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Domestic Captivity in Selick's Coraline

From Coraline’s first moment, Henry Selick has the viewer uneasily engaged. Eerie bells jingle and voices hum as a small doll, with black buttons for eyes, effortlessly floats in through a window, sheltered from the night’s star-spotted skies. Spiderlike, metallic hands are there to greet it; hands which gently place it onto a table alongside myriad sewing tools and cutting instruments. Rarely is a simple toy handled with such care. We come to see that the doll’s handler is not mending, but rather undertaking a complete reconstruction, as mechanical hands clinically guide scissors through the doll’s spine. Eventually, the doll is reborn, now with freckles, blue hair, and a yellow raincoat, but still black buttons in the place of eyes.

We are then whisked away to the Pink Palace Apartments, a gloomy yet ornate home, bordered by towering mountains on each side. It is here where we meet the true Coraline. Upon seeing her, it is clear – the reconstructed doll is a skillfully crafted depiction of her. However, where the hands of unknown owner so tenderly tended to Coraline in miniature, her true parents continuously neglect and chastise her. Coraline wants nothing more than a romp in the mud or an afternoon in the garden, but her parents are too occupied with work to entertain a word she says.

Understanding her role as a nuisance to her parents, Coraline occupies herself by exploring the surrounding area. She first stumbles upon Wyborne, or “Wybie,” and his black cat, as he terrifies Coraline by nearly running her over on his bike. Wybie is the young grandson of the Pink Palace’s landlady and the first of the film’s many absurd, dual-natured characters. Despite coming off as a spooky daredevil, Wybie is quickly shown to be little more than a wallowing kid, lamenting his name and equating it to “Why born?”. This is the first moment in which the film expresses an interest in the reason for existence.

Shortly after their meeting, Wybie returns to the Pink Palace to give Coraline a gift – something he found at his grandmother’s place. It is the doll from the opening sequence. Coraline then explores the interior of her home; it is sprawling and angular, but with grey walls and few decorations. Put plainly, it is wholly and deliberately unremarkable. That is, until the discovery of a miniature door of knee height, which is only opened by using a black, button-shaped key. Upon opening it, Coraline is utterly disappointed to find a brick wall on the other side.

That night, with the doll carefully placed next to her bed, Coraline is awakened by mice beckoning her to follow. She jumps out of bed and heeds their call, winding up at the foot of the miniature door. Now it is open, leading to a winding, ethereal tunnel. She traverses the tunnel and emerges in the very same place she left, but here things aren’t quite the same. It is a world of similar proportion but with contradictions at every turn. There is now a welcoming warmth and cheer to the home, with the previously dull hues being replaced with warm tones of red and orange. In the kitchen her mother awaits, but this mother has fairer skin, beautiful make-up, and buttons for eyes. The yarn of contradictions is seemingly endless and only unraveled further as Coraline continues to visit this wondrous land, where everything initially appears just as she would like it to.

Returning to reality, Coraline meets another of her neighbors, Mr. Bobinsky. He is a man with straw-thin legs and a hulking chest, whose body accurately reflects his eclectic personality. Bobinsky claims to own a circus of jumping “mushka,” or mice, which has Coraline enraptured. Then, she is introduced to a pair of one-time burlesque stars, Mrs. Spink and Mrs. Forcible, who occupy the basement. The two have an undoubtable affinity for the past, speaking of their glory days in the industry, offering Coraline bowls of old taffy, and displaying their packs of dogs – some still living while others line the walls, taxidermized.

Each of these interactions comes across with an intentional absurdity, as none of the characters address Coraline properly, instead calling her Caroline; the opposite is true on the other side of the door. Bobinsky’s physiognomy is inherently contradictory, and his tales of mice delusional, yet he treats Coraline kindly and thrills her with a display of insane acrobatics. Spink and Forcible seem to be at odds in every way; one is top heavy while the other is bottom heavy, one is blind while the other is not, and the two can never seem to agree, yet they both share an interest in Coraline. The one trait common across all of these characters is that they own a pet.

Coraline continuously returns to the other world, but with repeated visits she realizes that something is awry. Her other mother wants her to stay forever, and all it will take is the sewing of buttons into her eyes. We soon come to understand that the hands, which so carefully crafted Coraline’s replica, did so in an effort to enslave her. It was the doll which opened the portal to this odd world, and it is a menacing creature known as the Beldam which seeks to trap her here forever; to have someone to love without end, in a place which feels desirable to its captor, but is little more than an elaborate prison.

At this point, the film’s narrative begins to accelerate and the content begins to pierce further, beyond the eerie introductions and juxtapositions of its first act. The layers of domestic captivity are expertly laid in front of the viewer. First there is the plaything, or doll, then there are living creatures. From cats, dogs, and mice we can then progress to humans children. Selick encourages us to ask, what is the role of these beings and have humans consigned such creatures to live unfulfilling lives of captivity for their own selfish desires? The same can then be applied to children more generally, harkening back to Wyborne’s name and the question of why are they born? Existence is a harrowing enough process as is, which is only made more complex when we begin to understand existence as the means of pacifying the greed of others. Coraline displays that getting what you wish for is not all that it is made out to be, while asking incisive questions about the human’s role in nature, as well as the relationship between parent and child.

Bob Belcher and Modern Fatherhood (Yaejin)

Bob Belcher of Fox's Bob's Burgers stands out as a man and a father. Although facing constant financial instability, he is content flipping burgers and cooking up punny names for them. His wife, Linda, also works behind the counter of the family restaurant while their three children, Tina, Gene, and Louise, help out after school. The premise is simple and the characters are realistic, but each episode is packed with such personality. The wild chemistry between the characters is partially attributed to the show's recording style; the voice actors record their lines together, allowing natural ad-libs and improvisation. In a chaotic household, Bob contributes as a guiding force. 

The Belcher make up a conventional nuclear family. Bob, Linda, and their three kids live above the burger restaurant. The children attend public school. Because there is nothing particularly unique or extravagant about his lifestyle, Bob is sort of an everyman. The content of his petty arguments with Jimmy Pesto, the handsome owner of the popular Italian restaurant across the street, is specific to them, but the antagonistic chemistry is very relatable. Your Jimmy Pesto could be the boy kicking your seat from behind during homeroom or the co-worker who sharpens his pencils whenever you are calling clients. As a man with very typical demographics, Bob Belcher could be your mailman, but with an especially lovable personality.  He gives his recipe ingredients voices and character; he has an odd adoration for patty-cake in Stomp style. He just has a fantastic disposition and he embodies an appealingly progressive kind of masculinity. 

He is flattered when a younger, attractive male butcher hits on him, mistakenly reading Bob's frequent turkey purchases as flirting. There is no comedic rush to prove his manliness, and he never engages in put-down humor to poke fun at the misunderstanding. Pleased with the compliment, Bob finishes the scene as the man he was before he walked into the deli. 

The word "father" has many traditional connotations. A father may be expected to be the head of the household and support the family. Fathers can be depicted as stern, hardworking, and stoic, adjectives that do describe Bob's own father. Bob is a more emotionally accessible, compassionate parental figure.

The hardships he faced growing up in his father's house drive him to give Tina, Gene, and Louise cheerier childhoods. Bob is more than a provider-protector; he is an empathetic guide.  He shares few common interests with his son Gene, but they attempt some coerced father-son bonding time, throwing a baseball back and forth in an American classic.  Ultimately, they're both too unathletic to enjoy catch, but their bond is affirmed as Bob supports Gene’s passion for cheerleading, cross-dressing, and music.  And when Tina feels insecure about her hairy legs, Bob takes her to a waxing salon and gets his legs waxed to help overcome her fear of the pain.  He fills in any role to support his kids regardless of how these roles are conventionally divided by gender.  Not only is Bob Belcher an awesome role model, he is a terrific father, redefining the role for his children and also for himself.

Solving Design Troubles for Live-Action Adaptations (Katie)

Two live-action movies of beloved Nintendo franchises are hitting the big screens soon. But their receptions are extremely different—especially when it comes to the visual adaptation of everyone’s favorite characters to a cinematic universe. Fans have been so vehemently and vocally repulsed by Sonic’s live action design that the director for the live-action Sonic movie has promised to redesign Sonic before the full movie arrives in theatres…but everyone loves the cute and realistic designs of Pokémon in Detective Pikachu.

When it comes to unrealistic, cartoonish character designs and how they’re brought to VFX-life, what did Sonic do wrong that Detective Pikachu did right?

In short, the answer lies in how much the moviemakers decided to stay loyal to the original designs. It seems like a simple answer, but there’s more to it than meets the eye.

Both the Sonic and Pokémon franchises have cartoony, over-the-top, imaginative designs for their characters. Sonic himself is an unrealistically-proportioned, bright blue “hedgehog” with human-skin-colored belly and limbs: Sonic the Hedgehog. Pikachu, and other Pokémon, appear as wildly fantastic reinterpretations of Earth animals; Pikachu is a large, yellow-and-brown “mouse” with electric powers and plenty of cute to go around: Pikachu. Most importantly, both Sonic and Pikachu’s character designs—along with their in-game cohort—are based on real-life animals.

This is important because Sonic’s designers and Detective Pikachu’s designers took different paths after acknowledging that fact.

Sonic’s original design has its strengths in his big eyes, large head (especially the spikes on the back of his head), and sizeable extremities, even if the rest of him is small, thin, or otherwise unrealistic in being an actual hedgehog’s body. Where the Sonic live-action movie turns horrifying is in Sonic’s completely revamped features. Presumably, it is some desperate attempt to make him more realistic than he was ever intended to be, and the results have not favored the live-action movie.

The live-action Sonic has tiny eyes, a properly, proportionally-sized body, and small head spikes. He has the appearance of not quite a hedgehog—because he’s standing on two feet and human-kid-sized—but he also has a long way to go before being Sonic. The result is a hybrid that looks a tad horrifying, as live-action Sonic has none of the trademark Sonic traits, yet he’s not completely a hedgehog. It was so ugly that, after the trailer was released and the horrified reactions came flooding in, the director eventually had to release a statement that they would redesign Sonic entirely.

In Detective Pikachu’s case, the unrealistic traits of every Pokémon design were capitalized upon by designers. Instead of making Pikachu a compromise between a real mouse and the original Pikachu’s design, renders had Pikachu looking like a fluffy, real-life version of the original look for Pikachu—despite the fact that those proportions could never exist in any actual mouse. This resulted in some very ridiculous, fun looks for certain Pokémon, such as Ludicolo or and Psyduck, but these looks were never disloyal. Big, weird eyes? Huge duck bills and mouths? Who cares, so long as it still looks like the actual Pokémon? The characters on-screen genuinely look like live-action replicas of the cartoon or game designs themselves, and it’s worked in Detective Pikachu’s favor. After all, how can you say no to a creature as cute as Pikachu?

