Last Lecture =(

Pity it's the last lecture cause Bill seemed to be finally getting the hang of it. It was still very heavily animation orientated but at least it was animation I liked this time, especially the Anime. ^^ He even got a reference to character creation in!

It was about 'The Circle of Life: Globalisation of Culture and the Relationship Between Japanese and American Traditions' and Bill started by discussing how technology being better does not always guarantee better work. Linear progression & technological determinism = bad!

We watched the breakthrough Pixar animation of Andre and Wally B which featured:

motion blur
objects bending
particle systems
an injection of humour!
The Luxo Lamps animation was just adorable and amazing with how they managed to express so many emotions but Tin Toy was just plain creep! They tried to make the baby realistic and cute apparently but went way beyond Uncanny Valley and into 'please-can-i-throw-that-baby-into-a-valley' territory! =S

Bill then discussed anthropomorphism and synthetic nature in the history on animation.
Ideology naturalises the social
Takes the cultural and social amd projects it as natural, treats changeable relations as fixed.
Althusser -a French dude that killed his wife- posited that ideology is "the false obviousness of everyday life."
No better place to explore this than in cartoons (the medium 'for children') featuring visions of Nature.

We watched clips from the traumatic Bambi which featured:

• multiplaning camera - paraplex perception
• anatomically correct animals -a real deer was brought into the studio to aid this!
• Tyrus Wong's input of the Chinese art of blurring and voids in the background

Bill then decided to bring up 'Sexuality in Disney' and showed us the scene in which Flower, Thumper and Bambi get 'Twitterpated' and described them as getting full body erections as they go all stiff and then vibrate...

Well Disney is trying to corrupt the youth and make them hyper sexual and gay, i mean look at this undeniable proof:

Gotta love conspiracy theories! It didn't mention anti-semitism though and we all know Walter was a Nazi supporter and why were there no non-white princesses until after he died... hmm? Hmm? HMM?!

They're exactly the same!! =O

Apparently we were going to look at Warner Brothers too but as time was running away with us he skipped that to get to the best bit: anime!

We watched lots of My Neighbour Totoro and that's when Bill got the reference to Character Creation in! He noted that the characters look stereotypically scary, Totoro with his huge mouth and claws and supernatural powers and the Catbus with it's strange body and uncanny Cheshire cat smile. They look like they should be scary monsters but in actual fact they're lovely. Unless you find an alternate twisted image of them:  

Bill also mentioned that the scene where they make the oak tree grow is eerily reminiscent of the mushroom clouds caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I'd never made that link before despite being well aware of both the film and bombs. I can only think it's because the film is so magical and bewitching that i don't think about the real world whilst watching it. 

Talking of which the synthetic nature created in My Neighbour Totoro is far more enchanting and other wordly than Disney. Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki described it as: "It was nature painted with translucent colours." Disney borrows from Chinese traditional art but i don't think it has the same wonder and magic as Japanese anime.