Animation today
Animation has become in the recent years as one of the major, if not the pivotal medium of our visual culture. In contrast to painting, sculpturing, graphics, and even photography and the cinema, the amount of films exhibited in the framework of animation has been accumulated far beyond traditional and well established media we are familiar with. With the penetration of digital graphic software into each and every computer, animation has proliferated and turned into a means one can not without in films, presentations based on power point as well as computer games and informative data installed in our cellular phones desktops. Trivial as it may seen, the fact that well known cinema actors have lent their voices to animation films, such as Toy Story, Shrek, Madagascar, and Ratatouille, can serve as an evidence to the fact that animation is a popular medium which attracts even voice over participation. Would it be correct to say that the prestige of animation is no less than 'ordinary' films? Does it mean that the stories depicted by animation are much more intricate? Can we say that the effects of animation are no less convincing in the rendering of reality? Questions as such have always been debated in connection to the status of animation as a means of presenting social and political problems we are exposed to in our daily life. And indeed, animation brings to the open concealed and even suppressed issues one would not dare to represent in ordinary films. Take for instance The Simpsons or South Park two animated sitcoms which have bluntly referred to the American way of life – to its middle class families, to American stereotypes, to current events, and to television itself. Could such satirical scatological and unprecedented black humor (as in South Park) be considered as legitimate in ordinary means of representations such as the cinema, photography, painting and even caricature. It seems to me correct to say that media other than animation would have difficulties in bridging the gap between the real and the actual on the one hand, and facts of life on the other hand as successfully depicted by animation. In other words, animation may correctly be considered as a medium flexible enough to encompass various and sometimes contradictory themes and visuals in the same strip of film. Being a cartoon which represent real (and sometimes – harsh) life, allows it to touch on delicate and sensitive subjects with a smile as if what is seen is entertaining and not threatening or harmful.
The papers published in this issue all refer to the questions raised above, i.e.: to the bridgeable gap between the real and the fictional by the animated film. Suzanne Buchan who has contributed a paper on the Quay brothers put forward the following question – how is it possible that a piece of metal can bring to life emotional feelings, or which of the possible worlds we live in can a screw exist as a real entity? In other word – what kind of reality we experience in animation. Do we experience reality as it is, or do we experience the fact that our reality is a manifold of endless versions of what we label as Reality. This problem is debated by Ben Baruch Blich in his paper 'Animation as possible Worlds' which associates animation with paradoxes as it undermines mimesis and puts it in a new context. Animation is visual anarchist representing possible worlds by defying the merits of mimesis. The same line of thought but from a different angle is raised by Agur Schiff who examines whether there are fixed rules of thumb in teaching animation – are the rules of teaching animation go hand in hand with the rules advocated by the cinema studies curriculum or should we adhere to unique pedagogical means in the teaching of animation. In a roundabout way this idea is advocated by Raz Greenberg, who analyzes Hayao Miyazaki animation who according to Greenberg incorporates Western values as a means to strengthen the illusions of the real for the Japanese audience.
In his historical survey of the Israeli animation, Tzvika Oren pinpoints its main subjects: fascination of the fictional, the magical and the unreal. This issue is raised also by Nadan Pines who put emphasis on the connection between the narrative and its visual exemplifications in the animated film. The film The Monk and the Fish is the subject matter of a paper written by Zigerman, Dobrowski and Yanigar – students in Bezalel who analyze the film raising the question of visual manipulations vis-à-vis its content. At the end let me point at Dana Arieli-Horowitz's interview of Roni Oren (Head of the Animation Dept. In Bezalel) who enlightens some of the basic issues animation raises as a medium potentially able to represent and depict from as many as possible angles the real and the fictional alike.
Ben Baruch Blich
Chief editor