LOVE DEATH & ROBOTS: What is Female Agency When the Female Body is Gone? Part 2 (Katie)

Two weeks ago I discussed the autonomy and survivability of women in the world of “SONNIE’S EDGE.” I’ve returned to discuss another episode in the action-packed anthology, one which puts a similar but new spin on the way women survive: “GOOD HUNTING.” As a story about a Chinese demon hunter, the colonization of Hong Kong, and the disappearance of old, natural magic in the world, there’s a lot to unpack. Spoilers ahead for the whole episode!

The first quarter of the episode opens with young son Liang, accompanying his father on a hunt to kill a húlijīng—a nine-tailed fox. Allegedly, the húlijīng has enchanted a merchant’s son, and the family hired Liang’s father, the demon hunter, to kill the húlijīng and get rid of the enchantment.

The father and son camp underneath the enchanted son’s bedroom window. His moans for the húlijīng ring out over the courtyard. Finally, the húlijīng comes. While Liang’s father and the húlijīng skirmish, Liang is momentarily entranced by the beauty of the húlijīng, and narrowly manages to throw dog’s piss over her body in time. The piss prevents the húlijīng from transforming completely into her fox form, leaving her in a half-fox, half-human state.

Liang’s father tracks the húlijīng to her den at a nearby temple. While they split up to scout for their quarry, Liang discovers one of the fox spirit’s hiding daughters: Yan. She is young, beautiful, and talks to him in her naked, snow-white fox form, emphatically inhuman. Liang is all eyes, even as he cowers, even as she leaps from rock to rock. And in a single argument, she changes Liang’s worldview.

YAN

Why are you hunting us? We did nothing to you.

LIANG

Your mother bewitched the merchant’s son. We were hired to save him.

YAN

Bewitched? He’s the one who wouldn’t leave her alone.

LIANG

That’s not true.

YAN

Once a man has set his heart on a huli jing, she can hear him, no matter how far apart they are. All that moaning and crying, she has to go to him every night just to keep him quiet.

LIANG

No, she lures men and feeds on them for her evil magic.

YAN

A man can fall in love with a huli jing just like he can with a human woman.

LIANG

It’s not the same!

YAN

Not the same? I saw how you looked at me. [4:26 - 5:12]

Immediately after this talk, Yan witnesses the graphic death of her own mother at the hands of Liang’s father.

The opening of “GOOD HUNTING” tells us immediately that this will be a subversive story. Here, the female húlijīng are not the evil, demonic witch-figures that men would paint them as; Yan is as sympathetic as she is inhuman. This is the first argument that “GOOD HUNTING” will make about the agency and power of women: the beauty of a húlijīng is a not a weapon used against men, but men will oppress her for it all the same. They will resent the way they feel about a beautiful húlijīng, and they will blame the feminine fox spirits to absolve themselves.

As the episode reaches its halfway point, Liang’s father passes away. Now a grown young man, Liang lives in a modernizing village: the first trains travel through the countryside, and the colonizing presence of the British Empire looms large over natives’ shoulders. For their last meeting in a long time, Liang and Yan commiserate about the state of the dying earth around them. Yan speculates that the magic is disappearing from the earth due to “iron roads” and “machines that breathe smoke” (6:46). As the magic leaves, so does her ability to change into her “true form” (6:52). Soon, she may lose the ability altogether.

The steampunk twist that “GOOD HUNTING” takes, a sharp veer from its fantastical origins, is another message about female oppression. It is, after all, mother nature that begins to be exploited and mutilated for arrogant white men. All the (literally) magical beauty of the earth, including that of the húlijīng, is slowly suffocated once ambitious men enter the picture.

Years pass. The episode continues to tell the story of Liang. He finds himself extremely skilled at engineering, specifically that of automata; even as a much-hated minority in Hong Kong, he makes himself useful to the British and has a decent living. On a chance encounter, he bumps into Yan. He rescues her from a group of overly eager British men who seek to have their way with her.

As they catch up, Yan tells Liang she has been permanently stuck in her human form: “no claws, no sharp teeth. I can’t even run very fast. All I have is my beauty. Now, I live by the very thing you accused my mother of: I bewitch men for money” (9:05). She laments the lack of power and control she has over her life in Hong Kong: “I dream of hunting in this jungle of metal and asphalt. I imagine my true form leaping from beam to ledge to terrace roof until I am at the top of this island. Until I can growl in the faces of all the men who believe they can own me” (9:40).

The story that Yan presents is that of a loss of agency. When Yan grew up, she had both her human and fox form. Now, she is chained to her human form, and she is forced to use her beauty to survive. This is in direct contrast with how Yan and her mother were treated in China, where they were wrongly hunted for being too beautiful. The world of men has declawed the húlijīng. Not only did men take away her ability to transform into a being with sharp teeth and claws, they made safe the one thing they feared most about a húlijīng: her beauty. Yan’s beauty is now merely a tool for getting by, a plaything for rich, white, colonial masters.

So far, in every aspect of storytelling, “GOOD HUNTING” has depicted a universe in which women are hardy and survivable, but terribly oppressed. Unfortunately, things only get worse for Yan from here.

Yan’s long-time client, the Governor, was only sexually attracted to machines. Naturally, the Governor decided to drug Yan and strap her to an operating table. By the time they were finished, Yan was entirely a machine. The ultimate fantasy for men who lived and profited off automata.

Yan’s non-consensual body swap, and the complete and total murder of her autonomy, needs no explaining. But “GOOD HUNTING” is not without hope. Far from it.

When Yan comes to Liang and tells her his story, she reveals that she escaped the Governor by killing him. One night, she told him no, and it enraged him. He struck her. She struck back and realized how much strength she had gained with her metal limbs: “A terrible thing had been done to me. But I could also be terrible” (12:38).

Yan reassures Liang that she does not want to reverse what has been done to her body. She wants to make the best of it. How? By using what automata parts existed in her, and changing them to become something else entirely.

At the end of the episode, Liang has successfully changed Yan’s machine body—originally made for man’s sexual pleasure and subjugation—into one that, with the right amount of coal and fuel, transforms into a lithe, agile, and beautiful nine-tailed fox. Shimmering under moonlight and padding gracefully on the balcony of Liang’s house, the automata-fox-form of Yan is graceful, dangerous, and dazzlingly powerful. From then on, Yan does what she promised she would do: growl in the faces of all the men who believe they can own her.

While the storyline of “GOOD HUNTING” is filled with hardship and oppression for both Liang and Yan, Yan’s story is ultimately optimistic—boldly, emphatically, and rebelliously optimistic. When Yan lost control and ownership of her entire body, she managed to make the best of it and, with the help of another oppressed party, become something closer to her original self. Even though she has been through hell, she persevered, and she was rewarded for it in the end.

But it’s true: Yan suffered terribly for being a beautiful woman, both as a child and an adult, and both in a rural village filled with magic, and a modernized world filled with steam-run automata. Yan had to lose all of her organic body in order to gain the ability to transform into her fox-form—to gain power—again.

Like “SONNIE’S EDGE,” “GOOD HUNTING” also seems to think that the only way for a woman to achieve anything close to true power is to not be a (biological) woman at all. And even then, there is something bleak and grim about that power. For Sonnie, it is having to fight for her life every time she enters that ring. For Yan, it is the complete loss of her actual body and true form before she could return to her fox form again. While women in these sci-fi worlds can survive through oppressive hells, it is entirely unclear whether what lays on the other side was better than what spawned those hells.

There’s still more I want to talk about. Why do Yan’s story and Sonnie’s story feel so similar? What does it mean that all the women in these sci-fi settings seem to get treated with ultra-violence? Why do increasing amounts of modern stories tell us that, when high-tech finds a throne in the world, oppressed groups get jailed into the low life? But these questions must be saved for another time.

Works cited in this text:

“GOOD HUNTING.” LOVE DEATH & ROBOTS. Netflix. March 15, 2019. Netflix.

LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS: What is Female Agency When the Female Body is Gone? (Katie)

I cannot lie: I love a good sci-fi story. When LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS released on Netflix, I made quick work of binging the animated anthology. The first episode I saw (although Netflix has apparently randomized episode orders for this series) was “Sonnie’s Edge,” which had me thrilled and shocked in multiple ways throughout its 17-minute duration. One of the questions the episode asks, at least in my opinion, is what female agency, victimization, or empowerment means when the female body no longer exists.

There are spoilers ahead in my discussion of the short’s plot and implications, and I’m also including a trigger warning for rape due to the episode’s nature. (Seriously, there will unfortunately be a lot of talk about rape in this post.)

Now, onto the plot of “Sonnie’s Edge.” In a futuristic and dystopian society where prize fighters compete in death matches for money, we follow a day in the life of one female “pilot” who is exceptionally skilled at controlling her “beastie.” The beasties are the gladiators in the arena; they are bioengineered monsters made for killing.

As the opening sequence cuts to introduce our main characters, a few things immediately stand out. A notably female-presenting companion, Ivrina, and a noticeably male-presenting companion, Wes, walk in with Sonnie—who looks androgynous, if not far more ambiguous in terms of gender presentation. Her name, “Sonnie,” also evokes a more masculine aura to her character, even though her slimmer and curvier frame denotes some presence of conventional femininity.

The first conflict Sonnie faces is with a rich and corrupt man, Dicko (great naming right there), who wants to rig the next prize fight. He will pay her hundreds of thousands for her to voluntarily lose the next round. When Sonnie tells him to screw off, Ivrina steps in to further defend her from the old man. It is in the exchange between Ivrina and Dicko that we learn of Sonnie’s backstory—and this is a noticeably exposition-y bit of dialogue. When I say noticeably exposition-y, I mean that anyone versed in a little bit of writing will realize just how shoehorned the dialogue feels.

Here’s my transcription of the bit of dialogue, taken from Netflix subtitles, plus screen directions.

IVRINA

[Exhales angrily] Fucking men. It’s cunts like you that fucked her up to begin with.

Bodyguards approach Ivrina threateningly.

IVRINA

[Sighs] Fuck. A year ago, Sonnie got snatched by an estate gang, and when they was done using her, they started cutting, slicing their marks into her flesh. Can you imagine that kind of pain, that kind of humiliation carved into her skin? A lifelong reminder of that day. So when Sonnie steps into the pit, she’s not fighting for pride or status and certainly not for your fucking money. She’s carving up the men who did this to her. [3:30 - 4:11]

See what I mean? At least to me, the dialogue felt like someone writing a background inspired by some erotic fantasy. It was put in purely for the benefit of the watcher, and it was done in a quick and dirty way that seemed to want to titillate or horrify rather than offer meaningful explanation. The exposition appears much like other incidents of rapes of female characters in media nowadays, many of which seem to be written in for no other reason than the shock factor.

