Author Archives: tngregory

About tngregory

I'm a fourth-year Mason student majoring in History with a Women and Gender Studies minor and an LGBTQ Studies concentration. I plan to work in archiving and/or preservation after graduation.

On Fievel and Pocahontas

How much can audiences expect to learn from historical fiction? A few blog posts have defended Disney’s Pocahontas against accusations of historical inaccuracy by arguing that it was never the filmmakers’ intent. I tend to agree there. Disney never promised historical accuracy, yet audiences expected it. Why?

The characters and settings truly existed, sure, but the hummingbird and raccoon sidekicks, not to mention the talking tree, are glaring red flags that this is not going to be a history lesson. But let’s look at An American Tail. The story of America’s 19th century immigration boom is played out by mice and cats, all talking, many in full costume, yet this movie is arguably seen as more educational than Pocahontas. The settings are fully fleshed out, and the plot leads us through highlights of American history. Like PocahontasAn American Tail does not overtly claim to be a history lesson, yet again audiences are eager to claim it as such.

Why does An American Tail tend to get more credit? I suspect one factor in its favor is that the filmmakers made no pretense of basing the Mousekewitz family on specific historical figures. They are allowed to stand in for the generic every-man family, so their story is accepted as a generality. Most of us know by now that the Pocahontas and John Smith story was very unlike the Disney version, but that Disney (and centuries worth of storytellers before them) intended the story to be representative of cooperation. Would this moral have as much punch if the characters were Generic Native American Woman (which Pocahontas is made to stand in for anyway) and Generic WASP Man? Or did Disney need the authority of history, however misplaced or misused, to make their point?

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FLCL

FLCL is probably the most memorable anime I have ever seen. It’s a guilty pleasure of mine, guilty only because this is not a series that I would recommend to anyone whose tastes I didn’t know well. At the heart of it is a boy’s experience of growing up, but it’s not exactly family friendly. To those who assume that all anime is either giant fighting robots or raunchy jokes, FLCL will only prove them right because it has both of those things in spades. The emergence of one of the giant fighting robots is a raunchy joke. The title, Fooly Cooly, is kind of a raunchy joke. But let’s not talk about that right now.

One of the things I love about FLCL is the steady stream of references to other animations. Character costumes, jokes, visual dynamics, and animation style all in turn make reference to a number of shows and films. Even South Park gets a shout out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpAmOfPVKNw

In other episodes, the characters break the fourth wall to acknowledge how hard it is for them to do slow motion or manga scenes (I can’t even count all the pop culture references in that clip).

FLCL manages to include winks at pop culture in every episode while still being original and creative.

Anime and Aronofsky

We’ve seen animated works pay homage to other animation, and films pay homage to other films, but I would like to present a case in which a live action film director pays homage to animation. The anime motion picture Perfect Blue is a drama/thriller released in 1997 by director Satoshi Kon, who is also known for Paranoia AgentTokyo Godfathers, and Paprika. (You like Inception? Check out Paprika.) Perfect Blue is a favorite of mine and apparently of director Darren Aronofsky too.

The film follows Mima, a young ingénue who has found success as a member of the pop group Cham. Sweet, soft-spoken Mima is given the opportunity to perform in a wildly different role as a stripper and murder suspect in a TV drama. She wants the role, but no one believes she has it in her. To push herself, embody the character, and please her bosses, Mima tries to change herself from a sheltered “good girl” into a devil-may-care “bad girl”. She ultimately cracks under the pressure to perform and begins to see her fractured self — literally, in mirrors and windows — as a separate entity over whom she has little control. A version of Mima ends up dead.

If any of that sounds familiar, that’s because Perfect Blue is uncannily similar to Black Swan. I have to admit, I spent the month after Black Swan’s release internet shouting at anyone who would listen that it was basically a knockoff version of Perfect Blue with ballerinas, and that they should just watch Perfect Blue instead. I wasn’t the only one who noted the similarities. Aronofsky was asked about the earlier film’s influence on his movie, but denied it. Here’s the kicker: we know that Aronofsky admires Perfect Blue because he’s used it before.

There’s a scene in an earlier Aronofsky film, Requiem for a Dream in which a female character, feeling violated, sits in a bathtub, holds her head underwater, and screams. This scene was a near shot for shot recreation of a scene in Perfect Blue. Aronofsky even purchased the rights to it.

I think that makes it all the more curious that he actively denies that Kon’s film influenced Black Swan. There’s no shame in taking influence or homage. The bathtub scene, even though it was copy/pasted from another movie, still worked to great effect in Requiem. So why deny it now?

