posted
For the past two years I've been at a Computer Animation school where it was culturally accepted that everyone would go to see Wall-E and Up on opening day because Pixar is amazing and is basically the target job for the majority of the students there and why wouldn't you want to see Wall-E and Up no matter how old you were?
Now I'm working at my old supermarket while I look for a "real" job, and I was suddenly taken by major culture shock when I found out that practically nobody in the store had seen Up. After the initial shock I realized that A) the advertising for the movie doesn't remotely hint at the seriousness it contains, B) when I was a teenager I went through a "Disney movies are dumb" phase and while I grew out of it I didn't really fully appreciate how amazing Disney and Pixar movies are until I spent two years actively studying them.
Okay, fine. But then I got into an argument with an older woman who worked at the store who said "Up? That's some kids movie" and I said "Well, no, it's actually got a lot of really weighty stuff in it that kids can't possibly get and will mostly be bored by," and she just said with a straight face "It's a cartoon. It's for kids."
Which I took a lot more personally than she intended, since while Pixar isn't precisely my dream job it is the dream job of several friends of mine and a company that I have enormous respect for. And then I asked "well what's the last cartoon movie you actually saw?" And she said "Shrek."
And I was completely flabbergasted, because Shrek is so full of adult jokes I don't know how you could possibly mistake it for "just" a kids movie. She said "they only put those jokes in there so the parents can sit through it with their kids."
This forum (and every other community I've discussed it in) has had plenty of thoughtful discussions about Up and similar movies. I had assumed that the rest of the world contained at least a sizable percentage of people who were the same way. I haven't exactly done an exhaustive poll but I suddenly wonder how much I suffer from "the Internet makes it look like way more people agree with me than actually exist" phenomenon.
Google-fu is failing me so far. Does anyone know of any reliable data showing demographics of people attending animated movies, and how many people actually subscribe to the "if it's a cartoon it's dumb" belief?
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Okay, fine. But then I got into an argument with an older woman who worked at the store who said "Up? That's some kids movie" and I said "Well, no, it's actually got a lot of really weighty stuff in it that kids can't possibly get and will mostly be bored by," and she just said with a straight face "It's a cartoon. It's for kids."
My Dad is the same way, always was. Growing up, I can't think of a single show, ever, animated that I watched, TV or movie, that wasn't 'kid stuff'. And by kid stuff I mean stuff geared completely to children and worthwhile only to children.
Speaking of Pixar, though, I think they changed his outlook somewhat. Up in particular, in fact, since I heard it through the grapevine he was looking into release dates for the DVD way before it was even possible it would be coming out, and got the DVD almost the day of release, and watched the entire thing the same day. Weeknight after work no less.
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quote: Does anyone know of any reliable data showing demographics of people attending animated movies, and how many people actually subscribe to the "if it's a cartoon it's dumb" belief?
You may be able to find some focus group data finding out people's general attitude towards animated films.
It's going to be highly dependent on age group. Entire generations knew cartoons solely as kid stuff, and neither anime nor saturday morning cartoons helped with that for the generations above me. It still gets perceived as a sophomoric medium. These age groups also tend to think of video games as 'kid things' and don't understand that they've ballooned into an industry larger and more diverse than movies.
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What made it particularly weird for me is that I know adults spread throughout several generations who are perfectly able to appreciate animated pieces. But I guess the number of adults I know that I've actually talked to about an animated movie is vanishingly small, and the majority of those I have were from the school in question.
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I've not been in school for animation or the like, but I recognize animation as a medium, not a genre. Seems pretty straight forward to me.
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You'd think with Fantasia having been released in 1940 that even older people would know from experience that cartoons aren't just aimed at kids.
Let's face it, at its best, Disney has always made family films with excitement, whimsy, danger, and humor in balance. Cinderella's a great example. As a kid, I thought it was funny that the King had the ball so he could dream about grandkids. As a married but childless woman, I see a lot of truth in that scene I wasn't aware of before.
Peter Pan had the perils of responsibility and adulthood. Lady and the Tramp the unfairness of class stereotypes. The Jungle Book the lure of raw primalism tempered by the benefits of civilization.
