6:Popeye's Masuclinity

From his less that auspicious beginnings close by in Chester Illinois, Popeye has become a symbol of masculinity in cartoons.  This spinach eating (steroids?), Olive Oyl loving, Bluto punching man is the representation about all that is good and pure in society, but at the same point represents a misconception of masculinity.  If you are not ripped to shreds and saving women from bad men all the time, are you less of a man than Popeye?

Even as Popeye symbolizes masculinity, Superman continues the tradition of unrealistic representations of men in animation. Wells says in Understanding Animation that "Clark Kent is the helpless, well-meaning, inadequate, defined by the limitations of his human-ness [and] Superman is a mythic role model" (Wells, 193).  Just as Popeye is a normal guy until he eats his spinach Clark Kent is normal until he unveils that he is Superman.

However, unlike other super heroes who don costumes to create their alter-ego who fights crime, Superman always wears a costume, and only becomes a crime fighter when he removes his costume.  This is a significant point because Superman only actualizes his super-ness when he is not in costume, whereas other super heroes must put theirs on.

5: Psychedelic Animation.

As I was reading Art In Motion, Maureen Furniss mentioned that some abstract animator have "use[ed] hallucinogenic drugs to encourage intuitive thought processes" (Furniss, 252). This got me curious as to what I knew that had been animated with the help of psychedelics, and I quickly recognized two movies that fit perfectly with this chapter and with the themes of psychedelic animation: Pink Floyd's The Wall and part of The Grateful Dead movie. With both of these clips we can see the mix of abstract animation with realist animation, but it seems as though psychedelics will drive the animator more towards a surrealist style than an abstract one.

Clip from The Grateful Dead Movie

Clip from Pink Floyd's The Wall

In both of these clips we see a subtle mix of narrative with abstraction.  In The Wall, the narrative lies with the music itself, as Pink Floyd made it as a narrative album, but through the animation we can discover new links between the right and left sides of our brains. This mix of abstraction and narrative is present in The Grateful Dead Movie, as we see the beginnings of a story, a space man playing pinball, but what slowly turns into a surrealistic motorcycle trip with a dead Uncle Sam.

However, most of the animation in both films does not only on abstraction, but an elaborate mixture of abstraction and surrealism.  In The Grateful Dead Movie we see mountains morphing into feet, flowers floating in mid air, and a skeleton in a suit jacket leading us on a crazy trip into the desert.  However, a little after four minutes into the clip we  can see a strict abstract animation develop as Uncle Sam rides into nowhere. The Wall provides similar combination of abstraction and surrealism, morphing flowers, but also giving us shots where it is hard to imagine what we are seeing.

Metamorphosis

This reminded me of the discussion about metamorphosis from class today.

4: South Park's Narrative Structure

As I was reading through Wells's description of the narrative structures that dominate animations, I began to wonder what narrative structures dominate South Park.  It seems that metamorphosis is rarely used, as in terms of a cartoon South Park is fairly realistic, and condensation, although used, is rarely as applied as the concepts of metaphor and symbolism.  Wells states "the metaphor offers the possibility of a number of discourses within its over-arching framework" which is what much of the genius behind South Park relies upon (Wells, 84).

In the early seasons of South Park Matt Stone and Trey Parker were much less liberal with their use of metaphor and symbolism, and most of their stories and images represented themselves directly. In later seasons Parker and Stone began to use these two narrative devices to advance South Park beyond a silly, foul mouthed cartoon, and into a brilliant satire of American culture.  For instance, in the season eight episode "Douche and Turd", the elementary school is required to vote for a new mascot, and due to Cartman's interference, the choice is between and giant douche and turd sandwich.  Taken at face value this is a simple story, but when considered in context of the 2004 presidential election Stone and Parker have created a complex metaphor.  As Wells says "metaphors make the literal interpretation of images ambiguous and sometimes contradictory because they invite an engagement with the symbolic over and above the self-evident" (Wells, 84).  This episode presents more than just the literal interpretation of a grade school mascot election, asking the viewer to look beyond the literal images and into the symbolism they have used to vocalize their disappointment in the choices of the 2004 presidential election.

Stone and Parker have continued this tradition of metaphors through their animation with many episodes which are metaphors for contemporary conditions in America.  This is another aspect of their work which is significant.  The quick production schedule of their shows allows them to comment on current events within a week of the event.  They are able to create symbolism and metaphors which the common viewer should be able to determine due to their connection with contemporary events.

Jealous

I really wish this had been my flipbook.

3: Drafting from Comic Books

Dear Intraweb,
As I read through Donald Grafton's article "Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898-1928, Grafton explicated a trend which I find very common in contemporary cinema.  Grafton notes that many comic strip artists's work had been produced into live action films. However after a while it became more common to produce an animated work from a comic strip, since the two mediums seemed to coincide on many levels. It seems after many decades, this idea of transforming comic strips into live action movies has had a resurrection in cinema with the likes of Sin City, Spiderman, and Watchmen having been turned into live action films. 


This graphic novels have made a large chunk of money for the movie studios that produce them, and this is not a coincidence.  Many have loved these comic books and are very happy to see them turned into movies, especially when they are well done.  A film such as Sin City takes scenes directly from the graphic novel and turns them into a live action movie.  Here is an example




We can see that the director, Robert Rodriguez, has taken scenes from the comic book and translated them into literal live action versions of the book.  This is very similar to the technique used by people such as Lumiere to adapt Christophe's work "Historie sans paroles-Un Arroseur public".  Lumiere has attempted to take the completely false world of Christophe's cartoon and turn into real life.

Similarly, Zach Snyder's Watchmen produced a similarly uncanny resemblance to the original graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.  The movie, although it skirts around certain plot lines and other parts of the graphic novel, does the book artistic justice by lifting much of its images directly from the artwork in the book.  We can see that the strategy of turning comic strips into live action movies has come back, and from the look of the movies box office receipts, the comic strip medium will continue to be a mainstay of major studios for years to come.

Another Animation

Dear Intraweb,
Here's an interesting animation designed on a record player I believe.  It helps explain a lot of what we have talked about in class.

Enjoy,
Noah

Line Animation

Dear Intraweb,
I thought this should be spread around.

Enjoy,
Noah