Animation in the United States

[zakkrusz]

So as a fan of animation in general, something peaks my curiosity and I decided to see if I can get some ideas from the folks here. Some food for thought:

What exactly do you think is the crux of the issue as to why the amount of genres of animation produced in the states is so low? Why do you think the medium of animation is left largely unexplored compared to other countries works and why it is not taken seriously? For instance, outside of comedy, there is notable lack of many profound or at least deep works created for the adult intellect. Serious things like mysteries, drama, psychological or philosophical works.

I'd appreciate comments on the topic or suggestions for series or movies that break the mold.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

1. Animation is associated with kids. That part is obvious, but a lot of folks probably don't realize,

2. Animated movies for kids are wildly popular. Hollywood is rakin' in the bucks churning out G and PG rated animation. Some of the biggest worldwide blockbusters are in this category, both in terms of box office and DVD rentals and sales. Sure, there could be R and unrated animated movies but would they be as wildly profitable? Why spend resources on such things when you know how much money can be made by keeping things as they are?

 

[Peach Wookiee]

It's probably because of the continuing idea that animation is more for children than adults. Hollywood perpetuated that stereotype when they made the Oscar for Best Animated Film after Beauty and the Beast kicked the live-action butts. Back in the early 90s, animation was touted as being for everyone. But then... it's what happened.

 

[stonester1]

Though studios like Pixar (or just Pixar) buck that trend, more and more.

 

[Rii]

How is Avatar not an animated film?

 

[stonester1]

It has live action characters and sets, though admittedly, it does blur the line.

 

[Christopher]

What exactly do you think is the crux of the issue as to why the amount of genres of animation produced in the states is so low? Why do you think the medium of animation is left largely unexplored compared to other countries works and why it is not taken seriously?

Two words: Walt Disney. In the early days of theatrical animation, the various studios, including Warner Bros., Fleischer, MGM, etc., produced a wide range of animated films of various lengths and genres, aimed at audiences from children to adults (including some rather risque material such as the early Betty Boop cartoons and Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood character). But Walt Disney came to dominate the medium, particularly where features were concerned, and Disney embraced a very narrow range of animation genres, limiting itself to family-oriented musicals. So their narrow vision of animation pretty much crowded out alternative ideas of what animation could be in America.

Looking at it from the other side, part of the reason that animation is embraced to the extent it is in countries like Japan and France is because those countries' live-action film industries have a hard time competing with Hollywood product. So their filmmakers have responded by embracing cinematic niches that Hollywood doesn't monopolize, such as animation.

 

[zakkrusz]

Yeah, I agree there. Disney seems like it wants to maintain it's near monopoly of the animated film business pretty badly, having eaten Marvel and Pixar. Not that it doesn't produce a good work every now and then but I don't like the fact that it would seem to actively block creativity.

 

[Christopher]

^Well, Pixar ate Disney. Financially, Disney was the devourer, but creatively, Pixar (or rather John Lasseter) essentially won control of the whole schmeer.

And Disney's purchase of Marvel seems to be purely a financial arrangement; there's been no displacement of Marvel's creative people. Indeed, as with the Pixar merger, Disney's intent was not to stifle their creativity, but to embrace it and benefit from it. They didn't want to force Marvel to do things the Disney way; they wanted Marvel's help at capturing a demographic that Disney had been unable to reach on its own.

 

[Nerys Myk]

^Well, Pixar ate Disney. Financially, Disney was the devourer, but creatively, Pixar (or rather John Lasseter) essentially won control of the whole schmeer.

And Disney's purchase of Marvel seems to be purely a financial arrangement; there's been no displacement of Marvel's creative people. Indeed, as with the Pixar merger, Disney's intent was not to stifle their creativity, but to embrace it and benefit from it. They didn't want to force Marvel to do things the Disney way; they wanted Marvel's help at capturing a demographic that Disney had been unable to reach on its own.

40 year old fanboys?

 

[Kegg]

For instance, outside of comedy,

A corrollary to animation being for children is that animation is for comedy; it is a very flexibly silly medium. Hence the American sitcoms with broader appeal than just children, like, of course, The Simpsons, which at its height was arguably one of the greatest animated series out there.

Beyond that Temis is correct, it's just a more marketable approach. A corrollary to Walt Disney is Ralph Bakshi; who attempted to make adult, provocative cartoons and the results were found wanting. While some were wildly successful at the time - Fritz the Cat, specifically - mostly now they seem very dated in all the wrong ways. Adult here is fundamentally very puerile, very adolescent; the adulthood of the dirty limerick on the bathroom stall. And not even a limerick that's any funny.

Still, A Scanner Darkly was great, but if you have the choice between the revenue that made and the revenue any given Pixar movie made, well, I know what you'd go for.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

One part of the problem with the revenue disparity between "children's" and "adult" cartoons is prejudice. People see a cartoon and almost automatically dismiss its capability to be intelligent, thoughtful or provocative out of hand. Heck, I've seen comments on this website dismissing The Clone Wars simply because it's a cartoon when, clearly, there are some very mature, subtle and thoughtful elements at play. Same goes for the Beast Wars - Beast Machines shows of the late 1990s. I happen to think that the web series Afterworld is easily one of the best-written stories I've ever experienced (each two-minute episode is a universe of character, theme, and thought and it's got 130 episodes). But one look at its animation will likely cause many viewers to dismiss it out of hand.

There's no point ignoring how Disney active created (and perpetuates) the prejudice against taking animation seriously. Which is why adult-oriented animation never seems to get noticed and, thus, generates less revenue. But a lot of people allow themselves to be led along by the stereotype and don't look beyond the visuals to see the story underneath.

