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Let the Dark Knight be Dark: Maturity in Batman: The Animated Series

When one looks for quality television, one rarely looks as children’s animation. Often times it is derivative, uninspiring, and all around annoying. However, when the truly great shows come around, the realization is made that children are capable of handling more mature subjects without being remarkably traumatized in the slightest. One of the true greats in the aspect was the early 90s cartoon, Batman: The Animated Series. A superhero cartoon seems to be a strange place to be talking about mature content. Superheroes are the bread and butter of Saturday morning entertainment, but Batman decided to step away from the traditional method of children’s cartooning and try something different. Instead of simple “kid-friendly” villains, the show was able to mine its source material and use villains that were willing to kill an entire city just because they wanted to. This dark material should, according to many sensibilities, be extremely offsetting to kids. Instead, the show is able to find a happy medium which isn’t super violent, but at the same time won’t pull its punches when it comes to mature topics. One of the best examples of this phenomenon comes when dealing with the character of Two-Face. He is an established enough villain that the show could have easily had him simply appear and no one would think twice about it. However, the show takes the viewer through the entire emotional journey of his creation. The audience is introduced to the character of Harvey Dent, Gotham’s district attorney and best friend to the protagonist, in the first episode, and he is a recurring character throughout the series. This means that when an explosion goes off, horrifically maiming his face and cracking his personality in two, the audience is deeply invested in his character. This kind of deep emotional connection followed by such a traumatic experience gets the audience involved, but for many, it is too disturbing for children. By including it anyway, Batman proves that kids aren’t stupid when it comes to their entertainment. The show was very popular in its day and many kids watched this episode. There were no widespread reports of kids becoming traumatized by this event. Instead, they were able to take the emotional journey with the main character of losing his best friend and feeling guilty every time they have to cross paths. In short, Batman: The Animated Series didn’t try to create programming for kids. They simply tried to make the best animated show they could, but didn’t try to dumb it down for children. Instead, they expected kids to understand what was going on, and for the most part they were successful. While not every episode is as emotionally charged as the Two-Face origin, the show asks viewers, both child and adult to rise to the occasion so that the show can best the best it can possibly be.

That Anime Thing: Philosophical Cartoons?

It’s official. Cartoons aren’t only for kids. Animation has always been a visual art ignored for its own storytelling abilities. Every year, someone’s complaining how the latest Pixar movie was excluded for Best Picture.  Yet no one can deny the heart warming tale of WALL-E or the fantastic adventure of Princess Mononoke.  Even further, the invasion of Japanese Animation, more commonly known as Anime through the 1980s and 1990s has even further increased the popularity of animation.

Today, if you go into Blockbuster or Hollywood Video, you can find a whole section devoted to Japanese Animation.  Anime shops and conventions are all over the country.  Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away even became the first animated feature to ever win a top festival.[i]   Also, The Wachowski brother’s The Matrix as well as James Cameron’s television series Dark Angel drew heavily on Anime for inspiration as do many video games. Children grow up watching anime like Pokemon or one of the other Anime hundred shows on television today.  Indeed, these days, Anime has become embedded into our media and culture.

Yet, does Anime existing as an art form? Is it delivering a message? Is it mindless entertainment like the reality shows on VH1 and MTV? Or is it the stuff of classics, like we’d find of TCM? The answer would be all of the above.

Hayao Miyazaki has received worldwide acclaim for his films. Known for his pacifist, feminist, and often nature focused messages, Miyazaki has created films that get recognized as films, not just as Anime, but as true animated films.  His most famous include Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Castle in the Sky, and Howl’s Moving Castle.  Just as many Anime these days, Miyazaki’s films incorporate both CGI and hand-drawn style to create a look that is purely Miyazaki and Japanese in origin.  

Looking at Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki clearly weaves in the themes of humanity, technology and nature. On one hand, there’s Irontown. Irontown cuts down trees, kills the local wide life, and their leader, Lady Eboshi personally wants to kill the spirit of Life and Death. In this way, we see humanity, and technology against nature. It’s the ever burning fires of Irontown versus the vast forests, Lady Eboshi versus The Wolf Girl. At the same time, technology is a savior of the people. Lady Eboshi takes in leapers and prostitutes to employ in the city. Miyazaki further reflects this in his framing of Irontown. In some shots, the fires of Irontown seem endless and ready to overtake the people. In others, people eat and sit together, coming together as a community.  Visually, Miyazaki beautifully weaves in these themes as well as integrates CGI and hand drawn worked eloquently.

