Cinematic Power of Animation In Challenging Societal Stereotypes Surrounding Mental Illness in Pedro Rivero and Alberto Vázquez’s Psiconautas, los niños olvidados.

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Authors

Deschamps, Mikenna

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2025-04-25

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en_US

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Think of your favorite animated movie, is it a story of adventure or hope? These are traditionally true for animated films, but animation's power expands far beyond that. Animation can take you to an entirely different world far outside of the realm of reality. Pedro Rivero and Alberto Vázquez understood the power of animation and used it as a narrative tool in their 2015 movie Psiconautas, los niños olvidados (Birdboy: The Forgotten Children). This movie focuses closely on the lives of four children desperate to escape the reality of their conflicted world. Although the children experience the hardships of humanity, Rivero and Vázquez portray them as animals rather than people. The decision allows the audience to connect deeper with the essence of these individuals rather than establishing an opinion based on the societal niche given to them. Depicting the characters as animals diminishes the possibility of the audience basing their opinions on the generalization of society, but rather on understanding the individual as who they are. Robert M. Hensel states “There is no greater disability in society, than the inability to see one person as more.” Assuming that no one person has the same experience, how does the use of animation allow these characters to be seen as individuals as they work through the hardships of a conflicted world? In this presentation, I argue that in Psiconautas animation is used as a narrative tool to expose the individual reality of those who struggle with addiction and mental illness.

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