I was unimpressed with this bit of writing, but the ending of “Sonnie’s Edge” actually did an impressive thematic reversal on this blatant—and even almost disrespectful—telling of Sonnie’s past.

Later, when Sonnie is having a discreet conversation with Dicko’s female consort, they flirt and talk about Sonnie’s past. (Their conversation is more like foreplay than anything else, with kisses and soft touches included.) Here’s the relevant excerpt:

DICKO’S CONSORT

But that night, the gang, the…

SONNIE

Rape. Yeah. It’s not that. They can’t see past it. No one can. But it ain’t what gives me my edge. Angry little girl, out for revenge. Dicko believes that shit…

Dicko’s consort lightly tugs one strap of Sonnie’s shirt off a shoulder.

SONNIE

… ‘cause he wants to. They all do.

Dicko’s consort slides her dress straps off her shoulders.

DICKO’S CONSORT

[Slowly raising her skirt] Everyone sees what they want to see.  [12:50 - 13:33]

I felt like “Sonnie’s Edge” was calling many of the audience members out, myself included. Once we heard Sonnie’s shocking backstory within the first five minutes of the episode, all we could think about was her history.

Not to mention the fight scene between Sonnie’s beastie, Khanivore, and her male opponent’s beastie, Turboraptor. There’s plenty of forced, penetrative imagery between the beasties that’s rendered a lot more noticeable once you remember Sonnie’s apparent origins—definitely an intended effect.

We only saw Sonnie in light of her rape. We all saw what we wanted to see, even if the episode does reinforce seeing Sonnie in this specific light.

But there’s more to discuss. The twist ending to “Sonnie’s Edge” includes more violence to the female body. It turns out that Dicko’s consort is a bioengineered servant made to execute Dicko’s commands, and she penetrates Sonnie’s skull with Wolverine-like claws from her knuckles right after a kiss. Dicko comes out of the shadows to gloat.

Sonnie is dropped to the floor, and her skull is bashed in by Dicko’s foot. When Sonnie’s voice does not falter, and she does not die, it’s revealed that Sonnie was Khanivore the entire time. Khanivore then kills both Dicko and his consort.

While the explicit logistics aren’t made clear, the gist of the reveal is as follows: Sonnie’s original body was lost after the gang attack; Ivrina and Wes linked her consciousness with Khanivore’s, and Sonnie lives solely in Khanivore. Her human body is just a bioengineered puppet from her uploaded brain, and when she is fighting in the pit as a beastie, she is fighting for her life. That is her “edge.”

There is a lot of complexity to this short episode’s plot. The episode seems to take on a feminist role at the surface, with Sonnie being a character like Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The episode also makes a big deal out of Sonnie being the only female pilot in the beastie ring.

But what about the writing itself? The writers wanted everyone in the audience to think about Sonnie’s rape origin story in every minute of the episode, up till the very end. Much like Sonnie says, we can’t see past it. References to the rape in imagery and small plot points keep the origin story fresh in our minds; clearly, writers want us to be thinking about Sonnie’s rape, even if only as a blind to the real twist.

I found myself asking this question by the end of the episode: if Sonnie survived the rape not as a human woman, but an uploaded consciousness linked to a beastie who literally fights to live, which is better?

As a beastie, Sonnie has unlimited power at her hands. Physically, she is superior to all the beasties in the ring so far; she is mentioned to being on a 17-count win streak. She is obviously superior to every human; she’s a bioengineered monster made for killing. But she has limited autonomy and limited friendship with even her closest apparent friends, Ivrina and Wes. Khanivore, or Sonnie, has to keep fighting in the pit to make a living, and she has an added stake of needing to stay alive while in the pit—unlike every other pilot, her consciousness is directly tied to her beastie’s. Additionally, the implication of Ivrina and Wes finding Sonnie’s broken body and uploading her consciousness into Khanivore means that, at worst, they only saved her as a means of profit, or, at best, out of a desperate lack of other measures.

The picture that “Sonnie’s Edge” paints of female power and agency, then, is bleak. Sonnie, even in her most powerful form as Khanivore, is still subjugated to other forces—whether or not the female body is still intact. These other forces can include the violence of men, or the oppressive difficulty of surviving in a dystopian society. This message is also reinforced in the character of Dicko’s consort. She is completely without autonomy: every one of her acts is in service to Dicko, regardless of her physical superiority to him. (She is a more subtle and organic-looking, but she can be a killing machine, too, as evidenced by her Wolverine-like claws.) There seems to be no hope: Sonnie was raped and apparently nearly killed by men as a human, and when she became Khanivore, her new physical powers were restricted only to the pit, where she faces a greater loss than her opponent if she loses.

Might we be able to say, then, that “Sonnie’s Edge” at least views female endurance and survivability with optimism? Even if there’s no autonomy for characters like Sonnie or Dicko’s consort, even if the only source of happiness for many characters is achieving violence against an opponent, can we at least say that the women in Sonnie’s world can stick through anything to see another day?

Yes, although the optimism is laced with grit. Sonnie’s “edge” is the real, omnipresent fear of losing her life in the ring. She claims she’s always afraid in her conversation with Dicko’s consort, and by the end of the episode, she openly cites her fear as the thing that keeps her alive. It’s admirable, how indomitable Sonnie’s will to live is, even if it may be depressing that she needs the fear to begin with.

Then the question becomes why the framing of Sonnie's backstory needed such a specific blind. Do women in the world of "Sonnie's Edge" require a digestible, plausible backstory in order to go unnoticed by men and the rest of society? Perhaps; Sonnie states that she keeps her story so that men like Dicko can believe it. But it doesn't keep her safe; what keeps her safe is the secret that she no longer has a human body. And that argument is even more bleak: the only way to stay safe as a woman in Sonnie's world is to not be a woman.

All in all, “Sonnie’s Edge” is a visually stunning science fiction piece that falls comfortably into the grim and cynical subgenre of cyberpunk. Besides the thrilling colors, fight sequences, and beautiful animation, I think it plays with storytelling expectations in interesting ways... even if the rape as a red herring may not have been totally necessary or respectful. That’s a question I’ll have to tackle another time.

Works cited in this text:

“SONNIE’S EDGE.” LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS. Netflix. March 15, 2019. Netflix.

Stop-Motion: We the Objects, the Film Our Stage (Jin)

We remain obsessed with dolls– as children, we’d learnt to create for ourselves plastic avatars of our play objects, and now, as adults, we remain trapped in this transference of self and the imagining of scenarios, albeit in a more subtle and subconscious form. Our innate desire to play god by exerting control over self-replicas, which had been so apparent in our childhood, is now forced to manifest itself through other means besides playing with plastic. We turn to the most malleable form of art: film.

Film has become our stage, our new avatar. It is our way of seeking liberation from the present, through both the role of filmmaker and of spectator. A filmmaker, by creating a new reality in film, has established himself as god, or a creator of truth, thereby also creating for us a stage on which we can imagine ourselves occupying via the actors on screen. For the duration of the film, we may briefly forget our own selves and revel in the illusionary power obtained through the observation of a contained, controlled world. Although this experience is applicable for all genres of film, stop-motion film is particularly well-suited in depicting this stage-spectator relationship.

The stop-motion genre is becoming increasingly abandoned, but two Surrealist films, Jabberwocky by Jan Svankmajer and Street of Crocodiles by the Quay brothers, successfully tapped into its potential. Stop-motion reveals its power through its direct and quite literal replacement of people with dolls and objects, all photographed in movement through the real world. There is no greater embodiment of a film acting as a stage upon which we can insert ourselves; the movements that we see are simultaneously real (because, despite their fantastical motions, they are still taking place in the real world, the source of its movements simply hidden in the ellipses of the film) while overtly illusionary (because the actions themselves, i.e. a still object coming to life and dancing, are undeniably impossible). It is this paradoxical juxtaposition of the real and the illusion that grants stop-motion an even greater power: despite the spectator’s constant awareness of its impossibility, the illusion still retains a degree of possibility, because its movements are so directly fixed in the real world.

 

Props from "Street of Crocodiles"

Both Svankmajer and the Quay brothers carefully create their world using everyday objects, and in doing so, construct a type of reality that is synchronously familiar and new. When watching their films, we are instantly familiar with the plastic doll heads, the classic wooden chair, the ordinary metal screw, the lightbulb– it is a new reality pieced together with fragments of our own, thereby reading as a rearrangement, rather than an entirely alien atmosphere, like those created via CGI in Marvel superhero movies. This is the primary way in which the film becomes a more immersive stage, by creating a setting that is strongly felt as a replica of our own, rather than a complete departure. It is the imminently real turned into a tangible unreal. To add on to the effect, the objects themselves are antiquated and gritty, as though pervaded with both the refuse of life and its sentimentality. They are not just objects but relics fingerprinted with the presence of an external world, our own.

Just as they attempt to close the boundary between our world and theirs, the filmmakers also attempt to erase the dichotomy between the real and the absurd, between life and death. Particularly in Jabberwocky, all extremities coexist in the sudden perversion of the childlike, as a cannibalistic doll daintily devours plastic body parts or is torn apart as smaller dolls scramble out of its body. Akin to the traditional Grimm’s fairy tales, there is a natural blending of children- storytelling and the grotesque; the cannibalistic, brute dolls are an embodiment of death merged with life, further highlighted by added scenes of fresh fruit giving way to worms and of a folding knife, when closed on itself, paradoxically stabs itself and gushes blood.

Through Svankmajer’s and the Quay brothers’ ingenious use of stop motion, we find a caricature of both ourselves and our lives. The absurdity of juxtaposed life and death, of dolls rent apart to reveal gore, and of underworlds composed of human artifacts, is felt keenly as a subconscious stage for us to enter and as a replica reality directly born from our own. In the substitution of human actors with doll characters, the films rekindle our inherent affinity for playing god, and through it, hint at an even greater truth. Heinrich von Kleist once wrote on marionettes, insisting that, because they are not bound to the earth like we are, they exceed the grace of any human being, and that only through the self-consciousness of our own limitations, we can achieve a degree of that grace. Svankmajer and the Quay brothers give us the liberation that we need from our human limitations, by instilling in us the constant self-consciousness of their films' illusion, while simultaneously allowing for us to enter the illusion, to play on the stage as spectator-dolls. 

