The Weekend Blog

Animation- No More Puerile Nonsense! Posted: 30 Nov 2008 03:42 AM CST People feel attracted towards new and exotic things and even more to those things which they can relate with their own fantasies. Everyone, including children, adults and even oldsters, have fantasies. These new things that people find attractive are those that they usually can't do in their real life, things that reminds them of their own fantasies, things that are found only in their dreams and things that make them feel happy.Earlier people named them as "magic","occult" as they were orphic and beyond the then mind's understanding. Today we encounter a new form of these things in our daily life and we call it "Animation". It started in 1906 with the first short film named "Humorous phases of funny faces" by Stuart Blackton.People were attracted toward animation because it was a new concept. It attracted myriad of people from every age group. It was new, exotic, and also beyond human understanding, so in every aspect it had power to attract people. They had never seen moving images. It was fantastic experience for the viewers. It was like their dreams came true. Something they can see only in their own dreams now can be seen with family and can be shared without any modification caused by words. But early 20's was a time of scientific revolution. people started thinking logically and more they get familiar with animation, more they started getting tired of gags without a story line. The decline in popularity of this new concept alarmed those who were involved in it. Felix the cat by Otto Mesmer was a big hit and so was Gertie the dinosaur by McCay.These two were a hit because they were a "character" unlike just a moving image in earlier films.  They had their specific nature and behavior and thus they were different from their earlier types. Felix the cat was not as much popular as Gertie because it was not able to develop a strong stage persona and it relied on crude visual tricks to entertain it's audiences. Children were still attracted towards these crude visual tricks because they need not to apply logic behind every deed, same as they do with their dreams. They enjoyed the gags and those fairy characters. Characters they heard only in stories, characters that attracted them, characters that were their pals of dreams. Disney produced first animation movie in 1937 named "Snow white and the seven dwarfs". Still targeting the youngsters and with an intent to realise the imagination of fairy tales as made by human mind. But adults were not so much attracted towards this form of animation. At that time animation was considered as puerile and reserved for kids. A lot of movies were produced for younger generation and animation became a source of entertainment reserved only for kids. But today it has started growing its domain of viewers. Now animation is targeting adults too. After the saturation of child movies, animation now aims for content of adult interest. The switching from youngsters to adult was not able to happen at once. Animators produced movies tagerting whole family. Movies like Mulan and Lion king are examples of such efforts. To make it more adult like they started adding violence and more mature human emotions into the scripts. Unlike earlier movies in which one character cuts the other in slices yet the other one recombines himself magically, now characters were mortal in movies. Blood shedding that was not acceptable in earlier movies is now inevitable for adult movies. Besides violence and blood shedding there is something more that attracts adults towards animation. What is that? Adults have a sense of relating things with science and they accept them only when they comply with their logic. Puerile acts are not in their list of logically accpeted things and so do earlier animations. When they see a human like character producing energy blasts out of his hands, they find it unacceptable because this is not what they have seen in their observation of humans. But they accept it when they can relate this with a different environment. Environment in which these things are possible, and this is what todays animators are using to make it acceptable. They don't relate the characters with humans but they create a whole new environment for their characters. In this new environment they not only allow their characters to do "magical acts", what we can call them in real human life, but they also provide some logic behind that magical act. This logic seems true and acceptable because the audience is now familier with this new environment. Now they don't relate it with their own environment but with the rules of the new one presented before them. Now they can very well go with the illogical happenings of the animation because in some other world they are logical. One such example is the japanese manga series "Naruto". The producers of this big hit has created a new environment prior telling the story to audience. Environment in which all these things are possible so it does not strikes to mind when you see people flying high in sky or fighting to animals bigger than a 50 story building. Animals that have intelligence and are skilled in every single martial art technique.        Naruto, Superman, Batman and many more in the list. They all have changed the way grown ups look at animation. Now animation is not sole property of kids. It has extended its boundaries and reached to the most dominant age group, considering entertainment market, the adults. Now animation is everywhere. Animation now is creating magical effects in real life characters too, it has reached to such an extent that now we can't distinguish between real characters and animated ones. Animation , started for fun and gags, now has incorporated serious emotions and action. This is what makes it top in the list of entertainment.

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