Having become almost exclusively a mere commercial product that serves escapist cravings, animation, with its domineering "entertainment" bias, is stuck in a "merchandising" rut, and, by the same token, has mostly been shaped into a "language" that caters to the lowest common denominator, even to propaganda (see the very intriguing article Animated Propaganda During the Cold War by Karl F. Cohen).

I suspect that animation is still very much, in its "populist" mode, a form of propaganda, a way by which false values are presented as norms with which to shape/constitute the perception of reality following societal models. In this sense, those who contribute, knowingly or not, to the deception, carry a heavy responsibility.

Mind you, those who swallow those false values also share in that responsibility.

Approaching the making of an animation piece via the usual planning route (concept, storyboarding, etc.) is a sure way of making it stay within the established norms, a sure way of preventing it from exploring all that remains to be explored, all that still needs to be made visible (possibly an infinite task).

I also think that it is the dominating reliance on storytelling that has made animation so easily become a sub-genre. If we look at art history, we can see that a break from storytelling was needed in order to push the form of painting beyond the illustration aspect that dominated much of pre-20th century work.

Like most painting prior to the late 19th century "revolution," animation too has become a form that is closed, and not just closed, it is now likely unable to grow, stifling any attempt at "pushing the envelope."

We are more and more bombarded with pronouncements about what animation "is," or "should be" and "cannot be," and by far, most of those declarations posit "story" as being the center of it all in animation. Not only that, but "knowing where one is heading, and how" seems to be a must, even if the better work one does always comes as a surprise, a "reward," a "gift," often experienced as a "mistake" at first! For the sake of very trite commercial priorities, we have allowed much of what animation has become to be limited to a manufacturing process, leading to a manufactured product.

The great, wide-open vistas that were confronting animators during the early days have almost vanished. The (dumb) "puppeteering" agenda has just about won the day. (Puppeteering can be other than "dumb" of course, as in, for example, the fabulous work of Ronnie Burkett).

The form of animation, its language, has been locked into a pale mimicking of "reality," a pale duplicate of "live cinema," and/or a complete flip into "toon-land." In any case, much of animation, as it is practiced today, is a form that avoids the sincere exploring of our experience as it is lived, as it gives itself to us.

However, there are some people who have been and are making animation in ways that escape/avoid this sick catering to commerce, "fun" and "cynicism," preferring instead to explore "meaning," "joy" and "poetry;" following their inner voice instead of speaking the language that others may expect them to speak. We will see some clips from such people, clips that barely do justice to the body of work for which those artistes are responsible, a series of clips that, I hope, will show glimpses of "animation in a different key."

What all the people I will talk about here have in common is this ability to play, to play "seriously," and to explore facets of the potential of animation that may not have immediate (if any) commercial value, and, in some cases, as in Pierre Hébert's work, consciously do not want to be "marketable."

I will start with the work of one animator who helped me enter in earnest animation, as I understand it today, Mary Ellen Bute. She's a genuine pioneer, someone who managed to create and explore a form of animation that, to me, is of the highest order, and yet who is barely known today. Few people know her name, even fewer have ever seen samples of her films. Mary Ellen Bute avoided the trap of linear storytelling and simplistic character animation; she went for something much greater, much more demanding, much more elusive.

In that, her research was very much in tune with what painters of her time were also trying to accomplish. I am absolutely convinced that what she started exploring still has a great deal to offer, a great deal begging to be made visible. There's a good article on her by William Moritz here on AWN called “Seeing Sound,” which is very much what her work was about.

The two 20-second clips I show here come from Mood Contrasts, a 1953 film which has moments of sheer visual poetry, already making visible much of what I hope more of us will be able to connect with. It is worth noting that as Mary Ellen Bute died in 1983, this is in fact the 20th anniversary of her departing (she was born in 1906).