"Oh, you know," I said. "The next disc of Gilmore Girls, A Bug's Life, and Coraline."
"What's Coraline?" she asked.
"It's this movie that came out a couple years ago. It's based on a book. It's about this girl, and it's animated..." I trailed off. I've never read Coraline, and I'm waiting until Jackie gets back from Notre Dame to watch it with her, so I don't really know much about it.
My mom made a face and turned back to Practical Magic on the television.
"Hey, what's wrong with animation?" I said. "It's just a medium used to tell a story. "
She shrugged. "I prefer my stories to be told with real people," she said.
"But that's the wrong attitude to have," I insisted. "Very serious stories can be presented through animation. We had to watch Persepolis in my French class this year. It's about a girl growing up during the Iranian Revolution, Mami!"
My mom shrugged again. I sighed, crossed my legs, and watched the rest of Practical Magic with her. (Did you know that Abbey Bartlet is Gracie Hart's aunt? And also that she went by Rizzo when she was young? The wonders never cease.)
This conversation with my mom does raise an important point, though. Don't get me wrong, I love her dearly, but she's certainly not alone in this line of thinking. The prevailing view is that somehow animation is inherently less valid than live action, perhaps even childish. This, my friends, is known as the Animation Age Ghetto. You can find a very good post on it here, as well as the TV Tropes article I've also linked to above. I admit that I am somewhat biased; except for a brief period when I was roughly twelve to fourteen (and tended to buy into the animation-is-for-kids ridiculousness), I've always loved animation as a storytelling device. If you've talked to me more than a few times, you should know that I absolutely swear by Pixar Animation Studios and I've recently become obsessed with Avatar: The Last Airbender (not to be confused with that terrible movie that came out two weeks ago. I'm talking about the Nickelodeon television series). But if you've seen any episode of A:TLA or anything produced by Pixar, you should also know that the animation-as-childish argument has no merit.
I dare you to find anything more touching and heartbreaking than this sequence from Up, for example. Or tell me that this scene from The Incredibles isn't just as dramatic as the most recent live-action blockbluster. Or say that this clip from The Lion King is an example of subpar, childish storytelling.
Now, if you genuinely just don't care for the medium of animation, that's your preference and there's nothing I can do to convince you otherwise. At the risk of seeming a hypocrite, I generally don't care for anime; the storylines are usually very strange and the art style does nothing for me. Why does that girl have blue hair and no one comments on it? If her hair is actually supposed to be black, why isn't it colored black? It's kind of like Fauvism in that respect - why are the mountains pink? I don't get it! But I digress.
Still, even if you dislike a medium, you can't dismiss its storytelling qualities. Richie watches enough anime for me to know that much of it is incredibly complex, character-driven, and immersive (and not, as Dragonball Z would lead me to believe, full of people shouting at each other over a split-screen). The same goes for animation. You may not care for the look of a character or the physics-defying way that she moves, but you can't deny that she has a well-developed arc, if her creators have done their job correctly. Nothing about a story is less meaningful just because it happens to be told through hand-drawn or computer-generated characters rather than actors in costume. Sometimes, in fact, the story works much better in that format! Can you imagine a live-action Ratatouille? No, I didn't think so. How about one of my absolute favorite songs, "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas (as anyone who lived remotely nearby me in Brown should know)? Would it have been a better piece of filmmaking with actors frolicking in the woods?
And speaking of Pocahontas, I seem to recall that James Cameron's Avatar is currently the highest-grossing movie of all time. I'm pretty sure that about 90% of that film was computer animated. So why is it taken more seriously by the general moviegoing public than, say, WALL-E, which had a far more original storyline? Why is it okay for adult fanboys to rave over FernGully with Smurfs, but Finding Nemo is dismissed with a handwave as "just for kids"?
Animation is just as valid a form of storytelling as live action. If you don't believe me, watch these clips from a Best Picture nominee we all know and love (the last link is the movie's ending, but I think I can safely say we've all seen it). How is that not just as worthy of an Oscar as Slumdog Millionaire or Forrest Gump?