Miyazaki’s films are not the only Animes expressing popular philosophical ideas. Death Note, created by Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba, explores morality in today’s society.  Death Note follows the story of a boy, Light Yagami, who gains the power to kill anyone who he knows the name and face of.  Using this power, he kills various criminals, discovering their face and names through a range of media outlets.  As he kills, the crime rate gets lower and people start to revere him as a god.  Ohba and Obata question whether Light is a savior or a murder, does ultimate power corrupt, or  is murder acceptable if you’re killing criminals? What is the value of a human life, even an evil one? Visually, Death Note is almost Hitchcock-ian,   taking techniques from Hollywood and incorporating them into the style of Death Note, as well as a variety of Animes.  This exchange goes both ways, however, as seen in The Matrix and other movies. Even further, currently, Death Note has been optioned by Vertigo Entertainment. [ii]

These thinking cartoons often go further than Hollywood movies, even with similar budgets. Princess Mononoke was created for a whopping $20 million, not far from the $35 million The Hangover costs.  Yet not every anime is gold, of course. Like many movies today, Japan has its fair share of non gold. Luckily for most of us in the US, most of that doesn’t make it over the ocean.

 Nonetheless, it is easy to see how Anime has grown in popularity.  Approaching popular philosophical questions via a new and entertaining animation style has lead to a major fan base, not only in the US, but all over the world. And what sorts of things are coming up now? How about Ikigami? Ikigami tells the story of a government worker who delivers Ikigame(life papers) which tells individuals they have 24 hours to life. Or how about Higurashi no Naku Koro ni(When the Cicada Cry), which plays with time and narrative format?

Either way, I, for one, hope to see more from Anime artists in the field of storytelling.

 

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[i] Japan’s National Cool – Douglas McGray http://pub.idisk-just.com/fview/bDGRfnKGJ679cGhnn63IZ6P3hpgfuHXKsmo80UFp14sUwMPPFBhVrutQ7qDmFu09/Z3Jvc3MtbmF0aW9uYWwtY29vbC10ZXh0LW9ubHlfMDkwNDIx.pdf

 

[ii] Vertigo Entertainment developing US Death Note Remake – Anime News Network http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-06-02/vertigo-entertainment-developing-u.s-death-note-remake

Waltz with Bashir: life imitates art, calls for animation

Waltz with Bashir (2008) follows director/producer Ari Folman in his journey to rediscover his past from the 1982 Lebanon War. Initially, his pursuit is to confirm an ambiguous scene he witnessed as a soldier by interviewing veterans and interpreting their memories with a psychologist friend.  The film shifts from a series of personal recollections to a diplomatic appeal when each man’s account reveals the haphazardness of the soldiers, commanders, general public and war in general.

 
Waltz with Bashir is a hand-drawn animated documentary with careful attention to details. Waltz with Bashir. Flickr Creative Commons.¹

The genre is an interesting hybrid of documentary and animation: actual people are represented in cartoon versions of themselves yet dialogue is intact. Visually, it’s bold, stylish and impressively meticulous.  Over 3,000 frames were hand-drawn with tactful consideration to various visual cues (shadows, motion parallax and fine texture details) reminding us of the incredible effort and patience often overlooked in animation. With visual language this captivating, it's not hard to forget this is an educational documentary: Folman learned from previous documentary projects that cartoon-izing interviewees makes them readily familiar and accessible, thus more engaging to the audience. ²

And to portray each man’s shell shock, only the flexibility of animation can cater to human memory’s distortion, an underlying theme in the film. Whereas Folman’s memory is elusive, his friends can explicitly recall every dog that was shot, dismembered body parts floating amidst demolition, or their escapist wet dreams. “War is like a very bad acid trip,” Folman said, and that “animation is the only way to tell this story, with memories, lost memories, dreams and the subconscious.”³ Here, it's clear Waltz with Bashir proves life does indeed imitate art.

