“I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” The droll short The Revolution of the Crabs chronicles the depressing lives of crabs and how they become liberated, sort of. © Arthur de Pins/Metronomic.

The Revolution of the Crabs (La Révolution des Crabes)
Shortlisted for Oscar consideration this year was a droll black-and-white short from French illustrator Arthur De Pins, The Revolution of the Crabs. It’s all about the most common crab on southern European shores, Pachygrapsus Marmoratus, their depressing lives and how they finally shrugged off the yoke of blah living and became liberated, sort of.

On beaches and below tides all over Europe, there’s a modest crab commonly referred to as the Marbled Rock Crab. It’s gray, unassuming, and small, the kind of thing toddlers will maim without a second thought. No one ever asked one to dinner, made one the hero of a medieval quest, put one on their country’s flag. Yes, it’s a sad little species, and now a spokesman has finally come forward to tell his story. It turns out that in the undersea community they’re referred to as, “Depressed Crabs,” the main reason being that they can’t turn around. Up the sand and down, these poor schmucks can only move in a line from side to side, making them fatalistic and preventing long-term relationships of any kind. (How can you cultivate a friendship when you and your buddy never cross paths twice?)

Actually, they can turn; they just never do. Yep, they’re real dumb, these crabs, and when they’re not pacing off endless straight lines to the horizon or hiding in the rocks, the other crustaceans are appropriating them for public transportation. Once in a while their luck improves, as it does for one crab who finds himself standing on a flatfish that suddenly turns ninety degrees — but it can worsen just as quickly, as the same crab scuttles away in pursuit of thrills and adventure singing “Brazil” only to be stepped on a second later. Nothing really changes, actually, until the day one crab whose legs on one side have been pried off by a human and who is making endless circles in the sand becomes philosophical. He then rallies his fellow crabs to be proud that even though there are only two directions they can go, at least they’re going somewhere.

Arthur De Pins is a 2000 graduate of École Nationale Supérieure Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and makes his living as a professional illustrator and cartoonist with a fondness for blocks of bright colors and a super-clean line. His work has appeared regularly in the French men’s magazine Max, for whom he does cheeky sex cartoons in a Playboy-esqe vein. (I love the economy of his simple three-panel strip about a pizza boy delivering to a woman who answers the door in ball-gag domination gear, and all the things he thinks up on the way downstairs as an excuse for a return trip, “Um, you forgot the tip… Me again! Do you have a map of Panama?”)

Most of his portfolio is available on his website (spell out his name), including his two previous shorts: Geraldine, his graduate thesis, about the day Gerald woke up as a girl and his ultimately very successful means of coping; and L’Eau de Rose, a hilarious and technically accomplished crowd-pleaser about a boy dumping his girl on a Ferris wheel.

The Revolution of the Crabs was animated in Flash, and done in the extreme high-contrast chiaroscuro of monochrome comicbook design. The character animation is limited but goofy, with most of the laughs coming from the dialogue and pacing. The sound design is simple and effective, with a musical soundtrack lifted from the 1972 French comedy L’Oeuf reminiscent of beachside misadventures with Jacques Tati. The whole piece is very funny in the moment, and has at least one haunting comic trope to take home and pin to your mind’s bulletin board. When one crab finally does turn, saving his life in the process, the priceless reaction from the outraged crowd includes the cry, “Has he no dignity?”