Understanding Animation by Wells Paul

Author:Wells, Paul.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136158803
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

4 Expectation and exploitation

The next stage in the evolution of the animated comic form was the consolidation of a vocabulary of ‘gags’ which exploited the form and determined certain codes of expectation in the audience. The analysis of Soda Jerks in Chapter One, and Duck Amuck in Chapter Two, serve as representative examples of the kind of vocabulary that the cartoon constantly employed, and came to use in a predictable and formulaic way. This formula included the following aspects.

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Establishing a recognisable context in which characters have specific roles or immediately identifiable traits or qualities, even if these become subject to quick change or redefinition.

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‘Riffing’ a number of comic events by problematising a specific situation (e.g. employing mistakes, coincidence, misunderstanding etc.).

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Compressing the events by the use of elliptical conventions changing the logic of time and space in the narrative, often resisting ‘unity’ with regard to plot.

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Creating an ‘unreliable space’(see Klein, 1993: 7), which destabilises narrative by revealing the mechanisms of the medium (e.g. ‘squash-n-stretch’ movement, metamorphosis of character and environment etc.).

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Using jokes which had been seen before but which had been subjected to a fresh interpretation or use (e.g. a character standing in mid-air, realising, and then, falling; a character being subjected to some form of violent act etc.).

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Establishing the idea of characters in conflict which would be played out within the narrative parameters of a chase.

The seven-minute cartoon essentially required that it foreground its terms and conditions with immediacy and clarity in the same way that the vaudevillian comedian had to quickly establish himself and determine the style in which he was working in order to make his audience engage with him. These formulaic elements served this function but also had the consequence of creating and sustaining particular kinds of stereotype. As Henry Jenkins has noted of the vaudeville context:

This brutal economy weighed against the exposition necessary to develop rounded characters or particularised situations. Instead, characters and situations had to be immediately recognisable. An elaborate system of typage developed: exaggerated costumes, facial characteristics, phrases, and accents were meant to reflect general personality traits viewed as emblematic of a particular class, region, ethnic group, or gender.

(Jenkins, 1992: 70)

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