I said, i don't count these things. What is murder-suicide anyway, like when you jump from a rooftop and someone shots you in midair? ;D
What I was talking about is that death or injuries avoided at all costs. I see nothing bad in not wanting to show violence to children but, hell, just don't make cartoons about violence! It's THAT simple damn it! Making cartoons about criminals and soldiers without violence is not working. It's simply not working! And the problem is not absence of violence (and honestly you can think of plots without violence about those guys), but ( ^ laff so much violence ^_^) rather absence of consequences of that violence. I won't go as far as saying that any child who saw someone dropping an anvil (btw I wonder how many ppl would know what is an anvil if not for cartoons? =))) on someone else's head without any consequences will immediately do the same to his friend, but such things surely don't help understanding the world around him. And when an individual passed the stage of basic understanding of the world around him, such things simply breaking immersion. You feel that that world is not real so you can't empathize with those who live there. At least I can't. It's natural. I know, that when my hand is hit by a closing door it's hell lot of pain and I'm lucky to not break my fingers and when I see how in the same situation in a cartoon hand flattens and goes in normal state in a couple of seconds I don't know how that feels. So I can't feel the same. This will distance me from a character and next time he will show some feeling I theoretically can understand (like sadness, for example) I won't simply because I don't understand his feelings anymore. Well, it's not that I'm sitting and thinking "oh I can sympathize with this one, but not with that one, because..." - it's all subconscious.
Well, I strayed a bit. Violence was a side remark, if you want to talk about violence let me know ^_^ This topic and my post in it tempted me to watch some old cartoons. I used youtube for that and read a lot of comments. I'll work with some opinions from them. I payed attention mostly to the foreign ones, since russian ones were mainly "yay, my fav childhood cartoon!" or "Russia is teh best, America licks donkey balls!" and other very "informative". So one interesting opinion I saw was that russian cartoons not unreal enough, they look more like movies rather than cartoons. Hmmm what? Cartoons should be unreal? Actually I found out long ago that many people mix concepts of "real" and "realistic" and when someone says "unreal" he most likely means "unrealistic". Almost all cartoons and most movies are unreal = do not describe things exactly as they are in our world. I mean, if you see in a movie like someone drives through whole Moscow without staying for hours in traffic jams - that's unreal ;D But not unrealistic. Flying over it by flapping your arms - that's unrealistic. So, being real or unreal is decided by the theme of a cartoon, but should cartoons be unrealistic? Or rather do they have to be unrealistic? My answer is no. The less realistic thing is, the less connection it has with you, since you and world around you is as realistic as it can be. Whole unrealistic setting can be a selling point, but adding it to any cartoon? Hell no. It harms immersion and overall impact. Or maybe someone simply doesn't want cartoons to have impact on them? Hmmm that's worth additional investigation.
Anyway, let's go on. This part will be dedicated to modern cartoons an old handmade ones. I don't say hand drawn since there are other techniques. Sooo... Cartoons made with help of computers obviously lacking. Some say they lack soul. I won't be that categorical, I would say they lack warmth. A good comparison is a picture against a photograph. Photo can also be a piece of art and have a soul, yet you will never feel that warmth that's coming from a hand drawn picture. New cartoons look sterile like an operating room. And even when they try to look like "good old drawn cartoons" it's still the same operating room just with some garbage on the floor. Is it bad? Surely not, but just as with pictures and photos, focus moved from "how" to "what". Not as drastically, but still it's showing. And here disaster named movies awaited cartoons. Movies are already focused on what to show. So now cartoons are invading into moves domain, even turning unrealistic isn't helping that much anymore - movies learned that trick with CG. Look at most animes and things like Simpsons - you can turn them into movies anytime without loosing anything important. So talking about cartoons I'll be talking about the times when how to animate was at least as important and sometimes more important than what meaning the resulting creation should have.
I decided to talk about soviet cartoons mostly, even though I'll inevitably touch world animation. First of all it's better known to me since I'm russian myself and second it may be more interesting to you as well, since american animation is vastly known around the world and you may have first hand experience with it.
People often compare western (or rather american) and soviet animation. And they aren't wrong about doing so and I'll do the same a bit later, just need to talk about some background first. Soviet Union, as you know, was chasing communism. Even though it was utopia, some steps were taken, like lack of private property on a large scale. That means pretty much any production belonged to the state, including production of cartoons. So animators was getting fixed salary and had no need to sell their creations - they didn't belong to them at the first place. So you see, soviet animators had more freedom than their american counterparts. This may sound absurd, but just think about it. Soviet animators needed to please several committee which consisted of concrete men (yeah yeah, all the connections and bribes are at your disposal if it comes to that) while american ones needed to please millions of people at once. And if you fail to please them in the first case you'll just loose time making everything from the scratch (or just make some corrections here and there) while in the second case you loose money. And quite a lot of them. So american animators chose an obvious path in their circumstances - found "magic formula" and started to milk it. Cartoon series are exploitation of that idea. I mean, it's HOURS of the same art and animation technique. And even different series are usually done in the same technique if created by the same studio. This led to raising that technique to extremes. Disney's animation is outstanding. I say Disney's because I can make a mistake naming some other studio without checking wiki... Their styles are so alike! Of course, if you put two works from two different studios in front of my eyes I can tell a difference, but it's not major enough to recall it on fly. Well maybe Hanna-Barbera differs, but mostly in quality rather than principles.
