Lecture 9 'The Circle of Life'

This lecture was partly about ideology and what it means and partly a comparison between western animation e.g. Disney and Pixar and Japanese animation.

He showed us extracts form Bambi (Disney) and My Neighbour Totoro (Studio Ghibli) and compared the two. He talked about the way the western animation always had an underlying theme telling children that home is safe, stay with your parents and you will be safe, don't wander into the open on your own. The anime however seems to express the idea that when you leave home and explore the unknown you will have a thrilling adventure, that its OK, the exciting things happen when you are free from your parents.

This really made me think, i can believe that this is true for some Disney and anime but it cannot be an absolute rule. It is certainly true for the Studio Ghibli film 'Spirited Away' when a young goes through a portal and finds herself alone in a magical and disturbing world.

This is also true for the Disney film 'Pinocchio' where the wooden boy is safe while at home but when he gets taken away he has to endure some truly horrific events including being eaten by a whale and nearly turning into a donkey.

I don't think these rules are without exception though for example 'Peter Pan' is a story about some children who are invited away from home by a boy and a fairy to a magical land where theyhave an adventure.
However, being brought up on Disney i do understand what Bill meant by this. Sometimes when i watch anime films i get scared for the characters because they put themselves in dangerous positions so willingly, something you rarely see in Disney. I find myself wanting to tell them not to go through the spooky door or wander off with a monster because i have been brain washed by Disney into thinking that these actions will lead to danger. In anime these actions lead to adventure an excitement.

Lecture 9 'I move therefore I am'

This lecture was about animation, one part that really stood out for me was this quote:

"Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn."
Norman McLaren

I found this really interesting, I'd never thought about animation in this way before, the movements have to have some correlation with movements in the real world to work, the have to be smooth and flow. Bill said that the important stuff its not what is drawn in each frame, but is what happens between the frames.

Bill also explained about the roll of the controller, a god which is in complete control of the animated universe which he has invented. He has the power to change the laws of physics to bend and alter reality as he wishes. The characters may or may not interact with or be aware of this character which all animation shares. A good example of where the characters are aware of this figure in 'Duck Amuck' by Warner Bros.

In this scene the controller has changed the physical area and materiality of the world in which Daffy Duck exists. The universe has changed from an apparently infinite space to a floppy bubble of flat space. Daffy is having to hold up the walls of the universe for it to even exist.
In the seminar we talked about how animation had first evolved and how movement can bring things to life. All living things move, and if something that looks alive doesn't move, or if something that isn't alive moves than it disturbs us. The familiar unfamiliar as Freud put it. This can be thought of as a dead body, we recognise the person as a human but because of the lack of movement it looks uncanny. This could also be said if an inanimate object like a doll started moving. It would be very strange and disturbing.

This is what makes the Chucky movies so scary, how do you kill something that was never alive?

Thinking about that reminded me of a scene in 'Fantasia' the Disney animation, where Mickey mouse enchants a broom to fill the bath with buckets of water and he can't stop it. It keeps going until the place is flooded, then when Mickey tries to destroy the broom each of the splinters turns into a tiny version of the broom each with buckets of water and it goes on and on. It cannot be stopped, how do you kill something that was never alive?

This scene scared me as a child it was like a nightmare, the idea that it couldn't be stopped and anything you did to make it better only made it worse. It's hard to explain, it makes me feel uneasy thinking about it, i wonder how it would feel if i watched it now.

It all links in quite neatly an animated film about an inanimate object becoming animate, haha.