Gephyrophillia | Not An Update #8

Originally Posted on 02/13/2009 by Jeff Harris

This is not an update.

It's a dialogue about the fact that animation is treated as a second-class medium in the entertainment industry. Despite people saying otherwise, it's true. Don't believe me? Well, consider the following.

The Golden Bald-Headed Nearly Naked Man Award Nominations took place this week, and it has become apparent, for you latecomers out there, that the Best Animated Picture category is really a Best Children's Animated Picture category since, once again, kid-friendly animated titles dominated the nominees, Kung-Fu Panda, Wall-E, and Bolt.

Yes, it's almost a certainty that the Almighty Lamp will win yet another Oscar, even though many insiders believe that the Moon Fisher's martial arts flick was better and should be considered a legitimate contender. But a lot of the same folks wanted Wall-E to be nominated for Best Picture. But, once again, the venerated (read: old, antiquated, and out of touch) Academy decided that animation has no place at the Kodak Theater.

You know, let me deviate a moment while I ponder how many of today's readers below the age of 17 know what product Kodak is famous for and weep for my ancientness. Okay, deviation over.

Animation is not a genre nor should be treated as a separate genre. It's a medium. I feel like I'm repeating myself. Heck, animated pictures tend to be more entertaining than a lot of live-action films, especially the five nominations for Best Picture. And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Academy Awards supposed to be a celebration of artistic merit as well as dramatic achievement? I'm looking at the traditional definition of the word "drama," which is the ability to tell a story to a mass audience and not just limited to dramas.

There have been numerous animated films not aimed towards children that could have been easily be nominated for Best Animated Picture. Waltz With Bashir, which is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, could have easily been considered a nominee this year. However, because it's rated for mature audiences, it almost seems like it was snubbed for Best Animated Picture because Persepolis, a similar biographical foreign-language animated film, should have been nominated for Best Foreign Language Picture last year as well. Films like Beowulff, A Scanner Darkly, and Renaissance don't get nominated because of their adult nature even though they were high-quality films. Also, there's a bias against two-dimensional animated films that tends to favor the Almighty Lamp and the Moon Fisher more than other studios, although Spirited Away did win in 2002, which I may add was the only year more than three films were nominated. 2005 must have been disappointing to those computer animation purists because in that one year which didn't have any computer-animated titles at all.

The thing about the whole category is that it's unnecessary. It is. The whole thing about the Best Animated Picture category is that when the Oscar people say that animated titles could easily be nominated for Best Picture, they haven't nominated one in that category since Beauty and the Beast, the first and, so far, only animated title nominated. Films like Aladdin, The Lion King, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, Shrek, Spirited Away, Nightmare Before Christmas, and others all could have been nominated, but, at least in the case of Finding Nemo, Spirited Away, and Shrek, their subsequent nomination and win in the Best Animated Picture was just a bone tossed in their direction.

Another reason the Best Animated Picture category is a joke is because there's no Best Actor/Actress in an Animated Picture. It's bad enough Mel Blanc never won an Academy Award despite often being the solo performer in those award-winning shorts at Warner Bros., but it's equally bad that the vocal talents in each of those animated films fail to get noticed, let alone acknowledged for their contributions in those productions.

They're not getting rid of the Best Animated Picture category. They're not adding Best Actor and Best Actress in an Animated Picture categories. It's kind of . . . let me put it in this light.

Comedies and blockbusters are the candy of the Hollywood industry. Arthouse dramas that the general public didn't really see are tthe fruit of the industry. Animated films are the equivalent of a candy apple. Part junk food, part healthy food. They have to acknowledge the apple side of the candy as being healthy for you, but you can only eat so much of it because of the outer coating, which is why they want you to eat it in moderation. Three times a year rather than every day. And if you really like candy apples, like I do, you tend to get disappointed that you're not only getting three of them in a year, but they also took out the flavoring. Sure, it looks and smells like a candy apple, but the omission of the taste leaves one to wonder why they're giving it to you in the first place.

This is not an update. It's me finding myself wanting a tasty candy apple right about now.

Jeff Harris,
Webmaster, The X Bridge.