Animation is a medium, not a genre - in theory only. At least in terms of Western media. While plenty of headway has been made moving the dial against the cultural understanding that these films are only for children, in practice, an animated movie does not conjure an image of maturity. No matter how many shows like ‘Invincible’ we produce (and it isn’t that many), the average person doesn’t see it as “adult” art.
Just a cartoon.
The Shorts
In many ways, this struggle to seem “adult” is almost as baked in as singing princesses and conspiracy theories about subliminal messages. From the moment Disney Animation put Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) into theatres, there was a conversation about how far the public could be pushed. But even before the animated feature (which I know had sparks prior, but we’re not that cultured here) there was the animated short, and all that encompassed.
The featured players of the animated short, like Fleischer Studios, laid much of the groundwork with American audiences for darker themes. Betty Boop was as much as an “It girl” persona as Clara Bow, and remains sexualised to this day, despite being a canon child. Shorts about the dangers of drug addiction, teenaged runaways, and stuff about clowns run wild in the shorts of the studio.
Disney themselves had their own roster of mature themes. Not only was Mickey Mouse himself a bit of a nasty piece of work at the beginning, but oftentimes, the focus was less on zany shenanigans, but more a study in art. Whether (inaccurate) retellings of classic myths, or simple studies of nature, the pre-feature days were varied and adult-inclusive. But over time, as attempts to create less family focused fare failed (haha, alliteration!), we settled on a type. That type was cute, it was digestible, and it was marketable.
Ralph Bakshi
If we’re discussing animated cinema in this vein, there’s man who’s work in medium we must acknowledge. Ralph Bakshi is a legend in film, but one I rarely like to think about. It’s not that he’s personally forgettable or reprehensible. In fact, what I’ve come across concerning him seems to be a man passionate about his craft and his messages. For better and for worse
The trouble is his films are often offensive. Repulsive, even. If not thematically and conceptually, then visually. There’s something so distinctly 1970s about the design style he works with that makes my skin crawl. The man himself has admitted that this is often a result of working cheaply to get the product out there, but the result is the same. But like them of not, this is the best shot we have historically had for mainstream American animation with no intention of children watching.
Watching even the most mainstream of his works is a trip, because this is not how animated films look and feel anywhere else. I’m not trying to compare his filmography to the most expensive modern productions, but even for the time they stood out. His auteur status was cemented the moment ‘Fritz the Cat’ (1972) became a surprise hit, and he rode that to a career that many would envy. Touching on topics of race and class with a dark sense of humour, the films’ existence is awe inspiring. Rarely was his art compromised, and rarely is it accessible.
It was also not viable in the long term, and past a tepid attempt at epic fantasy in 1983, he has only directed one feature in ‘Cool World’ (1992) and a short entitled ‘Last Days of Coney Island’ (2015).
Animal Farm (1954)
The 1954 adaptation of Animal Farm (1945) is interesting in how it sits culturally. Like many adaptations of classic literature, it’s simultaneously taught in schools in place of the book itself, and shunned for its faithlessness. That one change, the ending, sees the impact of the film so fundamentally different that you cannot treat it as straight adaptation. It’s there for a reason.
The film is, quite literally, a propaganda piece. As is the book in many ways. But this production especially was -being an actual CIA venture- part of the Cold War. It’s a decent piece of cinema, yet it is also the opposite of what Bakshi stood for in his filmmaking. The ending was a decision to keep the film light and accessible, the art was directly inspired by the Disney standard, and it succeeded.
Never the less, this was a product for mass consumption. It sits alongside other war propaganda, not as a child focused piece, but something that had “mass appeal”. Considering how nationalist messages are fed to the public nowadays, it’s interesting that in the 1950s, animation was still a viable avenue.
Don Bluth and the Disney outcasts
Don Bluth is often given complete credit for the non-Disney animated films that seemed to explode in number throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The trouble is, he’s actually one of many. Richard Rich, the director of ‘The Swan Princess’ (1994) is also a Disney castoff, who had directed features like ‘The Fox and the Hound’ (1981). That film’s success on home video, along with his credentials, saw him have a continued career as a franchise man, with 14/22 being sequels. Others, like Mark Dindal, made their way back to the Mouse’s loving arms. With one underrated animated flop in ‘Cats Don’t Dance’ (1997), he returned safely in 2005 to direct Disney’s ‘Chicken Little’.
