Reconstruction 8.2 (2008)


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Animated realities: the animated film, documentary, realism / Paul Ward

 

Introduction: animation and "the real"

<1> One of the most potentially interesting areas for discussion in Animation Studies is how animation relates to conceptions of the real and realism. As Maureen Furniss has noted (1998: 5ff), a typology of moving image production can be most usefully constructed around the relative realism attached to particular representations. The two opposing tendencies of mimesis and abstraction offer a multitude of intermediate positions where a specific text can be placed and thereby understood. There are two basic ways that one can approach this area. First of all, one can analyze and evaluate how animation "is realistic" (or not, as the case may be). In other words, one can look at how animated films mobilize conventions of realism in order to better communicate their message. Under this discussion would fall consideration of Disney's "hyper-realist" aesthetic, the more recent tendency in computer animation to eerily mimic the textures of a believably realistic world, and, even, the anthropomorphized approach of Aardman films like A Close Shave (1995) or Chicken Run (2000). All of these types of animation operate within acceptably recognized canons of "realism". They are all, also, generally operating within a recognizably fictional sphere.

<2> This leads us to the second possible approach. This is to look at how animation relates to representations of the real world itself, the real world of lived, material actuality (and, crucially, history). It is one thing to discuss the relative realisms of animated films that are clearly constructing a fictional space: no matter how "realistic" the imagery might look, we still know we are looking at - and are being asked to consider - a world, not the world (see Nichols, 1991: 109ff.). This second approach therefore takes us into a consideration of how animation relates to the field of documentary and non-fiction filmmaking. And here lies a distinct problem. As noted above, animation's essential "abstraction" tends to make the viewer aware that s/he is watching something other than a mimetic recording of an external reality. Any realism obtained in these films is to do with generic/narrative conventions and verisimilitude rather than any sense of the film actually resembling the world we live in.

<3> The central problem, then, for those who wish to discuss realist representations of any kind, and documentary representations in particular, is that "realism" is often misunderstood as, or reduced to, "correspondence". In other words, what is stressed is the indexical link between an external reality (the lived world of actuality) and the thing that purports to represent it. In the case of live action, the mimetic power of the image is often considerable. Even in those instances where there is a level of formal experimentation at other levels, the apparent correspondence between the cinematographic and the "real" means the image is recognized and understood as "real" by the viewer. This isn't to say that the viewer takes the image as reality itself, but that the image is read in terms of its extraordinary mimetic qualities [1].

<4> Furniss has developed the mimesis/abstraction continuum for motion pictures and we can place all moving imagery on it, positioned depending on their relative realisms. In other words, the continuum is one that is predicated on realism. In many ways, it would be helpful to develop a similar continuum for the broad area of overlapping practices commonly known as "documentary". Even though Furniss's continuum, by definition, can accommodate all moving image production, it is perhaps worth considering the specificity of documentary signifying practices by attempting to construct a similar continuum. Certainly, there are a number of issues relating to documentary - and its relationship to the real especially - that seem to require specific attention. More particularly, we need a model that will allow us to talk about animated documentaries, films that obviously do not "directly" represent "the real world" (or have the same correspondence to it that live-action documentaries can), but nevertheless do make some truth claims about the real world or historical events. Even at its most mimetic (e.g. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within [2001]) animation just does not correspond to the real in the same way as live-action. As suggested above, this does not mean that it cannot represent the real, or offer illuminating comment on it.

<5> Before moving on to look more specifically at animation and the documentary tendency, it is worth outlining in sketch form some of the theoretical debates that are relevant to this area. The notion of "correspondence", of a set of signifying practices actually referring to something, is seemingly very straightforward. Yet there exists a vast range of theoretical literature grappling with this apparently obvious issue, in a number of different ways. Later in this chapter I will argue from what I would call a "Realist" perspective (see Lovell, 1980). That is, a position that assumes first and foremost that there is an objective, "real" world "out there", independent of our perceptions of it. The problem, though, of language and sign-systems and how they represent the world, is of central importance to understanding any form of communication, including "animation" and "documentary". Saussurian linguistics posits a distinction between signifier and signified and in many ways this chapter is concerned with the "gap" or "slippage" between them, when viewed in relation to animated representations. In Saussure's terms, the signified is the actual concretely "real" thing that is referred to by the signifier. Both signified and signifier make up the sign. So, the letters C-A-T, in that order, refer to a particular animal. A photograph or drawing of one of these animals also acts as signifier to its signified. Yet these are all different kinds of sign. C. S. Peirce's typology of signs is useful as it points to the fact that there are potentially different ways of referring to things in the world. Bill Nichols summarizes Peirce's classification of signs as a trichotomy, where

Iconic signs resemble their source [drawings, for example]; indexical signs bear a 'point-for-point' correspondence with their source [X rays, photographs, fingerprints, for example], and symbols bear an arbitrary relation [words, Morse code, national flags]. (1994: 18)

As already noted, the apparent epistemological certainty of documentary has tended to mean that it is inextricably linked to "correspondence" or "indexicality" to use Peirce's terminology. However, we do need to recognize that the way in which a documentary might refer to the world is not always going to be the "point-for-point" manner to which Nichols alludes. In particular, animated representations of the real social world tend to problematize such a notion, something I return to below.