The Horror of Romantic Reality (Jaeyoung)

Spoiler warning: plots of The Graduate and Anomalisa discussed.

Unless I am with other people, or if I’m feeling unnaturally brave, I will never watch a horror movie. The suspense, stress, cringe, and anticipation of jump-scares are all too strenuous for me to handle on my own. Therefore, during this Halloween season, I have watched no horror movies to recount on this blog.

Yet the feeling I’ve had watching those movies, the squeamishness, the dread, the “No, don’t make me watch this,” came up unexpectedly in a movie of a totally different genre--The Graduate.

And it wasn’t the part where Mrs. Robinson tries to seduce him, or when Benjamin asks for his hotel room, or when Benjamin brings Elaine to the strip club. No, it was the very last scene, after Benjamin crashes Elaine’s wedding and escapes with her, when their excited, smiling faces fade into regret and disappointment. It was uncomfortable to watch, and I was tempted to stop the movie before it got to the end credit.

Of course, I had questions. What happens next? Where are they going, and what is their future? Benjamin has even less idea of his future than he did in the graduation party, and the life to come will probably be worse than the life he just escaped. In the topic of horror, perhaps this fear can be categorized in the Terror vs. Horror paradigm; Benjamin’s impending fate is terrifying, while his unseen, painfully awkward future would be horrifying.

But one could say that the scene itself is horrific-- (the idea of) Elaine was the closest thing he could get to happiness and normalcy, but he loses her. After ripping through California on car and by foot, he realizes that he became bored of her more quickly than he did with her mother.We see in Benjamin’s face that he truly loses everything.

In Benjamin's defense, who hasn’t daydreamed about their ideal romance, imagining every perfect scene with the person they love? Everyone is their own private filmmaker. The Graduate simply does the dirty deed of realizing these romantic fantasies, only to muddy it up with hopeless reality.

The same romantic idealization is seen in the R-rated stop-motion picture Anomalisa, directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson. In a world where everyone is voiced by Tom Noonan, Customer Service expert Michael Stone finally meets Lisa Hesselman, a woman with a unique voice. In his hotel room, he appears completely infatuated with her, relieved that the many years of grim mundanity are finally coming to an end. In fact, after Lisa sings an unimpressive rendition of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” she exclaims, “Oh my God, are those tears?”

And to no surprise, Michael falls into the same trap Benjamin did--he shoves his hopes and dreams into a stranger he’d only recently met. And he faces great disappointment, as Lisa starts to displease him and sound more like Tom Noonan (aka everyone else). Unlike Benjamin, however, Michael attempts to shape her back into his idealized woman, chiding her for letting food hang out of her mouth and telling her she’s “too controlling.” But Lisa’s charm is irreparably broken, and Michael’s only hope in life is lost. The sunlight in the room becomes obnoxiously bright, suggesting that (the idea of) Lisa has just been a meaningless dream. Just when life was looking up for Michael, that one breakfast scene thrusts Michael back to misery.

But Anomalisa actually has obvious elements of horror. Not only are the puppets somewhat unnerving (unlike normal puppets, their faces appear pasted onto their heads), but also there is a nightmare sequence in which everyone, from the hotel manager to the staff members to Lisa’s friend, are “all one person" and are after Michael. The hotel grows ominously dark as Michael (who at one point drops his animatronic face) frantically plans his escape. But even in his nightmare, Michael has (the idea of) Lisa to hold on to, a last hope.

And then he wakes up, and (the idea of) Lisa is lost. Reality becomes worse than nightmare.

Women have no responsibility to conform to a man’s idealization. But we (as in mainstream audience) still expect romantically-satisfying endings. We are primed with movies and shows that have protagonists “winning the girl” or rekindling a waning relationship. Hollywood constantly peddles these opiates, and when movies like The Graduate or Anomalisa come around, we're kicked in the gut.

So who needs ghosts or zombies for a cinematic scare? With the right dose of wishful thinking and a swift counter-punch of reality, anything could be a horrifying thriller.

Bigger than Life: A History of Superhero Films (Nick R.)

        Superheroes have captured the American psyche since they emerged in comic books in the 1930s, and were very quickly adapted to the screen. Long before the special effects and modern technology that make superhero films what they are today, the subjects of these films appeared in serials, short films of generally 30 minutes, that were shown in parts to tell a larger sequential story. While it may sound like it was just a TV show, back in the 1930s, you could only watch them in theater. A lot of well-known clichés began with these serials, most notably, the ever-so-suspenseful (and occasionally very annoying) plot device of cliffhangers. Imagine watching your favorite superhero dangling from a building by their fingertips, and instead of just pressing ‘Continue Watching’, or popping in the next disc, you have to wait an entire week until next Saturday when the next episode of the serial would be shown. Netflix sounds pretty great now, huh?

         Superman: the Movie (1978), brought a new tone to superhero films, and with it mainstream popularity. It was the most expensive film in history up to that point, with a budget of $55 million. The film made over $300 million and was held in high regard on a critical level. What made this movie so successful was the more serious tone of the science fiction/fantasy storytelling (being written by Mario Puzo, who also wrote The Godfather) that superhero movies had rarely taken on, generally being directed at children. Superman: the Movie showed that superheroes weren’t just for kids any more, and they could be molded into a brand for all ages, while at the same time utilizing the fantasy elements that make them so special.

                                                

        The most obvious change that enticed audiences and put them right into the world of the modern superhero film are the special effects and CGI that made the supernatural look so real. Beginning with X-Men (2000) and Spider-Man (2002), these franchises launched huge blockbusters with very realistic special effects. The visuals of superhero films had suddenly gone from only being truly believable by a child, to epic and life-like proportions. Marvel saw the traction that their characters were generating for other studios, such as Fox (who produced the X-Men franchise) and Sony (producers of the Spider-Man franchise), and began to reclaim some of their most prominent properties. With the release of Iron Man (2008), this new studio released the first in what would be many self-produced movies by the company. Just over a month later, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man’s Tony Stark appeared in the Incredible Hulk (2008). This was the first step in what became the creation of the “Marvel Universe,” the connected storylines of different franchises under that company’s control. The Avengers (2012) really proved how far this concept could go, bringing together four characters, and their respective actors (excluding Edward Norton as the Incredible Hulk) from previous films. The Avengers now sits as the fifth highest grossing film of all time.

        While the connected storylines have created massive popularity for Marvel, I think that after a while it may inadvertently cause the downfall of, not superhero films in their entirety, but at least the success of Marvel. As the stories of each of these characters develops, such as previous meetings with other superheroes, and major story arcs that end up playing a role in the later films, the connected nature of the “Marvel Universe” inadvertently adds a complexity to superhero movies that the common viewer may just not be interested in dealing with. Superhero movies don’t feel like stand-alone projects anymore, and with story being something that drives the success of these films, it is likely that after a while, the collective storyline of these characters will simply just be too played out and have too complex of a history.

        So where do superhero movies as a whole go from here? Considering the huge amounts of money they make and the fact that they have caught on like wildfire, it doesn’t seem like blockbuster superhero movies are going away any time soon. However, Steven Spielberg and analysts within the industry have suggested that superhero movies will see a similar fate to that of the Western. The Western genre, packed with gunslingers and lots of action, was by far the most popular of the 1950s and 1960s, with hundreds of films created during that time period. Despite how popular the genre was, so many Westerns were pumped out of Hollywood that people eventually lost interest.

        As an optimist and an avid fan of superhero movies, I think it is much less likely that superhero movies share that outcome. Despite many superhero movies coming out in the past couple of years, this paled in comparison to the rate at which Westerns were created during the 50s and 60s. Secondly, the science-fiction aspect of superhero movies lends itself much more to an ability to evolve and adapt as times change. Westerns took place for the most part in one area of the world during one time period, the American Midwest and South in the later half of the 19th century. And while it is a fun and interesting period to explore, it is a concept limited by time. World War II movies, movies on the Vietnam War, and other types of period films have all seen their peak and decline, mostly because after a while, people want to learn about and delve into a new world or historical time period, or futuristic sci-fi concept for that matter. The science fiction characteristics of superhero movies mean that as the world changes and develops new technology and discoveries, these can be integrated into the lives of superheroes. 

                                                   

        If there is one thing that is spectacular about superhero films, it’s that they are, in a sense, bigger than life. What if our world had people who could do these miraculous things? What if it was me? It is an outlandish concept to believe that there are people among us bigger than life, bigger than the limitations of gravity, the human body, and the mind. For a moment, more accurately about two and a half hours, we can blur the lines between what we want to see, what we want to be able to do, and what is really there. Regardless of age, special effects and story allow us to visualize something that previously was impossible. Marvel may well have killed the comic book, but in the process have sparked a new age in the blockbuster movie experience for years to come.

How to Be a Villain (Treva)

As a junior in the middle of my spring semester, I’ve had to start thinking about my life after college recently. My career path. And, as a junior in my spring semester, at Johns Hopkins, I am very overworked and desperate to avoid anything actually resembling adulthood. So my thoughts have been turning, inevitably, to one ideal career: Disney Villain.

But how? How to set myself up as the perfect Villain(ess)? Well, I am a junior at Johns Hopkins University, and a humanities major to boot, so in order to answer that question, I set out on a research quest. Mostly through video clips of signature villain songs, because those are the best part of being a specifically Disney villain.*

My exhaustive research has led be to two basic conclusions: the strength and impressiveness of a true Villain, and their song, is based on power and social deviancy.

Also, darkness. All the best Villains have dark clothing and dim lighting. But that’s such basic analysis that I feel it almost goes without saying. Lower chords in the music also help, and minor keys.

In support of my claim, I shall compare two famous musical scenes: “Bibbidi-Bobbiti-Boo” from Cinderella (1950), and “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from The Little Mermaid (1989). It’s an interesting comparison because they actually have a number of key points in common, including some notable Villainous qualities. In each, an older woman uses magic to manipulate the environment and transform a young woman—so, in fact, she can go meet and marry a prince.

The use or even just implication of supernatural forces is a hallmark of Villainy, falling under the category of social deviancy—this is the supernatural. It’s abnormal, and thus dangerous. In Little Mermaid, magic is actually a more neutral thing, used also—indeed, first!—by King Triton, an antagonist but not a villain. (Though he does use it for the purpose of destruction, of the human objects that approximately represent Ariel’s hopes, ambitions, and individuality.) Ultimately, however, he uses the same magic to give her the life she dreams of, on land with the humans. It’s much more common for Villains to either introduce or even be the only ones to call on the supernatural. Dr. Facilier, the villainous witch doctor, is the first to use magic in The Princess and the Frog (2009), explicitly evoked in his song “Friends on the Other Side.” In The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), a movie otherwise completely without magic or occult effects—save the living gargoyles who provide comic relief, and whom I for one have never thought fit tonally with the rest of the film—Bishop Frollo’s “Hellfire” is full of supernatural effects. Red hooded figures appear from nowhere to chorus and shame him, and his imagination summons a dancing image of the gypsy Esmeralda in the fireplace. The sound effects suggest that his hand motions are manipulating the flames.