What then sustain the integrity of documentary amidst the punchy animation are the real voice recordings. Actual testimonials anchor us in reality so no matter how embellished the stories seem, the weariness and vulnerability in each veteran’s voice remind us that war is impossible to exaggerate. Appropriately, the film ends with real footage of the Sabra and Shatila massacre aftermath that Folman himself witnessed: the camera pans slowly across stacks of dirty corpses yet can barely keep up with the hysterical women that follow. We see it all through Folman’s cartoon eyes, emphasizing the contrast between the fanciful, imaginative world to the real.

Although animation will indefinitely be known for the naïve, childish fables of Saturday mornings, it is perhaps that stigma of novelty and innocence that accounts for Waltz with Bashir’s ingenuity: we are not used to seeing explicit content in cartoon, making the scenes all the more compelling. Funnily enough, lavishly funded war dramas with Hollywood actors can rarely resist glamorized action scenes or romantic conflicts. Waltz with Bashir ultimately does not challenge the seriousness of war and gives animated films the last laugh.

Image Credits

¹"Waltz with Bashir poster." Flickr Creative Commons. Wolf Gang. 11 Nov. 2008.

Works Cited

²"Ari Folman: "Animation, or Not at All"" Interview by David D'Arcy. GreenCine. All Media Guide, 23 June 2009. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. <https://greencine.com/central/arifolman>.

³"Ari Folman Finds Freedom in Animation." Interview by Steve Erickson. Film and Video. Studio Daily, 18 Dec. 2008. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. <http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/10304.html>.

 

Coulais' Soundscape in Coraline

Why is it so difficult to remain attentive to sound while watching a film?  And why is it so rare that we fully appreciate and internalize a musical score?  In a culture that bombards us with visual emblems, cues and representations, image frequently subverts sound, particularly in retrospective analysis.  We subconsciously relegate the musical score to the background, assuming it is more of an embellishment than a fundamental structural component.  Yet, a soundtrack can elicit intense emotional responses and deserves independent analytic and artistic investigation. 

The mise-en-scene acquires a notably warmer pallet in the alternate universe; costumes, props and visible light sources furnish a deceptively enticing fantasy world. Coraline. Creative Commons.¹

The challenge of formulating a non-verbal audio accompaniment to a narrative cannot be overstated.  In constructing an audio landscape, directors risk imposing a generic emotional atmosphere.  Such moods are frequently sentimental or melodramatic.  Exploiting sound to elicit calculated audience responses is highly problematic: a musical score that reduces the climate to shallow, one-dimensional emotions undermines the audience.  Characters and environments tend to lose their originality under the oppressive weight of music that “tells” viewers how to feel.  In turn, audiences habituated to overt musical scores lose the ability to formulate original thoughts about characters, relationships and environments.  A score might inspire angst, pity, joy or elation, but one-to-one equivocations between musical styles and emotions are rarely interesting.  When music is manipulated to induce a calculated response, it fosters complacency among viewers and dulls their capacity to think critically about the music in relation to the mise-en-scene, framing and characters. 

Last weekend, I ventured into Muvico 24 to see Henry Selicks’s acclaimed stop-action film Coraline in 3D.  Until then, I never had a reason to visit Arundel Mills.  But after seeing the film in 2D at The Charles, a trek down to the Mills was my only option if I wanted to see Coraline in all its stereoscopic glory.  The first thing you notice as you enter Arundel Mills is the ridiculous scale of things.  The whole mall is divided into "neighborhoods," each complete with streets and massive cafes facing massive stores selling computers and televisions.  It’s like an airport, only exponentially larger.  During the trailers, the sound was overwhelming and obtrusive, functioning only to amplify the impact of mass destruction, mechanical failure or human brutality.  In a way, the trailers' sound quality and volume conformed to the grotesque scale of the theater and mall.  I consider this type of sound to be exploitative because it obstructs our sense of cinema's visual language and fails to illuminate subtle connections between sound and imagery.

