[This is a brilliant exegesis on Jim Woodring’s _Frank_ stories] [mo], viewed as a détournement of the conventional anthropomorphic, mutable world of classic cartoons.

It gets right to the heart of what makes these stories so beautiful and unsettling. In Jim Woodring’s world everything is potentially alive, and alien; anything might in an instant become a sudden threat or a transcendent miracle, or both.

>The frowning, peering, waterspout. The gawping foliage… I’m not sure I’d describe any of this stuff as friendly, and I’m certainly not sure its apparent intelligence is in any way human. We might find something of who we are scattered across the million masks of God that form Frank’s home – this place is anthropoland, after all – but that doesn’t mean we’ll happen upon ourselves offered back up to us in an easily recognizable form. In Frank the singing trees may possess the operating system of a shark, and the houses all the winning charm of the octopus. We’re out of the comfort zone of simple anthropomorphism and entering the realm of primal animism.

[Read the whole thing] [mo] at [Mindless Ones] [mo2].

(Link via [Journalista] [j]. And everyone knows [Jim Woodring has a blog] [wm], right?)

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