<6> However, there is a school of thought that argues that animation, by virtue of its essential "abstraction" (no matter how mimetic an animation might be, it will always be nearer to the center of Furniss's continuum than the "mimesis" pole) cannot (and should not) attempt to mimic reality. This is a particularly resonant point when considering what Paul Wells terms the "documentary tendency" of some animation (1998: 28). Those who view animation's essence as residing in its more experimental approaches see no point in such a form setting out to represent reality. Indeed, William Moritz expresses an extreme version of this train of thought, when he says

No animation film that is not non-objective and/or non-linear can really qualify as true animation, since the conventional linear representational story film has long since been far better done in live-action. (1988: 21)

<7> There are considerable problems with this assertion. Apart from anything else, it seems to suggest that any animation that is "not non-objective and/or non-linear" must therefore, by definition, be attempting to be a "conventional linear representational story film". But these two extremes are hardly the only options open to filmmakers in either live action or animation. In addition to this, it has to be said that Moritz's terms are somewhat vague and (unsurprisingly enough for someone trying to argue that "non-objectivity" and "non-linearity" are the essence of animation) fall into an essentialist trap of implying something like "this form can do x, therefore x is its 'destiny', and all it should ever do". Finally, and most serious of all, this is a statement that completely ignores the complex contextual, historical and ideological reasons why a specific form (whether "live action film", "animation", or "documentary", or even "parliamentary democracy") comes to be what it is, and have the function that it does. The logic of the statement seems to rest on a flawed foundation: live action tells stories and represents "objective reality" "better than" animation (or anything else?), therefore animation should not bother with either storytelling or the real social world. This seems far too proscriptive, and more than a little politically vacuous [2].

<8> The main problem with an approach such as Moritz's is that he eschews the useful relative/continuum model, where all motion picture production is considered, in favor of a model that attempts to hold up one form of representation, like animation or live action, as essentially better than the other. Not only better, but also as an entirely separate mode. In many ways though, his approach can ultimately be disregarded, as he is seeking a chimera - "true animation" - which exists only notionally and therefore outside of the bounds of our discussion here. The consideration at this point is how does the animated form interact with and comment upon the "real", the actual lived reality of real people and historical circumstances?


Animation and the "documentary tendency"

<9> There is a wide range of animated films that have engaged in some way with what can broadly be termed "documentary" aesthetics. That they do so transforms (or at the very least means we have to rethink) our conceptions of what both documentary and animation commonly mean. Animated films, by virtue of their "distance" from the direct, indexical link with an external reality that can (overly) complicate how we relate to live action documentary films, can offer commentary on real events and real people. Despite animation's status as "completely created" rather than in any sense "captured" (in the way that live action documentary - particularly direct cinema films - can be said to be "captured", in that it appears to merely observe a real situation), such films can offer an argument [3] about the real. As Wells puts it, concluding his discussion of McCay's The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918):

it is clear that documentary is not merely a vehicle for factual information, but for emotional issues, and overt argument. Nicholls [sic] has argued that this type of film is an expository mode of documentary because it ultimately foregrounds its didacticism. (1997: 42)

Indeed, the very constructedness of animation might be the key to a specific mode of address that can elude live action documentary filmmaking, precisely because of the expectations that the indexical link - and apparent transparency - can raise.

<10> In Old Glory (Jones, 1939) for example, we can see a mode of animated documentary - highly didactic in style - interestingly juxtaposed with the more usual "cartoonal" representation we expect from a work of this kind. Porky Pig is supposed to be learning how to swear allegiance to the flag and, losing patience, he throws the book to one side and falls asleep. Enter Uncle Sam, who berates Porky (albeit in a highly avuncular fashion) for neglecting his studies, and proceeds to show him the history of the USA's battle for Independence and the importance of the flag. Close on Porky, now the zealous patriot, swearing allegiance, with his j-j-joke s-s-stutter under more control than usual. What is interesting here is that Porky exists as the cartoon character, with all the stylization that that entails, while Uncle Sam is drawn in a more naturalistic style - though it is one that highlights his twinkly eyes and Henry Fonda-esque charm. Thus the more naturalistic style appears at a moment of "seriousness", the change in drawing style signaling that this is no longer the straightforward world of the cartoon - jokes, chases - but something that should be taken seriously: Uncle Sam! US history! Old Glory! This continues into the flashback sequence prompted by Sam's history lesson, where we see various patriots shouting (now famous) phrases – "Give me liberty or give me death" and so on - before moving on to a highly selective version of early US history – "brave pioneers" in silhouette, a statue of Abe Lincoln with a choral "Battle Hymn of the Republic" on the soundtrack. Although the graphic style remains simple in the flashback sequence, the figures are strikingly naturalistic in terms of outline and movement, due to the use of the rotoscope technique: a sharp contrast to the cartoony style of the opening and closing sequences with Porky. Thus "realism" as embodied here by the more naturalistic style of representation and figure movement, and contrasting with the expected verisimilitude of the cartoon world, is being equated with the notions of "truth" and "seriousness" that are conjured up by the patriot's version of history. This invoking of the codes of naturalism, and their equating with a particular reality/history, is therefore narratively motivated: Porky and, it seems, the audience need a lesson in History (with a capital H), and the cartoonal verisimilitude is therefore transgressed in order to underline that message.

<11> This reading of Old Glory suggests that the use of particular devices can and will be equated with relative positions in terms of believability, or the truth-value that we might attach to a particular text or sequence. As an example, we can compare the styles used by Winsor McCay in How a Mosquito Operates (1912) and The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918). The former clearly falls into the category of exaggerated, comical action which is familiar to McCay's other animated work (such as Gertie the Dinosaur [1914]), and his comic strips (cf. Crafton, 1993: 89-135). At no point do we take the action for an accurate, realistic representation of, literally, how a mosquito operates. Realist representation is sidelined in order to foreground (grotesque) comedy. In Lusitania however, McCay had a considerably more serious intention, and we can see this reflected in the aesthetic devices he uses. The film resembles a newsreel in its representation of movement and the shading of the action; the overall tone of the film, despite some rather hysterically propagandist intertitles, is somber and portentous. Clearly, the viewer is meant to relate to what is on the screen in a very different way to what is shown in Mosquito: we are meant to believe and understand the events as real, and of historical importance - hence the strikingly different animation style, a style that has been described by Paul Wells as "part informed speculation, part quasi-newsreel, part propaganda" (Wells, 1998: 16).