Sita Sings the Blues: Interpretation

The Sita overview post is here.

The entire point of Sita Sings the Blues is this: a love story is a love story is a love story. Tragedy is tragedy, heartbreak is heartbreak. We see this most easily in the juxtaposition between Paley’s and Sita’s stories. We also see it in the animation styles. Ages-old shadow puppets, 18th century drawings, squiggly 20th century sketches, and modern vector graphics are all used to tell one story. Centuries-old Indian art styles and blended with 20th and 21st century American styles. We hear it in the Depression-era music and the conversational tone of the shadow puppets’ commentary. In the FAQ section of Sita‘s official website, Paley declares “I didn’t set out to tell THE Ramayana, only MY Ramayana.”

Paley saw something familiar in Sita’s story, despite the differences in time and place. The stories are set in “definitely BC” India, modern India, and the modern United States, but they’re both about devotion and loss. Each woman is in love with a man who is indifferent at best, each is sent away and abandoned, and each eventually comes to the realization that their ex-partners don’t deserve their devotion.

One of Sita‘s greatest strengths is that, even though the legend is tragic, the movie itself is not. At her most self-pitying point, Paley calls herself out by cutting in the commentary on the Ramayana. For most of the movie (excepting this scene and the beginning of “Sita’s Fire”), the two stories are allowed to exist side by side without touching, leaving the audience to draw the comparisons themselves. In this moment, however, Paley chose to merge them and aim criticism of Sita directly at herself. There’s no uplifting hey girl, his loss! It’s a moment of tough love in the middle of an otherwise lighthearted film. Telling Sita’s story helped Paley cope with her own heartbreak. I can imagine viewing this movie could help others with theirs.

Sita Sings the Blues: Overview

Sita Sings the Blues is an animated feature written, directed, and animated by Nina Paley. Thanks to its Creative Commons license, you can watch it in its entirety on YouTube. It tells the story of Sita, a central figure of a Hindu epic, and parallels it with the story of Paley’s divorce. It seems to be a love it or hate it movie. It’s weird in a lot of ways that are either charming or tacky, depending on your taste. If you’d like a sample of Sita, clicking on the screenshots will take you to that scene in the movie.

Paley uses several different animation styles throughout the film to create visual distinction between the stories. Her own story is drawn in a loose, sketched style that appears to be her signature.

Dave, Nina, and Lexi the Cat

Dave, Nina, and Lexi the Cat

Sita’s story is told three ways: in a fairly traditional drama, in improvised commentary by a group of people who grew up with the story, and in musical numbers. The drama, in which Sita, Rama, and the rest have dialog and interact directly with each other, is portrayed in what looks like traditional 18th century Rajput art (yes, I’m linking to Wikipedia for this one; remember, this is just an overview). They look like Paley cut them out of a textbook — which fits the straightforward narrative style — and is moving them around like paper dolls.

Sita refusing Ravana's advances

Sita refusing Ravana’s advances

Contrary to what one might expect, the modern Indian commentators are animated as shadow puppets. This is what first reminded me of Sita in our discussion of Reiniger. More on that in a later post. The paper dolls reappear here with over-the-top comedic manipulation, almost like graffiti. The doodles look like they were done with cut-paste and the paint brush tool in MS Paint, which heightens the comedic effect and the irreverent tone.

The commentators discussing Ravana, the villain

The commentators discussing Ravana, the villain

The musical numbers are easily my favorite version of the story. You’ll notice that Annette Hanshaw is billed as the star in the opening credits. Hanshaw was a jazz-pop singer in the later half of the 1920s. (Fun fact: she performed some songs as proto-Betty Boop Helen Kane impersonations, including “I Wanna Be Loved By You” and this song that I dare you to listen to all the way through. The rest of her repertoire is much better.) In the musical scenes, Sita lip syncs to Hanshaw’s songs. These scenes are even more cartoon-y than Paley’s modern story. It’s all bright colors, bubble bodies, and vector animation. I love it.

"Here We Are"

“Here We Are”

And then there’s Sita’s fire. Spurned by her husband, Sita throws herself onto a funeral pyre as a show of her anguish and worthiness of Rama’s love. In the movie, this scene is portrayed twice. The first time is in a musical number with bobbing palm trees, dancing monkey-men, and a char-broiled Sita smiling and singing in flames. The second time is after Paley is dumped by her husband. Reena Shah, who provided the speaking voice for Sita, performs an original dance, which Paley rotoscopes and puts on a vivid, erratic background. It’s honestly beyond description. If you watch nothing else of this movie, watch this scene. (Heads up, it features bright, rapidly flashing images.)

