Blog Post #1 Cartoon Rejects or Statements?
January 25, 2010
In class we discussed the three aspects of drawing, film and story that yield our common perceptions of what is considered “good” animation. Immediately what came to my mind was Herdzfelt’s “Rejected” which catchy and wacky phrases such as, “My spoon is too big!,” “I am a bannana!,” and “silly hats only,” have permeated my high school and college social experience. I always assumed that this short was merely viral nonsense on the level of “surprised Kitten” that rose to fame via youtube. However with some contextual research I found that this short was more than a strange piece of animation and uses (in a sense rejects) the conventions of drawing, film and story.
With the help of wikipedia I found that “Rejected” was nominated for an Oscar in 2000 for “Best Animated Short Film,” won 27 global film awards and is ranked on IMDb as the third best short film of all time. Inetestingly the film has a cult following where people actually dress up as the characters and perform renditions of the film. The premise of the film in itself is showing a series of clips that were entered in to be commerical segemnts for “The Family Learning Channel” and subsequently rejected.
Given the social acclaim and context of the film, I am arguing that the film pokes fun at the extreme commercialism that is ever present in our capatlistic society. The animation clearly isn’t what a typical person would expect: There is no cohesive plot, the characters are shaky stick figures, and a sense of humorous yet strange vulgarity is ever present. Utlimately, “Rejected” is a powerful example of how animation can defy convention while simeutaneously using humor and oddity to make a point about social institutions such as capitalism.
**I commented on Katherine Danoy and Danyael Hughes (Number 10 and 23 on the class list)
January 27, 2010 at 4:12 am
I have to agree with the majority of your post. I too experienced the phenomena of these “viral” videos, but I took a different message. I agree it is pushing animation norms (no real plot, not advanced technical quality, etc), but I don’t see how it is commenting on commercialism/capitalism. My computer recently suffered a serious crash and I am without a computer that can reliably run the animation. I have, however, seen the animation multiple times and from what I remember I assumed (in my rebellious teenage years) that it was about not conforming to society. A branch of that could apply to commercialism/capitalism but I don’t remember the animation being that specific. Perhaps you (or others) are reflecting today’s current conformity fad (money, money, money!) on the non-conformist message? Perhaps there is a specific instance you can point out that directly relates to capitalism?
January 27, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Sure, consumerism (which is the lifeblood of capitalism) as in the cartoons imitation of mini-commercials that were intended for the intended Family Learning Channel. They are absurd in nature which reflects the insane ‘buy, buy, buy’ attitude that exists in America.
January 27, 2010 at 5:55 pm
I have never seen this film before which surprises me, considering how much time I’ve spent on the ‘net, but watched it on a whim after reading your post. At first I was bemused, trying to figure out the non-sense animations, but once the film reaches the third “act” (where the animations start falling apart) I realized the film’s genius. The first two parts are a comment on commercialism, essentially to see what the artist could “get away with” in trying to sell these “commercials” to the companies that contracted them. Not only are the animations nonsensical, but they are bad, with voices not lining up, etc. But the artist’s failure causes his entire creative output to “stall” leading to some of the more brilliant parts of the work, wherein the characters are trying to escape the crumbling pages (specific in my mind is when one is banging on the paper and it wrinkles, animated flawlessly). This is one film where the artist really does show his artistic chops AND get across his underlying message about our commercial culture.
January 27, 2010 at 5:59 pm
[...] my comments for this week are here and here on Hayleigh Allingham and Brandon Trimble’s blogs, [...]