A successful sound universe generally develops an environment's complexity, widening the number of possible associations and interpretations, rather than confining a scene to one monolithic mood (i.e. "melancholy" or "happiness").  Part of what makes Coraline such an intriguing piece of art is the musical score's capacity to evoke new sentiments with multiple viewings.  Instrumental details and subtle shifts in tonality, volume and timbre are integrated with a level of craftsmanship that merits the meticulous language of stop-action animation.  My emotional response is never identical or formulaic.  Rather, I experience conflicting senses of familiarity and refreshing newness each time I listen to the score.  Moreover, within the context of each investigation, it is possible to discern conflicting elements: desire and repulsion, harmony and discord.

It would be a disservice to the film to try to analyze the extensive array of technically brilliant elements, including the interiors and landscapes, the characters' physical forms and movements (angular or wobbly, and often "twitchy," according to Selicks) and the lighting (cool/diffused versus warm/hard).  Instead, I hope to analyze three realms – Coraline's ordinary home, the art deco theater, Bobinsky's circus tent and the other-worldly garden – to investigate how the musical score and mise-en-scene interact to reveal parallels between characters and their micro-environments.  

Bruno Coulais is the film's French composer.  He is also well-known in the U.S. for his compositions in Les Choristes, a film that ardently asserts the power of music to counter repressive regimes.  The presence of youthful singers from Nice in Coraline identifies the musical score as Coulais'.  His work is original and inventive, oscillating between contemplation and agitation.  Perhaps the most challenging aspect of writing a film score is to ensure it is unified without being redundant.  Coulais achieves such a sense of unity by relying on a core group of instruments: horns and oboes, harps, vocals, piano and percussion instruments, along with synthesizers and bells.  He avoids the typical musical motif, instead opting to use certain melodies, rhythms and tones to color specific characters.  Thus, individuals and their environments acquire musical personalities that complement their visual impact. 

Neutral tones, cool accents and diffused lighting predominate Coraline's ordinary domestic existence. A raked stage intensifies the sense of confinement in the drab interior. Coraline. Creative Commons.²

In Coraline's home, a neutral dinginess pervades the dining room.  The accumulation of cool neutral elements - tiles, chipped cabinetry, fogged windows, metallic chairs, kettles and cutlery - cement the sense of ordinary.  Her parents are so embedded in the minutia of domesticity that they seem to become human appendages of the monotonous environment.  In the office, her father's gaunt, hunched body is echoed by precariously piled boxes and canted camera angles.  Coraline's restless form reflected in his computer poignantly encapsulates the gap between her boredom and his frustrations over work.  When he sends her on a mission to list the doors, windows and "everything that's blue," Coraline conveys curiosity, insight, independence and slight brooding.  Her quest is accompanied by Coulais' "Exploration," a light ballad performed with the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra.  A single angelic voice and accompanying harps and piano endow Coraline's childhood with a balance of beautiful innocence and potential darkness.  Using the synthesizer, Coulais compiles harmonies (from the solo vocalist) to create an illusion of multiple intertwined voices.  The result is a sound metaphor for the paradigm of the only child, who relies on her imagination for companionship. 

Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, retired British theater performers. Coraline. Creative Commons.³

Within the universe constructed by the "other mother," one of three luxuries used to entice Coraline is an elaborate art deco theater.  There, imitations of Coraline's two elderly neighbors, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, perform an opera complete with intricate costumes, two-dimensional sets and an elaborate pulley system for hoisting figures.  It is a testament to the convincing characterization and deft manipulation of the puppets that we perceive the scenario to be authentic.  Suspended in the world of Coulais' musical composition and Selicks' animation, we embrace the notion of sculpted characters consciously performing against their own two-dimensional mise-en-scene!  Spink's fleshy body is firmly encased in a fish tail and Forcible's voluptuous form is scantily clad in sequins. Rarely in popular cinema is the elderly female body so brazenly displayed, and in this sense, Selicks departs from conventional Western constructs of feminine beauty.  However, Coulais' musical score grounds the scenario in a performance culture, where such absurdity seems natural. The music is highly dramatized and full of affectations.  And perhaps because the sequence is so flamboyant and unexpected, the lyrics assume a greater weight, even a sense of urgency.  It is difficult to ascribe a particular meaning to the opera's narrative, yet the warnings to sailors hint at an ominous future.