"Sita's Fire"

“Sita’s Fire”

Sita provides so much material for discussion that I could probably write the rest of the semester’s blog posts on this one movie. I’ll only do three: this introduction to the movie, a quick interpretation of it, and an analysis of its influences.

A Cat in New York

This week, I thought it’d be interesting to consider how A Cat in Paris might have differed had it been an American picture instead of French.

First of all, the art style. I don’t know enough about French animation (yet) to make any kind of assessment about how typical the simplistic style of A Cat in Paris would be to a French audience. But I do wonder how it would be interpreted in the United States if it were not French. Would an American audience accept this style if it were domestically produced, or would we expect something more polished?

Next, the plot: Having an indoor-outdoor cat is unheard of in US cities, so there’d have to be some sort of contrivance to get the cat outside again and again. The most obvious way would be to have the cat leave through a window while the owners slept. We know that a city pet owner would almost certainly not let their cat outside to roam alone, and that they would quickly start to worry if they noticed it were missing. In Paris, Dino the cat is let out to explore; in New York, he would have to sneak out. There is no way to describe a cat’s leaving the apartment unbeknownst to its owner as anything other than “sneaking out” or “escape”. This would likely change the perception of Dino’s personality from adventurous to mischievous.

A Cat in Paris generally avoided putting Nico and Dino close to the city’s landmarks — except, of course, for the climax on Notre Dame. This sharply cut down on potential observers. Nico and Dino might not be able to find such a quiet, dimly-lit route in New York City. They could still travel the rooftops unnoticed, but I think a New York setting would make their escapades an even stronger statement about people’s obliviousness to their surroundings. Unless they’re in Times Square, how many people in the city look up?

The hidden gems of New York would become the highlight. Scouting NY is the blog of a movie location scout who posts his more unusual finds online. Even a cursory scan of the website reveals some strange sights/sites that Dino and Nico could come across. There’s everything from art deco, to 19th century marble arches, to gargoyleslots and lots of gargoyles. This new view would make the hypothetical American film as much a love letter to New York as the original was to Paris.

Silent Sidekicks

The personalities of talking animal sidekicks have already been discussed by others. In this post, I want to examine their silent counterparts. The silent sidekicks are extensions of the main characters. They express all the outrageous emotion their owners, but on a lighter scale.

Rapunzel’s little chameleon (why on earth she has, of all possible creatures, a chameleon, is still a mystery to me) glares and lunges when Rapunzel is in trouble. Abu, through his angry chittering, expresses the selfish impulses that Aladdin has to control in himself. A Bug’s Life is all about sentient insects, but the ant queen has an aphid as a dog-like pet that growls when the queen is angry.

For whatever reason, we keep coming back to Meeko, so I’ll pull him out again. We have the large-scale drama between the English and the Powhatans reduced to squabbles between a raccoon and a pug. The violence between the humans is daunting; the violence between the animals is fun. The audience is led to root for Meeko, the representative of the protagonist.

The silent sidekick is the cartooniest of cartoons, although still the simplest.

Princes and Princesses

On Wednesday, a few students (I don’t know anyone’s name yet, but I will learn) touched on the newer model of Disney prince. While in the past, the princes have been flat and mute, our new heroes have fleshed out personalities, motives beyond getting the girl, and character arcs of their very own. I hadn’t given the princes any thought before, to be honest, but now I’m thinking that the cardboard cutout nature of the prince could be one of the reasons for the criticism of the old-fashioned Disney princess.

You know the story: princess falls victim to something or someone through no fault of her own, falls in love with a prince in one glance, the prince rescues her because true love, and they live happily ever after. A problem many people have with this structure is that a romantic happily ever after is positioned as a prize and easily won. Now I’m thinking that a root of this issue is the trophy prince. Without a personality on his part, we’re left with love for love’s sake. The two fall in love because it’s a nice idea, nothing more than that. The man of your dreams is literally the first man to come along. That’s not healthy.

Is Disney making its new princes/heroes complete characters because they want to nuanced or because they’re trying to bring in little boys? It’s no secret that Tangled was rebranded for just that purpose. There are Disney movies that are gender-neutral in appeal/marketing and movies that have been marketed more to boys, but apparently those are no longer enough. Are they trying to bring little princes into the princess genre, or is the Disney prince improving for the princess’s sake?