Chapter 4. Exploring animality and childhood in stop-motion animation Prokofiev’s Peter & the Wolf

Abstract

This chapter presents animality as a way to illuminate interconnected relations between children and animals in film through an analysis of stop-motion animation Prokofiev’s Peter & the Wolf (Templeton 2006), adapted from a symphonic fairy tale by Sergei Prokofiev (1936). It argues for animality as a core concept in preserving animal essence and credibility while exploring how animal characters integrate the human and nonhuman. Interdependence between animals and children is considered through notions of “significant otherness” (Haraway 2003) and “childhoodnature” (Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles, Malone, and Barratt Hacking 2020). The chapter also examines how the film’s material qualities accentuate its production of animality.