<12> The notion of particular aesthetic devices being perceived as "more real" or "more truthful" than others is a pervasive one, and one that remains at the center of any debates around issues of representation, animated or otherwise. In his discussion of direct cinema, for example, Brian Winston notes that the codes and conventions used by practitioners in this area are inextricably linked with the level of truth-value or objectivity assigned to the films. Thus,

the long takes, the lack of commentary, music and post-synch sound effects, the absence of cinematic lighting, the understated titles, even the persistent use of black-and-white stock long after the TV news had gone to color - what are these if not earnests of objectivity for an audience schooled in the reception of realist images? (Winston, 1995: 162)

Citing Allen and Gomery's work in the same area, he goes on to add, "as early as 1944, James Wong Howe was pointing out to his cinematographer colleagues that the authenticity of war footage was becoming bound up in the audience's mind with shaky black-and-white shots" (ibid.). Such points are emphatically underlined by the unsettling, "unreal" atmosphere of such newsreel/war footage that was shot in color - an example being the footage shot by Hollywood director George Stevens of the liberating of the concentration camps during World War Two, which can be seen in the documentary George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1984). (Or, the extra poignancy that the color home movie footage adds to a series such as Britain at War in Colour [Carlton TV, 2000]). Put simply, we do not expect such footage to be in color, such is the powerful bond between what is being represented - wartime atrocities - and the conventions associated with such representations - the black-and-white, shaky, "authentic" shots to which Winston refers.

<13> A useful term for clarifying this phenomenon is "modality", as used by Bob Hodge and David Tripp (1986), and by Hodge and Gunther Kress (1986). The term is borrowed from linguistics and applied in a "social semiotics" paradigm, where it "concerns the reality attributed to a message" (Hodge and Tripp, 1986: 104). In the everyday use of language people will qualify what they say with "modal auxiliaries" - that is, terms and phrases that either add to or detract from the relative certainty of what they are saying. So, a statement such as "This is what happened on that day" has strong modality. This could be weakened by saying "This is allegedly what happened on that day", or strengthened further by saying "This is definitely what happened on that day". The point here is that there are relative degrees of certainty, relative degrees of "believability" attached to these statements. But, crucially, this relative dimension is one that is negotiated by people in the course of comparing messages – whether everyday utterances, or media texts such as films and cartoons – with actual social reality, "or more exactly, with what they believe about reality" (ibid: 106). This explains why particular conventions (like "shaky black-and-white shots") become strongly associated with certain types of representation (like "authentic" wartime footage): such codes and conventions are "modality markers" for that particular message.

<14> I would suggest that a similar drawing on the resonances of specific representational codes is being used in Old Glory, in particular the use of rotoscoped imagery. The Rotoscope was patented by Max Fleischer in 1917, and utilizes live-action footage which is then retraced frame-by-frame, a technique which "allows for the creation of animated images that move with a high degree of realism" (Furniss, 1998: 77). One of the first uses for the rotoscope technique was a series of training films for the US army, which "show the operation of the mechanism of ... all the various ordnance pieces, as well as how to read military maps, harness cavalry horses, etc." (Crafton, 1993: 158). As Crafton points out, utilizing the rotoscope meant that "a film of schematic clarity could be made" (ibid.) and this certainly explains the technique's popularity with "the government ... industry ... and educational institutions" (ibid.). The rotoscope technique is therefore closely associated with discourses of instruction and training (Crafton refers to the aforementioned army training films as "these didactic productions" [160]), and such an instructional/pedagogic dimension only bolsters the "serious" tone of the rotoscoped sequences in Old Glory.

<15> As already noted, they constitute a serious History lesson, one which requires the stylistic shift from "cartoon" to the ontologically (and therefore epistemologically?) distinct "rotoscoped animation". Interestingly, the very fact that the two styles/techniques are juxtaposed so clearly draws attention to the shift in style as precisely that: a shift. In other words the rotoscoped sequence's very difference from the cartoon aesthetic, the shift in style, is meant to be noticed, signaling as it does the "importance" of what is to follow. In this respect, the shift marks the move from "cartoon" to the didactic expository mode that Nichols outlines. In effect, it is a shift in modality. How such a shift is read or understood is what is important, however: certainly the intention was for it to be understood as a shift to the sober discourse of History, but its very "obviousness" also means that it can be more easily spotted as a device. Such a point is lent credence by the evidence (anecdotal, admittedly) cited by Schneider (1994: 64), and then by Timothy R. White (1998: 41) that Old Glory was "a favorite at New York's Fillmore East rock-concert house, where it would be screened between acts. The late-sixties audiences, it seems, enjoyed a film that ends with a pig saluting the flag". This is almost certainly true (who wouldn't?), but it is important to stress that such "enjoyment" is part of a complex spectatorial activity - often over-simplified under the umbrella-term "reading against the grain" - which is quite clearly predicated on recognizing, negotiating and understanding how the different representational strategies are being deployed, and understanding them in a new context.

<16> To clarify this point, it is helpful to read the rotoscope technique in terms of two concepts – the palimpsest and Derrida's concept of "the trace". Clearly, an animation technique that involves taking live action footage and literally tracing over it would bring to mind these terms. The first refers to the manner in which old manuscripts would be re-used by scrubbing away the inks and dyes, so that a new text could be put in the old one's place. Often, the old text would show through, remaining as a ghostly reminder of the past. (This "showing through" has been dramatically increased by the use of X ray and infra-red techniques in deciphering old manuscripts). More generally, the term has come to refer to the way that social phenomena show signs (traces) of the incremental build up of their meanings over time. For example, the changing face of a city's architecture – where new buildings are erected next to old ones, where old buildings are renovated, rebuilt and extended – is something that can be read in this way. The buildings, and the cityscape, exist as a palimpsest, something that is constantly changing, evolving, subject to revisions (see Benjamin, 1979). The concept of the palimpsest is therefore fundamentally historical; it forces us to think diachronically, or across time. In the case of animation, such as Old Glory, the rotoscoping draws an eerie attention to this "layering" of meanings, this accrual of "traces". In Derrida's terms, the "trace" refers to the way that language functions as interplay between presence and absence: in order for utterances (or any signification) to be meaningful, their "presence" is contrasted with, and structured by, the "absence" of other utterances. Thus:

The sound sequence pet, for example, can function as a sign only because it contrasts with bet, met, pat, pen, etc. The noise one makes when one utters the sign pet is thus marked by the traces of these signs which one is not uttering. (Culler, 1979: 164)

This draws attention to the fact that things can never be entirely, unproblematically "present" or "absent", and that meaning resides in our reading of this interplay. In the case of rotoscoped animation, we have an instructive example of a representational strategy that appears to be both animation and live action, rather than simply one or the other.

