Does America have a bias against animation?

Some people genuinely consider commercial illustration to be art; there's museums dedicated to it. (I've visited one; they had Rockwell, as well as Leyendecker and Gibson.)

In fact, there are people who consider "frivolous" mediums like animation and comic books to be art, and some of them are respected critics - witness the documentary Crumb, where art critic Robert Hughes calls R. Crumb "the Bruegel of the 20th century."

To overcome this supposed bias, we'd need more people like that.

Well, of course they do. And why not? But why should we care whether what we like (or don't like) is considered art or not? Does Crumb's work need to be "art" to be worth enjoying? Why does cartooning or animation need "mainstream acceptance?" It might get more animation made, but I doubt the percentage of really good animation would go up all that much.

I used to be all over this argument. The older I got, the more I came to just not care anymore whether academia or the mainstream thinkers of America, Europe, or wherever thought the stuff I enjoyed was art or not.

I'm kinda with you on this, really.

I don't see why animation really needs to have mainstream acceptance. It's not going to change anything. We'll still have tons of bad shows, they'll just be for adults; and they'll probably be pretentious as well.

Maybe it's due to some sort of insecurity?

I love you.

I expect that's a great deal of the reason right there.

Going back to an earlier theme, the depiction of loss in animation. I've got an example from what some may consider an unlikely source: Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears. For those that don't know, the Gummi Bears were a tiny colony left behind when the Great Gummis (their magically and technologically advanced forbears...sorry, no pun intended)fled across the sea centuries earlier. A running plot thread throughout the series had the Gummis re-discovering some ancient bit of Gummi tech that they'd forgotten about. In an early episode, "Zummi Makes it Hot," their water goes out, and they have to trek to an abandoned (though up to now) still functioning pumping station high in the mountains. Upon finding this technological wonder, and realizing it has run untended for centuries, one character (voiced by the excellent June Foray, no less) turns to another and says, with a catch in her voice, "It's terrible what we've fogotten." This show was never heavy, always light and amusing, but it had a LOT of moments like that. Little bits where the reality of the main characters' situation was brought home to you. The loss of culture, of knowledge, of identity. And that it was terrible. How many cartoons, much less Saturday morning tv cartoons from the 80's, ever did that? Gargoyles' Greg Weismann was one of the developers of this series, if that tells you anything.

As far as dealing with murder goes, Tex Avery dealt with the concept, comically, a number of times. There's the great "Who dood it?" and there's another one he did, about a cat slowly being driven insane by a cuckoo (told in some seriously creepy first-person narration) whose title I never can remember, where the cat seriously wants to murder the cuckoo. Villains get killed in Disney movies all the time (Ursula was impaled on a bowsprit, Maleficent got a sword to the heart, Sykes in Oliver and Company got run over by a train). And there's the memorable scene in Lion King, where Mufasa realizes Scar is about to kill him.

edited 27th Mar '15 4:51:48 PM by Robbery

I often kind of feel like that's the reason for a lot of stuff people think about animation. "We need more serious shows so animation will become mainstream and we don't have to be laughed at for liking childish stuff."

This is the same reason why I don't like the idea of the guilty pleasure. If you like something, be unabashed about it. Don't let society or your own paranoia tell you what to be ashamed of.

Alan Moore once advised throwing your cool to the winds. Trying to be cool is the killer of genuine feeling and engagement. Just like what you like. Hearing someone talk about something they genuinely enjoy is one of life's great pleasures, usually regardless of what that something is.

While I dont like Alan Moore (His Simpson Persona was hot though), I dont need celebrities or Great Minds quotes to agree with what you've said. I definitely love the way you think Robbery!

i would agree with this partly, though the reason most people don't like abstract art isn't really that it's stylized, but that it's not representative.

if you can draw in a stylized fashion reasonably well, people will still think it's cool and impressive. but the vast majority of people don't have the art know-how to determine whether an abstract piece is "good" or not.

that's also the reason why most people consider conceptual art pretentious.

Cable shattered the Animation Age Ghetto anyway. South Park simply confirmed what people already suspected (and either way, The Simpsons led the revival of prime time animation).

The key nowadays is budgeting. Animation is expensive, and the anime empire in Japan is built on the dedicated Yen of the otaku community. In the U.S., you really have to be a hit in order to have large-scale merchandising, whereas in Japan it's almost the other way around, the stuff that sells figurines, tie-in games, and body pillows tends to be the stuff that gets renewed for a second season.

Action cartoons *need* to be big enough that you can guarantee that everyone will be playing with their toys, because niche figure lines still haven't gotten as big. This is what killed SWAT Kats, despite it being the highest-rated Saturday morning cartoon of its age. They couldn't get the merch off the ground, and Hannah-Barbera was looking ahead to a more hopeful (on the merch front) Johnny Quest revival (the Real Adventures), and so it got axed midway through the second season with some episodes even left unfinished, this despite powerful ratings and fairly edgy content (for being aired on the networks too, mind).

