In the process of exploring the metaphor of plants, I tried to understand another concept: Anthropomorphis.Principle anthropomorphism is the viewing of an inanimate object or an animal with human characteristics. Anthropomorphism makes metaphors more vivid. Anthropomorphism is used extensively in Disney’s animation. To be precise, the method that should be mentioned in my report is Personification, The difference between Anthropomorphism and Personification is that：
Anthropomorphism is literal. Speaking animals or objects who talk, think, or behave like humans are all anthropomorphic. Think of Thomas the Tank Engine, Winnie the Pooh, or Peter Rabbit. They literally act as if human.
Personification is figurative. Do you sometimes feel like your computer hates you, especially when it’s not working right? Well, it can’t literally hate you because it’s not human.
Personification has always been widely used as a literary device, especially in lyric poetry. Wordsworth’s personified daffodils below demonstrate what is probably one of the best-known, to the point of cliché, examples of this type of metaphor:
‘Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance’
The same approach was used in another animation I researched which is Pan’s Labyrinth.
In the process of my research, I also found a book called Plants as persons which deal with very philosophical aspects which I couldn’t fully understand but I would like to share some interesting points from page 14 of the book:‘The risk we run by ignoring the personhood of plants is losing sight of the knowledge that we humans are dependent ecological beings. We risk the complete severance of our connections with the other beings in the natural world—a process which only serves to strengthen and deepen our capacity for destructive ecological behaviour. This is humanity’s worst type of violence.’
Perhaps the underlying reason for man’s destructive behaviour towards nature is the neglect of the fact that we humans are ecologically dependent beings.
I really enjoy the process of research and even though not all the information I find may be directly helpful to my articles, it is interesting to understand things from a different perspective and discover more possibilities of things.
In the end, I clarified the scope of my research, making it specific to the plant metaphor and the animation Coco.
The title of my critical report is Analysis metaphors in animation:Plant