BEYOND THE FRAME: UNPACKING IDENTITY CRISIS THROUGH MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS IN ANIMATED MOVIES

Abstract

The genre of animated movies represents such rich themes through multiple modes i.e. colours, dialogues, actions and music etc. The main aim of this thesis is to study how various modes combine to represent the identity crisis of Beast and Elsa in animated movies ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘Frozen’ respectively. Marcia’s Identity Status Theory is employed to study the psycho-social nature of their identity crisis, in combination with Kress and Leeuwen’s Multimodality Theory to analyze its representation through verbal, visual and kinetic modes. The findings reveal that Beast and Elsa keep shifting their identity statuses during identity crisis phase until they finally resolve it. Their relationships are also disturbed and stabilized along with these changes. Moreover, these animated movies have used verbal, visual and kinetic modes in a synchronized fashion to build identity crisis theme. Hence, Disney animated films use imaginary characters to portray realistic aspects of human psyche and by means of multiple modes, intricately combined.