6. Gender Constructions

In Chapter 5 of Understanding Animation by Paul Wells, I learned animation has often been put into the children’s category, or many brush it off as if it has no implication. Cartoons have many biases and discrepancies in how genders are represented. Many main male characters such as Popeye and Superman are shown as tough and strong implying their masculinity because those are classically associated traits. Popeye’s masculinity comes from his working with hard metal, machines, and his display of his biceps. Clark Kent shows many similarities with his muscles, super strength, and his ability to save Lois from evil.

The female image and femininity also have an extremely direct relationship. In “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” Jessica Rabbit portrays the epitome of a cartoon woman. She has large breast, small waist, long hair, and is wearing stiletto heels. Gender-bending is also common in animations. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are no strangers to this; they both have been dressed up and made-up to look feminine, which introduces questions about sexuality. The genders of these characters are sometimes indistinguishable, leaving the audience thinking of the characters being in a state of sexless androgyny.

I thought the section about questioning Jerry’s gender was very interesting. It is never clearly stated or even shown what Jerry sexual identity is, bur she is often shown dressing up in women’s clothes. She also has very feminine mannerism and body language, like covering the area where breasts would be when she is naked. There are also lesbian tensions implied when Jerry is shown being embarrassed from being in bed with a female doll. The question of gender can be implied with shades of colors, with the darker being the male and the lighter typically being the female.

5. Abstract Animation

Chapter 13 from Art in Motion by Maureen Furniss discusses the problem of spectator interpretation of abstract animation. I thought Wassily Kandinsky had an interesting and very valid point about todays viewers and abstract animation. He basically says that todays spectators are overanalyzing the picture that we view in any type of cinema. He thinks that instead of trying to make meaning out of the picture, we should let the picture make its own meaning. This of coarse comes from Hollywood cinema’s hyperdominace in the main stream, making narrative story lines the norm.

The Hollywood cinema has trained us to try and probe beneath the surface of what we are watching, but one has to realign his or her process of interpretation to appreciate viewing abstract animation. Viewing an abstract animation more than once in a sitting is preferable because it is hard to extract meaning from one viewing. When one switches their conceptualization of an image, they use different parts of their brain. The right part of the brain is predominantly used at night and the left during the day. One switches their interpretation to the right side of their brain to let the meaning of an abstract film make itself.

This seg-ways into the idea that watching a film is like having a dream, and sometimes strict laws of reality don’t bind the world of dreams. Shamus Culhane says that people have an aversion to thinking with right side of their brain because there is no use of logic or reason, just intuition. This scares people because they perceive a loss of control. A final element I thought was interesting, was the section about mandalas. A mandala is a symmetrical object , sometimes a circle or a lotus, used in Buddist or Hindu culture to meditate. These ‘mandalas’ are used in many abstract animations as focal points.

4. Narrative Strategies for Understanding

There are many different techniques that can be used within animations to help the viewer understand the story better, as talked about in Paul Wells book Understanding Animation. The narrative can develop in certain ways, as a result of these different techniques. One device is called metamorphosis, which is a fluid linkage between imagery. It is the actual transformation of the drawings. Although unrelated images can be connected, narrative continuity can be conserved. Another technique is condensation, which is also known as elliptical storytelling. This is when cuts are to show a significant passing of time between the shots, and it is predominantly used in shorter films. The third technique is synecdoche. This is when a part of something is used to represent the whole. This is often used as a metaphor, when some small action is used to represent a greater meaning. Another way it can be used is to have a hand representing the whole body, a part acting for the whole entity.

A very commonly used technique within animation is symbolism and metaphor. Symbolisms complicate the structure of the narrative because they can be used to represent something else or some other meaning, but the object or character can also be construed as representing literally what it is. Peter Munz said that a sign merely duplicates the thing that it symbolizes because there is the existence of the implied meaning, as well as the literal and more specific meaning. Metaphor is very similar to symbolism, but it’s used to represent a system of ideas in a more appealing way. Another very common technique within animation is fabrication or the idea that objects or material things can have a sort-of life. Svankmajer introduces this idea, and he believes that objects have much more memories than men. All of the experiences that they have had, they conceal within them. Fabrication introduces the existences of a meta-reality, where objects are alive.