<17> It is interesting to compare the issues raised by this discussion of Old Glory with a more recent version of the same events. In an episode of The Simpsons, "Bart Gets an F" (2nd season, 1990), Bart has to pass a test on US history so that he is not held back in the 4th Grade. He prays for snow one night so that he can have one more day to study and, when the next morning his prayers are answered, Lisa holds him to his promise ("I'm no theologian ... [but] you owe Him big.") The whole of Springfield having fun in the snow, Bart locks himself in the basement to study. Cut to Bart sitting in a room with the assembled men of history, listening to and learning the various speeches of these original patriots. Suddenly: "Hey look everybody, it's snowing!" – "In the middle of July?!" – "It's a miracle!" All of the men jump up and run out into the snow leaving Bart looking bemused, overhearing the immortal pay-off line "Hey look - John Hancock's writing his name in the snow!"

<18> The Simpsons' position as satire dictates that its take on early US history be radically different from that of the tub-thumping Old Glory, but this difference is not simply figured in the ludicrous, piss-taking (literally) verbal jokes. It is also evident in the visual style, which does not stray from the cartoony look for which the show is famous. Put simply, the other characters present with Bart in this sequence basically look like Simpsons characters, their very cartooniness signifying that this sequence is no different from the other elements of the show, and should be laughed at. There are certain differences from the usual look of the show, but they are clearly motivated by a combination of Bart's subjectivity, the position of what we are seeing as a "version" of history, and a clear desire to satirize the priorities (and attention-span) of those present. For instance, the distinct lack of "normal" skin tones - Simpsons' yellow - and the use of sepia tinting with spare use of other color, suggests not only that this is an historical scene (we enter the sequence via a dissolve from Bart's history text-book), but also underlines the grim uniformity and blank expressions of the majority of those present. They look like cartoon characters, but lack the delightful detail that The Simpsons lavishes on even its most minor bit-players. This emphasizes Bart's desperation in trying to learn elements of the Constitution ("we hold these truths to be self-evident....we hold these truths to be self-evident") by suggesting that those actually present at the time weren't listening. Indeed, it is typical of The Simpsons' bitingly satirical take on History that the distraction of the snow erupts just as the speaker reaches "...that all men are created equal and from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable". The central plank of the Republic is forgotten as the men run out into the snow: perhaps this is the more "truthful" or "realistic" version of History after all?

<19> It is worth stressing that there is a case to be made in favor of apparently "unrealistic" works (such as The Simpsons) being "more real" than texts such as Old Glory (or, indeed, the most mimetic of fly-on-the-wall live action documentaries). The latter's investment is very much in naturalism, an aesthetic concerned with "detailed 'reproduction' of natural objects ... a style of accurate external representation" (Williams, 1976: 183). In other words, Old Glory's "realism" is one which unproblematically equates the capturing of detailed, surface reality - as figured by the shift to rotoscoping - with the capturing and representing of actual (historical) reality, or Truth, as spoken by Uncle Sam. Indeed, the cartoon "was commissioned by Warner Bros. as a counterpart to a series of live-action shorts dealing with American history and patriotism" (Schneider: 62). The difficulty with naturalistic forms of representation (and this is leaving aside for the moment the thorny issue of such representations being anomalous, rather than the norm, in the world of the cartoon) is precisely that they concentrate on the surface, rather than attempting to represent what might be going on beneath that surface.

<20> Indeed, "the reality of the social process is quite different from its appearance" (Lapsley and Westlake, 1988: 162), with the suggestion being that, in order to adequately represent reality, one needs a mode of representation "which reveals the underlying structures and forces determining the dynamics of society" (ibid.). How The Simpsons manages to do this where Old Glory fails, I would suggest, is in its (satirical) attention to elements other than surface detail. Brecht's comments on the shortcomings of naturalism - particularly photography - are instructive here: "less than at any time does a simple reproduction of reality tell us anything about reality. A photograph of the Krupp works or GEC yields almost nothing about these institutions". Therefore, in order that a representation does tell us something about reality "something has actually to be constructed, something artificial, something set up" (cited in Benjamin, 1972: 24). In this sense, a "realist" representation is not "describ[ing] the observable surface of things [but] rather ... explain[ing] their hidden and contradictory reality" (Lapsley and Westlake, 1988: 163). The "Bart Gets an F" sequence reveals such a hidden and contradictory reality: that the "truths" of the Constitution are far from being "self-evident" to a great many people, not just Bart; that the "inherent and inalienable rights" are likely to be forgotten at the slightest distraction. The fact that it also makes us laugh does not lessen the seriousness of this point, nor The Simpsons' ability to comment upon reality. As Homer says in a different episode: "it's funny because it's true..."

