Does America have a bias against animation?

One of the things I love about American animation, as opposed to Japanese animation, is that it draws from a whole host of influences for it's visual style. The folks who make Adventure Time have said, for instance, that their visual influences are primarily the rubber-hose style animation of the pre-Disney days. The entire Anime industry seems to be operating under a "House Style," with fairly minor variations for tone. It works for them; anime is certainly popular enough, but it's curious that so few Japanese animators have chosen to experiment visually in a significant way.

I would have enjoyed Avatar when I watched it if:

• The 3d glasses didn't remove so much of the colorfulness only to add some cheap trick.
• I didn't know exactly what was going to happen 30 minutes before each scene.

I wouldn't call it western animation, more than I would call Jurasic Park western animation.

edited 31st May '11 10:57:03 PM by nabaduco

Ukonkivi: I feel I must point this out. You said you don't like the "gross-out" style of Ren and Stimpy. That's not the kind of "style" we mean. We mean animation and character design. It's not like anything that John Kricfalusi draws is automatically gross. What you want to think of for that particular show is the utter cartooniness of it, and lack of consistent character models. That's the important thing about John K's art style. His characters can be exaggerated in tons of ways. Like this.*

... isn't that one of the biggest differences between Japanese cartoon and American ones?

I mean, the aesthetic? The animation style itself is pretty similar. Though I have heard people claim that Western animation is superior because of higher framerates or the like.

I didn't think it was about higher frame rates, but rather that Western animators tend to be schooled in the Twelve Basic Principles of Animation, whereas (especially cheaper) Japanese animation does not follow these principles and seems stilted, inexpressive, and lacking in weight or gravity as a result.

edited 1st Jun '11 7:03:02 AM by accaris

One of the things I do notice about Japanese animation is that the drawings don't convey the illusion of "acting" like western animation.

The difference in Western and anime has nothing to do with the frame rate or how many drawings are in a second. I seen countless examples of anime shots that were all on 1's with literally a new drawing every frame, and ALSO examples of Western animation on 3's and 4's. The idea that Western animation is smoother than anime is, again, another stereotype.

Ironically, when people were hired on the first ever anime produced, the director ordered them all to read up on Preston Blair's animation book... and he was a Disney animator. Yet they still had choppy frame rates, and awkward poses and acting.

edited 1st Jun '11 9:38:39 AM by kyun

Bump

I believe that America having a bias towards animation is nothing new. The general public have always watched cartoons to laugh, or be happy. It has been this way since the silent age.

It wasn't til Disney tried their hand at realism in their works that popularized a new priority in cartoons. To see how much it can pull our heartstrings and make us FEEL the suffering of our protagonists! :'( Oh how I cried at parents being killed offscreen in every cartoon flick ive seen in the past 100 decades. It's so emotional!

But seriously, I have nothing against cartoons trying to be tearjeakers. When they do it right, it's done right. It just seems that the popular definition of being a tearjeaker in these shows or movies is to kill a parent offscreen or make a villian scream bloody murder right before they die. It's not as popular as it was in the 90s, but it's still lingering around like a headache...

tl;dr: animation was always looked down apon, tries too hard to pull heartstrings.

edited 31st Jul '14 12:27:40 AM by teddy

And I can assure that really isn't the reason animation is look down upon. :/

Because if anything some people just feel animation isn't mature enough to even tackle themes like murder and loss. So you're argument falls rather flat.

edited 31st Jul '14 6:19:55 PM by AfroWarrior27

your comment on murder and loss is just one of many examples I'd like to see someone handle someday - and do it justice for this medium.

While I can't think of one for murder, though I'm sure plenty exist, for loss you've got Up.

No argument there, and a damn good movie choice at that.

I don't get how murder is a theme. I really don't. Loss I understand, but not murder.

Not as a theme, but as a major plot element. Maybe something like an animated Film Noir type thing.

Somebody's probably made a cartoon where a murder figured as a major plot element, comedic or not.

I know I've probably seen some but I'm struggling to remember.

He probably meant a serious work in which that's a factor.