I'm not sure I understand why people would choose to see only the childish humor of the lesser movies when there's so much glory and magic to be found. Then again, even Disney fell into that trap with it's later movies. I almost think they're trying to recapture the feel of Aladdin and haven't been able to. Somehow, the Genie worked when the Gargoyles, Mushu, Kuzko, and even Robin Williams as the crazy robot in Treasure Planet didn't.
So what do they give me in the Princess and the Frog commercials? Farting fireflies and some guy with an expanding butt. Maybe it's unfair to ask audiences to get it when the studio doesn't.
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So... um... Family Guy is for kids? South Park? All the shows on Adult Swim? (I mean, it's called "Adult" Swim, and it's only shown after 10 pm...)
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quote:Originally posted by FlyingCow: So... um... Family Guy is for kids? South Park? All the shows on Adult Swim? (I mean, it's called "Adult" Swim, and it's only shown after 10 pm...)
Yup, I can totally see Wolf's Rain and Samurai Champloo going over wonderfully with a group of five year olds. I really do miss Gargoyles, that show was my favorite and now they show it on that pay to watch Disney channel all the time, I guess Goliath found his place in television anyway.
As to the actual request of the thread maker, seeing as you have a degree in digital arts (or whatever the powers that be call it) and your google-fu cannot render the info I wont pretend that I'd know of anything you havent tried. Sorry.
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I'm not finding anything in the quick search (all I had time for) but this:
quote:Under the early influence of the Disney studio, animation had been soft, sentimental, and storybookish — aimed exclusively at a children's audience. Warner Bros. did the complete opposite and modernized animation, creating cartoons that were brash and reckless. With striking frequency, the Warner Bros. writers devised stories of brilliant invention, while the studio's directors masterfully executed them. But the Warner Bros. cartoons did not come alive without the brush of gifted animators, painters, and designers. The Washington Post described them as "men who well may qualify as among the century's great humorists, (who) made an invaluable contribution to the culture that only in recent years has begun to receive the outpourings of appreciation it deserves."
What prompted me to search was the memory of watching either TBS or AMC or one of those channels as a child and hearing that cartoons like Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies were originally intended for adult audiences as a humorous outlet for dealing with the daily stresses of life. The above paragraph sort of alludes to that.
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The kids only attitude towards cartoons does not surprise me at all. I know many people who think that way. I have also been extremely frustrated with my friends right now about their views. Writing my nano novel, it is fantasy and I have been told repeatedly that I must be writing a kid's novel. Scifi is also only for teenage boys, I have learned recently. I don't know how to convince them differently.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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This reminds me of the scene in Shawshank Redemption SPOILERS*
where the guard gets locked in his restroom stall, while the music is playing over the intercom system. You can clearly see that he is reading a Jughead comic book.
/spoilers
Interestingly enough, Disney cartoon movies were a major driving force in Osamu Tezuka's (The godfather of anime) artistic development. Tezuka almost immediately after creating manga for children (Astro Boy, Kimba The White Lion) started creating story's with adult themes (Dr. Black Jack, Metropolis). When they started adapting manga for television sets and movie theaters both children and adult anime found their way there at the same time.
I think early Disney movies certainly had elements explicitly crafted for children (animal friends being the biggest indicator) but almost all of the protagonists and antagonists in Disney movies have been adults. There are very few children ensemble casts, so clearly they are not trying to alienate adults.
I think Japanese anime with its' unabashedly adult themes was a major driving force, starting in the 70's for convincing Westerners that you can have an animated stories designed exclusively for adults. Akira was not intended for children to watch. But in America, I don't think the demographic is large enough for an animated feature to compete with more traditional mediums. Look at the Dragon Ball Z movie, Dragon Ball Z may be the most watched anime in the United States, and yet when they put it on the big screen they decided to do it live action. Granted it may have been impossible to get the author to write a new story, or there may have been other technical difficulties.
I think in short, in the United States animators attempt to tell stories with adult themes, but in such a way that children are absolutely comfortable going to the movie with their parent. This isn't a bad thing, there are many stories that need to be told that both parent and child ought to see. Coincidentally this is also the formula that guarantees maximum profits adults go to the movie, as do the children, children gobble up the movie related merchandise, and everybody is happy.
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quote:So... um... Family Guy is for kids? South Park? All the shows on Adult Swim? (I mean, it's called "Adult" Swim, and it's only shown after 10 pm...)