<21> At the heart of this discussion lies the distinction between real relations and phenomenal forms. This tension has been variously defined in different paradigms though the terms themselves are classically Marxist, and the way I am going to apply them is very much within the Realist philosophical position associated with Marxism. Before doing so, I would like to briefly discuss two of the alternative paradigms, to place what I am doing in a broader context. In discussing Lacanian psychoanalysis, for example, Fred Botting states:

Lacanian psychoanalysis differentiates between reality and the real. It is only the former that is directly bound up with language: 'it is the world of words that creates the world of things'. (1995: 89)

This suggests there is some tension between reality and our conception of it, with one realm characterized by plenitude, and the other by lack and fissure. This bears considerable similarities to the real relations/phenomenal forms dichotomy, but the problem with this formulation is that "the Real" in Lacan's theory remains essentially "unknowable" or "ineffable". Needless to say, this is a problem if we are arguing, as I am, that it is possible (not to mention desirable) to make plausible knowledge-claims about the social world. If "the Real" is, literally, "beyond expression" (which is what I understand "ineffable" to mean) then making such knowledge-claims is impossible.

<22> In the post-modern paradigm, the surface or "phenomenality" is in some sense reality - pastiche and referentiality now constitute our reality for us. This implies that there isn't so much a tension (or dialectical relationship) between real relations and the phenomenal forms that mis/represent them, but that the former is somehow reducible to the latter. This radical skepticism concerning a real social world – and, ultimately, our ability to have knowledge about that world - is one of the reasons why Marxists are critical of postmodernism. Both of these positions – as well as, it should be added, Derrida's aforementioned notion of the "trace" – are dealing with the discrepancies and slippage (or conflation) between things as they seem and things as they actually are. The problem with these other paradigms is that they do not adequately recognize the material nature of the world, and therefore have a tendency to reduce real social relations to the workings of language.

<23> We therefore need to pay careful attention to the differences and interrelationship between the real world of actuality and the various ways we have for (mis)understanding that real world. This, in a nutshell, is the real relations/phenomenal forms distinction. The prime example is how, in a capitalist system, the "real relations" of work and labor-power become "mystified" by the phenomenal form as manifested by wages. Thus

The selling of the commodity labour-power is the real relation of exchange which is transformed, in experience, into the mystifying phenomenal form Wages or wage-contract, thus disguising the real nature of the social relations involved in transactions between capitalist and labourer in bourgeois society. (Mepham: 148)

In other words, there is more to the situation than meets the eye! Indeed, what at first seems to have very little to do with documentary, realism in filmic (or other) modes of representation, or animation, is in fact a central philosophical and ideological point. The issue with phenomenal forms is that they offer mere appearance (an honest wage for an honest day's work - what could be more straightforward and tangible than that?), an appearance which ultimately masks the full complexity of what is going on in a particular situation (the boss is actually giving the worker only a fraction of the worth of their labor). In effect, the real relations of a situation or relationship are masked by the misleading surface appearance.

<24> It is vital to note that the phenomenal form or appearance, while it can be labeled "misleading", is not some completely false, or externally imposed aspect. It is a result of, a component of, the complex workings of ideology. Henri Lefebvre states:

Social reality, that is interacting human individuals and groups, produces appearances which are something more and else than mere illusions. Such appearances are the modes in which human activities manifest themselves within the whole they constitute at any given moment - call them modalities of consciousness. They have far greater consistency, let alone coherence, than mere illusion or ordinary lies. Appearances have reality, and reality involves appearances. (Lefebvre: 62)

The underlying dialectical relationship between "appearances" and "reality" is therefore of the utmost importance to human understanding of the real world and our place within it. And, arguably, a form such as animation can give us access to exactly those "hidden" or obscured "real relations", precisely because its constructedness is foregrounded. Even at its relatively mimetic moments (e.g. the rotoscoping in Old Glory), we are not watching something that is simply trying to mimic the world.

<25> This is one of the key problems in talking about documentary in general. As Bill Nichols suggests "there is an obviousness and naturalness about the world as represented [in documentary] that we are frequently invited to take for granted" (1991: 115). He also states "documentary gives us photographic and aural representations or likenesses of the world" (1991: 111). This latter quote (unsurprisingly?) assumes (as "obvious and natural"?) that any documentary will be photographically-based, something that any animated documentary will by definition problematize. Animated films are totally fabricated and do not, as noted already, bear an indexical correspondence to the world. This lack of correspondence must free them to a great extent from the "obviousness and naturalness . . . that we are frequently invited to take for granted". The relationship between reality, documentary and animation could therefore be described as "creating the real". With apologies to Brian Winston, this term adapts the title of his 1995 book on documentary, Claiming the Real. The change of terms is instructive: if we can argue that live action documentary attempts to "claim" the real by virtue of its immense mimetic potential, and the conventions of correspondence that have accrued to this mode of representation, then it is similarly persuasive to suggest that animated documentaries "create" the real. By this I am not arguing anything as simplistic as "they make it up", perhaps implied by the term "create". What I am arguing is that animated films, by dint of their total creation (frame by frame, drawn or otherwise manipulated) can offer us a more critically distanced and reflexive form of documentary. It can comment on and argue about real issues and relations, but do so in a mode where "transparency", "correspondence" and "mimesis" do not (irony of ironies!) obscure the real issues, as so often seems to be the case with live action documentaries.

<26> Although animation can be said to foreground the manipulation involved in a representation, this manipulation actually goes on with all texts - they are all manipulative representations of something, but some are "let off" this hook more than others. There still seems to be a problem with talking about documentary signification in terms of its creative use of audio-visual conventions, with the implication being that, if one can discern manipulation of some kind, then this - in and of itself - renders any argument suspect. Such radical skepticism stems from what Lapsley and Westlake outline as the "conventionalist" critique of the "mediation thesis" notion of realism, i.e. rather than film being a simple mediation of an external reality, it is a historically contingent (and therefore changing) set of conventions. As Lapsley and Westlake suggest though

The fact that a representation calls on a historically specific convention does not effect its epistemic status. After all, if convention were the badge of falsity, then any proposition would be false in that language itself depends on a set of conventions. Such a notion is patently absurd: it is in, and only in, language and other systems of representation that truths can be stated; as equally, of course, can falsehoods. (160)

It is documentary's close association with "truth" and truth claims about the real world that makes the problem of manipulation so acute. But, as Mike Wayne has pointed out (and as Lapsley and Westlake make clear) the manipulation is not the problem (Wayne, 2001: 127). Wayne argues that we need to move away from ontological objections to any manipulation - i.e. "this is a manipulation in essence, and therefore wrong" - to epistemological objections - i.e. "this is manipulating in order to make an argument and I dis/agree with that argument". The former logically doesn't allow documentary to exist (and, as Lapsley and Westlake put it "is patently absurd"); the latter recognizes that documentaries are constructs but equally recognizes that a textual manipulation can also engage with and perhaps reveal some truth/s. The key with documentary is the notion of it referring to an historical antecedent (i.e. the real lived reality of the world) rather than any formal strategies on their own. In this sense, there is no reason why an animated documentary should be considered less valid (or "less real") than a live action one.

