Detheux Part 1

“It seems to me as if most of the traditional narrative animation is endlessly repeating itself. With minor variations, the form seems to have been set a long time ago (Disney?) and is not ready to be changed, at least not for as long as the control of what is acceptable (and supported) remains in the usual hands.”

"most people seem to want to do exactly the same work the major studios are doing, only with less money."

(http://mag.awn.com/?article_no=1391)

Detheux is under the belief that Disney animation has set the bar, not only for animation, but for the narrative as well, and that since the dawn of Disney, everyone else is scrambling to catch up, by repeating what Disney has done, rather than come up with something unique and original of their own.  I can in some ways see how this opinion came to be born, in watching animated films released by studios other than Disney, shortly after the release of a Disney film, and at times have been guilty of the same sort of shaming that Detheux has done in his article.  Shark Tale, and Finding Nemo - here we are telling stories about fish; I saw Finding Nemo, and saw a picture of the Shark Tale film in the queue at Redbox, and thought, “hasn’t that already been done?” And while I’m sure the plots were completely different, I didn’t give the Disney alternative the time of day.  However, there have also been films with animation that completely blew me out of the water, and I wouldn’t say that they reminded me of Disney in narrative or aesthetic.  The example I’d use here is, The Triplets of Belleville.  That move completely amazed me, both in narrative (the movie is mostly silent, and relies on character’s expression, sound effects, lighting, staging, scene, camera angles, etc to set the mood and draw in the audience, and in animation style - it looked like an old traditional animation circa 1950.  It closely follows all the steps that The Illusion of Life references, to draw in an audience, and to animate in a visually dynamic way.  There have also been films with astounding stop motion animation that have left me speechless, Jan Svankmajer’s Alice, for example is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland; this was done by Disney in quite a beautiful way, but Svankmajer also took a well known story and made it completely his own.  While there have been some takes on Alice in Wonderland by other studios (Tim Burton, for example did his own version,) I have yet to watch one of them and think, “this writer/ director/ etc has copied scene for scene, script for script, and dialogue for dialogue Disney.  While I somewhat agree with Detheux, I’m mostly inclined to say the glass is half full in the world of animation; I think that Pixar certainly inspired studios to get serious about 3D Animation for telling a story and not simply visual effects in live action films, however, I don’t believe that people copy Disney to the point of unoriginality.  Imagine how art would progress in anyway, if there wasn’t someone who inspired the greats before us; we watch and learn from others, we take what we learn and make it our own; we in turn can inspire change.