The Watershed is Coming

The Watershed Is Coming
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South Park's content always takes a wild turn -- too wild for some! © Comedy Central.

Inevitable Change?
If there is any difference now from the past, it is that the pressure toward adult animation is stronger than ever before. Fritz the Cat emerged from a genre of comic book that was never a mass phenomenon: the entire comix industry that R. Crumb defined (along with S. Clay Wilson, Gilbert Shelton, and a few others) never reached more than a small counterculture audience.

It was, however, part of a general cultural rebellion that eventually seeped over into the mainstream. The same relaxing of restrictions that brought the end of the Production Code, the increase in sex, violence and "language" on screen, and massive changes in the boundaries of public discourse has progressed since then, aided in no small part by technological changes.

Much as the invention of TV forced motion pictures to risk greater expressive freedom, so did the coming of cable change the face of TV. The networks weakened, making room for the wily upstart Fox; and Fox saw its best chance in the more "daring" material that started ignominiously with Married with Children and reached its qualitative apex with The Simpsons. Cable fought back with Beavis and Butthead and then with South Park -- both of which were able to push the standards more than any broadcast station, even Fox.

It was inevitable that this cultural change would leach over to the big screen.

Yet the very debates sparked by South Park are indicative of the blindered view that animation is by definition kid's stuff. The more extreme edge of this perspective -- as exemplified by groups like the Christian Action Project, whose online review of Bigger, Longer & Uncut was nearly as funny as the film itself -- sees nothing less than the deliberate use of "children's entertainment," i.e., animation, to corrupt the young and indoctrinate them in atheism, Satanism and all that is unholy.

Princess Mononoke presented sophisticated adult fare to a market that wasn't yet ready for such subject matter. © Miramax Films.

The other pressure toward adult animation comes from Japan, where anime has long since taken animation beyond the range of young children. (One can only imagine what the Christian Action Project would have made of Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend.) There is no inherent reason to think that Princess Mononoke should have a harder time finding its audience than a live-action adult adventure film; yet Miramax has been unable to draw in audiences, despite yet another set of virtually unanimous rave reviews.

It would be nice to think that the time has finally come for animation to break out of its children's straitjacket. But commercially speaking, this is not at all clear. I suspect that the problem lies not so much with the audience as with Hollywood execs, whose inherent conservatism makes adult animation seem both a risk and a bother. Only the respectable performance of Bigger, Longer & Uncut bodes well for the immediate.

Andy Klein is a film critic for the New Times newspaper chain. He is head of the animation committee for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA).