Animated Automatons. An Approach Through Literature and Cinema

Abstract

The gothic tale “Der Sandmann” by E. T. A. Hoffmann serves as the basis for an analysis of eye-motifs in dolls/puppets, automata and androids. Strategies of narrative composition regarding the animation of artificially produced human figures as well as interactions between the android gaze and human projections are central to the analysis. Sigmund Freud’s concept of ‘the uncanny’ and methods of film analysis provide the basis for the analysis. To this aim, film analyses are used to exemplify both recurring aspects of Hoffmann’s tale within the cinema of the Weimar Republic as well as the development of eye-motifs in the history of American science-fiction-cinema.