Yeah, I just thought of Family Guy and South Park while I was half asleep an hour ago, and then fell back asleep and had a dream about going up to the woman from the store and being all like "Family Guy! Boo ya!"
quote:So what do they give me in the Princess and the Frog commercials? Farting fireflies and some guy with an expanding butt. Maybe it's unfair to ask audiences to get it when the studio doesn't.
Honestly I haven't seen that in the previews I've watched. What I've seen so far looks like Classic Disney, except with the black versions of cultural archetypes instead of European ones.
Four years ago I thought it was dumb that Disney restricted itself to the same childlike formula and continuously butchered perfectly good fables. But since then I've A) realized what a wide array of animation that is available, B) gained an appreciation for the skill that goes into designing a story to fit a particular set of requirements. And C) I've come to appreciate the fact that when I want a specific kind of nostalgic comfort that comes from watching a movie with funny animals and songs, I have Disney movies available to me.
Disney restricts itself to making those kinds of movies, and has shed a lot of creativity that they had in their early years when they hadn't settled into a monolithic brand. But that creativity has been picked up by other companies, and Disney has gotten particularly good at making the kinds of movies that Disney makes. I also have felt a sort of a power when you go to Disney world or play Kingdom Hearts and see all their stories woven into a coherent world, which is largely possible because they base things off the same formulas.
Princess and the Frog was designed as a sort of Flagship for Disney's return to making good movies (it's being directed or at least spear-driven by John Lasseter, the lead animator at Pixar, as an apology for accidentally killing 2D animated movies). It's intended to include some new things that Disney hasn't done before (black princess, focus on hard work as opposed to waiting for a magic fairy, etc), but it's also designed to incorporate all the classic things that make a Disney movie Disney (songs, funny animals, and a dead parent).
I've read a lot of interviews about the thought process that went into Princess and Frog and while I can't judge whether it's a good movie yet (haven't seen it obviously), I think all the right ideas are in place.
[ November 25, 2009, 11:38 AM: Message edited by: Raymond Arnold ]
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I gained a little more faith in "The Princess and the Frog" when I heard that Randy Newman was doing the music. Heaven knows, the previews haven't done much for me.
quote:Mr. Zoradi noted that audience demographics were particularly broad: 5 percent of ticket buyers were over the age of 50, an unusually high figure for an animated film.
Pretty sad that 5% is considered "unusually high". But then, the film made $293 million domestically, so I guess one can't get too depressed.
I wonder what that woman would make of "Beowulf"...?
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I can't recommend it, but I also can't say it was as bad as I was expecting. It was surreal though seeing the preview in Japan at a movie theater. I'm fairly certain alot of the people had no idea what the heck movie was being previewed until the title blazed on the screen.
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which refers to people who think Dragonball was a good movie or people who think Up is for kids? Or both?
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I would just like to comment that Coraline is one of my favorite films and that has some downright scary stuff forr young children. That really feels like an underappreciated animated movie. And as a teenager I'd like to say me and my friends can talk about animated movies and how good a lot of them are. WALL-E and Toy Story for example.
Posts: 856 | Registered: Jun 2007
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I was very surprised when I mentioned my desire to see "Avenue Q" and a much younger coworker looked at me with utter disbelief. "Isn't that with the puppets?"
"Yes."
"What would you want to see a kid's play?"
I explained about the themes of sexuality, post-college malaise, relationships, NYC, etc, but she clearly couldn't get her head around anything involving puppets not being meant for kids. And this was an intelligent woman in her 20s.
In some defense, unless you went looking for the good stuff it would have been easy in the 70s, 80s, early 90s to assume animated shows were for kids, "Simpsons" and "Family Guy" notwithstanding. The adult-theme quality of early Disney movies had faded to fairly predictable kid-friendly movies by then and most of the stuff an average person would see commercials for were of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Barbie variety. Even the classic Warner Bros cartoons on TV had been slashed and softened to make them toothless and somewhat unintelligible.
By the way: surefire way to tell the difference between a Pixar movie and a Dreamworks movie? If there's a fart joke, it's a Dreamworks movie. And probably a plot point.
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: I was very surprised when I mentioned my desire to see "Avenue Q" and a much younger coworker looked at me with utter disbelief. "Isn't that with the puppets?"
"Yes."
"What would you want to see a kid's play?"
yeh, let's take a kid to a play that features a musical number "You can be as loud as the hell you want (when you're havin' sex)"
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