<27> It is certainly the case that, as a general tendency, animated films will operate on a more "subjective" level than live action representations. Instead of the mimetic, apparently "objective" rendering of the world that we see in a live action film, we get an animator's "interpretation" of aspects of that world - suitably exaggerated, distorted, compressed. Yet, as has been implicit throughout this discussion, live action is as subject to these manipulations as animation: it is just that the expectations attendant on certain conventions mean that they are read as more (or less) able to show us "the real". In terms of creating/constructing an argument about "the real", however, neither mode of representation has a monopoly.


Animation and documentary: typologies

<28> Paul Wells offers a typology of four animated documentary modes - the imitative, the subjective, the fantastic, and the post-modern. The first of the four, as the name suggests, attempts to imitate. But not, as we might think in this context, simply imitate the textures of the real world (although that might be part of it). Rather, he suggests that the imitative mode of animated documentary is instantly recognizable because it takes as its basis certain conventions of the live action documentary. Examples given are the aforementioned The Sinking of the Lusitania - which imitates the conventions of a live action newsreel - and the educational films of Walt Disney, such as The Living Machine (1955). The key here then is the deploying of recognizably "documentary" conventions (the immediacy of a newsreel representation of a tragedy, the paternalistic "voice of God" voiceover) in order to either show us something which we would otherwise not be able to observe, or to make humorous the educational/informational discourses that are central to a certain kind of documentary.

<29> Although I agree with much that Wells says, I think he essentially fudges the difference between live action and animated documentaries that operate within this broad sub-category. I quoted earlier when Wells points to Nichols' expository mode as the basis for such documentaries, films that "ultimately foreground [their] didacticism" (Wells, 1997: 42). The fact is that Nichols makes very clear that the expository mode, while leaning heavily on didacticism, does not really foreground it. There is a difference. The expository mode foregrounds didacticism only in the sense that it uses it as its main frame of reference: that is, expository techniques are to the foreground, while other techniques (e.g. what Nichols terms "observational", "interactive" and "reflexive") are minimized or not used at all. But it does not "foreground" it in the sense that the viewer is made party to the workings of the mode. The expository mode "addresses the viewer directly, with titles or voices that advance an argument about the historical world" (Nichols, 1991: 34). Furthermore, it

emphasizes the impression of objectivity and of well-substantiated judgment . . . it affords an economy of analysis, allowing points to be made succinctly and emphatically, partly by eliminating reference to the process by which knowledge is produced, organized, and regulated so that it, too, is subject to the historical and ideological processes of which the film speaks. Knowledge in expository documentary is often epistemic knowledge in Foucault's sense of those forms of transpersonal certainty that are in compliance with the categories and concepts accepted as given or true in a specific time and place . . . [an] issue can [therefore] be addressed within a frame of reference that need not be questioned or established but simply taken for granted. (35)

The bottom line here is that Nichols does not talk about animated documentaries, so we can take his comments as being specifically about live action films. But animated films, by virtue of their "difference" from live action, will not be watched in the same way. They are "distanced" from the sober discourse of the expository mode, and an animated documentary that uses these strategies will be "foregrounding" them in a different way to a live action documentary. As Nichols argues, the underlying rationale for the didacticism of a (live action) expository documentary is the mobilization of a kind of "common sense" (i.e. "epistemic knowledge"). In this respect, any argument put across in such a documentary is really covert rather than overt. It is not presented as an "argument" to be weighed up, mulled over, and possibly disputed, but rather as a "statement of fact". As Nichols puts it, the proposition implied by such films is "This is so, isn't it?" (114), a rhetorical question if ever there was one.

<30> The inherent "subjectivity" of animation therefore allows for an opening up of this form of address. Wells notes as much with his category of the "subjective mode" (1997: 42). Similarly, the "fantastic" mode is one that challenges the certainties of the expository by dwelling on what lies beneath the orthodox surface of everyday, common sense reality (a comparison with the real relations and phenomenal forms dialectic, outlined earlier, is inevitable), usually with "surrealist" results (Svankmajer is the main example here). Finally, the "post-modern mode", which comes closest to suggesting that documentary is a mode with no special claim to "truth" or "reality", but is rather "merely 'an image' and not an authentic representation" (1997: 45). The unstable and fragmented experience of individuals in the contemporary world translates into a mistrust of, and attempt to displace, the so-called truths of objective reality and knowledge about that reality. Such relativism seems admirably suited to a form such as animation because animation seems limited only by the imaginations of those practicing it.

<31> Yet the problem remains: if "documentary" can be said to have any specificity whatsoever, it must reside in the text's relationship to the real world of historical reality. Attempting to understand how addressing such an anterior, material reality - with all its paradox and contradiction - in a form like animation - that seems bound up with the "subjective" - is the key to a greater understanding of both. Nichols is again useful when he suggests the concept of "magnitude" as central to an understanding of documentary's relationship to real events. I'd like to conclude this discussion by outlining what he means by this, and how it is helpfully inflected by introducing an animated documentary's representation of events.