Soviet animation had completely different background, so no wonder it also differs principally. If you're not bound by money and you're creator (and I don't actually believe that on such work you can do anything "only for money" as some "all new things are soulless shit" like to say) it will be very boring for you to do the same thing over and over again. And they didn't. Wnen someone says "soviet animation" no picture flashing in my mind. What is soviet animation? Every studio had its own style and even every director within it. Hell, even the same director rarely did the same thing more than couple times. You could usually feel "his hand", but that's it. So talking about soviet animation as a whole is almost impossible. Well, american animation is also not that simple, even if it's easier to generalize, no serious discussion can feed on such large generalizations. Anyway, before going concrete I'll say couple words about these two groups as I see it. Some orthodoxes as usual claim that american animation has no soul. Don't actually know why all that crap about "xxx have no soul" is that popular... Guess it's the only negative opinion apart from "xxx is shit" those ppl know... Anyway, taking american and soviet animations as a whole I would say that the former is interesting to watch while the latter is pleasant to watch. Not that american one is unpleasant or soviet one is uninteresting, but just general feelings. Watching american cartoon you mostly think of what's going to happen next in the plot or what crazy trick will someone pull out in the next scene, and while watching soviet one you pay more attention to backgrounds, intonations and overall atmosphere. First of all because they let you. Soviet cartoons are slow paced and have lots of talking compared to american ones. In general, of course. I think here lies amazing longvivity. Interests of people change very fast, so chances you keep your interests from when you were 7-10 years old are pretty slim. So watching most of the american cartoons of my childhood now is boring and I can't understand how could I enjoy something like this? On the other hand tastes rarely change. They do change, but slower and sometimes you like the same things for the whole life. I watched about 20 or so soviet cartoons and glanced through some long ones preparing this post and only couple of the very childish ones were not interesting to watch. Maybe it was also because there really were little cartoons "for children". Cartoons were "about something", not "for someone". That "something" was chosen so children can understand it, but rarely more. And you know, such things as friendship, joy, love and so on are not alien to adults, are they? And for children to understand love or hatred it shouldn't be between 5 year olds sitting in a sandbox, should it?
Ok, let's get closer to the topic. I already mentioned that soviet cartoons have more talking in them, in our case it's a drawback - subtitles don't work most of the time, harming reception greatly. So I tried to pick some without taking at all or where words don't carry much.
Conflict - a bit strange for the start... When I saw this cartoon first time I was around 6 or 7 years old and it had deep impact on me. I watched it many times after that. Having watched it now I'm still impressed. Very strong work indeed. And by what means!
The Nutcracker - this one is very interesting. Maybe interesting is not the right word... It's just
very, let it be so ;D Watching it now I understand it doesn't belong to the modern world. It saddens me... Really, where to watch something like this? It's too short for a cinema and TV... With 5 mins of commercials in the middle? Hell no! And how else will children see it? On youtube? There are many more "interesting" things for them there ;D Sigh...
Plasticine Crow - this one is renown and you most likely saw it already. But just in case. This cartoon is about animation and even though I linked the version with subtitles they don't carry much meaning so don't be distracted. Actually my most favorite soviet plasticine cartoon is mmm "Last year's snow was falling"? Or something like that if you translate the title, but it's loosing too much with subtitles so I won't recommend it if you don't understand russian. You can check it out if you want of course.
Film Film Film - this one is frequent guest on TV screens even now and it never dulls ;D Words that characters saying are gibberish so don't worry for not understanding =) If you think about it, movie making is not something children have to know about, but... Why not? That's a good example of cartoon that can be interesting for anyone. I mean, previous ones are also versatile, but kinda abstract, this one has very concrete theme and it's not among usual topics for children yet I don't see what child can't understand here, especially if he watches it with parents as it should be (parents who leave their children in front of a TV alone are ... not wise
).
Initially I planned for some ... strange cartoon here which had a song in it to link to the next topic, but I couldn't find suitable version so screw it. Lets rant about songs ;D I simply HATE songs in most Disney works. They are nice and all, but why the hell characters themselves singing them?! Is it some indian movie? That breaks all the mood! Really... I mean, Lion King is one of my favorite western cartoons and true masterpiece, but SINGING LIONS?! You kidding me? SINGING FUCKING LIONS?!!! I just can't accept it... Soviet cartoons don't disappoint me like this. First of all, not every long cartoon thinks it should have a song every 15 minutes. And second even if cartoon has songs and characters themselves are singing them it's linked to the plot! There are things like the whole cartoon is drawn to go with the song like a clip, but that's another thing. So compared to american ones soviet cartoons, especially 1h+ long, has very little songs. For me it's for the best since they are rarely fit - music alone is enough to create mood in most cases. Some soviet cartoons also have unfitting songs of course... Cartoons I don't like
Well, here should be some song... Let it be
this one. That cartoon has many songs, but they are linked to the plot plus this one is the best in my opinion. If you want to know what it's about then "night will pass - sun will rise" is enough to describe it =) In different meanings.
Ok, that's enough for the start of some productive discussion. I left out cartoons with dolls since I consider all of them creepy -_- And, as I said, many that greatly rely on talking. Like Alice in Wonderland... I saw it before, but didn't pay that much attention and watching it now... Hell, it's a textbook for a young troll! And voice acting is also amazing. Watching it after the Disney's version is... interesting ;D Too bad it's untranslatable =\ There are some long things that don't rely on wording that much, but still I need to watch them full to check the translation and I'm lazy
Anyway, let's talk about cartoons closely. Link some interesting ones that you like! Long series are out for most cases - there are rarely anything to discuss apart from plot or characters.
P.S. I made a spell check only, too tired atm to read this, I'll leave that to you ;D
).
Well, here should be some song... Let it be 