Multimodal Analysis of Animated Hollywood Film Fantastic Mr. Fox

Animations, one of the virtues of digital world, subjectively demonstrates anthropomorphic representations of fantasy worlds in which human and non-human identities are constantly being revalued. In this milieu, animators are heirs to aesthetic resources functioning a mediating force to re-conceptualize and reorganize the world’s spatial coordinates. This paper probes the nature of creeping ideologies about consumerism, globalized world and denigrated non-American local cultures propagated in popular, animated Hollywood film Fantastic Mr. Fox through a multimodal analysis. Multimodality, an interdisciplinary approach to the study of contemporary communication and representation, justifiably claims that there are intricate processes of meaning-making achieved not only through language but also through a variety of modes, including image, gaze, gesture, movement, music, speech and sound–effect, that simultaneously and in various degrees contribute to the gestation of semiotic landscape. Applying a multimodal approach, we try to answer these questions: In what ways is multimodality a repertoire for scaffolding cultural identity? How can multimodal representations help immerse interpreters in the life-worlds of fictional characters? What is the best way to study processes of remediation as they bear on issues of multimodality? The significance of current study is emphasized by the formation of an increasingly intimate association between children, consumer culture, and lucre-oriented media in the USA, as well as the increasingly dire information emerging about disparaged local traditions. This analysis grossly represents the dual, alienating and often conflicting messages that commercial film provides for its young audiences about promised American utopia and their vociferously alleged panacea for the audiences’ desperate situation.