Cartoons and the Nature of Man

Alright. Time to get back to basics: cartoons.

I heard a quote from Friz Freleng the other day in reference to the Looney Tunes characters that went something like this:

The abstraction of the character design is important to make the realism of the character work for the audience.

Wow. That is an interesting take, thought I. Can realism in design and character even work? According to Friz, no it can't. Interesting, and I think I agree. This post is an attempt to work through that logic and apply it beyond the 6 minute short world of Chuck, Friz, and the Bobs.

I'll start with something tangible that might actually appeal to normal human beings. Jim Henson. Best known (of course) for his work in Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas, but he was also involved in another slightly less known (alright, I'll stop the sarcasm here, I promise)...

The muppets have worked their way into the national consciousness, whether from constant Sesame Street bombardment or just because they really are that cool (I'll go with the latter). Either way, that is an impressive feat. Why do we love these fuzzy creatures the way we do? I think it's because they have such clearly established characters and are able to emote so successfully. Recently I saw bits and pieces of The Dark Crystal, a movie that will never make it past the tolerable mark on anyone's list, and was struck by how boring everything was. Wasn't this Jim Henson? Didn't he just make The Great Muppet Caper (best muppet movie, hands down) a year before? What happened? My conclusion: the characters in The Dark Crystal are much more carefully designed than the muppets. Their faces seem very plastic and difficult to move around. It's to the point that getting any emotion out of them at all becomes very difficult. On the other end of the spectrum, Kermit is a glorified sock yet can communicate emotional depths unparalleled amongst footwear and ranking high in even the upper echelons of Hollywood actors.

Next, CG movies. So far the most realistic one I have seen is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I'm not actually sure about this. Tech gets so much better so quickly that it may have been eclipsed without me even noticing. In any event, the visuals of that film are stunning. Even better than the visuals was the very natural and fluid motion of the virtual actors. All that being said, the movie was not that good. Sure it suffered from story and scripting problems, but I think the bigger failing is the audience's basic rejection of these human-like...things that they're presented with. It may look like a duck and sound like a duck, but you sir, are no duck (to horribly mix up a few sayings). The characters are realistic to a point where anything other than absolute realism is an utter failing. How can we possibly get attached to these mannequins whose artificiality is never far from our thoughts? Contrast that with everyone's new favorite The Incredibles. I'm not even going to praise it because it doesn't need it. EVERYONE loves this movie. How many other films can say that? So, are the characters realistic? Even without the superpowers, do they look normal? Nope. As Brother Joe put it you have 4 basic body types: Male-Super-Large (Mr. Incredible), Male-Super-Regular (Frozone), Female-Super (Elastigirl), and the super-deformed, chibi-esque models (The boss, the costume lady, etc.). Not very realistic at all, but we still bond with these characters. Because they don't mirror us in a physical way, we have less of an obstacle in sympathizing with the human parts of their character. Once the idea of a realistic model is forsaken, the pressures of perfect realism are gone.

There's a theory or a poll or something that covers man's reactions to human-like robots (or something like that. Does anyone know what I'm talking about here?). It basically shows that as a robot looks more like a human there is generally a more favorable reaction until a certain point where the robots look almost exactly like humans. At that point, the reaction from people sinks like a lifeboat laden with lead. I think it's the same theory at work, and it leads to my basic hypothesis about this whole argument.

Humans were created as unique beings with souls. I think that's a Christian take on things but it really is universal. You get the idea of the "internal person" being seperate and somehow greater than the body in every culture I can think of. When something like that crosses cultural boundaries it's easy to call it an innate knowledge, right alongside the desire for a god to exist and to be in control of the world. Since God has imparted this knowledge to man, we realize our special place in the world and that governs how we react to the world around us. When we encounter anything that seems to look like a human and have a soul like a human, we start to get uncomfortable quite quickly. However, we can mimic one or the other to great effect. Our greatest artists and sculptors have always looked to the human form as one of the highest forms of art. Our greatest writers create characters that have positively human souls. Neither of those extremes bother us. Try to do both and you fail.

Doing both is where animation lives. To make it work, there's a sliding scale. Less realism allows for greater character development. More realism requires a more simplistic approach to characters.

At least that's where my logic led. Is that right? Even I'm not completely convinced. And where does that leave things like live action movies and on-stage productions?

Rather than work this out now, I'm going to wrap things up. Right now I think my point (or Friz's point expanded) has been made, the post is alredy long enough, and it's getting late. Time to stick a fork in it.