Pierre Floquet, the author of “Le langage comique de Tex Avery,” is the recipient of the 2011 McLaren-Lambart Award for the Best Scholarly Book on animation. This book, published in French by L’Harmattan, is a detailed analysis of the cinematic nuances at play in the cartoons directed by Tex Avery at MGM from 1942-1951. With remarkably complex insights into Avery’s comic language, the author distills what at first glance might seem like a director’s reliance on coarse gags and repetitive formulae into a sophisticated colloquy with moviegoers. The manner in which Avery engages viewers on the nature of cinema has always been disarming, played for laughs instead of reflection, but French film scholars recognized him as an important auteur as early as the 1960s. This recent book in many ways is a fulfillment of this earlier recognition, a culminating study of Tex Avery’s influential body of work. Pierre Floquet’s writing on the concept of distantiation, from Althusser and especially Brecht, is essential. It points to a genuine concern with the form of the language of cartoons that is just as vital in any consideration of modern animation as it is with Avery’s œuvre.
The McLaren-Lambart Award is given annually by the Society for Animation Studies. The selection committee is chaired by Tom Klein, with our judging panel comprised of Jean Detheux (NFB/visual music animator), Janeann Dill, Ph.D (founder, IIACI/Institute for the Interdisciplinary Art and Creative Intelligence) and José García-Moreno (Chair, Animation/Loyola Marymount University). This award recognizes the finest contributions by international scholars to the advancement of animation studies. From a previous co-affiliation that it had with the National Film Board of Canada, this award is named in memory of Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart.
“Le langage comique de Tex Avery” can be ordered from Amazon France.
Image by Charles Da Costa