I like cartoons. I am a 23 year old man and I really like cartoons and am entirely unapologetic about this. I'm not an animator and I can't draw to save my life (well when I was a teenager I did do a comic strip called "El-Vez: Latin America's Worst Elvis Impersonator", but this is sadly lost to the ages) but I do have a lot to say about cartoons so I hope Dear Reader that you will indulge me in this.
One my favourite TV shows bit on my Facebook page about half of them are cartoons, on of my favourite shows ever is Futurama and I am currently obsessed with Adventure Time. I also build up my hipster cred by advising practically everyone I meet to look into the work of SoyuzMultFilm, the Soviet Union's animation studio, especially "Vinni Pukh" which is their version of Winnie the Pooh and is far superior to the Disney version.
So with my credentials on the subject established lets move on to the meat of the thing. Recently Channel 4 have started re-airing episodes from the first few series of The Simpsons, after a period of mostly showing only 'new' episodes. One of the first things that hit both me and my flatmate after this shift is the radical difference in animation style. Newer episodes are much more polished and crisper, whilst the older episodes are sketchier and even blurrier. Now there are several reasons for this, including improvements in filming and broadcasting over the last 20 years, but the main reason is a shift from hand drawn animation cells to "digital ink", ie. computer animation. New clips are hard to find online because of Fox's litigious lawyers but here is a clip from the 1994 episode Lisa's Rival (not coincidentally one of my favourites):
If you compare this to modern episodes you start to notice that the older episodes are more elastic and rubbery whereas the newer ones are more rigid and in a way realistic. This is apparent not just in The Simpsons but in lots of other cartoons, notably in the work of Seth MacFarlene. Characters may do things which are unrealistic and only possible in a cartoon, but they still do them in a rigid way. If you don't know what I mean I'll give you an example: I was watching American Dad the other day, which is a clearly unrealistic cartoon about a CIA agent who's best friend is an alien. In that episode Stan the main character was given the legs of a toddler below the knee but he didn't move like he a cartoon, he moved like he had a skeleton!
To make the point clearly please watch another of my favourite cartoons, a classic Max Fleischer Betty Boop short:
Toward's the end of this short Betty's constant companion Koko the Clown is transformed by the wicked queen into a strange distorted ghost who sings Cab Calloway's "St. James Infirmary". The dancing effect is achieved by rotoscoping, that is animating from a film cell of the actual Calloway dancing, but Fleischer maintains the rubberiness and moldability of the cartoon form to make the ghost move in a clearly unnatural way. Now it's slightly unfair to compare people to Fleischer because he was probably the best animator who ever lived but the point is that cartoons shouldn't really have skeletons, but the rigid elements of computer animation almost forces them to.
One of the few cartoons that is around at the moment that seems to recognise this is Adventure Time which I am a big fan of. The main character and the only human in the cartoon is a boy called Finn who has noodely legs an arms, and his best friend Jake is a magic dog who can actually stretch and change his size and shape at will. The effect of this can be seen right from the opening sequence of the show:
Of course with all this you'd think that the main problem I have with The Simpsons at the moment is animation style, but this is only the half of it. Style is important but obviously the story is equally if not more important. The episode I watched yesterday for example was 1990's Season 1 episode "Moaning Lisa", perhaps most famous for introducing the character Bleeding Gums Murphy. Now the art direction here is sublime, particularly in a section where Lisa wanders at night through the sleezy streets of Springfield trying to find the source of Murphy's music. During this segment the dark building stretch out into the night sky, really evoking the feeling of being a small child.
But the episode also deals with some serious issues in a funny and entertaining way. Lisa is essentially suffering from depression and doesn't know how to deal with the situation, until Marge finally realises that her own mother had given her bad advice as a child and that it is fine for Lisa to be sad if she wants to, because Marge will always be there to support her, a revelation which finally lifts Lisa's sadness. The B plot while less weighty and more funny deals with an equally important issue as Homer deals with a crisis of growing old, in the form of Bart beating him to a video game, a story which climaxes in a fantastic dream sequence.
Essentially these cartoons treat people as they should be treated, intelligently, and its evidenced throughout the early run of The Simpsons which is often thoughtful and enlightening while not being preachy and remaining funny. Too few cartoons manage or even attempt this these days. An article by Mark Kermode before Christmas in the Observer noted a similar problem in cinema while citing Inception as a hopeful example of change. Having recently seen both the Artist and The Descendants in the cinema it seems to me that perhaps Hollywood has finally realized they can treat people like grown ups, certainly watching Pixar films it would seem that feature length animations have, I really hope that in time TV cartoons can start to do the same.
