Performance times: The lightning cartoon and the emergence of animation

Cook, Malcolm (2014) Performance times: The lightning cartoon and the emergence of animation. Askari, Kaveh, Curtis, Scott, Gray, Frank, Pelletier, Louis, Williams, Tami and Yumibe, Joshua (eds.) In Performing New Media: 1890-1915. The edited DOMITOR proceedings from Brighton, UK, 2012. John Libbey. 336 pp .

Abstract

This chapter examines the lightning cartoon/sketch music hall act, with particular focus on its performative aspects and the treatment of a range of temporal durations played upon during the act. This chapter argues that the lightning cartoon may be seen to have anticipated the temporal dislocation of moving image performances, and consequently played a role in the exploitation of it in the early development of animation.

This chapter demonstrates, contrary to immediate expectations, that the music hall act was not a simple ‘live’ stage performance dependent upon the temporal and spatial coincidence of performer and audience, with an attendant immediacy and authenticity based on the inherent skills of the performer. Some performers may have presented their act in this way, with Edgar Austin proclaiming his honesty in drawing without aids and child stars’ inherent ability being emphasised in interviews. Equally audiences’ vocal responses indicate a naive acceptance of that immediacy and interaction. Yet, as shown here, the act was carefully constructed, through the use of stage names and personas, rehearsals, rigorous schedules, and drawing tricks. Most importantly, the performance involved a dislocation between the time it took to produce the drawing and the spectator’s cognition of it, termed here the narrative of perception.

When the lightning cartoon was translated into early moving images, these various performance times were exacerbated, with their construction more readily apparent, and they were added to by the nature of the mechanical reproduction of the performance. While the earliest films of Tom Merry were inadvertently damaged by the mismatch between production time and projection time, Walter Booth exploited the difference to further extend the temporal dislocation between performer and audience, a quality that may be seen as typical of animation, with its laborious production time yet seemingly effortless performance when projected.

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