riikka, Semenec, Paulina & Diaz-Diaz, Claudia
2020 Interview with Riikka Hohti. In
Posthumanist and New Materialist Methodologies: Research After the Child,
Claudia Diaz-Diaz,
Claudia &
Paulina Semenec (eds). Singapore: Springer.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Jaques, Zoe
2015 Children’s Literature and the Posthuman: Animal, Environment, Cyborg. Oxon: Routledge.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Jaques, Zoe
2017 Animal Studies. In
The Edinburgh Companion to Children’s Literature,
Clementine Beauvais &
Maria Nikolajeva (eds). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Kraftl, Peter
2020 After Childhood: Re-thinking Environment, Materiality and Media in Children’s Lives. Oxon: Routledge.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Kraftl, Peter, Semenec, Paulina & Diaz-Diaz, Claudia
2020 Interview with Peter Kraftl. In
Posthumanist and New Materialist Methodologies: Research After the Child,
Claudia Diaz-Diaz &
Paulina Semenec (eds). Singapore: Springer.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lamarre, Thomas
2018 Animation and Animism. In
Animals, Animality and Literature,
Bruce Boehrer,
Molly Hand &
Brian Massumi (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Louv, Richard
2005 Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lundblad, Michael
2009 From Animal to Animality Studies.
PMLA. 124(2): 496–502.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Malone, Karen, Duhn, Iris & Tesar, Marek
2020 Greedy Bags of Childhoodnature Theories. In
Research Handbook on Childhoodnature: Assemblages of Childhood and Nature Research,
Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles,
Karen Malone &
Elisabeth Barratt Hacking (eds). Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Mohamed, Fauzi Naeim & Nurul Lina Mohd Nor
2015 Puppet Animation Films and Gesture Aesthetics.
animation: an interdisciplinary journal. 10 (2): 102–118.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Morton, Brian
2016 Peter and the Wolf at 80: How a children’s classic survived Stalin … and Disney.
BBC.
[URL] (3 October 2021).
Nikolajeva, Maria
2002 The Rhetoric of Character in Children’s Literature. Oxford: Scarecrow Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Nodelman, Perry
2019 Fish Is People.
Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature 57 (2): 12–21.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Osmond, Andrew
2006 Peter and the Wolf: Stop-Motion Finds a Dark Side.
Animation World Network.
[URL] (3 October 2021).
Ratelle, Amy
2015 Animality in Children’s Literature and Film. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rogers, Katharine. M.
2006 Cat. London: Reaktion Books.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rollin, Bernard & Rollin, Michael D. H.
2001 Dogmatisms and Catechisms: Ethics and Companion Animals.
Anthrozoös 14 (1): 4–11.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques
1762 Émile or On Education, translated by
Barbara Foxley. Delhi: Lector House.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Spyrou, Spyros
2017 Time to Decenter Childhood? Childhood 24 (4): 433–437.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Struzik, Justyna & Pustulka, Paulina
2017 Transgressing the ‘Luggage’ Metaphor Children and Pets as Migrants in the Context of Contemporary International Mobility from Poland to Norway. In
Childhood and Pethood in Literature and Culture: New Perspectives on Childhood Studies and Animal Studies,
Anna Feuerstein &
Carmen Nolte-Odhiambo (eds). London: Routledge.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Thunberg, Greta
2018 The disarming case to act right now on climate change.
TEDx Stockholm.
[URL] (3 October 2021).
Tree, Isabella
2018 Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm. London: Picador.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Tsing, Anna
2015 The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Van Dooren, Thom, Kirkesy, Eben & Münster, Ursula
2016 Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness.
Environmental Humanities 8 (1): 1–23.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Veryeri Alaca, Ilgım
2019 Materiality in Picturebooks: An Introduction.
Libri et Liberi: Journal of Research on Children’s Literature and Culture 8 (2): 243–255.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Wells, Paul
1998 Understanding Animation. Oxon: Routledge.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Wells, Paul
2009 The Animated Bestiary: Animals, Cartoons and Culture. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Whitley, David
2012 The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation. 2nd edition. Aldershot: Ashgate.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Wolfe, Carey
2010 What is Posthumanism? Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
You, Chengcheng
2021 The Necessity of an Anthropomorphic Approach to Children’s Literature.
Children’s Literature in Education 52: 183–199.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by (1)
Cited by 1 other publications
Farrar, Jennifer, Evelyn Arizpe & Rachel Lees
2024.
Thinking and learning through images: a review of research related to visual literacy, children’s reading and children’s literature.
Education 3-13 ► pp. 1 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.