Lei Dai, Zhixin Zhan

Lei Dai

30 December, 2024

Props, Narrative functions, Animated films, “Up”, “Coco”.

Props, an indispensable element in animated films, can enhance the expressive power of the films, enabling the audience to better understand their essence. Using theoretical and textual analysis, this research paper analyzes and compares the narrative functions of props in two famed animated films (“Up” and “Coco”) via Paul Wells’ narrative strategy theory. Regarding the major text “Up”, four narrative functions of props are generalized: to externalize the inner activities of characters, to strengthen the relations between characters, to reduce superfluous plots and to resonate with the audience. The paper then takes “Coco” as a sub-text and selects one of its key props for narrative analysis, proving that the four functions deduced from “Up” are transferable therein.

© 2024, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license