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The End is a 1995 short film (7 minutes) directed by Chris Landreth.
Two abstract figures, a man and a woman, appear—they have the faces of humans, but their faces are attached to their "bodies" by rods, and those bodies look like the human circulatory system if it were made out of rubber hoses. As chess pieces and other random shapes float by, and a "bird" that is two disembodied hands flies around, the man and the woman babble a lot of faux-philosophic nonsense.
Then the background action stops, and the two figures are caught short. They then hear a voice above, a man muttering about his deadline. The man and woman soon figure out that they are in a cartoon, and the disembodied voice they hear is their animator.
Tropes:
- all lowercase letters: The title, as shown in the opening title card, is actually "the end."
- Author Powers: The animator realizes first that he can do anything to his animated creations, and then to himself, as he is also a figure in the cartoon. The short ends with the animator cycling through several different body shapes and colors and flipping between genders as he realizes his power over the universe.
- Faux Symbolism: In-Universe. When pressed by his characters the animator is totally unable to explain what any of the arcane symbolism in the cartoon actually means. When they point at the two hands flying around and asks "what is that hand bird thing?", the animator lamely explains that the symbolism has to be "obscure" to get people thinking. He claims that the cartoon is filled with "lots of profound symbolism and political allegory," but is clearly just trying to sound smart.
- A God I Am Not: The man and woman think the disembodied voice is God, but the voice says no, he's just their animator.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: Subverted. The woman refuses to accept being told that she is a character in a cartoon and her thoughts are scripted, insisting that she has self-awareness and being self-aware makes her real. She says "I have free will!", and is instantly proved wrong when the animator stops animating her.
- Halfway Plot Switch: The first part of the cartoon is two characters talking faux-sophisticated gibberish about art. Then the second half involves the two of them realizing they're in a cartoon and calling out their animator for making a bad one.
- Le Film Artistique: In-Universe and satirized, as the characters babble dialogue that sounds profound but is actually nonsense. They are interrupted by the narrator telling his friend that "This piece is far ahead of its time."
- Medium Awareness: The two figures realize that they are inside a cartoon.
- Multiple Endings: Three, as the animator runs through possibilities with the voice on the phone.
- First he suggests "The 'Hammer' concept", which involves the characters being crushed by hammers labeled "the state" and "mass media." The voice on the phone rejects this as "pretty heavy-handed."
- Then "the 'Love' concept", in which the characters "transcend their existential isolation" by intertwining until they fuse.
- Finally there's "The 'Fictional Animator'", in which the man on the phone tells the animator that "You are a work of fiction in your own animation." The animator, having morphed through several forms, realizes "I can create my own ending." And with that the cartoon ends.
- Noticing the Fourth Wall: The characters hear a disembodied voice. They think they might have invented God, but the voice explains that he is an animator and they are in a cartoon.
- Postmodernism: The characters in an animated cartoon engage with the animator, insisting that they have free will even as the animator tells them that he's actually writing everything they say. Then it gets even more postmodern when the camera pulls back and the animator is somehow animating himself, within his own cartoon.
- Rage Against the Author: More like contempt for the author. Once the characters figure out that they're in a cartoon, they mercilessly ridicule the animator for his absurd pretentiousness. The woman wants to know why she has no ears and is not convinced when the animator tells her that it's "stylistic streamlining." And here's what happens when the man asks why he has weird spokes coming out of his face.Animator: They symbolize your interconnected yet disembodied sense of self.
Man: What the hell does that mean? - Stylistic Suck: The first part of the cartoon has two characters babbling a bunch of pretentious faux-profound nonsense. That, of course, is part of the joke.
- Title Drop: The animator, on the phone, tells the other person that his cartoon is called "The End."
- The Voice: The man on the other end of the animator's phone call, who is never seen.
- Word Salad Philosophy: The first line of dialogue has the man saying "Lingering narrative concepts and furtive simplistic montage are the harbingers of the new semiotics!" The first part of the cartoon ends with the two character chanting in unison, "Speak to me now, bad kangaroo!"