As suggested, Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother actually follows the “only one affiliated with the supernatural” trope more than Ursula does. She not only uses magic, but she specifically affects the protagonist with it, spelling Cinderella into a dress and her mouse friends into horses and a footman. Such an overt exhibition of power and domination is reminiscent of when Ursula not only turns Ariel human but first gives the show of her abilities with the simulacrum: “This one longing to be thinner, that one wants to get the girl / and do I help them? Yes indeed.” Or when Scar (The Lion King, 1994) kicks the hyenas around in “Be Prepared”, or Dr. Facilier concludes his song by literally turning Prince Naveen into a frog. The power expressed in physically manipulating the environment and, better, the protagonist, is another key habit of true Villainy.

The Fairy Godmother, however, is not a Villain, or even an antagonist. Why? And not just as demonstrated in her motives, to help rather than hinder or entrap. How does the film, in animation and effects, express those motives?

For one thing, though they similarly use magic, the Gofmother conforms to society’s expectations in a way that Ursula does not. The Fairy Godmother resembles nothing so much as a kindly grandmother, while Ursula, though white-haired, acts the part of a sensual temptress. Her bright lipstick and eye-shadow pop out of her face, her tentacles are shaped like a low-bodiced, jet black evening gown—with attention drawn to the chest by a dangling gold locket—and she’s…on the plump side, debatably “fat” by model-standards of beauty, particularly relative to Ariel’s lithesome sixteen-year-old self. But she’s also curvaceous, and her body language—and that make-up—positively screams confidence and “look at me!” Remember the exaggerated undulation on, “And don’t underestimate the importance of body language!” Whereas the fairy godmother is covered head to toe in loose robes of pale blue and pink, including a hood and a large pink bow at her neck. She’s gently unfashionable, non-sexual, and the colors suggest calm and comfort. She’s even shorter than Cinderella: totally non-threatening. Ursula’s aggressive sexuality is startling to the point of scariness, particularly in an older woman who insists she’s being grandmotherly, helping “poor, unfortunate souls.” It’s arguably the “otherness” of it that makes her scary rather than the actual sexuality—she also has bruise-purple skin where all other mermaids are fairly pale, or at least human-colored, and octopus tentacles instead of a fish tale. It’s similar to how Scar is the only dark-furred lion (was Walt Disney racist? Well, probably) or Governor Radcliffe in Pocahontas is taller, broader, and more richly clothed than all the other settlers in Pocahontas (1995). Villains are those who don’t fit in.

Despite this deviancy—or perhaps because of it, and which of those options is scarier?—Ursula obviously has power. Supernatural power, and power expressed in blocking, and even in the tempo of the song. It’s fast. It’s aggressive. It actually picks up speed as the song goes on, and Ariel’s choice becomes more immediate. “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” has not only a slower tempo, but also significantly less range in its notes and energy in its delivery. Ursula belts notes low and high—though generally lower, menacingly. She moves around, often to literally above Ariel’s head—a simple indication of power by blocking. She draws the focus of the scene and demonstrates her sheer drive. A true Villainess isn’t afraid to commit real effort to her world domination plans. The Fairy Godmother stays on Cinderella’s ground level throughout her song, moving little more than to broadly wave her wand.

So what have I learned, if I want to pursue a career of Disney-style Villainy? Here are the big takeaways:

• Dark clothing
• Own my sexuality, particularly if I’m not expected to. Be unexpected, and confident in it!
• Move around. Speak loudly. Don’t necessarily pay attention to others’ implicit pleas for personal space.
• Try to acquire a unique talent.
• Above all, stand out and carpe diem!

…Or I could continue spending Friday and Saturday nights alone in my well-lit bedroom, wearing pajamas and watching Disney clips on YouTube. Yeah. I might do that. At least I have cool socks.

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* For reasons of copyright law, I can share neither screencaps nor links to where one might watch such clips. But I’ll admit that I, acting as a private citizen unaffiliated with JHU, have found several on the web. If you’re interested.

It’s a Small (Claymation) World After All (Nicola)

“Huh?” Coraline stops short at the sight of her ‘Other House,’ looming before her. She turns to her feline companion as if to verify that they had indeed departed from that location not minutes before. “But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?” she asks.

The cat replies in a drawl that implies the obvious: “Walk around the world.”

“Small world…”

 Based on a novel by Neil Gaiman, Coraline is a dark fantasy that revolves around a young girl named Coraline (not Caroline, as she is often forced to remind her neighbors). Upon moving to Oregon with her deadbeat, overworked parents, Coraline finds herself bored, neglected, and missing her old home. In search of adventure or, at the very least, something to interrupt the unrelenting monotony of the overcast Oregon afternoons, Coraline discovers a small door leading to a parallel world. In this ‘Other World’ everything is the same, but better – better food, better neighbors, better garden, and best yet, parents that actually seem to care about their daughter.

Yes, everything is better – except, that is, for the eyes. Everyone in this ‘Other World’ has buttons for eyes.

Now, if an animated doll staring at you with glazed-over, black button eyes isn’t creepy enough to give you the heebie-jeebies, it gets worse. It soon becomes disturbingly clear that the ‘Other World’ is nothing but a construction, created for the purpose of stealing children’s souls. In a danse macabre, the child ghosts of former victims describe the methods of the ‘Other Mother’:

She spied on our lives,

through the little doll's eyes,

And saw that we weren't happy.

So she lured us away,

with treasures and treats,

and games to play!

Gave all that we asked –

yet we still wanted more –

So we let her sew the buttons.

She said that she loved us,

But she locked us here

And ate up our lives.

Indeed, Coraline Jones is in a very small world. The ‘Other Mother’ has created a realm that centers entirely around our little blue-haired protagonist. But Coraline exists in a small world in more ways than one, for as it turns out, the 'Other Mother’ has quite a lot in common with a certain director with a penchant for imbuing inanimate objects with life.

At the time of its release in 2009, Henry Selik’s film, Coraline was the longest stop action film in existence. Now, when it takes an entire week for a fully staffed crew to produce approximately 90 seconds of footage, you can be pretty sure that the selected medium was chosen for a reason (masochistic tendencies aside). Stop action - Claymation in particular – generally involves the incremental manipulation of figures to act out a story. In the case of Coraline, a 140,000 square ft. warehouse was transformed into the 150 sets that compose Coraline’s world. Extensive research was done on the real-world locations portrayed so the film would appear stylized but accurate, the set was filled with hand-crafted dolls (fun fact: a woman named Althea Croem was hired purely for the purpose of knitting miniature sweaters. Sometimes her needles were no thicker than a single human hair), and the film was shot using the dual camera technique to create a 3D look.

Hmmmmm. Intense research on outside source material, a miniature world, dolls operated by unseen hands and made three dimensional… Sound familiar?

The medium of the film reflects the story itself. Pretty neat, huh?

Now, I will say, I have mixed feelings about Coraline – there are certain aspects of the film that I adore and others that bug the heck out of me. I think I’ve already expressed how much I enjoy the self-awareness of the film, but more than that, I love the stylization. Coraline is a film that knows what it is – it has a great sense of humor, it’s exceptionally creative, and the soundtrack is so good that I’m pretty sure I bought within 24 hours of leaving the theatre. That being said, it’s pretty hard-hitting when it comes to the ‘neglected child’ thing and doesn’t do nearly enough work when it comes to humanizing Coraline’s real parents. What’s more, the ending (a neighborhood garden party on a sunny afternoon) rings with the falsity of a fairytale – a tone which seems quite out of place given the general propensities of the piece. It feels forced, tied up with a bright red bow and thrown at the reader as if to say: “Here. Have a happy ending.” It blatantly ignores the fact that basically nothing has changed in Coraline’s real life and, in a day or two, Coraline’s parents will go back to their work as usual. Not to mention the fact that Coraline’s probably going to suffer from deep psychological issues. Oh, and don’t forget the three children who were murdered and had their eyes gouged out. But sure, let’s end the film with a garden party!

Gee, thanks.

I would tend to say, if you’re going to go the route of a dark fantasy, you should commit. The film does such an amazing job of constructing this incredibly unsettling aura, but all that work goes right out the window in the last five minutes. The 'Other Mother' is possessed by a desire to have things 'just so.' Consequently, even though her world is supposedly perfect, it has a wrongness to it – it feels too contrived. The movie itself (intentionally or not) possesses the same wrongness and a lack of natural progression that is positively infuriating. That is not to say the film is not enjoyable (in fact, I highly recommend it) but it does leave certain things to be desired. 

BONUS: I also highly recommend perusing the CoralineTheMovie YouTube channel. They have some wonderful stuff in there about the making of the film. It’s fascinating!
Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FfFaj2eRcQ

Darkness and Allusion in "Over the Garden Wall" (Elizabeth)

It is rare that one can recommend an animated television show without needing to throw in a caveat. There are plenty of gems out there, but all too often cartoons are either insultingly childish, full of shock value humor, or just simply keep going long after they should have ended. “Over the Garden Wall” does not suffer from any of those problems. It is a new kind of endeavor for Cartoon Network, a short miniseries that is deceptively deep and dark in tone, telling the story of two brothers who are lost in a mysterious woods trying to find their way home. One of its main themes is that nothing is as it first appears, and this holds true for the miniseries itself. It is child friendly, as anything on at primetime Cartoon Network will be, but its tight, twisting plot and mature themes ensure that most children wouldn’t be able to scratch the surface of its depth.

One of the strongest ways that this manifests is in the constant allusions and stylistic and tonal references that the series has. The man alone in a manor who thinks he loves a ghost and fears he may be mad hearkens back to Poe, the two witch sisters have designs that call to mind the work of Hayao Miyazaki, and Greg’s dream of going to heaven is a clear homage to the oldest theatrical cartoons. It draws many of its locations and episodic plots from older American culture and folklore from a purposefully indefinable era. Even the obligatory out-of-place modern jokes and references Wirt and Greg make turn out to be foreshadowing the eventual twist, that they’re working their way through the limbo of the dead who haven’t let go.