Associative relations are displayed when unrelated imagery and conjunctions are spliced together to create a different narrative impetus. This construction is used more for experimental animations, similar to montage of motion picture films. Acting is another part of narrative strategies because the animator has to understand how a certain character would look, reacting in a certain situation. A character has to be developed from a script, taking into consideration the character’s role, their rang of motion, and their overall demeanor. Another construction of animation is choreography or how the movements of the characters correspond with weight, space, and time. The animator has to understand how certain conventions of the real world would translate onto paper. The animator has to relate shape movement to effort action, or make sure the action the character is doing matches with what they want.

3. Claymation and Stop-Motion Animation

Claymation and stop-motion animation has interested me because recently I have seen The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coraline, two amazing films. Claymation is a form of stop-motion animation that uses of frame captures of clay figures in different positions to create the illusion of movement; stop motion is the same thing, just not specifically with clay. The claymation and stop-motion animations that I have seen have enlightened me to how tedious the work is. I have also seen the shift toward realism manifest itself within these forms of animation. Coraline being a claymation film and the latter being stop-motion animation. both of these films were fantastic in plot line, but I had never seen a feature length stop-motion or claymation film before, and I realized how tedious the art work must have been because of all of the little subtle movements of their whiskers, eyes, hair, and endless other aspects of movement. Although I did find out that the sets in Coraline were scanned into a computer and converted into digital imaging, the film was nonetheless amazing. these types of films are usually projected at a frame rate of about 12 frames per second, different from motion picture films which are projected at a frame rate of 24 frames per second. This type of animation really does depend on the “interstices that lie between the frames”, just as Norman McLaren put it.

The concepts of these films both have surrealist and realist aspects within them. As talked about in chapter one of Understanding Animation, Disney pushed for a shift toward realism within cel animation. This shift is still present today because there are very few mainstream films that are abstract and lack a perception of some sort of reality. These two stop-motion films are no exception. The Fantastic Mr. Fox displays ideas such as foxes and other woodland animals can dig tunnels to anywhere or foxes can drive cars or foxes can have wars with humans. The characters within the film are basically given human characteristics. Coraline is more surreal with the introduction of an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ type alternate reality, where Coraline can escape to. These films both have surreal elements, but they would definitely be classified with Disney’s genre of realism because of the life-like movements and the boundaries of reality within each film.

Another claymation, which was viewed in class, is Creature Comforts. I thought it was such a clever little short because it combined surreal and real aspects. The animals in the zoo were talking about life living in the zoo, but the twist was that some of the animals were actually people who they interviewed at a zoo. The idea of animals having human characteristics is shared with The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but they were both realism inspired as well because of the life-like movements, and the setting in which the animals are in.

2. Orthodox vs. Experimental Animation

The Reading from Understanding Animation focused on how different styles and approaches of certain animations vary. I found it interesting how structured orthodox animations were just with their configuration, continuity, narrative form, as well as the rest of the elements of style. There are three types of animation styles: orthodox, experimental, and developmental; they all fall on a continuum. Orthodox is at one end, experimental is at another, and developmental is in between. Orthodox animation has a narrative story line, and even though it may have some fantastic elements, there is still a certain logic and continuity within the world of the animations to how things work. An example of an orthodox animation would be “Silly Symphonies”.

An interesting discussion of “Duck Amuck” is in the reading, and I thought it was neat how it recognizes that it is an orthodox cartoon within itself by the way Daffy adapts to the background. It also sort-of mocks the orthodox cartoon by having Daffy speak straight to the artist who is present. This would not fit into the orthodox category, but it’s definitely not a completely developmental animation.

Experimental animation is typically associated with abstraction and image illustration. There are a multitude of different styles that one can use to achieve an artistic vision. The artist is present within the animation; when one is watching, it becomes evident that what appears in front of them is a visual expression of the artist. An experimental animation that was viewed in class was “Deadsy”. It is a compilation of illustrations including xerography of a narrator man, revealing the story of how Deadsy had a sex change. Although it did have a weak story line element just as orthodox do animations do, its interpretive form and lack of a singular style makes it experimental.