Music plays an equally critical role in the faux Bobinsky's circus tent.  It lends a sense of magical-realism through vaguely Eastern European melodies and frantic orchestral maneuvers.  There is a childish quality to the music, which seems to oscillate and glimmer alongside the synchronized mice.  Small bells, cymbals, percussion and fluttering high-pitched brass instruments give the sequence a ephemeral, dreamy aura.  But the music also echoes the eerie oboes, horns and chimes earlier associated with the authentic Bobinsky, blurring the threshold between the two parallel worlds.

The final other-worldly wonder is the Fantastic Garden, endowed with luminescent crocuses, tickling ivy and swarms of hummingbirds.  The garden brims with color, warmth and movement - pulsing with the vitality of an intricate ecosystem.  The visual elements are built up gradually, each striking component giving way to another, until the entire garden is viewed from above to reveal a fauna mosaic Coraline head.  The music develops in parallel fashion: what starts as a few lone violins culminates in a jazzy conglomeration of percussion, cymbals, bells, horns and strings.

After viewing the film in 2D and 3D, I have to say that the 3D format undermines the potent textural impact of Bruno Coulais' musical score.  Although it certainly adds a technically impressive element to the opening sequence, in which needle-thin metallic fingers deconstruct the fibers, fillings and hair of a doll, it deprives the movie of its cinematic essence, giving it the feel of a video game.  Coulais' music, influenced by the French pianist Eric Satie, renders the animation deeply emotional, at once delightful and disconcerting.  Coulais' sound scheme renders Selick's work more vivid, immediate and lasting.  His impact far exceeds anything stereoscopic effects can achieve.

In an interview regarding the film's fastidious attention to detail and craft, Henry Selicks asserted that his main job was "to keep the beauty under control...to knock down the beauty."  Excess beauty is a very real risk when a project involves so many talented people, each engaged in one small component of the whole.  But Selicks, through figure twitches and grit, successfully combats perfection.  He relies on visual language to convey characters' behaviors and mannerisms, and trusts Coulais' music to inform their deeper emotional complexities.  For this he should be commended. 

 

Image Credits:

1. "Pic by Focus Features." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

2. "Coraline's Normal Life." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

3. "Miss Forcible and Spink." Creative Commons. Joanneteh_32. January 30, 2009.

 

 

The Brothers Quay: Exploring the Czech "Tactile Experiment"

Recently, I rediscovered the stop-action animated shorts of the Quay Brothers, two Czech experimental filmmakers.  I was first exposed to their works as a kid stuck on the couch with the flu.  My dad brought home the video, and prefaced it with a mention of my great-grandfather who had escaped Czechoslovakia trekking around Europe before coming to the U.S.  Symptoms gave way to awe for the quality of movement of the puppets and props.  Whoever had crafted and manipulated these figures, I thought, had given them a unique spirit.  Indeed, the Quays endow each figure with a dark and surreal brooding, an element they refer to as “pathology.” 

Frequently in Quay films, visual relationships, particularly the spatial and temporal links between a figure and its “poetic” universe, supersede narrative associations.  Although narrative structure exists, it is embedded within the visual and abstract.  Compositions and movement through space emphasize transformative processes and the tactile experiences of life and dreams.  Dialogue is largely absent.  Language that does exist fulfills a primarily graphic function.  Often, words allude to the genre of Czech surrealism, or provide an Eastern European contextual heritage for the mise en scène. 

Ident commissioned by BBC2 (1991). Creative Commons.¹

The Quay Brothers tend to emphasize the creation and revision of atmosphere as the basis for their filmic process.  In one interview, they compared inventing and sustaining a climate to choreographing a ballet.  Both film and dance hinge on the integration of lighting, décors, bodies in motion and, perhaps most critically, music.  These elements coalesce to form the dynamic environment that engages, isolates or opposes characters.  The necessity for music in dance is completely self-evident.  The role of music in Quay films differs somewhat.  Music does not dictate the physical patterning of puppet movements; rather, it infuses each shot's universe with a lifeblood.  Music exists in lieu of dialogue.   Verbal exchanges would add an unnecessary redundancy to the subtle, abstracted drama provided by the musical score.  The brothers acknowledge that passive viewing yields few insights into their work.  Attentive sensitivity is absolutely necessary to fully appreciate each sequence.  