One of the strongest and most thematically resonant parallels is to Dante’s Inferno. From the name of their treacherous but good-hearted guide, Beatrice, to the fact that Wirt is a poet whose official role in the Unknown is “pilgrim,” the foreshadowing about the true nature of the woods is much clearer to those who’ve read the classics. This lets the writers add a creepy layer of symbolism that children watching wouldn’t be able to grasp—the Beast, a clear Satan analogue, attempts to get travelers to give in to despair, which will cause them to turn into trees. In The Inferno, becoming a tree in hell is the punishment for suicide. It gives the viewer the same sense that it gives the boys in the story—wandering through a mysterious past and trying to make sense of the memories and legacies of those who are gone.

Even the darkest of implications can hardly measure up to some of the explicit action of the plot, especially the woodsman who unknowingly burns lost souls to ashes. This can be quite powerful—but it can also work against itself. Some of the trappings of child-friendliness don’t quite work out for a story as dark as this—the, dark, detailed backgrounds and monsters of the Unknown clash against the cartoony stylization of the humans, the songs not sung by the bullfrog tend to be rather jarring, and there are a few times where it feels the need to explain things that it could have more elegantly left to implication. However, this is exactly the sort of deep, mature, unique project that animation needs to get taken more seriously as a medium.

The Light of Religion in The Secret of Kells (Elizabeth)

I’m going to be looking at another beautiful, trend-bucking animated film this week. The Secret of Kells tells a fantastical version of the creation of the real-life Book of Kells, an ancient illuminated manuscript containing part of the New Testament. The story takes place in the 9^th century in the Abbey of Kells and stars Brendan, a child monk who must learn to illustrate to finish the book in place of the elderly refugee Brother Aiden. The book is described as having been created by a saint, and as being a source of knowledge and light necessary to spread hope to the people while invaders besiege them. The art style matches this function, based on the sort of intricate patterns and strange perspectives that characterized the illuminations of early monks’ manuscripts. Other than this, the abbey is not depicted as being particularly religious due to the abbot’s obsession with building walls to keep out the Vikings, with the book as the only strong Christian symbol.

Despite the Catholic setting and references to Christian tradition, there are even more concrete ones to Celtic paganism. One of the most important and memorable characters is Aisling, a shape-shifting spirit who lives in the forest outside Kells. Her exact nature is never made clear, but Brendan refers to her as a fairy and she functions as a sort of genius loci for the forest, transforming it from a dark, formidable cage into lush, open world once Brendan wins her favor. She is also his most helpful ally, aiding him whenever he is in the forest—saving him from wolves and finding him the berries to make pigments. Aisling saves him when she is unable to directly help him, when he is locked in the abbey. She transforms Pangur Bán the cat, the one character able to go between the forest and abbey as he pleases, into a spirit so that he can steal the key. In that beautiful sequence, she sings about how misty and fleeting life is in Gaelic. Despite her status as a pagan spirit, her is invaluable in helping Brendan create the Catholic book. She even risks her life to let him to enter the cave of Crom Cruach, the film’s other major figure from pagan mythology.

Crom Cruach was a real Celtic deity associated with human sacrifice, who in the movie is responsible for wiping out all of the forest spirits besides Aisling. He is Aisling’s thematic and visual opposite. Whereas she is pure white and made of flowing lines, he is black and angular and serves as the harmful, frightening side of paganism to counter her benevolence. His mere presence nearly spells death to Aisling, infecting her with dark veins of evil when she lifts the stone to let Brendan access his cave. Despite how dangerous he is to spirits, against Brendan Crom is barely a threat. He uses his talent at illumination, honed to illustrate a Christian book, to trap Crom in a drawing. Without being able to move, Crom eats himself alive. From his body, Brendan steals his eye to use as a magnifying glass so that he can illustrate the book with greater detail. He returns to the abbey without seeing Aisling, and works on the book without venturing into the forest again. Even when he and Brother Aiden must flee from the Viking attack, he only glimpses her as a wolf while a pack attacks the invaders. The last time they meet is years later, when an adult Brendan returns to bring the finished book back to Kells after decades of wandering to show it to the Irish people. He sees her as a wolf, and though she laughs she does not speak to him.

Good spirits and evil spirits are more concrete and useful than the Christian God throughout The Secret of Kells, and yet the spirits we see are helpful because of the way that they aid in the creation of a Catholic artifact. Crom is evil and chaotic, but is defeated almost immediately when exposed to the symbolic light of knowledge in illumination. Aisling is kind and self-sacrificial in trying to help Brendan finish the book, but once the book is finished and he has a greater duty he leaves her behind. The book represents a clear and permanent beauty of the sort that Aisling’s song to Pangur Bán claimed was impossible. In the end, the Pagan, magical, natural world is shown as dangerous, beautiful, and beneficial but fleeting, a tool to aid in the creation of an enduring artifact of knowledge, humanity, and Christianity.

Style in Animation: The Triplets of Belleville (Elizabeth)

            As a lover of animation, it’s always a great pleasure to me when I discover an animated movie with a unique, distinct style. Far too many cartoons feel the need to be cartoony, full of bright colors, simple plots, and childish humor. For a medium whose main benefit is the unique creative possibilities that it provides, it’s disappointing that most films feel the need to ape either Disney fantasies or Dreamworks comedies. On a purely stylistic level, the gorgeous French movie The Triplets of Belleville was a wonderful departure from this norm.

            The film opens on a parody and stylistic throwback to old black-and white theatrical cartoons, complete with a filter to emulate aged film. It features rubber hose limbs, odd transformations, and smooth lines, with a song in the style of 1920s music to match. It is an old-fashioned, goofy parody that manages to homage early animation while taking a few dark jabs at its conventions, such as by having a performer eaten alive on stage by his own living shoes.

            After this sequence is when the film’s own unique style comes into play. Visually, the differences from standard Disney-type animation are striking. In 2003, around the time that CGI was first beginning to overtake traditional animation, the film seems to revel in its hand-drawn, human touches. Unlike the crisp, clean lines associated with most theatrical animation, the film maintains a slightly sketchy, artistic look, especially in its backgrounds. The colors are muted and washed out, making every shot carry a melancholy tone. Rather than making sure that its characters maintain an innocent, cute appearance, the film exaggerates their features to create grotesque but meaningful designs. Champion, who neglects most areas of his life to obsessively train to race bicycles, is painfully thin, but with bulging, muscular legs. The henchmen of the French Mafia appear as an impenetrable, square-shouldered wall that absorbs and highlights their boss as he walks before them. Even Madam Souza, the main character, is comically short, unbalanced, and severely wrinkled, with a big nose and a prominent blemish on the side of her face, daring to be old six years before Up. The film rejects perfection and shininess in every shot.

            The other big stylistic departure is the fact that the film is almost entirely voiceless, told through pantomime. The only times when the human voice is heard in a significant way are the music numbers when the triplets put on their shows. Emotion is conveyed through carefully drawn faces, the actions of the characters, and especially through the oppressiveness of the music and environments. Through this, even the dog is a sympathetic, understandable character. The story that this technique tells is dark and satiric as well. Belleville, an amalgam of New York City and Paris, is full of stupid, fat, obnoxious locals who ignore the plight of those around them. Criminals move openly without fear of repercussions, exploiting innocents to slavery just for the purposes of entertainment and killing them when they can no longer work. A boy grows up with the sole dream of winning the Tour de France, trains for all his life, and cannot even complete the race. Specific jabs are taken at Disney itself, to complete the rejection of its influence of modern animation. Most obvious is the photograph of a boy at Disney World, being given a lollipop reading “SUCKER.”

            There is nothing wrong with the standard, feel-good Disney formula, but the fact that theatrical animation needs to tailor itself to this family-friendly standard is a shame. The Triplets of Belleville is not a perfect movie, but its unique style, dark tone, and beautiful ugliness make it stand out against a sea of safe, childish cartoons.

The Sovereignty of Technology and Mankind’s Oppression in Gen Urobuchi’s Psycho-Pass (Yasmine)

   Imagine a world where your thoughts and emotions were no longer your own under the watchful eye of a tyrannical system—a world in which the state of your mental health could be enough to label you a criminal for life. Such is the world illustrated in the anime crime-thriller TV series Psycho-Pass. In this futuristic setting crime prevention has become more heavy-handed and exact with the advancement of a technological system called Sybil, a super-computer that acts as judge and executioner for people who demonstrate the psychological potential for crime. To appease the machine’s algorithm, citizens anxiously groom their personalities, avoiding stress and negative experiences—essentially becoming slaves to the oppressive technology. Men and women in the Criminal Investigation Bureau (WPSCIB), tasked with protecting the safety of civilians, regard the system like an omnipotent god, obliging the Sibyl System’s judgment even when it means the incarceration or annihilation of civilians who have not yet committed a crime but display a high criminal potential. Instead of merely serving as a tool to maintain peace and promote national wellness the technology’s authority supersedes human institutions of law, undermines the human experience, and denies the potential for growth.

    The prevalence and power of technology makes itself evident when we first become acquainted with the high-tech Japanese city. With a gritty noir style the opening scene of episode one paints a bleak picture of the nighttime cityscape with high contrast lighting and cuts to ominous back alleys. An areal view reveals a mass of moving cars followed by a shot of robot drones monitoring the streets for potential criminals. By contrast, the initial lack of human presence illustrates the dominance of technology. When crowds of people eventually do appear huddled around a crime scene, a downpour of rain obscures their facial expressions conveying a lack of individuality. Hiding behind holograms of large child-faced dolls, the security drones display their authority, successfully blocking the crowd away from the crime scene. The line of robots forming a barrier in front of the unorganized crowd of dazed humans denotes the efficiency and repressive nature of the robots while also signifying the powerlessness of the people who comply with the robots’ commands. The composition demonstrates that like caged cattle the people are fenced in, repressed as they are pushed to the edge of the frame by the holograms towering over them. The arrival of the protagonist and newly appointed Crime Investigator, Akane Tsunemori further elucidates this point as she rushes into the scene before bowing to the robot—an apology as well as a sign of submission. In the absence of a legal system, Sybil reigns supreme.

    As the show progresses, it becomes clear that in order to maintain a safe and ideal society the officers of the law have become tools of technology, relinquishing their own judgment in favor of the Sybil System's black and white system of justice. If the computer judges someone to be a latent criminal, no matter how upstanding their lives, it orders the removal of that individual from society by either lethal or non-lethal means.  The Sybil System exacts this power through Enforcers, latent criminals forced to apprehend other latent criminals, and Investigators like Tsunemori who keep the Enforcers in check. Arriving to the crime scene in a paddy wagon and kept on a tight leash like prisoners, the Enforcers are regarded as subhuman and “bankrupt of moral character” despite appearing normal—a consequence of the Sybil computer’s tyranny.

