The Animation Pimp: Leftovers, B-Sides and Outtakes

The Pimp just doesn't even care about the war anymore…he's had it with two-faced rhetoric and the independent animation film community's failure to be relevant.

By Chris Robinson | Tuesday, May 13, 2003 at 12:00 am

Posted In | Columns: The Animation Pimp

Insignificant and occasionally interesting contributions to the cognition of reality…

It takes a shallow grasp of history to believe that solutions exist to most international problems. Often there are no solutions, only confusion and unsatisfactory choices.

Robert Kaplan, Warrior Politics

Between grief and nothing, I’ll take grief.

William Faulkner, The Wild Palms

Everybody's hoppin' just a boppin' just a boppin'.

Jerry Lee Lewis, High School Confidential

Illustration by Andreas Hykade. Courtesy of Chris Robinson.

“I don’t care.” There I said it. I don’t feel a damn bit of shame either. The U.S. has done what it said it would do and I don’t care anymore. Same goes for animation, the part of my life that earns cash. These days I’m more concerned with my dog’s limp, my book deadline, what we’re going to do for a new venue for Ottawa 2004, the endless e-mails I keep getting about penis size (I don’t know 'bout you…but I got over that whole thing when I was about 14. I mean are there really any women out there who believe that a BIG PENIS is everything? If so…please write c/o address below), and the NHL playoffs. I know, I know. What a petulant, self-righteous spoiled s.o.b. Well hey la dee da. At least I’m not a self-styled polygamist. (Sorry I just really wanted to say that phrase.) Maybe you’re right but what do you want me to do? Maybe it comes with tossing the bottle or having a kid or hitting that Dante age. You step back, slow down and actually think things through. All I know is that I find myself sitting atop a couple of fences at this moment.

We Are All Puppets!
Up 'til about December, I was pretty much lefty. It was easy…just quote Nader or Chomsky, wave your fist, go to a few protests, visit alternet or common dreams, go see Bowling for Columbine, forward a few emails and you’re done. Barely a sweat, but man do u feel good about yourself. Well…I got called to the mat by my friend Hayden. He lives in Toronto. Big deal. (That reminds me: it was Hayden and I who actually wrote that opening night speech for Ottawa 2002. I lied about buying it off a speech writing Website. Sorry.) During the month of January he and I started discussing the war. I’d just finished (almost) this book called The War on Freedom. The book argued that the U.S. government basically knew and allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen. This had left me thoroughly depressed because how do you fight something so complex and jamesbondingly evil? Well…anyway…Hayden and I started gabbing about Iraq. He took the centre of right. I took the left. By the end of it I realized how daft I’d been. All the lefty stuff I was spouting: 9/11 was a conspiracy, Bush is an idiot. It’s all about oil. Killing people is wrong. It was all empty rhetoric. It wasn’t that I became an anti-abortionist Negro hating redneck…no it was that I came to understand that the left could generate the same impotent verbal crap that also drips from the mouths of Bush, Fleischer, Rumsfeld and the rest of the boys' club. This really wasn’t new…I was always annoyed by those drum beating Communist hippies. They always struck me as so bloody intolerant of difference. They were morally superior, above it all and ironically almost sort of fascistic to a degree (“You’re either with us or against us!” Hmm…). They could all quote Chomsky, Biafra, Rollins and assorted lefty pop stars. Worst of all, like Newt Gingrich, they had NO SENSE OF HUMOUR. Man…I once wore this T-shirt I got from Bust Magazine that said, “Feminist chicks dig me,” and you should have seen the scowls. (Kinda like the reaction Borak [the Kazakhstan TV host on Da Ali G Show] got when he went to an animal rights protest and talked about how he used to hunt dogs for fun.) Anyway, all these gals pushing strollers and wearing those hats…sort of circular…kinda thing a lame ass jazz musician might wear (my friend Andrea calls them NGO hats -- non-governmental association)…anyway…these broads confronted me and said they were offended by my shirt. I told them it was obviously a joke…but umm…they weren’t laffing. Can u imagine what they’d do if I wore my T-shirt with Bin Laden wearing an "I Love NY" T-shirt? Shiver me timbers. And hey…just look at their poster boy, the self-righteous tattle taler, Noam Chomsky: “Well...the U.S. did this and this and then they did this and this…oh…and that too. That was really bad…and I think they should be spanked." Chomsky apparently lives in an error free, perfectly knitted (like his sweaters) world. I was part of some lefty e-mail groups and they’d always annoy me but now they did so more than ever. Again they seemed humourless, ignorant and downright childish -- like the hippies in Beavis and Butthead’s Animation Sucks. (You’re purple! You’re green! Yeah…but we’re both red inside.)

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I correct myself here - The Bastille fell in 1789, marking the beginning of the french Revolution.

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Trevor Keen (not verified) | Sun, 06/08/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

Pimp, read your history! The American Revolution was not inspired by the French Revolution, because it took place earlier. The Bastille fell in 1792. As far as political authors go, George Orwell should be required reading - his short essays as well as his famous novels.