Quay Brothers at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee Switzerland. Creative Commons.²

In The Epic of Gilgamesh, an entire kingdom is encapsulated in a wooden cube, whose linear architecture, small geometric windows and high-tension wires suggest that an alien modernity pervades the derivative mythical world.  The brothers reconfigure the epic myth to fit within the constraints of a brief, though precisely executed, pilot.  Gilgamesh's kingdom, spatially estranged and bordered by strong currents of wind on two sides, serves as the motivation and vehicle for his fatal encounter with rival bird-man Enkidu.  Enkidu's venture out of the Enchanted Forest and into Gilgamesh's domain triggers the contriving of the beast's trap.  The trap exploits Enkidu's carnal instincts and subdues his psychological discomfort in the realm of the kingdom.  The "sandbox" kingdom becomes an acetic, almost clinical foil to the forest, and the trap starts to resemble a grotesque operating table.  The musical score adds a disconcerting dimension to the muted palate of the kingdom.  Seedy saxophone music plays during Enkidu's lewd encounter with the trap.  Following Enkidu's demise, Gilgamesh emerges, accompanied by childish carnival music.  The tune is a sound approximation of his sinister, clownish features and diminuative feet, pedaling madly on his tricycle.

In The Street of Crocodiles, the brothers again appropriate a preexisting narrative as the skeletal foundation for their filmic universe.  However, once more, space and geometry subvert narrative structure.  The decors plays a critical role in evoking the precise climate of a Polish retail complex shrouded in dust, debris and refuse.  The environment's essence, in the Quays' words, is "degraded reality."  Yet, the imperfections, indentations and reflections are acceptable, even wonderful, in the cool diffused light.  The most interesting aspect of this environment is the "breakdown," conveyed by the deranged movements of mannequins, screws unscrewing and the reforming of a knot in a string that serves as the gateway into the labyrinth of dust and decay.

In an interview in Paris, the Quays distanced themselves from filmmakers Nick Park and Tim Burton, two key contributors to the genre of stop-action animation.  While technical similarities and a common choice of medium unite these filmmakers, distinctions of equal weight can also be made.  The Quays' works are informed by their Eastern European heritage and surrealist aesthetic, while Nick Park captures the essence of the suburban domestic U.K.  Park (Wallace and Gromit), frequently expresses cynical attitudes towards the status quo (see Creature Comforts), but these sentiments are couched in comedy.  Even at its darkest moments, his work retains a ludicrous hilarity to which we can relate.  Moreover, the narrative structure remains paramount.  Even Wallace's absurd gift of mechanical pants serves a narrative function in The Wrong Trousers, advancing the plot towards the climactic heist scene.  In contrast, the absurd image of a broken tennis racket strewn over high-tension wires in Gilgamesh's domain serves no such function.  Rather, it is merely an artifact of the brothers' village memory.

The Quays are equally hesitant to draw analogies between their shorts and the works of Tim Burton, suggesting that his mise en scène is more closely related to the tradition of horror.  Indeed, graveyard scenes in The Nightmare Before Christmas employ chiaroscuro and exaggerated angles that hearken back to German Expressionism.  Burton composes a narrative that integrates the qualities of a musical: imaginative backgrounds and songs advance a linear plot.  The Quays instead compose a non-verbal cinematic dance.  The musical score and environment of that dance are the primary concern, and the narrative is far more cryptic. 

Phantom Museums: The Short Films of the Quay Brothers, 2007. Zeitgeist.

1. Photographer: "The Justified Sinner." Dec. 27, 2008. Creative Commons. http://search.creativecommons.org/

2. Photographer: Hendrick Speck. Nov. 22, 2008. Creative Commons. http://search.creativecommons.org/

The New Role of Animation in Film

    When a filmmaker first sets out to make a film, he has an important question to answer: Should it be animated? In its beginning, animation was typically used in the portrayal of fairy tales, films that could appeal to children. This was of course popularized by Walt Disney and his abundant supply of feature length folk tales brought to the screen. In recent years, animation has been adapted in the fulfillment of another purpose. Animation allows the viewer to be submerged in another world altogether. It is limited only by human imagination, boundless in its ability to recreate reality. In the recent academy award nominated film Persepolis (2007), filmmaker Marjane Satrapi expanded the role of animation in film to include an even further purpose.

