Animating the Cute

This study examines animation as the end product of a complicated relationship between conscious social exchanges and intelligent cultural management. By employing an ethnographic approach, the researcher investigated how animation, as a form of cultural product, was and is, produced and consumed in the global age, as transnational capital has reorganized the world economy toward a more globally integrated, task-segmented system. Taiwan was, and still is, one of the largest producers of animation in the world. However, the industry was founded in a dependent position within the subcontracting environment. It relied heavily on the pre and post-production skills of the client countries in the first world, such as the United States (Hollywood) and Japan. In the digital age, the animation industry attempts to move upwards along the value chain, creating full-length features, to adapt a live-action film to animation, and hopefully to spur a burgeoning video game industry. Despite a number of government-led projects, the brain-drain in narrative planning, storytelling and global marketing remains in the way of its quest.