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Trevor Keen (not verified) | Sun, 06/08/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

Hi. Caught your article mainly cos I was looking for some animation inspiration and found you by luck, but as I am always debating the war with one of my wanna-be-a-Commie, Liberal-Socialist, Local-Gov't-Employee buddies, I found your comments very insightful and I want to email him your column badly cos you absolutely nail the issue of the war dead-on. I have kids aged 11 and 12 (won't bore you with the obligatory 'and we are writing scripts for the next great Dragonball-whatever' crap - you know the drill), and we were watching the live morning news on 9/11 when my daughter said, "There's another one," just as the second plane hit the second tower. Trying to explain this war to kids who saw it happen live just minutes before having to go to school; trying to debate the political lies (of both sides, as you so intelligently noted) with a wanna-be-a-Commie buddy; trying to make sense out of it all without wanting to bury my head in the sand is hard enough as it is...and you wanna bring the issue of 'Wherefore art thou, Animation?' into it?... Actually, you are dead-on about that, too. Art, real art, is supposed to be a passionate discussion about what is happening in our world RIGHT NOW; sadly, modern Animation does not cut it. We just saw "Finding Nemo" and what a fun film it is; only, it says nothing important about anything important, at all. I get your point about "Spirited Away" and all that, too; we just bought the entire collection - beautiful stuff, but utterly pointless. I occasionally try to read sites like the emag your article is in; but the oh-so-esoterica of who is doing what goes over my head, like it would for 99% of most people in the world; you know: the ones who actually have money to spend on art? I mean, who the hell are all of those people you mentioned? Didn't recognize any names 'til you got to the likes of Jordan and his ilk. And those animators are the acclaimed best? By whom? Other closet-case animation-obsessed sorts? Sorry, but I live in the real world. No wonder it takes them so many years to make anything; they don't know how to talk to real people about real things. If they did, they'd be the Walt Disneys, Hanna-Barberas, Rankin-Bass' and/or Hayao Miyazakis of the world, not Whozats Whatzisnames from Dinky-Lil-Nowhere, who never did nuthin' worth remembering by most folks, ever. The war is all about crazed nobodies who just happen to have their hands on the means to kill a lot of people like you and me, and our kids, just because we aren't them; our politicians, being politicians, all care more about staying in power than about saving our asses - if that weren't true they'd shelve all the damned lying and do some damned work for a change; and animation artists today care more about spending 4-6-8-10 years making an animation about absolutely nothing, that almost no one will ever see, than about actually doing something meaningful with their talents, skills and vision. Man, if you worry so much about this stuff that it compells you to write a column about it, I'd hate to have your job. The realities, which are what you seem so concerned about, are actually quite simple: 1) The world itself, as a thing, doesn't care about war or politics or art; we, who pay the price for all of those things, should. 2) Politians and pundits don't care either, although they say they do (and may actually think that they do, too); they care about what other people think of them. If this were not true, they'd shut the f-up and just do some damned work. 3) Animators, for the reasons you stated, don't care about these things either, although they may think that they do, too; their work, either irrelevent because it is almost never seen, or absolutely pointless because it is so commercial that it makes Plain-Jane Vanilla look like a N'Awleans Brothel Girl at Ma'dee Grah, is so utterly forgettable that it proves the point by just being. Animation, including Web-based stuff, and especially commercial work done in the throw-away worlds of advertising and entertainment, needs to grow the f-up if it expects to ever amount to any sort of social relevance. It is, in the end, as Scott McCloud says about Comix: an Invisible Art; the problem is, it is actually the artists doing all of the work who themselves seem most content to let it, to even make it stay that way. Relevant, Invisible is not. Good luck fighting the good fight, Dogg. You're gonna need it. (P.S.: I hope you win!) Chris Carroll Springfield, MO 6-6-03

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Chris Carroll (not verified) | Sat, 06/07/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

Damn, Pimp, you did it again. Touched me and made me feel guilty about my work again. I agree with you once again, specially on the part where you say that nobody cares about animation outside our little animator's world. Sometimes I feel that even animators themselves believe that animation is merely intended for kids and avoid doing anything that involves critical thinking, politics or any other subject that might not be suitable for children. I can't tell you I'm gonna be the Kerouac, Lee Lewis or Pollock of animation, but you can bet your ass I'm gonna die trying.

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Daniel Poeira (not verified) | Mon, 05/19/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

Robert Kaplan wrote. "What does the earth look like in the places where people commit atrocities? Is there a bad smell, a genius loci, something about the landscape that might incriminate?" " Not if you are far enough away and only watch CNN. "In another essay, "Was Democracy Just a Moment?" Kaplan heaps scorn on the United States' fondness for exporting democracy around the globe. Democracy often brings instability and becomes a vehicle for amplifying ethnic and minority tensions, he says, rather than providing the foundations for a middle class, growing prosperity and stability." Let's all tell everyone that we don't agree with that they should leave the US and move elsewhere. "When voter turnout decreases to around 50 percent at the same time the middle class is spending astounding sums in gambling casinos and state lotteries, joining private health clubs and using large amounts of stimulants and anti-depressants, one can legitimately be concerned about the state of American society. We have become voyeurs and escapists. Many of us don't play sports but love watching great athletes with great physical attributes. It is because people find so little in themselves that they fill their world with celebrities. The masses avoid important national and international news because much of it is tragic, even as they show an unlimited appetite for the details of Princess Diana's death. This willingness to give up self and responsibility is the sine qua non for tyranny. " Let's allow the Patriot II Act to pass, it'll will make all our lives safer.

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Pat Hacker (not verified) | Thu, 05/15/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

Christine...you nailed me on the pottery line. What I'd originally meant was 'the pottery of cinema."

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Animation Pimp (not verified) | Thu, 05/15/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

Nina Paley is doing some damn good protest animation. Just not the kind of protest that comes to mind at first, though. Animation is a technique, not a genre. It lends itself particularly well to the fantastic. Live action fims do reality better, and novels do in- your-head thinking better. All can be done in animation of course, but because those aren't really isn't much cause for concern. And, as I say to my warhawk and dove friends, it's always easier to complain than actually do something.

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James Reynolds (not verified) | Wed, 05/14/2003 - 00:00 | Permalink

Yeah Chris! I know whatcha mean about them violent hippie types...always looking to pick fights with folks not like them. Hey, give peace a fighting chance! ...I thought pottery was the pottery of the art world? ;o)