What’s so Adult About it?
Pretty familiar rant from me. This is basically a variation on some old Pimps that were turned into a piece for The Ottawa Citizen.
I’ve never liked the term “adult animation” because it suggests that animation is then by nature something for children; a dominant presumption that couldn’t be further from the truth. We don’t call The Departed or Capote or Brokeback Mountain ‘adult’ cinema -we all know what ‘adult’ cinema really means anyway – so why on earth must animation be defined as such?
As the latest releases of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection and, to a lesser degree, Walt Disney Treasures reveal, if you go back to the very beginnings of animation you see that cartoons were actually made for the amusement of adults. All of these classic Warner Bros. cartoons that many of us grew up watching as kids were originally made primarily for an adult audience. Even the early Walt Disney films weren’t made for kids. Goofy, Donald, and the Warner Bros. cast of characters were in fact parodies of adults. Through their exaggerated antics (e.g. Donald’s insane temper), the animators playfully mocked just how pathetic and foolish human beings could be. In that sense, the only thing ‘kiddie’ about these works was that they revealed the child in the adult.
Even before Warner and Disney, animation Pioneers like The Fleischer Brothers (did you really think that Betty Boop was made for kids!?), Winsor McCay (Gertie The Dinosaur), Emile Cohl, and Otto Messmer (creator of Felix The Cat) all made animation films for an adult audience.
Somewhere along the way things changed. Disney started making features like Pinocchio, Bambi and Dumbo that appealed to adults, but were now softened for children. Then came television and Saturday morning cartoons and the rest is history.
Animation has certainly grown enormously during the last fifteen years. Today, animation is everywhere: commercials, video games, music videos, and mobile phones. In truth, animation has become so prominent that there are few feature films that exist which do not contain some form of animation. King Kong, Spiderman, Revenge of the Sith could easily qualify as animation films. This growth spurt has also seen animation’s palette widened considerably. Two decades ago, animation was dominated by the realistic Disney style. Today, we can find an array of techniques and styles being incorporated into commercials, TV shows, and films. The one thing that, unfortunately, hasn’t changed is the content. Each year I see almost 2000 new animation films from around the world. Many of them are beautiful, poetic works that rival any of the great arts. Unfortunately, unless you go to festivals, you probably won’t see these films. Television and cinemas aren’t all that interested in this kind of animation because they believe that animation is made for kids, tweens, teens, and twits.
We’ve heard all this talk about animation growing up and how there is more adult animation being produced than ever. But just how adult are they? Every so-called adult animation show that has aired over the last decade (from Pond Life and Bob and Margaret to Family Guy, South Park, King of the Hill and, of course, The Simpsons, all rely on gags and laughs. I don’t mind having some laughs, but now not only is animation forced to live with this infantile label, it’s also expected to always be funny. It’s pretty much the same with feature animation. With the exception of Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly, and a handful of obscure foreign features (e.g. The District from Hungary), adult animation is limited to a few lame in-jokes (e.g. Shrek, Ice Age, Hoodwinked) so that mom and dad can enjoy the ride too. However, the idea of making serious animation about real-life issues seems alien to television and movie producers, and by extension, most of their audience.
Now, I’m not asking for heavy-handed Ingmar Bergman chamber dramas. What I’m looking for is something that has personality, humour and yet is mature and reflective. The Sopranos, Lost, The Wire, Deadwood all deal with those issues of life, death, sin, salvation, loyalty, violence, sex, power, etc. They sometimes lead you to reflect on an issue in your own life (e.g. Deadwood, The Sopranos and Lost might trigger reflection on morality and personal responsibility). It’s as though making serious animation is about real life issues is a sin of sorts.
In a sense, the situation resembles what animators in former communist countries had to go through to get their films produced. In Estonia (a former Soviet republic), for example, some animators made subversive films that criticized the struggles and brutality of Soviet society. To escape the wrath of the censors, the artists had to cloak these critiques behind obscure symbols and metaphors. The few shows I’ve seen that touch on adult themes (e.g. Batman: The Animated Series, Samurai Jack) do so superficially, as though they’re afraid of being too mature.
It’s not like it hasn’t been done before. Ralph Bashki made a number of animated features (Fritz the Cat, American Pop) in the 1970s that were aimed squarely at adults. Japanese anime – which has a massive worldwide following – produces an array of complex, serious films (e.g. Akira, Ghost in the Shell) and shows). In the 1990s, Peter Chung’s MTV series, Aeon Flux - which was a cross between science-fiction, James Bond, Roadrunner and Coyote, and Michelangelo Antonioni films - found a sizeable cult following (and was recently made into a live-action feature film).
And of course, if you want a real gauge of just how mature and articulate animation can be, just check the list of prizewinners at any international animation event. Some of the most recent Academy Award winners like provocative, poetics animation works like Ryan, The Man Who Planted Trees, The Moon and the Son,, and Father and Daughter.
Animation is routinely hailed as the great liberator, an artform that can take us to new realms of possibilities. Animation can shatter the laws of physics and excavate the imagination and soul like no other art, so why is it that television and feature animation remains stuck in that old habit (now masquerading as truth) of being nothing more than a raucous, naughty, cutesy, infantile medium for toddlers, pre-pubescent man-boys and other associated virgins. It’s about time that someone came along and shook this oh so tiresome ga-ga giggling snort snort fart chuckle muffled laugh medium out of its semi-soiled training pants.
Perhaps it’s not animation that needs to grow up, but us.
December 5th, 2007 at 7:10 pm e
Most of what is called “adult animation” today isn’t actually geared toward adults but toward horny teenagers and frat boys. Its main attributes are raunchiness and swear words. A wiser understanding of the world (the true mark of an adult, I think) is not even on the agenda.
Ralph Bakshi, too, was “adult” more in that first sense. His “adultness” was a novelty rather than a fully-thought-out artistic decision (or at least it seems that way, and it was advertised that way).
Oddly enough, filmmakers in communist countries seem to have had an easier time in making mature works. I should also note that there is more to making a mature work than “criticizing the struggles and brutality of Soviet society”. Although THAT was frowned upon, in other ways filmmakers were often allowed to assume that their audience had some sophistication. What is more, a film was often quite acceptable for children and yet deep enough for an adult. One of my favourite examples of this is “The Tree and the Cat”, made at Kievnauchfilm in 1983:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zh3C-D9KpQ
There is no reason that children should be fed junk food, either.
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:14 am e
niffiwan, u commie bastard! americans children are way smarter than commies assholes. point number one: US animations are childish most of the time, but they are, in may ways, great animations, with emotion and reflection. like Ratatouille. i’ve seen commies animations, and they arent all that great. independent american animation is much more sophisticated than any commie bastard could ever understand.
“bla bla bla, the tree and the cat, made at kienauchfillm, bla bla bla, im fucked by a commie bastard every fucking day, and i like that…”
u motherfucker