This book examines the popular and critically acclaimed films of Pixar Animation Studios in their cultural and historical context. Whether interventionist sheriff dolls liberating oppressed toys (Toy Story) or exceptionally talented rodents hoping to fulfill their dreams (Ratatouille), these cinematic texts draw on popular myths and symbols of American culture. As Pixar films refashion traditional American figures, motifs and narratives for contemporary audiences, this book looks at their politics - from the frontier myth in light of traditional gender roles (WALL-E) to the notion of voluntary associations and neoliberalism (The Incredibles). Through close readings, this volume considers the aesthetics of digital animation, including voice-acting and the simulation of camera work, as further mediations of the traditional themes and motifs of American culture in novel form. Dietmar Meinel explores the ways in which Pixar films come to reanimate and remediate prominent myths and symbols of American culture in all their cinematic, ideological and narrative complexity.

Dietmar Meinel is a research and teaching assistant at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, in the Department of Anglophone Studies. He has published essays with the European Journal of American Culture, NECSUS European Journal for Media Studies, and the Animation Studies Journal as well as in the essay collection Rereading the Machine in the Garden (2014). Meinel has co-edited the volume Black, White, and In-Between (2008) to which he also contributed the essay “White Western: Whiteness and Race Politics from John Wayne to Clint Eastwood.”