Written by Shreyas Ramani
From starting off as hand-drawn films to the animated features we see today, animated films have evolved a lot. The potential for imagination in these films is virtually limitless, as infinite different universes can be created and explored with the amount of freedom offered by the animated platforms. With rapid advancements in virtual reality and graphic techniques, it’s safe to say animation has a bright future ahead.
A lot of us may remember spending most of our childhood days watching animated content. Shows like The Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo, the Powerpuff Girls and many more were integral parts of our childhood. And yet, as we grow older, we begin to prefer live-action over animated content and over time we presume that animation is ‘just for kids’. As a result, we see very few adults watching animated movies without kids, leading them to miss out on some of the most inventive, creatively mature content in the market, while also negatively impacting the industry. But this wasn’t always the case.
Back in the 1920s, animated films made their first appearance in theaters. Going to the theater to watch animated films was a grand event, and adults treated it as such. Even television’s first animated show, Crusader Rabbit (1947) wasn’t meant for kids due to its satirical nature, and thus adults continued to enjoy animated content. It was during the 50s and 60s, with the increase in household television sets, that a shift began to be seen. Television content began to be vast and varied, and characters began to be more popular than the show itself. A lot of kids began to identify with these characters and due to the lower cost of producing animated films for television the number of such projects began to skyrocket.
In the late 80s and 90s, cartoons like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT), Transformers and Japanese animated shows (called anime) like Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon became so popular that action figures began hitting the market. These action figures became very popular among kids, and corporations thus began directly marketing animated features to children. He-Man (and later G.I Joe), one of the most famous action figures at the time, was made into a TV show to promote its sale. Over time, the concept of ‘Kids Channels’ also began. While adults still watched animated content, many slowly began distancing themselves from it.
The crux of this shift can be explained by the definition of social stance in people’s minds. Growing up, people associate adulthood with independence and childhood with dependence. Childhood is characterized by living with parents, going to school and watching cartoons. Conversely, ‘adulthood’ symbolizes living alone, going to work and watching the news or other channels. Despite this, however, there are multiple animated shows and movies that have succeeded with an adult viewer base, marketing towards kids notwithstanding. So clearly traditionally child-oriented programming could be just as appealing to adults, given the right creative approach.
For further conviction, consider two great movies, The Dark Knight (live-action) and Monsters Inc.(a Pixar animated film). One of the complaints that people have is that animated movies are not ‘realistic’ enough as live-action. So if one had to pick a movie from the above as a realistic one, it would probably be The Dark Knight. However while The Dark Knight is a fantastic movie, regarded by most as one of the greatest ever, as far as realism goes, the film doesn’t push too far. In the real world, we are neither going to see a man wearing a cape and mask driving around on a super speed motorcycle, nor a man wearing face paint terrorizing an entire city by himself.
On the other hand, the seemingly fantastical Monsters Inc. cuts far deeper than most would care to admit. Themes exploring intense psychological and sociological phenomena are handled with great care. In the movie, the monsters were afraid to touch human children because they thought that the children were infectious, until two monsters break this taboo once and for all. This could be an allusion to the fact that we as a society were once upon a time afraid to go near AIDS patients, even if they were our loved ones. It was only when Princess Diana publicly visited an AIDS hospital that this taboo was destroyed in many parts of the United Kingdom. Another seemingly simple, yet profound idea explored by the film was the curative power of laughter.
The point of this analysis was to pinpoint unrealistic elements from a ‘realistic’ film and vice versa. Despite a clear lack of realism in these films, both explore complex ideas and have richly developed characters. It would be a shame to see an audience ignore one, simply because it was labelled a ‘kids movie’.
However, it is not that animation studios aren’t entirely to blame. Due to the high cost involved, major studios often choose the least risky option, and use tried and tested techniques without venturing into newer ones. This means that a lot of shows can tend to be repetitive and dull, without much substance in either plot or graphic technique.
Yet, over the last two decades, animated films have made more progress than ever. As companies want to make sure that they get a good return on investment on their films, the quality of films has been better than ever. Most cartoon movies now cater a little to the adult audience and some cartoons like the Simpsons and South Park and even newer shows like Bojack Horseman or Rick and Morty have exclusively catered to adults and succeeded.
And it is not just ‘adult’ jokes and stories that make a film worthy of an older audience. Take for example Spiderman — Into The Spiderverse, which makes use of integration of various styles of animations including the comic book style, neo-noir, anime, classic 3D and more, all to push the techniques of animation.
Re-watching some favorite childhood animated shows or movies with an adult’s perspective shows several things that we miss in our childhood. Tom and Jerry had some of the best sound editing and sound mixing for any show airing in the 1940s. Phineas and Ferb had brilliant characters had dialogue coupled with lyricism, and A Silent Voice dealt with several societal topics.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Animation is a medium capable of boundless creativity, and the ability to tell stories that perhaps no other medium can. The power of this art should hardly be limited by the most inane of rhetorical questions — “Is animation for kids?” Perhaps, with time, we can begin to ask the question — “Is animation for you?”
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