    In her Commentary, Satrapi states "The reason we used animation instead of real images is because drawings have an abstract quality. If we used real images it would be a few Arabs in a country, right away it would be an ethnic film....But drawings, with their abstract quality, emphasize the universal"* For those unfamiliar with the film, Persepolis chronicles the early life of an Iranian woman, Marjane, growing up during the Iranian Revolution. While the film certainly contains a firm political message about the dangers of a dictatorship of any kind, its message is, in Satrapi's words, universal. It is impossible to take nothing from this coming of age story, if even just that perfect mixture of joy, anticipation and sorrow we all (or at least most of us) feel the first time we say good bye to our parents. As Marjane reaches this point in her life, the viewer finds that her feelings at this time are not unlike your average American college student. Throughout, from the grand central themes to the minute details, the film remains a constant exercise of universality. 

    In Persepolis, Satrapi utilizes some pretty unique animation techniques. First of all, she used traditional animation, meaning the animation was done on paper, frame by frame, not by a computer. Second, the entire film is done in black and white, an unusual approach to a typically vibrant medium.

   For her film, Satrapi used a back to the basics process. With the advent of computer technology, traditional animation has become a less cost effective, and much longer approach to animation. However, as Satrapi herself states, "Machines produce perfect images while humans are imperfect."** The characters come to life in a way that can't be replicated by a computer.

    This is probably best explained by way of example. In a pivotal scene towards the beginning of the film, Marjane falls asleep as a protest takes place outside. The protesters march towards soldiers in gas masks and a line of tanks. In a climactic close, one protester is brutally shot, and this fallen hero is raised above the heads of his countrymen. Together, the use of traditional animation, coupled with the particular choice of black and white, allow for Satrapi to deliver her message to the viewer. The traditional animation allows for a contrast between the movements of the soldiers and the protesters. While the protesters move individually, though with one purpose, the soldiers and the tanks move in complete unison with robotic precision. As the protesters move forward, the black and white becomes ever more apparent. Lit like your favorite Fritz Lang film, everyone is silhouetted. Only very certain details are allowed light, particularly the eyes of men in gas masks and the eyes of the martyr. Because of the dynamic nature of traditional animation itis clear who is good and who is evil. However, the black and white silhouette allows the identity of the crowd to become universal. Given the context of the film, we know that it is the Iranian Revolution. But people all over the world can relate to the mob mentality that arises in times of distress, and the often deadly consequences.

    Marjane Satrapi is certainly not the only filmmaker pushing this new purpose. Ten years ago, Writer/Director Tom Tykwer used several different visual mediums, including animation, in Lola Rennt (1998). The movie is set up with a "reset button" concept, meaning our protagonist, Lola, starts from the very beginning three times, each time trying to save her boyfriend and each with slight changes in her story that change its outcome. At a particular part of each segment, Lola runs down the stairs of her apartment building, confronting a dog and his owner. For this segment, Tywker chose to use animation. Just like Satrapi, Tykwer could have used live action and told this part of his story effectively. Instead, Tykwer used traditional animation that gave Lola the look of a superhero. The animation is especially effective in Lola's last chance, as she barks back at the dog. During this segment, Lola's head becomes much larger, while the dog becomes much smaller. Just like Satrapi, Tykwer chose not to make an imaginary world where anything can happen. This was an impossibility for him, as it was necessary for the animated segment to blend seamlessly with the rest of the film, shot in live action. Instead, Tykwer used the animation medium to portray the world in a way the viewer never could have visualized.

    Of course, there is still room in this world for the Disney fairy tales, a vivid world of imagination projected on screen. The precision and detail that is prevalent in movies like WALL-E (2008) and Kung Fu Panda (2008), both up for academy awards this year, is still a popular and effective use of the animation medium. However, Satrapi has pushed forward a new purpose for animation. She made a conscious choice to enter into a medium where anything is possible. But instead of creating fantasy, she chose to recreate reality. This new direction is still in its early stages, but it is nevertheless having a significant impact on the role of animation in film.

*Knight, Chris. "Taste of Teenage Wasteland." National Post (2008):

**Marjane Satrapi "The Hidden Side of Persepolis Commentary," Persepolis, Sony Picture Classics, 2007.