CONTRA LA INERCIA AGAINST INERTIA - granada cultura

(13) “The body is malleable – it may
be stretched over long distances, be
compressed or extended, take the shape
or another form, fit into incompatible
spaces, etc.” Paul Wells. Understanding
animation. London; New York: Routledge,
1998. p. 188.
(14) “The body is fragmentary –it can
be broken into parts, reassembled
and conjoined with other objects and
materials”. Op. cit., p. 189.
(15) Op. cit., p. 189.
(16) “Animation makes “life” in the
inanimate space absolutely explicit and
uses the organic and the inorganic as
the subject of its basic principles and,
thus, redefines the comic aspects of the
relationship”. Op. cit., p. 162.
140
most powerful and, by a considerable margin, their
most media-friendly outlet. Paul Wells, an expert
in animation’s visual rhetoric, outlined a number
of principles on which animators have altered the
human figure. Wells believes this to be one of the
main alterations of the genre, and without doubt it is
one of the most characteristic of Pomet’s figuration.
One of these principles is malleability 13 , a solution
Pomet has exploited abundantly in legs that grow abnormally
long (Watanabe, 2004; El ministro, 2010),
thoraxes that extend magically or monstrously (Hot
dog, 2004; Clanger, 2006; Astairer, 2007), hands,
feet or heads smaller or, more usually, larger than
the rest of the body (T Rex, 2005; Kolyma, 2009;
Birda, 2009; Herr Profesor, 2006 [p. 96]; as well
as the whole series titled Sizes, 2010), large breasts
(Dolly, 2001), bodies depicted on a smaller scale
than the other figures in the scene (El prisionero,
2006; Junior, 2008), and Pinocchio’s nose or ears
(Celebración, 2007; The contract, 2010). Wells also
remarks on fragmentation 14 , which is what happens
to incomplete bodies (the headlessness of several
figures in 1909, 2006) or whose limbs have been
replaced by metal shoots (Dionis, 2009 [p. 115]; The
searchers, 2008 [p. 123]) or assembled with fragility
(The wrestlers, 2004 [p. 95]). Wells adds that
“bodies may redetermine the physical orthodoxies of
gender and species” 15 , which is exactly what we see
in a number of episodes of transformism appearing
as women’s legs and shoes on men, mainly men in
uniform or working clothes (Privado, 2009 [p. 72];
Manual transexual de historia contemporánea,
2010; Capitulación, 2011), as well as hybridizations
of animals (La conversación, 2006; Truce, 2011).
Finally, where distortion affects objects that are by
definition rigid or inanimate, it does so only to revoke
these categories, giving mobility to street furniture
(Sunset Park, 2007 [p. 60]) and trees (El regreso,
2006; Zzzz, 2009), or the elasticity of buildings (Lo
nuestro, 2006; La herencia, 2009 [p. 62]), in other
words, unifying the organic and the inorganic under
the laws of the same supernatural physics, disfiguring
and interpenetrating their respective limits, and
causing a clearly comic effect 16 .
The influence of the visual rhetoric of classic animated
films produced between the forties and sixties
in factories such as Warner Bros (Looney Tunes,
1930-1969), Hannah-Barbera (Wile E. Coyote and
the Road Runner, 1949-1966) o De Patie-Freleng
(The Pink Panther Show, 1969-1980) widely shown
on Spanish television in the seventies and eighties,
should be considered together with the specific
weight of other artists that Paco Pomet acknowledges
in his work, such as Neo Rauch, Martin Kippenberger,
Saul Steinberg or Mark Tansey on the