I know of one. A little film you might have heard of.

The Lion King

Yeah, that's what I meant. A major plot element. Though murder could be a theme if it's what drives a character to prevent something else like it happening again.

That's a great example, another would be Finding Nemo.

edited 31st Jul '14 6:25:31 PM by AfroWarrior27

It does seem that American cartoon TV shows are considered to only be for children and/or comedy.

I think the reason why there is a biased is that most animation, especially from Disney and the show from the 90s to ealry 00 is that we watched them either with kids or were kids and as soon as we get older people just naturally see animation less and less due to life responsibility. Also for some out reason, I don't understand the trend of making everything live action, such as Cinderella, Maleficent, Walking dead, etc. I will probably never get that. Also on a side note is that it kinda reminds me of the video game market, where in the 90s you could get away with the "cartoony" mascot collect-a-thons and platformers and the such, but after the rise of Halo the market is for the serious fps or realistic games and beside Nintendo and Sonic you really can't pull of the type of games from the 90s and early 00. The reason why I brought that up is because to me, the mascot platformer is the ghetto of the video game market and only be seen as a 'kid's game'.

My sister and I were talking about this recently, and we decided that it's not animation per se.

Mainstream American culture is biased against stylization in general.

Right here On This Very Wiki, the most common criticism leveled against various narrative tropes is that they are "unrealistic." Abstract art is considered pretentious. Musical theatre, ballet, and opera are considered frivolous—"Nobody randomly bursts into song in real life!"—whereas plays that lack musical elements are taken more seriously. The stylized art of non-Western cultures is called "primitive," while Roman sculpture and Renaissance paintings are "sophisticated," apparently solely on the basis that they accurately represent their subjects—the obvious implication being that the sole or most important function of art is accurate representation.

The bias against animation is just another facet of this attitude.

I guess...Americans don't like being reminded that our fantasies are fantasies?

Eh it's just a stage in culture. Taste changes with time.

Fun fact about those old Greek and Roman sculptures, back in their prime they were painted with all kind of bright pigments and colors. Ditto for the Terracotta army in china. It just faded/wore away with time.

@Karalora, and genre fiction is not worthy of anyone's time, with its speculative elements and/or recognizable formulas for stories. How are we supposed to pretend that's non-fiction?

I kind of agree with Karalora, in a way...

If there is a bias against animation, it's because it is seen as frivolous, whether it's kids' stuff or not; and no amount of serious animation will ever change that.

The only way we could get over that bias is if animation got rid of its frivolousness and became a serious thing. The same thing happened to jazz and, to some extent, rock - both went from frivolous dance music to respected serious music.

But I don't think anyone would really want to see the more frivolous stuff go away; all we can hope for is if people start to look at animation and enjoy it for its own inherent beauty.

Snobbery comes in all shapes and sizes, and pretty much every strata of society will have it's version of it. Among certain groups of people, stylization IS considered pretentious, juvenile, and what have you. In others, realism is considered passe, old fashioned, and bourgeois. Too often, neither side is willing to admit that their own biases may have nothing to do with quality, and that just because they don't like something doesn't mean it isn't worthy (or that just because they DO like something doesn't mean it IS worthy). As something of a case in point, Norman Rockwell did not consider himself a fine artist; he considered himself a commercial illustrator. He gets held up by certain segments of American society as one of the greatest fine artists of the 20th century, something I doubt he'd have been comfortable with. Other folks want to tear him down as technically excellent but thematically shallow, corny, and commercial (odd complaints to make of someone who never made any claims to deep artistic significance — except perhaps in his "Southern Justice"). He's become a bit of a controversial figure, believe it or not, in the art world. Some critics have complained that the argument itself has become tiresome. Some artists embed themselves so deeply in our psyches as to be essentially invulnerable to popular criticism (nobody cares if you like Shakespeare or not. Good luck digging him and his influence out of Western Literature. Drives pretentious literary wonks crazy). I would dearly love for people to stop using their taste in art to try to aggrandize themselves or alienate others. You're not cool for liking Lichtenstein, and you're not an unlettered dolt if you don't.