In many ways the beneficiary of a dire grade-point-average, Bluth’s work does mostly stand on its own. And in part, it’s due to the maturity of his storytelling, at least in the beginning. Films like ‘The Secret of Nimh’ (1982) were as mature in themes as the standard adult fair, and his success meant he was allowed to get darker and darker, until studio interference and a shifted creative vision seemed to collapse in on itself. There’s a distinctly adult focus in his catalogue throughout the 1980s. Risks were taken that, in many ways, simply couldn’t exist today. He produced classic after classic, and then not, and then ‘Anastasia’ (1997). I will give the man his flowers, and then some.
Y2K nostalgia
For as long as I’ve been online, there’s been this insistence that the animated films of a certain age’s childhood (hags) stood above the rest. And while most of this is just plain nostalgia, I do have to acknowledge that there is something else going on. And that is the complete and utter failure of animation studios in the early 2000s to do market research.
I mean it. Look at the roster of Disney films from 2000 to 2009. It’s a sea of failed sci-fi adventures, mediocre films about “friendship”, plus the actually excellent Lilo and Stitch. For a studio that struggled to take a chance on ‘The Little Mermaid’ (1989) because it didn’t fit into their notions of what types of movies would be profitable, they certainly dove headfirst into ‘Home on the Range’ (2004)! Have you even looked at that poster? A herd of angular cows with the tagline “Bust a moo”. The mighty fell hard, Mr Eisner.
But despite the more ridiculous flops, this era did have a clear motive.
Following the slow decline in the “Renaissance Disney” style through the 1990s, the studio began to greenlight more ambitious projects for more mature audiences, starting with projects like ‘Tarzan’ (1999). Some, like 2002’s ‘Treasure Planet’, were beautiful sci-fi stories but expensive failures that have a slowly developing cult status. Others, like ‘The Emperor’s New Groove’ (2000) exist more as comedies (sometimes buddy, sometimes romantic, sometimes flaccid). But the throughline was that they have a basic expectation that the audience was MEANT to be a little wider than it had been. It wasn’t, these films often just didn’t find an audience at all, but the kids who watched these films felt a little more grown up for seeing them.
The truth
If we’re being honest, Hollywood animation is not a genre, or a medium. It’s an industry unto itself. And unlike the film industry in the same area, there is no variation in how it’s treated. Not a cent is left on the floor in the production, and nor a cent is ignored in merchandising. Live action films that flop rarely have a presence outside of the cinema, but even the worst performing animated movie can theoretically produce a goldmine of intellectual property. ‘Hoodwinked’ (2005) anyone?
Merchandising is arguably more important to animation than the films themselves. It’s multiple billion-dollar industries, after all. Toys, blankets, stationary, clothes – every product that can have a face plastered on it will have it. And unlike many other industries that have traditionally gone the same route, it doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
The reason we don’t have animated blockbusters and strange pieces of ephemera in theatres anymore isn’t just that they bombed. Some didn’t. Many remain franchised to this day (hello again, Betty Boop). But animation is a painstaking industry that isn’t actually getting any easier, and Hollywood is increasingly risk-adverse. Digital technology didn’t smooth out the process, it made it hard in new and exciting ways. While the standard live action film is able to get away with flood lights and a green screen, the process of producing even the worst animated fare is never particularly improved. Every step forward is a millimetre of ease at best.
So, the big studios play it safe, and the definition of “safe” has narrowed over time. While artists like Bakshi can exist in theory, it would have to be someone who would choose to lose big many times over to get stuff out there.
The path was paved for someone like Bluth to take the reins and do mature storytelling, but ultimately, money talks. Nobody who is making art is a sell out to me when it comes to this discussion (Bluth especially), but I think we have to be honest about why the industry exists as it does. 24 frames a second, 1440 a minute, 86400 an hour, 1296000 for a feature.
Try and draw that picture for negative dollars.