Animation and genre: the Clangers reboot – a case study

To the uninitiated, the invitation to consider, research, and speak about ‘animation and genre’ might seem like wasted energy. Animation is kids’ stuff, right? Classification by genre may seem equally unproblematic: animation is a particularly colourful strand of children’s entertainment. While these unnecessarily limiting statements are intended to focus the mind, it is still possible to encounter such oversimplifications – and prejudices – about the animated form when moving within generalist circles, or, more visibly, when navigating the menus of on-demand services such as the BBC’s iPlayer (to find animation you must search via the ‘category’ ‘CBeebies’), Netflix (see ‘sub genre’ ‘Children and Family’), and Amazon Video (where there is a clear overlap in the contents of the ‘Genre’ groupings ‘Animation’ and ‘Children and Family’).

This paper seeks to demonstrate why expending time and energy considering, researching and speaking about animation and genre is indeed fruitful. Focussing primarily on The Clangers reboot (2015-present), this paper will discuss the ways that genre, nostalgia, and national context have shaped the production of the stop-motion animated series. The paper will provide a glimpse into the speaker’s ongoing research project concerned with the work of Smallfilms, and will draw on first-hand archival, historical, interview-based, and textual analyses. Ultimately, the paper seeks to reveal how The Clangers reboot problematises its classification as children’s entertainment.