 

The Dominator--Weapon of The Sybil System from "Psycho-Pass"

 The computer demonstrates a lack of moral bias that although standardized, can hardly be called just. Having outlawed real guns and deeming human beings (even police officers) too unpredictable and irrational, the Sybil System leaves no room for human error. Instead Enforcers and Investigators wield weapons called Dominators, which have a direct connection to the Sibyl system and only fire when the Sybil system decides an individual is a threat. As its name suggests, the Dominator denotes technology’s dominion over human willpower, rationality, and choice. It becomes apparent that the Sybil system substitutes cold logic for human compassion when the Dominator decides a rape victim’s crime coefficient is a potential threat, ordering Tsunemori and her colleagues to kill the woman in the same way they killed her attacker. Tsunemori, the most empathetic character in the series, appears trapped in a tight frame, which restricts her movement as she watches her peers mindlessly obey Sibyl’s commands. While the police officers can choose whether or not to pull the trigger, not doing so is a violation of societal norms and the nature of their work, and therefore a criminal offense. Consequently, the inability to decide the fate of those they aim to protect and the stigma against utilizing their own moral judgment hinders the Crime Investigation Bureau from exacting justice. As the series progresses Tsunemori must reconcile her compassion and earnest desire to protect innocent lives with a system she knows is a necessary evil.  

 

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A Different Take on Dreams and Nightmare in 1988's Alice (Steven)

Jan Švankmajer’s 1988 film Alice, one of many adaptations of Lewis Carroll’s well-known work, mixes stop-motion and live action footage to depict an unsettling, dream-like Alice in Wonderland. Jan’s Wonderland is an old house. Both timeless and inconstant, it’s a place where cracked walls repair themselves and threadbare creatures sew holes back up. Each shot is cramped and detailed. Jan focuses on objects and poses rather than vistas or facial expressions. The Wonderland house resembles a twisted I Spy book with its piles of wooden toys, bones, tattered cloth, sawdust, and leaves.

Unlike many dream-inspired films, the sensations in Alice are rooted and immediate. There are no psychedelic washes of color or vague mists here: it’s a world of sharp sounds and sharp corners. Jan achieves strangeness not through otherworldly imagery but by placing and attaching familiar things in unfamiliar ways. This collage-like method reflects the laziness of our subconscious. Rarely are dreams original creations of our minds; instead, they steal ideas and images from our waking lives and put them together in often nonsensical ways.

Jan is eerily in tune with the tones of our childhood dreams, and he’s not afraid to present an honest portrait of them. There’s no shortage of nightmare in the film. The sounds, which, of course, can’t be traditionally produced due to the stop animation, always feel a little louder and more staccato than they need to be. Even in the cases where a normal recording of the sounds of the scene could have been used, Jan often uses a similar sound from a completely different origin, as when Alice claps her hands and produces a noise much harsher and shriller than a normal clap. This sharp soundtrack heightens the unease of creepy moments, but the unfamiliarity also makes the watcher listen more consciously to sounds which might otherwise have gone unnoticed. There’s no score outside of the title credits, but sometimes these noises approach musique concrète in their rhythmic insistency.

While there are no jump scares or gore, the film does not have a dearth of visual creepiness, either. Death, decay, and violence reoccur as motifs. Skulls hatch from chicken eggs and scuttle into the shadows, skeletal chimeras march along dirty floors, and a flank of steak flops to a new hiding spot when disturbed. The “Drink Me” bottle not only makes Alice small, it also turns her into an uncanny doll. In one scene, the minified Alice is forced by dead animals to walk the plank into a pot of milk, which turns out to be another transformative liquid with an unsettling effect: Alice grows again, but instead of a girl or a doll she becomes a girl entombed alive in a doll-shaped sarcophagus.

Taste, or more accurately hunger, is also a consistent theme both in Jan’s adaptation and in the original book. In Alice, the white rabbit is introduced as a taxidermied specimen in Alice’s room. It creaks itself free of the supports and chatters incessantly through big yellow teeth. It greedily licks sawdust from the timepiece it keeps lodged inside its own body cavity. Once in Wonderland, Alice tries to eat anything that looks edible, but jelly jars are filled with tacks and nails sprout from loaves of bread, and most of the things she does manage to consume coincide with the size-changing substances from the book. Her narration is frequently paired with extreme close-up shots of her mouth pronouncing the words. Hunger is an astute choice from Lewis Carroll, as young children think about it quite often, both inside and outside of sleep. Jan Švankmajer makes sure to point out that they also think of death and violence more than most adults would like to admit.

Alice manages to marry creepiness with wonder in its surrealist exploration. As with most of Jan’s work, the film carries with it a dose of absurdist humor. He breaks the fourth wall early in the film with an odd bit of narration from Alice’s lips: “Now you will see a film… made for children. Perhaps.” A film for brave children, perhaps, or a film for adults to think and dream and have nightmares as kids for an hour.

Attack On Titan: The Preservation and Destruction of Social Order (Yasmine)

A society is typically formed by a group of individuals interconnected by shared values, norms, and culture.  Members of a society maintain social order by reinforcing established customs to keep its members in check and ensure stability.  In the emotionally charged Japanese anime, Attack on Titan, humanity struggles to keep its society in tact as humanoid giants called Titans relentlessly devour humans, forcing mankind to hide behind fifty-meter walls to save themselves from extinction. In the beginning of the series, the idealistic protagonist, Eren Yeager dreams of a free life outside the walls, contradicting the mores of his society which prefers a life of containment to certain death.  The barriers which humans have erected to escape annihilation become both a sanctuary and a prison for the kingdom, signifying society’s propensity toward social constraint and fear of that which disrupts social order.

The three walls: Wall Maria, Rose, and Sina exemplify the way in which societies rely on social structure for stability and containment of its members. The story’s narrator explains that since its creation not a single Titan has been able to infiltrate Wall Maria, thus inspiring social tranquility.  With its immense height and enduring structure made of solid stone, the one-hundred-year-old wall epitomizes permanence and security. An aerial view of the Zhiganshina District enclosed in Wall Maria reveals a somewhat medieval society with an organized collection of homes and markets.  The carefree social interactions amongst the townspeople, the trading of goods in the market, presence of families, children playing, and a laid back police force give evidence to the sense of peace and stability humanity experiences within the walls.  In contrast, the outside world and the Titans who rampage in it are equated with chaos and cultural genocide.

The Titans’ place on the fringe of society, their incomprehensibly monstrous behavior, as well as their unorthodox appearance makes them the antithesis of civilization and societal control. Though the Titans resemble bipedal humanoids, their gargantuan size, nudity, and deformity immediately sets them apart from the civilized humans inside the walls. Despite shambling about aimlessly in groups, the Titans do not conform to any preconception of a uniformly functioning community. The Titans’ zeal for devouring people and wiping out humanity for no discernable reason makes them a hideous blight on human progress and a potential disruption of social order. Since Titans do not need to consume people to sustain their own existence, humanity assumes the Titans’ singular motivation is the eradication of human life and culture. With Titans possessing neither a complex language system, nor a means of governing themselves their actions are unpredictable and symbolically anarchistic. In this sense Titans are more than just a threat to human lives; the terror they instill jeopardizes the social glue that keeps society from falling apart.  The Titans’ resemblance to humans makes their murderous actions more disturbing, suggesting that without social control and stability the illusion of peace would falter and humanity would succumb to an existence of endless conflict and violence amongst its own members. To spare society from the Titans’ negative influence, humanity heavily guards what is left of its customs, placing an exaggerated emphasis on the necessity for containment within the walls to keep curious members from the lawless world beyond.

Although the three walls surrounding this human civilization safeguard the communities from the uncivilized outside world, they also imprison them, limiting their perceptions. The dynamics of the insular kingdom demonstrate how the walls are heavily embedded within the social structure of humanity’s sequestered survivors. A priest travels the districts of Wall Rose shouting praises and personifying the wall as though it were a savior and a god, exhibiting the wall’s influence on the citizens’ religious and cultural life. It becomes evident that any mention of life beyond the wall is considered culturally taboo when Eren’s friend Armin expresses a desire for humanity to explore territories outside the wall and is consequently harassed by a group who accuses him of heresy. This shaming ritual and other methods of social correction: such as ridicule and shunning perpetuate an isolationist mentality, a fear of change, and a dangerously irrational optimism. As Eren says, humanity’s fear of the outside world has made it like “ignorant cattle” merely “surviving” but unable to live or control the terms of its existence.  Like cattle the inhabitants of Wall Maria were unprepared for the slaughter.

The sudden appearance of the first 60-meter “Colossal Titan” looming menacingly over the wall literally paralyzes society, as citizens of Wall Maria stand still and helpless beneath the Titan’s powerful gaze.  With a mighty kick, the Colossal Titan breaks the barrier, instantly mangling the carefully constructed society. As citizens scramble to escape the horde of Titans, homes, families, and social order are destroyed as Wall Maria crumbles. This indicates humanity's lack of control, the inevitability of change, and society’s need to adapt to it. Once again humans must flee the Titans; the “humiliation of being kept in a cage” intensifies as they retreat to the more confining inner walls, desperately seeking structure which, like Wall Maria, has fallen apart almost beyond repair. In order to save themselves, the people must learn to accept and face the threat of the Titans head on if they ever hope to reclaim what they have lost. 

You'll Get Used to It (Natasha)

    Thinking back to the trailers and stills I saw when the film came out, I expected A Scanner Darkly, Richard Linklater's adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel, to be the weirdest-looking movie I'd ever seen.  Instead, I grew accustomed to the singular effect of "interpolated rotoscoping" inside of a minute, and proceeded to marvel at how closely certain of the animated shots resembled live action.  Linklater employed the rotoscoping tactic five years before in Waking Life, but that film's decidedly sunnier outlook means the animation looks much sunnier as well.  Scanner's unique appeal is its grittiness, a grittiness that makes the animation look eerily realistic.  Did Linklater rotoscope to create a dystopian mood in his near futuristic setting?  Was it to firmly remove the story from the present, or to make it seem like a projection rather than a depiction?  Was it another attempt to show us what his dreams look like, as he may have intimated in St. Richard of Austin, a documentary on England's Channel 4 (I say "may have" because I merely read brief accounts of the documentary and have not yet found a way to watch it myself)?  Whatever its intention, rotoscoping does not manage to alienate us from the world in the film.  After a minute, rotoscoping alters the film's world only slightly--not enough to be conspicuous, but enough to make us uneasy without knowing why.