Going forward, i think The Legend Of Korra and RWBY will be the shows to emulate in this regard. One was launched by a web content provider, the other was taken off the air to make way for more lucrative content, and yet was still given a full four seasons off the back of fan demand.

The problem is that action cartoons still need a champion willing to follow through with this model and effectively mass-produce it. Perhaps one of the companies that makes premium figurines could put up the dough for a video site that could petition for original content and provide seed money for pilots (presuming that they could turn that into a stable of merchandisable characters).

You have to remember that as far as mainstream entertainment goes, America is about on the level with Japan in terms of animation. The big stuff gets airtime on the major networks, but we have the Otaku O'Clock trope for a reason. A lot of this stuff is very obscure as far as the average Japanese cares.

I love you. Again. Many people feel it was Ted Turner that killed the show (ESPECIALLY in this wiki) and its filled with butthurt pseudo clever attacks against him. I really hate it when people dont get their facts straight.

EDIT: Also that article has revived my desire to make a Sunday Morning Kids Anime article. Its pretty cute that Japan has an equivalent of the Saturday-Morning Cartoon!

edited 29th Mar '15 11:21:40 AM by AegisP

Why, then, do we keep complaining about the ghetto?

Don't forget it was Ren And Stimpy that really proved adults could watch kids' cartoons and not feel ashamed.

I'll say it now. If action cartoons are to survive, their fate can't be tied in with the merchandising. Comedic toons can survive with barely any merch (see most of CN pre-Adventure Time). The same ought to be true for action.

edited 29th Mar '15 11:28:28 AM by Aldo930

The Ghetto keeps action cartoons stuck to Half Hour Toy Commercials and DC/Marvel shows (and Star Wars, thankfully exempted), because U.S. corporations don't want to rely on the nerds (i have privileges for this particular N-word) to keep their endeavors afloat with merchandising. Children buy toys, so merchandise-driven action cartoons still need to be targeted towards children.

And to be fair, the otaku circle-jerk did some damage in Japan during the moe craze of the past 7 years or so, where the key was creating a series with waifus to get the merchandise rolling and created a glut of slice-of-life shows. So it's not like the Japanese way is "great", but at least they get these animated shows made, whereas in the US they're concepts that remain trapped as web-comics.

One would figure more western video games could use animated tie-in shows as well. They couldn't have gotten a season's worth of World Of Warcraft material out there? Especially at the height of the game's popularity.

I'd estimate that the reason they don't want that is because there are less nerds than kids.

As much as some people want more video game based toons, deep down we all fear they'll turn into another Captain N.

Right, but presently the idea is that you only make the shows that can get mass kid appeal, and leave the others to rot. Let the other ideas live, just with a low production run and supported by more premium merchandise, like most 12-episode anime.

They're kids' networks, though.

Kids' networks generally have the kids first in mind. Nerds aren't on the radar for them. They don't matter.

edited 29th Mar '15 1:11:13 PM by Aldo930

that was a different time though.

the videogames captain n is based on, at that point, were very sparse in plot and characterization because that's not something that most developers cared very much about at that point. as such they had to supplant that with their own ideas, which ended up being...well, bad.

these days most games have a lot more to work with in terms of plot and characters. it might not guarantee a good show per se, but it won't be like captain n where the characters they gave us were only very superficially similar to the people they were supposed to be.

I meant "in quality."

I think what America mostly has is a very limited view on what animation can be. They believe that Snow White was the first animated movie, but don't realize that some impressive work came beforehand. They though that Stop Motion was dead outside of special effects when in reality, Eastern European Stop Motion was big during that period. They consider themselves "In the know" because they recognize a Studio Ghibli movie and Akira, but have no idea who Satoshi Kon is. They have no idea what European studios produce unless it is Aardman. That's not unusual, though. When it comes to foreign media, Americans are rarely interested.

They might know of Canadian animation they see on Cartoon Network, but not the NFB...

This is pretty much a problem with a lot of animation fans as well.

edited 29th Mar '15 3:28:00 PM by Aldo930

Im REALLY sorry for being the dumbass that proves the point Aldo but who is the NFB?

In my defense I ask this so I can know and be more informed.

Also, I like you more and more Lady Swan Pride. I DO wish your English was more polished though. The lack of the final t in "Thought" in particular makes me cringe. Although that's because English is my only talent,specially since its such rare talent where I live (Im not a native speaker). Im a waste of space and oxygen otherwise.

edited 29th Mar '15 3:39:14 PM by AegisP

The National Film Board of Canada, who have financed such quality pieces of animation as this:

MLP has cons solely about that one show! Disney now has one or two conventions only for their stuff. In America, I am convinced that having its own con solidifies a cartoon to be a hit. That's almost impossible to do.

Does Adventure Time have its own con?

No. Though it's not as popular as it used to be.

edited 29th Mar '15 6:19:00 PM by kyun