"Magnitude" and animated representation

<32> Nichols begins his chapter on magnitude (1991: 229-266) with a startling juxtaposition of two quotations, both describing a tragedy. The first is the famous radio commentary of the 1937 Hindenberg disaster (often heard in conjunction with newsreel footage of the explosion). Even for someone who has never actually heard this very famous commentary, on the printed page it clearly resonates with emotion at the events that the reporter was witnessing. Several times he is close to tears, or actually sobbing, and there are phrases such as "I can't talk . . .", "I can hardly breathe . . .", as well as the iconic "Oh, the humanity . . ." in what is a long, grief-wracked exclamation. The second quotation comes from the NASA controller's voiceover on witnessing the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle in 1986. An ostensibly very similar catastrophe is summed up with perhaps the ultimate example of bathetic understatement: "There seems to be a major malfunction". The fifty years of "progress" between the two events is thrown into sharp relief: better technology and broader horizons -- but also bigger explosions and an apparent complete lack of emotion. "Oh, the humanity" indeed.

<33> Nichols' point here is to introduce the idea of how "representable" are real, historical events. And not just major tragedies like the Hindenberg or Challenger disasters (or, for that matter, the events of September 11th, 2001), but any historical events. In short, he wants to ask

how any narrative or expository frame can be of an order of magnitude commensurate with the magnitude of what it describes. Narrative and exposition are alway [sic] forms of miniaturization that seek to encapsulate a "world" that bears some meaning for us. Documentary presents a world we take to be congruent and coterminous in quality and nature with the one in which we act rather than re-presenting an imaginative transposition of it. (230)

"Magnitude" therefore constitutes that which cannot (easily) be represented in a representation. It lies in the realm of the affective, the emotional, and as such appears to have little to do with the "rational" and "empirical" realities so often seen as the foundation of good documentary practice. "Questions of magnitude are always questions that run not so much against the grain as beyond it, outside the constraints of any given system" (231). As Nichols goes on to point out, magnitude is therefore a site of ideological dilemma, paradox, contradiction - all things that need to be worked through by the viewer, but necessarily require that the viewer understands the broader context. Thus:

Magnitude, then, raises questions not only of indexical correspondence between a text and the visual world but also of ideological correspondence between a text and the historical world. The magnitudes opened up by a text are not merely a matter of naming something of profound importance but, more tellingly, of situating the reader in a position where these magnitudes receive subjective intensity (232).

In other words, "magnitude" refers not only to how accurately, or for what purpose, a documentary represents a recognizable anterior reality, but also how this makes us feel.

<34> Karen Watson's remarkable 1987 animated film, Daddy's Little Bit of Dresden China would not ordinarily be categorized as a documentary. Indeed, Paul Wells, who discusses the "documentary tendency" of some animated films elsewhere in his book Understanding Animation, does not use the term in relation to this film. In an otherwise very astute and sensitive reading of Watson's film (1998: 61-67), he tends to gloss over the way that it actively engages with concepts of the un/representable and the un/sayable and, more to the point, how this makes reading the film using the terms and debates of documentarypractice so useful. Certainly, the subject matter of the film - child abuse, specifically that by the father on his daughter - has a "real world" meaning, and one that is given extra resonance, if any were needed, by the fact that Watson was abused by her own father. Wells locates Watson's work firmly in the "developmental" category of his typology, in the sense that it "borrows from" orthodox animation's repertoire of symbols and meanings (e.g. the fairy tale clichés) but does so in a way that mobilizes them to say something "against the grain". But, as Nichols observes, if we are talking about magnitudes, we are exploring things that run "not so much against the grain as beyond it". This is what I would argue Daddy's is actually doing: clearly constructing an argument about, and passing comment upon, real world issues and problems. More than that, it is attempting to represent something that actually happened (to the filmmaker) and continues to happen to many other people. In doing so, it revels (if that is the correct term) in contradiction, hypocrisy and taboo. As such, it offers a key instance of the kind of film I have alluded to thus far - the kind that suggests animation's unique ability to represent, discuss and analyze subjects that might seem to be the preserve of more conventional or traditional live action documentary.

<35> One of the main problems with reading Daddy's as a documentary lies, of course, in its form. I have discussed this tension above (between the notionally "objective" documentary on the one hand, and the clearly "subjective" animation on the other), but it is worth reiterating. As a film that uses a mixture of puppet, collage and cut-out animation, along with the ironic references to fairy tales, and the real testimony of abused people, it seems to lack the restrained, evidentiary foundation that one would hope for from a documentary. However, this is precisely its strength. As the film makes clear, it is the inability of some people to face up to and talk about their role that helps to perpetuate the abuse. Also, there is some brilliant deconstruction of dominant media imagery and the hypocritical - yet "common sense" - discourse that surrounds it. Here I am referring to the sequences in the pub, where cut-out and collage animation is used to great effect in conjunction with men's voiceover. The predatory, sexist comments and objectified representations of women are juxtaposed with the "hanging's too good for them" outbursts in relation to sex offenders. The overall effect is to set out a social context, in which seemingly separate elements such as family life, media representations, sex, violence, mythology, are shown to be overlapping and mutually determining. Not only that, but we are made very aware that this is something that extends well beyond the bounds of this particular text, and therefore requires a social solution. The use of animation therefore "makes strange" (to translate the term "ostranenie", central to Modernist, and potentially progressive artworks) some of the stuff of everyday life. As Wells indicates, the use of puppets (and puppets that are made, symbolically, from things like razor blades, or feathers and bandages) is decisive here:

The puppet plays out a complex tension between being like a human being whilst being non-human in form; at once, the puppet is the embodiment of some degree of living spirit and energy but also inhuman and remote. This tension enables the puppet to operate at the symbolic level and simultaneously represent a variety of metaphorical positions. (1998: 61)

<36> Nevertheless, it is at the level of magnitude that the film really functions. As Watson herself has noted, the film "acted as a form of therapy, enabling me to express feelings I could not have expressed otherwise. Feelings I didn't have words for, and forbidden feelings such as anger" (quoted in Wells, ibid.). Rather than simply "documenting" a case of abuse (like, say, Tim Roth's live action narrative fiction feature, The War Zone [1999]), and personalizing the issue, making it a problem of a particular family, the film is therefore about the wider social structures that collude and contribute to abuse. It is precisely about "the inarticulable and the unspeakable aspects of [Watson's] experience" (ibid.), and how, crucially, they "spill over" beyond her specific experience and the limits of this one film. It is this representing of the potentially unrepresentable that I have identified, using Nichols, as a feature of animated documentary in particular.


