The Animation Pimp: Like Everyone, I’m Not Like Everybody Else

The Pimp bemuses charlatans and Ottawa’s funding fiasco in this month’s edition.

By Chris Robinson | Thursday, August 7, 2003 at 12:00 am

Posted In | Magazines: AnimationWorld | Columns: The Animation Pimp

Insignificant and occasionally interesting contributions to the cognition of reality…

Illustration by Andreas Hykade. Courtesy of Chris J. Robinson.

A colleague sent me a media release from a Toronto-based company. Now almost every PR release is full of fluff, pomp and equivocation, but this one was pretty over the top. They said that they did something related to the software development which was used for some big feature film. What it amounted to was, oh yeah, I know “insert celebrity name here.” He’s a friend of my sister’s cousin’s husband’s uncle’s brother’s mother’s daughter’s step-cousin’s friend of a friend’s friend who went to the uncle’s brother’s mother’s daughter’s step-cousin’s old high school one year and sort of knew the step-cousin through his sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s aunt who was sleeping with a teacher who knew the math teacher at the step-cousin’s high school.

Another person I know was fond of telling everyone about all her wonderful splendiscious experiences in the wonderful splendiscious world of animation, and that all they wanted to do, all they REALLY WANTED TO DO, was just share this wealth of knowledge that they had mined, working with some great masters (are there piss-poor masters?). Of course it turned out that this woman had only worked with one of these masters vicariously while they were teaching together at some school. (Sort of like me saying that I’m a radio/TV personality based on the fact that I’ve done TV/radio interviews.)

It’s not just the small timers; even the big fish stretch the truth. Virtually every Disney feature film has been re-marketed for home video/DVD as a “masterpiece.” OK, sure, I can accept Bambi, Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty, but umm… yeah… the rest of dem? I dunno. Granted, they have toned the masterpiece stuff down on DVD. Anyway, equivocation is the nature of advertising. You only sell the bright side of life.

Initially, this piece was gonna be about these grifters, the people and companies in the animation world (and every other industry/community) who exist through smoke and mirrors… but then the Ottawa Festival had its funding cut. All of a sudden I didn’t care about illusionists. Instead, I wondered what the fug I was going to do. I’d spent the last 12 years involved in animation and, BAM, just like that, it was potentially gone. My entire adult life has been spent working in animation. It’s, in part, defined who I am to myself, but mostly to other people.

David Ehrlich (American animator) once interviewed me and we started talking about how we came into the animation scene. We both admitted that it was the people. It was an environment that made us feel less alone. I was even more of an outsider because I didn’t give a tinker for cartoons really. I came from an academic background and for me technique always came second, third and fourth to concept. When I say concept, I don’t necessarily mean message, smarts or learnin’, I simply mean IDEA. That can be a series of Tex Avery gags or some high falutin’ Norman McLaren musing.

Don’t listen to those wanks who sputter about non-figurative, non-representational, abstract material, conceptual art. That whole ‘high-brow’ definition of conceptual art is the biggest snow job this side of ‘democratic’ elections. Post-Sec. academia is just another gap filler, tenured ad men using new words to sell used ideas to the next generation of something seekers.

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Comments

Chris , you amaze me sometimes. I have heard you called every name in the book (even threw in some myself) but what is shocking is that no matter what the extreme description they must add the word "intelligent" to it. Your thoughts on status/position becoming identity (and the downfalls of it) were about as perceptive as is possible. To go further , to accept a job as an identity is to give up your real identity and that is the saddest part of all. To lose that part of yourself whether by choice or by weakness. In many ways the temporary collapse of 2D is a godsend in that so many lives will now be realigned and freed from what otherwise would be a long empty road . All change is good though it might not be apparent initially. The important thing is that those who follow ( in 3D) will be subject to the same temptation . To the same submersion . Perhaps that concept of self is the first thing every artist should be taught but whatever the case as long as people are encouraged to define themselves by their position they are in danger of the waking bitch slap. You are weird but I like your rambling. Definately worth reading.

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Dave You Know Who (not verified) | Tue, 08/19/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

Chris, Glad to hear you're back afloat. I found your article fascinating, particularly considering it really didn't say much at all. Just stream of consciousness ramblings of a stressfull period. (Yes, men have those too…) And BTW, your book looks lovely. Congratulations on finishing that. You know I'd like to see the animation community take one collective chill pill. I am full with all the lousy one-upmanship and villainizing going on behind the scenes and I'd like to see folks take a step back and think about what this medium is FOR. Storytelling is all about life lessons. Teaching and learning and sharing experiences with humanity. (And if apon reading this anybody feels their toes trodden on, it's time you kept your feet under your own special chair.) We have to quit spouting the same rotten behavior we complain about all the time. Enough with the whining victim! Tear off that dunce cap-- toss it at the moon! We all have common experiences and we all need to build bridges of understanding between the members of our community. When it starts being about the story and the people, it stops being about who has the biggest brick ;o) Who the heck am I, You ask, to have these opinions and no mega-blockbuster-ego to accompany them? Never-you-mind. You all just go take a look inside yourselves and it'll all come clear in no time at all. And if that doesn't work, there are always those cool tablets… :o)

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Christina Lane (not verified) | Sat, 08/09/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

Excellent article Mr. Pimp. I was aware of the Ottawa situation and I'm glad to hear from somebody that everything is back on track. Just on a side note, I'm really glad that you touched upon a few subjects that coincidentally relate to a 2-year research project in film theory that I've been doing. Your thoughts on identity are spot on, and are especially important to both cinema and animation. I think the reason why neither forms have really progressed in the past few decades is becuase of our belief in the "true soul" or our "true identity." If you were to look at a still photograph, is the human figure (if there is one) objectively above anything else in the picture? Think for a second. A picture by nature is flat, and so by nature all parts of that photograph are a sum of the whole. Except for pornography (which ironically most cinema is closest to in form), a great photograph is aestically moving because of it's entire image, where lighting, composition, color and subject only SERVE to create a total emotional experience. Motion photography (movies), I think, should follow the same logic. To take your Lacan reference, a baby first sees itself as a part of the world around itself. I think in order to create the more viscerally true movie, one must also revert back to this way of vision. Most movies, both animated and live-action, almost narcissistically focus upon human beings and our internal problems and desires, with a complete disregard for the world surrounding us. This is probably why Americans makes the most blatant of these movies, since our values focus on the individual, or the "little man" (Seabiscuit anyone?) succeeding by overcoming the "oppressive forces of the world." Heck, it's even how America was founded in the first place. At least in some Asian movies you see some hint of an interest in the overall world around them. Perhaps if we were to create movies that focused on the outsides of ourselves: where our identity is the moment in which we exist where we are just a part of a bigger whole where the world DOES NOT revolve around any one person, then we could create movies that meet the bar of say SHAKESPEARE or BACH, or even JIMI HENDRIX. These are just naive, innocent thoughts though, spurred on by the Great Animation Pimp's mentioning of both "Freud" and "Lacan" in front of a college film student. Still have much to learn. Still learning much. How's that for honesty!