Breaking the Animation Age Ghetto

Yes.

Aldo, elaborate on what you mean by the films Neil Emmett is talking about being "pretentious." What is pretentious about them?

Pretentious as in "they think they're so much smarter than they really are."

There is some adult animation that's pretty frigging pretentious, but then there's some that are incredibly enjoyable.

edited 22nd Aug '14 7:49:34 PM by Aldo930

Yeah, I haven't seen Gargoyles extensively but I've seen enough to know there was a lot of effort put into it. Calling it "mediocre" or "juvenile" is just silly, IMO. i also wouldn't put it "on par" with anything live action because the two mediums are entirely different and it's pretty pointless and misguided to compare the two except perhaps very broadly.

Some of things I could agree with, but the rest? Nah.

edited 22nd Aug '14 8:23:36 PM by Teddy

A lot of effort getting put into something does not necessarily mean it's good.

However, effort done in the right places, like the writing, does mean it's good.

I agree 100% with what Emmet said about this site. We are not helping the problem.

In what way are we tropers not helping the problem?

A. Ignoring or dismissing animators like Jan Svankmeyer.

B. Trumping up Gargoyles as some great work of art and expecting people to take us seriously.

C. As such, continuing to trumpet Greg Weisman as some sort of mistreated genius when he's got about as many writing tricks as Eric Bischoff. Only instead of gratuitous controversial content, it's gratuitous Shakespeare allusions. THAT is a point for further discussion.

edited 22nd Aug '14 8:08:11 PM by maxwellelvis

How much of this is applicable to the troper situation of today? That article's a couple years old, and after all, I don't see a lot of people holding up Gargoyles as a sort of Acme Of Animation For Which Nothing May Surpass It™ these days. (That honor would go to a couple of different shows.)

Though I do agree we should not be going around holding up kids' shows as, well, True Art. Then again, I'm pretty much against the idea of True Art.

edited 22nd Aug '14 8:19:12 PM by Aldo930

It's only a year old.

Well, that's what I get for reading only the stuff that's posted here...

Though these days you see more newer shows being called "True Art".

edited 22nd Aug '14 8:27:30 PM by Aldo930

Can I get back to Weisman for a moment? Because it kinda bugs me how people would trumpet about how his Shakespeare cameos were some sort of elevating thing, and looking back, he only really uses two plays for all his references, and it's two of the more well-known ones even.

Also, around Young Justice, I started to realize how often he keeps using the same trope over and over again to the point where you stop caring what happens.

It seems more like the fans are pretentious instead of the show, trumpeting this as high art when it really isn't, and mentioning things that are supposed to make it high art that fall flat when you really look into them.

God, I have been there...

edited 22nd Aug '14 8:43:59 PM by Aldo930

High/true art is a pretty meaningless label to me considering how nebulous the term "art" is in the first place (as a visual arts major I should know). I find the term so pretentious that I really don't feel comfortable applying it to anything I enjoy, even things that I think have legitimate intellectual merit.

I also don't see anybody trumpeting Gargoyles as some sort of masterpiece nowadays- just an unusually good show for its time. I agree with Aldo in the sense that I think fans are often just as pretentious as shows are.

edited 22nd Aug '14 9:13:51 PM by wehrmacht

Gargoyles wasn't even good. Basically Disneys attempt at trying to make a serious show out of the popularity of ANOTHER SHOW. Never seen anyone obsess over it..

Btw the only people I know who use the term True Art are teens who think gritty anime and DC comics are perfection :/

edited 23rd Aug '14 6:58:49 AM by Teddy

Well... I guess I'm glad I'm not looking for True Art, then - just good writing and likable characters. With some of the crap I've watched (without naming examples), I've almost succeeded. Personal best, if you will.

Then again, I'm less of a fan of pure action shows (just PO.e.d by the lack of them as of late) and more of action/comedy fare - I guess I admire the balance, which we need more of, too...

This. This right here. Y'all want animation to be taken seriously as an adult medium? You need to show more support to animators who are actually making works for adults. The works that most animation buffs seem to champion are outright children's shows. That's not a bad thing, but, for the most part, they are intended to be for children as the target demographic. The fact that they are children's programming does not make them inferior in the slightest, but the overt focus people have on these shows is to the detriment of animators who make programming intended for adults.

