Porco Rosso

*** NEW ***
Ratelle, Amy (2020). Examining animal bodies in war-related media for children.
In Nathalie op de Beek (ed). Literary Cultures and Twenty-First-Century Childhoods (pp. 235-251). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

"Little has been written about the intersections of armed conflict and animal bodies, particularly in media for children. In the twenty-first century, we have seen increasing interest in celebrating animals’ wartime contributions, as well as depicting children’s experiences of war and making historical conflicts relevant to contemporary children. Exhibits—including the Imperial War Museum’s “The Children’s War” (2005–2011) and “Once Upon a Wartime: Classic War Stories for Children” (2011–present), David Backhouse’s “Animals in War” memorial in London, and the Australian War Memorial’s 2010 “A is for Animal” exhibit—signal co-evolved interests in vulnerable non-combatants’ observations of armed conflict. Amy Ratelle finds that this attention to childhood and to animals likely contributed to the commercial success of stage and screen adaptations of Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 novel, War Horse. In this chapter, Ratelle extends posthumanist scholarship to examine the role that animal bodies have played, and continue to play, in war-related or combat-themed media for children, including War Horse, the multiplatform Pokémon, and the films Open Season, Over the Hedge, Porco Rosso, and The Incredible Mr. Limpet. By reframing the rhetoric around the inclusion of animals in war-related media, this chapter moves beyond anthropocentric assumptions about human/animal relationships, the civilizing process human children undergo, and the nature of warfare itself."

Akimoto, Daisuke (2014). A pig, the state, and war: Porco Rosso (Kurenai no Buta). Animation Studies, 9.

Jackson, Paul (2014). Pigs might fly: Applying literary analysis to 'Porco Rosso'. Screen Education, 74, 46-51.

"Its pig-faced protagonist aside, Porco Rosso is one of Miyazaki's least fantastical films - but that doesn't mean it's straightforward. Allegory and Russian Formalism are just two of the analytical methods that can be employed when studying this rich text, writes Paul Jackson."

Wood, Chris (2009). The European fantasy space and identity construction in Porco Rosso. Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities, 28(2), 112-120.

Drazen, Patrick (2007). Sex and the single pig: Desire and flight in Porco Rosso. Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and the Fan Arts, 2, 189-199.

Moist, Kevin, & Barthalow, Michael (2007). When pigs fly: Anime, auteurism, and Miyazaki's Porco Rosso. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2(1), 27-42.

"This article addresses Western views of the Japanese animation form known as ‘anime’ through an analysis of a lesser-known film by one of the most important anime filmmakers, Hayao Miyazaki. In seeking to build what scholar Thomas Lamarre refers to as a ‘relational’ understanding of anime, we address Miyazaki’s film Porco Rosso through the lens of film studies concepts of auteur theory, and also in relation to the medium of animation. In a range of aspects, from visual approach to its deeper themes, Miyazaki’s work is found to draw on a distinctive set of strategies that might be described as ‘creative traditionalism’. Using Porco Rosso as a case study, our broader argument is that anime, as a form of postmodern popular culture, can be best understood in the West through a triangulation of different approaches that balance issues of form, medium, cultural context, and individual creators."