 

[Kegg]

Heck, I've seen comments on this website dismissing The Clone Wars simply because it's a cartoon

I've been follwoing the show consistently, honestly rather like it, and that seems fair. The Clone Wars is a Saturday morning cartoon; you have to be essentially willing to watch that sort of fare with all it implies to like it at all. Sure, there are darker, more serious episodes, like the recent "The Deserter", but nothing that would really put it above the label indicated.

But then if you're not of a matinee mindset you may not get a lot out of the Star Wars franchise in general, I think, which is sure to be a controversial viewpoint.

There's no point ignoring how Disney active created (and perpetuates) the prejudice against taking animation seriously.

Taking it as kid's stuff. That's not the same thing. Sergei Eisenstein had a fairly high opinion of Walt Disney and his Alexander Nevsky was, among many other things, an attempt to create a sort of live-action cartoon (with the fusion of music and image in the way the Disney works had done). Beauty and the Beast was the first animated movie nominated for a Best Picture oscar. And so on.

 

[zakkrusz]

So, It's basically a self-sustaining paradox. That's my tentative solution after thinking about it for while. There is no market for more serious animation because people are shown nothing but family friendly things which reinforce the incorrect assumption that animation cannot be serious, and thus nobody tries to make anything.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

My favorite animated film is British... The Wrong Trousers. The animation is esquisite, and even the flaws you'll find add to its texture, and the story telling is nothing short of perfect. Later the characters were funded by an American company (DReamworks) for a feature film that I consider a masterpiece as well (though not so much as this short). I personally think Pixar is overrated, as subtlety seems to have been lost on the animators. Take a scene from The Curse of the WereRabbit. Gromit has already seen that his master is the Were Rabbit, so the next morning he is sitting at the breakfast table with this knowledge, knowing that any second, Wallace will soon take his seat (falling from above) and Gromit knows that his master is the very plunderer that is causing all these problems. The brilliance here is how little they actually made him move, They barely animated him. His eyes blinked a few times, but there is no mistaking the dread that he is feeling, he is frozen with it. In a Pixar or other film, they might have him sweating profusely, biting his nails, shaking about in his chair, anything to show this sense of dread and nervousness as cheaply as possible. But the creators of this film hardly made him move at all and that is the brilliance of the character and of their film.

 

[FordSVT]

One part of the problem with the revenue disparity between "children's" and "adult" cartoons is prejudice. People see a cartoon and almost automatically dismiss its capability to be intelligent, thoughtful or provocative out of hand. Heck, I've seen comments on this website dismissing The Clone Wars simply because it's a cartoon when, clearly, there are some very mature, subtle and thoughtful elements at play. Same goes for the Beast Wars - Beast Machines shows of the late 1990s.

There are some adult-ish themes at work here, but compared to Japan, for example...

In Japan animation encompass virtually every facet of fiction and even non-fiction writing. Contemporary soap operas, cop shows, psychological mysteries, romance, teen dramas, horror, historic dramas.

American film and TV animation occasionally explores adult themes but is extremely limited in scope compared to Japan where live action and animated stories are virtually interchangeable. You'd never see an American animated movie about, say, a 55 year old widow who daydreams about the girl he loved as a youth that died in a tragic auto accident and the life they could have had, and the guilt he feels because he thinks about her more than his own dead wife.

 

[Pilot Ace]

There are some adult-ish themes at work here, but compared to Japan, for example...

In Japan animation encompass virtually every facet of fiction and even non-fiction writing. Contemporary soap operas, cop shows, psychological mysteries, romance, teen dramas, horror, historic dramas.

American film and TV animation occasionally explores adult themes but is extremely limited in scope compared to Japan where live action and animated stories are virtually interchangeable.

Yet, despite this medium interchangeability, there is still a stigma attached to watching anime past a younger age.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

How is Avatar not an animated film?

First it has 30% live action scenes shot traditionally with a director of photography, actors, sets & lighting.
Second it uses actual actors performing the characters movements and sound recording during the performance (unlike a studio soundbooth narration session and animation created after to match the mouth movements).

Third those actors movements are not to be taken lightly. What Avatar did with the facial motion capture is create such a nuanced subtle performance that animators would have taken a very long time to be able to accomplish that.
Sure other films will do the same in the future but not on the level of motion capture that Avatar did.

On the other hand motion capture and animation can also create a really good animated 2-D film such as
Renaissance (2006). It really has some cinematic camera moves and action and it is truly an animated film (that is also very stylized animation).

 

[milo bloom]

American film and TV animation occasionally explores adult themes but is extremely limited in scope compared to Japan where live action and animated stories are virtually interchangeable. You'd never see an American animated movie about, say, a 55 year old widow who daydreams about the girl he loved as a youth that died in a tragic auto accident and the life they could have had, and the guilt he feels because he thinks about her more than his own dead wife.

What would be the title of that one?

 

[zakkrusz]

There are some adult-ish themes at work here, but compared to Japan, for example...

In Japan animation encompass virtually every facet of fiction and even non-fiction writing. Contemporary soap operas, cop shows, psychological mysteries, romance, teen dramas, horror, historic dramas.

Japan puts the US here in the kiddy pool when it comes to variety and serious story telling in animation, yeah. It's where most of my frustration with our industry comes from, probably. Ironic since early Disney works, were a large influence to the Japanese stylistically. However, they went with a more diverse approach and things like Black Lagoon, and Bakemonogatari score within the top ranks their BD charts currently. Which, I have to say, is awesome because they are great series.