People sometimes bring up names like Ralph Bakshi, and of course there are mainstream adult animated hits (e.g. King Of The Hill, Family Guy, the more recent Rick And Morty, Futurama, and yes, of course, The Simpsons). Problem is that of Small Reference Pools. These are the only pieces of adult animation that get any real attention, whereas pretty much every children's show from the '90s gets nostalgiagasmed as the pinnacle of art. What about all those animators like Jan Svankmeyer? Don Hertzfeldt? Hell, even people like Lev Yilmaz. There's a bunch of films on this list (a list that unfortunately doesn't quite live up to its name, weirdly favoring mainstream children's movies and anime} that hardly get any recognition, yet if they did, they might help to make animation seem more like a serious medium in the eyes of the general public.

TL;DR: Support indie animators.

I might be using a lot of hyperbole here, but so do people with the opposite view. I'm trying to make a point here.

edited 23rd Aug '14 9:21:56 AM by Odd1

Unfortunately, Indy animation does tend to suffer from small reference pools, and their lack of mainstream attention makes it difficult to list their works. Here's a small sample of Indy animators who are worth looking into (and there are many, many more out there to find); There's somewhat well known films and filmmakers like Sita Sings the Blues, Allegro Non Troppo, Ernest and Celestine and Fears of the Dark, and well known indies like Richard Williams and Ralph Bakshi, but there's also;

Ray Kosarin, Michael Sporn, John Hubley, Norman Mc Laren, Caroline Leaf, Arthur Lipsett, Kaj Pindal, Any of the filmmakers of The National Film Board of Canada, The puppet films of Trnka and Pojar, John schnall, Joanna Quinn, Robert Breer, Richard protovin, Eliot noyes jr. , George griffin, Kathy rose, Al jar now, Dennis pies, Mary beams, Adam Beckett , Kathleen Laughlin , Maureen Selwood, Emily Hubley , Debra Solomon, Fred Wolf's ( made for abc feature "The Point"), John Wilson , Candy Kugel, "En Tus Brazos" by Edouard Jouret, Matthieu Landour, and Fx Goby, "Trash Dance" by Oliver Fergusson-Taylor, "Entanglement Theory" by Richard James Allen, Australia, Kathy Rose's "She", Jay Field (Romeo and Juliet Before Parting), Stephanie Weber Biron (Gabrielle), Len lye, George dunning, John Canemaker, Duzan Vukotic , Irving Reis’s (The Four Poster (1952), Witold Giersz , Piotr Szpakowicz Lenica ("New Janko the Musician"), Raoul Servais, R.O.Blechman ( A Soldier’s Tale), Gene Deitch, Michael Myerberg‘s (Hansel and Gretel, an animated puppet feature done in 1954), Teddy Shepard, Oskar Fischinger, and many more beyond.

I hope this helps.

edited 23rd Aug '14 12:43:53 PM by TheBeanerItWas

I must respectfully disagree.

While promoting indie animation is good for the quality of the medium it will not help get popular approval from adults (which, let's be honestly, is what most people mean about breaking the ghetto) for mostly the same reason that indie films don't attract large audiences. They both focus on niche subject matters and formats that will likely alienate the people you want to get approval from.

edited 23rd Aug '14 11:48:45 AM by Mio

Sigh... still worth trying, at least IMHO. Disagree or not.

Post 215: In this day and age, it's some more newer shows that are being called the Acme of Animation™. You have three guesses as to what they are and the first two don't count.

Every children's show of the 90s? Even one-season obscurities?

While I wholeheartedly agree about Sita Sings The Blues, John Hubley, Gene Deitch and some of the NFB films... why did you leave out Sally Cruikshank?

Is Eliot Noyes Jr. the same guy as Eli Noyes, who worked at San Francisco's Colossal Pictures?

So, um... why do we want the approval of these people anyway?

edited 23rd Aug '14 12:29:12 PM by Aldo930

Aldo, like I said, there are so many independent animators to list, that some can inevitably slip by, even if they're important artists, like Sally Cruikshank.

The late Michael Sporn, in addition to being a great Indy animator himself (he was even working on an animated film about the life story of Edgar Allan Poe before his untimely death) and mentoring under master artists like Richard Williams and John Hubley, championed the work of many esoteric animators on his Splog, including many Indy animators that you wouldn't hear about anywhere else. He has 14 pages about them, linked below. Check it out when you can.

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?cat=35

I do think we could add John R. Dilworth as an independent filmmaker despite the fact he had a successful TV show that ran for four years.

After all, Gene Deitch is known for his take on Tom And Jerry around here and at one point did a TV adaptation of Krazy Kat (it was probably the best adaptation - closest to the original strip), so doing commercial stuff should not shut anyone out of the category of independent filmmaker.

(Dilworth, of course, did that great independent film "The Dirdy Birdy.")

edited 23rd Aug '14 1:00:33 PM by Aldo930

90s nostalgia is powerful, but not that powerful.

Good question.

Probably has to do with not want to feel stigmatized by the majority.