So! Animation. I’ve been thinking a lot about it recently, partly because it’s an interest of mine and partly because several classes of mine are talking about it at once, and that’s a dream come true. Granted, it’s in very different contexts—Bojack Horseman versus experimental stop-motion animation with enough strobe to leave an impression on your retina—but hey, I’ll take it where I can get it.
It’s interesting though because this experimental animator, Jodie Mack, came to visit another class of mine and give a lecture or two on what she’s made, how she makes it, theory-type thoughts on animation as a whole. And one of the things she made a point of doing was telling us, “Animation isn’t a genre.” Which, in retrospect, makes a whole lot of sense! You hear that and go, “Of course not. It’s a medium,” like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and I’m only a little ashamed to admit I did so. But, reflecting back on it, it’s not obvious! Not at all.
I remember discussing Bojack Horseman in class, analyzing it through the lens of intertextuality, and just googling the show to see what genre people categorize it as. A cursory read gives us: animated comedy, animated television show, and my personal favorite, adult animated psychological tragicomedy-drama television series. That last one’s taken from Wikipedia, and it takes me a full five seconds to read it every time. Regardless, every single one of them classifies it as animated, because the medium itself has turned into its own genre.
How would you describe shows like Gravity Falls, or Bluey? Animated kids show. Despite sharing genres, they’re wildly different shows: one’s got horror elements, twenty minute episodes, and three seasons of overarching plot; the other’s an Australian educational program for toddlers, with self-contained seven minute episodes and a notable lack of horror. The difference in what’s classified as adult animation only grows. Watch the raunchy, abrasive comedy South Park right after the mellow, strangely comforting Bee and PuppyCat or the serious, artistic revenge story of Blue Eye Samurai, and you’ll wonder how on earth an algorithm could think you’d be interested in watching them all back to back. The answer is simple—they’re all adult animation—but it’s not an answer that makes sense to me.
I think adult animation as a category, as a genre, only partially makes sense. I can understand using it to talk about influences and intertextual interactions. As my group discovered in class, Bojack Horseman lists about ten different animated shows as stylistic influences in a Rolling Stone article, so the category’s not useless. I do think Jodie Mack’s got a point, though; animation is more of a medium than a genre. Complicating the two might make us miss important points for analysis, and force us to make connections where there aren’t as many, simply because they share a “genre.”
Anyways. Talk to me about animation. School’s on a roll with it right now, and I plan to take full advantage of the momentum.