Thursday, November 1, 2007

Animation is Art: Seriously!

One of the things that bothers me the most about animation is that, at least in America, people have a strong tendency to dismiss anything animated as Cartoons, as no more than entertainment for children. It makes it hard to discuss anime when people immediately write you off for watching cartoons, not to mention thinking less of you (Dork, loser, etc). We're not going to get into the sections of anime fandom about which they, you know, have a point (Naruto); this is about the art form in general.

So, if I'm going to be writing about things like animation, I might as well start off by talking about why animation is worth talking about.

First off, I've repeatedly encountered two popular false assumptions about animation:
1. Animation is somehow less viable as a form of artistic expression than any other medium.
2. Animation is a genre, not a medium.
3. Animation is for children.

All we have to do to see why these are untrue is to break down animation as an art form. Animation is created by stringing together images at a certain high number of images per second (24-30 depending on whether the work in question is cinema or television). Using persistence of vision, these independent images appear to move (or are animated, as in, still images are given life or spirit). On top of this, there are usually sounds added to this - music and often voices.

If this sounds familiar, you know something about cinema. Indeed, animation is part of cinema. The technical aspects of any given movie or television show are identical between animation and live-action, save for one point: the nature of the images. In one, the images are hand-drawn, whereas in the other, they are photographic. That's it. Technically speaking, that's the difference between The Lion King and The Godfather.

So the issue of live-action vs. animation is, when boiled down, one of photography vs. drawing. Now, I don't think anyone would credit either of those two art forms as being more or less artistic than the other - and if they did, I can see more arguments for drawing or painting being more artistic than photography. So why is that when you take the two of them, and bring them to life in the same manner, them put them back next to each other, one is suddenly worth less than the other?

The answer, of course, is that it's not. Animation is not a subset of cinema: Cinema is animation. Animation of drawings or animation of photography, but animation all the same. They are part and parcel part of the same medium, and you cannot discard one and keep the other. For both Animated and Live-action films, what you have is a conglomeration of classical art forms, including literature, drama, music, drawing, even architecture, sculpture, and dance to certain degrees.

And let's not forget the increasing presence of computer animation in films - live-action and animated alike. Films like the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars trilogies are as much or more animation than live-action film - the battle scenes and armies, all the CG effects and characters. What about Beowulf, a fully computer-animated movie animated around real performances? Where does one draw the line? Who can even say when that line is only going to become more and more blurry as technology gets better and better?

At any rate, let me skip to the third point for a moment: Animation is for children. If we follow the previous discussion, it should be easy to see that there is nothing inherent in the medium of animation that makes it more fit for consumption by children than adults. No more than live-action movies are for adults moreso than children. And yet, most of the animation in America is indeed for children. What gives?

The problem is not in the medium itself, but in how we use it. Here is the second point: as far as American culture is concerned, animation is a genre, not a medium. Let's take a look at how American culture uses animation:

Television animation: 2 categories
Children's cartoons (Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network)
Adult comedy (Family Guy, Simpsons, etc.)

Animated Feature Films: 1.5 categories (at best)
Children's / Family movies
A subest thereof: Children's / Family movies that adults can actually tolerate.
(I'm being kind by keeping this separate. The only thing that actually separates these two is quality - the movies that are so bad that only a child could appreciate it, and the movies that are actually good enough to be appreciated as movies regardless of their being aimed at children. e.g. most Pixar movies)

This is an astonishingly narrow utilization of a full-fledged artistic medium. When was the last time you saw a piece of American animation aimed at adults that wasn't a zany comedy? A family drama, or an action-adventure, or a serious romance?

When almost all of the mainstream animation in America consists of children's shows (itself a sticky genre to define, these mostly characterized by being vapid culture commercials) or "edgy" / "satirical" comedy like South Park or Family Guy, can the consumers really be blamed for having formed such a narrow opinion thereof?

Now, a little disclaimer: Animation is indeed well-suited to children's movies. Talking animals, bright colors, and so on are easier to do (well) in animation. Babe is a good example of how it could be done in live-action, but if you look through Disney's animated feature catalogue, you can see that they were using unique capabilities of the medium of animation to tell their stories in a way that would have been impossible in live-action. This is, in itself, a good thing.
Animation is also well-suited to zany comedies - by not having to work with live actors, you can set up a joke however you want. Comedic timing, physical comedy, cut-aways and over-the-top setups like are much easier to manipulate when animated. Futurama, I think, is the best example of an animated comedy that would be difficult to reproduce faithfully as a live-action show - imagine Leela and Bender is people in costumes.

There's nothing wrong with using animation for some of the things it's good at. However, when you limit it to that so rigorously, you do harm to the entire art form. Cinema tends to truly excel past other media at telling realistic, personal stories, because you can portray real people. But thankfully, cinema covers far more bases than that, because people are willing to accept a whole slew of genres and styles from cinema - an artistic freedom that Americans are unwilling to grant animation.



So, how should we be using animation?

This is where I bring up Japan. Japanese culture has embraced the artistic possibilities of animation on a level unheard of by any other mainstream culture. The amount of animation produced, shown, sold and bought far and away exceed any other culture's industry. And historically there's been a lot more artistic freedom in the way they've used the medium.

Animation for children in Japan is still a large part of the market. However, there's a huge array of animation produced for teenagers and adults as well, and among any demographic, animation can be found in almost any genre. Action, adventure, comedy, romance, slice-of-life, period drama, family drama, science fiction, fantasy, crime, mystery, supernatural - the list goes on, and that's not to mention the frequent cross-pollination.

For every show like, say, Sailor Moon, you have a show like Mushishi. Mushishi would be best described as a cross between "Ghost Stories without the Ghosts" and a "Supernatural Nature show." It's beautifully drawn and animated, scored very subtly, and tells moving, human stories set in not-quite-human circumstances.

For every show like Inuyasha, you have a show like Honey and Clover - a simple, realistic, slice-of-life story about a group of friends in school. Graduating and moving on to adulthood, finding your path in life, love and friendship - a deeply human, realistic story.

The number shows with (often excessive) violence, sexual themes, complex psychological aspects, and otherwise mature content is vast. An this is without even mentioning animated pornography, as if you needed another example to prove that in Japan, animation has, by its nature, nothing to do with children.

The overall quality, the American perception, and the rampant marketing aspects of animation in Japan are topics for other posts. For now, we can look at Japan and see that just because we only use animation for children's shows and college-demo comedies in America and the west does not mean that's all it's good for. So the next time you hear someone mention that animation is fluff, or that it's for children, give 'em a good slap and tell them to sit back and think about it for five minutes. And if they can think of a single reason why animation, by its nature, is any less artistic than cinema, or literature, or painting, or why it should only be used to make children's entertainment, I would love to hear it.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice Article....

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Unknown said...

the problem goes on the form of narration, i mean, on cinematography you have montage, on videogames you have the gameplay, but on animation you got...well, nothing, nobody has said a way to narrate on animation, i think that the posiblity of deformation on characters and the ability of take everthing as a single shot would make the animation the art form it needs to be and considered.

Unknown said...

Nice blog !!! I appreciate your hard work for providing this valuable post.
Thanks !!!!!!!!!!
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