    The uniquely flat animation used for the "scramble suits" (government officials' full-body sheaths that project partial images of millions of strangers to keep the wearers anonymous) offers a contrast that further legitimizes the faces of the people inside them.  These scramble suits are meant to obscure and dehumanize within the world of the film, but they do so even more effectively for the audience:  In a privileged view into the suit, we see the world-weary and disgusted face of Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves), who looks completely real following the conspicuously animated suit.  We do not, however, believe he is completely real.  Linklater's particular animation style exaggerates the shading on each face until it becomes an array of neutrals in irregular shapes, in constant motion, brought to life by a very human set of eyes.  The result is a sense of movement just beneath the skin, a freaky look that puts us on the same perceptually impaired level as the film's "Substance D" drug addicts:  The immediately addictive drug's primary effect is visual hallucination within real settings, and the recognizable but supremely strange world of the film gives us a similarly trippy experience (minus the feeling of bugs crawling all over us).

    If it was indeed Linklater's intent to make Scanner as dreamlike as possible, he succeeded in a way that has nothing to do with the visual quality of the film.  The insurmountable tension, the vague knowledge of unspecified high stakes and the big hint of confusion that gripped me all the way through my "wait, what?" moment at the very end aligned my experience of watching A Scanner Darkly with the feeling I have just before I realize I'm dreaming.  It is a beautiful and terrifying feeling, being so enthralled by a dream; spirited away by whatever absurd directive my subconscious gives my dreaming self, my mind grants unrelenting focus to each new development of the dream while I lie captivated and motionless.  I imagine I looked much the same watching Scanner, save that my eyes were very wide open.

 

 

~ Natasha Hirschfeld

Let the Dark Knight be Dark: Maturity in Batman: The Animated Series (Chris D)

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.

Scribbled in Blood: The Ghoulish ABC's of David Lynch's Short Film THE ALPHABET (Kyle)

I mentioned the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges in my previous post (on the topic of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut) and it seemed to go over well -- at least in the eyes of an approving commenter named Paul -- and so I've decided to do it again, this time in the service of David Lynch's 1968 experimental short "The Alphabet." In the epigraph to his philosophical fantasy "The Library of Babel" (go ahead, click the link, read it, you'll thank me), Borges cites the 17th-century Englishman Robert Burton:

"By this art you may contemplate the variations of the 23 letters..."

--- The Anatomy of Melancholy, part 2, sect. II, mem. IV

In "The Alphabet" -- created when Lynch was but a 22-year-old art student with a feverish imagination, not yet the grey-bouffanted eccentric of popular lore -- we witness the nightmarish exaltation of not just 23, but indeed all 26 letters of the English alphabet. But despite that arithmetic discrepancy, the game is roughly the same: Lynch takes a set of arbitrary, innocent symbols, and, through artful variation, sharpens them and loads them with miasmatic ill-will. The half-animated, half-live-action short (viewable on the web) superficially resembles an elementary-school instructional video of sorts -- sing-song voices chant the letters of the alphabet, which float onto the screen in various witty animations -- but it doesn't take long for those letters to transcend their communicative function and become, instead, the twisted talismans of some malicious intent. Like the falling droplets in an ancient Chinese water torture, the letters ignite a latent madness buried beneath the clean animated surface of the film's beginning. Abstract shapes embark on odd pilgrimages, fuse with other shapes, bristle with sickly restlessness, converse with a bare-breasted corpse-woman, and so, unmoored and queasy, we tumble into a world of live-action red-pierced monochrome. The film ends with a grotesque girl-creature writhing in bed, incanting the letters of the alphabet as if they were the pet names of the Devil himself, before finally vomiting forth a spattering of blood: the elements of speech transubstantiated into the particles of disease...

This typographical nightmare also marks the beginning of David Lynch's career-spanning obsession with sound design: bird-like yawps unsettlingly evoke both the vulnerability of birth and the anguish of death, while desolate wind (or machinery?) sounds imbue the flat animations with all the vastness of an uninhabited dystopia. But even as "The Alphabet" sees Lynch experimenting for the first time with sonic atmospherics (experiments which he continues to perform to this day), with dis-continuity editing, and with other temporally-encoded aspects of film language, the film also functions as a last hurrah of sorts for David Lynch the painter/collage artist. Educated as a visual artist of the pigment-on-canvas variety, Lynch was famously (or not-so-famously, I don't know, I'm a bit of a cultist) inspired to take up film when he saw one of his paintings flutter in the wind -- coming to cinematic life, as it were. This origin story -- one for the ages, I think -- is manifest in his very first film ("Six Men Getting Sick"), which come across, essentially, as an Abstract Expressionist sketch graced with the breath of life. "The Alphabet" retains much of this animated-collage aesthetic, but also -- significantly -- contains one of Lynch's first forays into live action, with all that that implies (mise en scène, editing, actors, cinematography, makeup...) As such, "The Alphabet" can be fruitfully read as a document of a young man in a state of aesthetic (and professional) transition, veering towards cinema, but refusing to accept its strictures point-blank, choosing instead to reshape the medium into something of his own making -- something morbid, something inscrutable, something darkly comic, in short, something Lynchian. 

Keep in mind, though, that this is neither the mid-career Lynch of macabre '50s-infused Americana (vide Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks) nor the later Lynch of recursive Hollywood melodrama (Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire), but rather the early, flagrantly grotesque art-horror of Eraserhead -- all oozing secretions and bodily perversions and aimless torment and pancake makeup. As a disembodied, bloody-gummed, eyeless face aptly intones near the end of "The Alphabet": "Please remember that you are dealing with the human form." Indeed, this is one of Lynch's main preoccupations, addressed obliquely but relentlessly not just here but throughout his whole oeuvre. He probes the fragility of the human mind and body, its frail architecture, its mutations, its laughable deformities, its perpetual susceptibility to infection by foreign shapes, objects and dreams. Just as Betty/Diane is seduced, corrupted and ultimately driven to bodily madness by the Hollywood image-factory of Mulholland Drive, so too is the nameless bedridden girl in "The Alphabet" tormented to the point of blood-spewing hysteria by abstract letters that colonize her mental space like so many microbes. It is, after all, no accident that gruesome head wounds feature as a recurring trope in almost all of Lynch's films...!

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Photo courtesy of jvoves's Flickr. Cropped and copied in accordance with this Creative Commons license.

The Works of Satoshi Kon, and the Impossible Pursuit of Perfection (Katie)

Fans of Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan would find watching Satoshi Kon's 1998 animated film, Perfect Blue, something like a case of retro déja vu. The similarities between the films are not a coincidence – Aronofsky was not only aware of Perfect Blue, he had even purchased the rights to it when making Requiem for a Dream, in order to exactly re-create the bathtub scene for his film. While Black Swan is not a remake of Perfect Blue, it draws heavily from the same themes – duality, madness, and the desire to reach a stage of impossible perfection.

 Perfect Blue is the story of Mima, a pop idol who wishes to leave her idol profession and branch into acting. This seems to please no one – her ex-pop idol manager is extremely protective of her, and disapproves of the roles she is offered and how she is treated by the directors of the television show Mima is cast in. The one most upset is Mima's number one fan, who stalks her every move and runs a website dedicated to Mima. In order to succeed and distance herself from her idol past, Mima agrees to appear in a violent rape scene, and then to pose for nude pictures – which brings her both success and misery.

 As she questions whether she is following the right path, she begins to hallucinate a double of herself – the Idol Mima, still fresh-faced and innocent, who taunts her for her mistakes and insecurities. Mima begins to sink into delusions and madness – she begins to read the blog on her website (which are not even written by her) in order to remember what she did that day. The scenes from her television show begin to merge with her real life. The Idol Mima pops up everywhere she goes. When the photographer from her nude photo shoot is stabbed to death, Mima can't remember whether or not she is the murderer.

Mima struggles with the duality of her image and her self, unable to reconcile her past as a pop idol, and her future as an adult woman in charge of her acting career. But unlike Nina in Black Swan, who destroys herself in order to achieve perfection, Mima finds that she is the victim of her manager, Rumi, who has been living vicariously through Mima. The climactic ending sequence is a grotesque and physical battle of the Mima's – and while it is revealed that Rumi was heavily manipulating Mima's life, it does not explain away how Mima continues to see Rumi as a ghostly specter of herself. In the end, it is implied that they are both disillusioned – but Mima has been able to reconcile her personality split, while Rumi could not.

 In the search for her identity, reality for Mima becomes mutable and fluid, a jungle of mirrors and images, a cobbled-together world of illusion, constructed experiences, false narratives, and deception.

 Satoshi Kon continues to play with the theme of distorted reality and narrative in his 2001 film, Millennium Actress. The film follows the life story of Chiyoko Fujiwara, an actress whose career spanned for decades in Japanese cinema, as she is interviewed by her biggest fan, Genya Tachibana. A scene towards the opening of the story is an early hint of the merging of reality and film that is to come – the audience watches as a young Chiyoko climbs into a spaceship which begins to liftoff. The camera then cuts out to reveal the scene is actually a video that Genya is watching, and as the spaceship rumbles into space, the room around Genya begins to shake. For a brief moment the film world and the real world are one – until it is revealed that it isn't the spaceship shaking the room, but an actual earthquake.

 The merging of reality and narrative continues as Chiyoko tells her story to Genya and his cameraman, and the flashbacks become not only her interior reflections, but an interactive experience. Genya and the cameraman become part of the flashbacks, watching and commenting on Chiyoko's actions and experiences. Yet there are even more layers to this constructed reality, as her recounting of her life becomes the recounting of her film roles, with no distinction between the two. The narrative becomes an epic of not only her story, but the story of Japanese cinema, of Japanese history, and Japanese history as told through cinema. She journeys through time and space in order to achieve her goal – to reunite with a painter, in order to return a key he lent to her with a promise to meet again.

It proves impossible for her to meet her painter again. Yet the story of Chiyoko's chase is more thrilling and fulfilling than any outcome where she and her beloved painter could be reunited. The narrative of her life story is what gives it meaning, even as it seems to be foolish to chase an impossible goal. On some level, Millenium Actress and Perfect Blue are both about the same thing – the impossible pursuit of perfection, and the toll it takes on an individual. Perfect Blue presents a pessimistic outcome – the complete fragmentation of Mima and Rumi's identities. Millenium Actress is more optimistic, presenting the impossible pursuit as more personally enriching than the goal itself. Both films present challenging and complex narratives, and are excellent examples of animated films that are not just for children. 

That Anime Thing: Philosophical Cartoons? (Leela)

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 (Inhye)

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 (Shauna)

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" (Shauna)

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 Christmasemploy 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 (Jason)

    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.