Conclusion

<37> This essay has outlined some of the ways in which animation usefully problematizes commonly-held beliefs about "realist" representation, and documentary representations in particular. While all audio-visual communication is by definition constructed, it has been my contention here that animation foregrounds that constructedness to a great degree. When an animated film offers us a representation of real, historical events (or actual, living people) it is therefore negotiating an ontological boundary, one that has become effaced to a large extent in relation to live action representations because of the power of mimetic "correspondence" between the filmic and the pro-filmic. The clear differences between the "real world" events or people and their animated counterparts therefore need to be understood as a strength of animation: its ability to move beyond naturalistic, surface representation and embrace real relations between things in all their magnitude.


Works Cited

Andre Bazin (1967) "The Ontology of the Photographic Image" in What is Cinema? (trans. Hugh Gray) Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press

Walter Benjamin (1972) "A Short History of Photography", Screen 13:1

Walter Benjamin (1979) One-Way Street and Other Writings London: Verso

Fred Botting (1995) "Culture, subjectivity and the real; or, psychoanalysis reading postmodernity" in Barbara Adam and Stuart Allan (eds.) Theorizing Culture: An Interdisciplinary Critique after Postmodernism London: UCL Press

Donald Crafton (1993) Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928 Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Jonathan Culler (1979) "Jacques Derrida" in John Sturrock (ed.) Structuralism and Since: From Levi-Strauss to Derrida Oxford: Oxford University Press

Maureen Furniss (1998) Art in Motion: Animation Aesthetics London: John Libbey

Bob Hodge and David Tripp (1986) Children and Television Cambridge: Polity Press

Bob Hodge and Gunther Kress (1986) Social Semiotics Cambridge: Polity Press

Robert Lapsley and Michael Westlake (1988) Film Theory: An Introduction Manchester: Manchester University Press

Henri Lefebvre (1968) The Sociology of Marx New York: Pantheon Books

Terry Lovell (1980) Pictures of Reality: Aesthetics, Politics and Pleasure London: BFI

John Mepham (1979) "The theory of ideology in Capital" in his and David-Hillel Ruben (eds.) Issues in Marxist Philosophy, volume 3: Epistemology, Science, Ideology Brighton: Harvester Press

William Moritz (1988) "Some observations on non-objective and non-linear animation" in Storytelling in Animation: The Art of the Animated Image volume 2 Los Angeles: American Film Institute

Bill Nichols (1991) Representing Reality Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press

Bill Nichols (1994) Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press

Steve Schneider (1994) That's All Folks: The Art of Warner Bros. Animation London: Aurum Press

Mike Wayne (2001) Political Film: The Dialectics of Third Cinema London: Pluto Press

Paul Wells (1997) "The Beautiful Village and the True Village: A Consideration of Animation and the Documentary Aesthetic" in his (ed.) Art & Animation, Profile no. 53 of Art & Design magazine, London: Academy Group

Paul Wells (1998) Understanding Animation London and New York: Routledge

Timothy R. White (1998) "From Disney to Warner Bros.: The Critical Shift" in Kevin S. Sandler (ed.) Reading the Rabbit New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press

Raymond Williams (1976) Keywords London: Fontana

Brian Winston (1995) Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited London: BFI

 

Notes

[1] Even a film like Un Chien Andalou (1928), for all its experimentation and surrealism, rests on the recognizably mimetic qualities of live action shooting: here is an actual eye being slit open. So, although Bazin (1971) would hardly hold up this film as an example of his idea of realist cinema - a unified, mimetic representation of the actual world, or a fictional approximation thereof - it remains the case that even as outlandish and surreal a film as this uses the ability of live action to "capture" the reality of actions, in order to put across its message, however "unreal" - or "surreal" that message may be. [^]

[2] The same logic tends to apply when some people discuss, say, the provision of social services: we get an uninterrogated "this side good, that side bad" polarity that invariably cannot see beyond those terms and suggest possible alternatives. It is unsurprising that, in a world where global capitalism is dominant - for very specific ideological reasons rather than any "natural" or "essential" ones - "arguments" are often waged in such a way that cannot see "beyond" global capitalism, and therefore end up concluding that its way of doing things is "far better" than any (not really articulated) "alternative".

To bring it back to Moritz and animation: it is certainly the case that live action film has developed into a hegemonic position of dominance, and that far and away the most dominant form of live action film is narrative, or the so-called "linear representational story film". But to conclude from this state of affairs that live action therefore tells stories "better than" animation is patently false. Would Moritz seriously argue that films such as Toy Story (1995), Toy Story 2 (1999), Shrek (2001), or Monsters Inc (2001), are anything but "conventional linear representational story film[s]" of the highest order and coherence? And, indeed, that any of these films, because they are animated and not live action, are less clear than Mulholland Drive (2001) or Last Year in Marienbad (1961)? He might respond that live action as a general rule tends to tell stories "better than" animation, but that isn't what he actually says. Nor does this address the more fundamental points that "better than" is simply too vague and subjective a criterion on which to base an argument like this, and that his argument implies that because a certain form does something, apparently very well, it should just be allowed to get on with it, seemingly uninterrogated and unchallenged by alternatives.[ ^]

[3] cf. Nichols (1991: 111), where he points out that to use the term "argument" does not mean to imply that all documentaries are explicitly "argumentative". Rather, it is to distinguish "between the imaginary world of a fiction and the propositional world of a documentary" (ibid.). [^]


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