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The Legitimacy of Animation

© Enoch Allen

By Enoch Allen

Okay, allow me to demonstrate what the title of this article means. It has nothing to do with minorities in Animation (the “cartoon” industry, in fact, is very diverse culturally) and, it has little to do with the state of the quality of animation (that’s another article).

It has something to do with Animation’s IMAGE.

If you went to see “Hey! Arnold” a couple of weeks ago, did you have the feeling that you were in for viewing a picture as sophisticated as “The Road to Perdition”? I suspected as such. Or, let me adjust my demonstration to include “The Powerpuff Girls”. Is your answer still a resounding “No”?

If it is, then you know what I’m getting at. And, by the way, both of these pictures did very mediocre business at the box-office.

The majority of the animated offerings released this year were aimed at kids. And, it didn’t help that the Academy ghettoized animation by giving the genre its own category, instead of letting it rightfully compete with its live-action counterparts. Films such as “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” and “Lilo & Stitch”, while excellently made, only served to stunt the potential of the medium.

As artists and as writers, if we wish to add weight to our side of the scale, we might be putting forth a little more effort to curb the trend of the “kiddie film”. Animators such as Bill Plympton and Bruce Timm, and writers such as Micah Wright and Paul Dini have showed us how far we could go--if only we’d be willing to travel the distance. There are hurdles, of course.

Like studio executives, whose eyes are glued to either one of these two things: the bottom line, and the Nielsen ratings (for television). Or even audiences themselves, who support the shoddiness and the banality that characterizes animation’s Poor Side.

Sometimes, even us. We can be our own worst enemy, in our quest to climb up that long ladder to success. In fact, to the point where we’d be destroying the unique creative visions of others. We must stem that ambition.

In animation, there needs to be more adult characterizations (i.e. housewives, businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, etc.), more sophisticated plotting (cutting the funny business of substituting situation for legitimate story structure), and higher production values (as in, not “Teamo Supremo” crap). If animators can achieve the above, they would be taking the entire genre a step closer to legitimacy.

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