At The Threshold Of Gender And Culture: An Analyis Of Magıcal Realism In Animation

This thesis examines how the intersection of magical realism, queer theory, and animationcan reimagine and reconstruct memory and identity. Using personal andfound family archives, it explores animation’s formal flexibility and magical realism’snarrative strategies to challenge dominant narratives of family, identity, and memory.Central to this study is the author’s animated short Threshold, which combinesarchival footage, occult symbolism, and experimental techniques to interrogate exclusionaryfamily rituals. Through a tripartite structure, the film transitions fromoppressive domestic realism to a liberatory magical realist utopia, embodying magicalrealism’s capacity to merge the ordinary and the extraordinary. The thesisalso engages with my heart knows, the author’s fabric sculpture that materializesqueer kinship and memory through tactile, durational labor, further expanding thediscussion on alternative archives. Theoretical frameworks emphasize how magicalrealism and animation challenge fixed epistemologies. By reclaiming suppressed historiessuch as Anatolian folk magic and queer counter-memory, this work positionsartistic practice as a site of utopian intervention. Ultimately, the thesis argues thatmagical realism in animation offers a transformative space for reconfiguring identity,memory, family, and temporality, opening pathways to queer utopian futuresbeyond cis-heteropatriarchal constraints.