Bogus

Absolutely!!!

Warner Bros. and Disney went nuts with their anti-Nazi propoganda back in WWII. Certainly the current political climate is ripe for parody but the only show that seems to have the cahones to tackle it is South Park. Everyone else is too afraid of.............. well I don't even know what. That's what makes their lack of tenacity so frustrating.

Certainly not everything should be politically charged. But, noone should be stopped from doing so either. It's AAAALLLLLLLLLLL part of the great democracy, people! :cool:

Certainly. But it is probably easier as an individual independant driven than a studio or backed-by-a-big studio to express a single political vision.
There may also be a moral dilemma for an individual working at a studio to be involved in with something he/she may not agree .

But definenately, animation has no limits to what it can express in political or social comment.

Definately...
If we can't express our anger and opinions through the means that we have, we might as well give up. the animation industry shouldn't be cleansed out of political or any other kind of message, even if you don't agree with the actual message. that's why those old animation shorts shouldn't be censored, we need to learn from our past mistakes... It is all part of our history, both the good and the bad side of it!

Should the huge, multinational, corporate conglomerate studios make political statements with their films? Sure.

Will they? No.

They're far too busy making their political statements with financial contributions in exchange for favorable legislation.

The idea of a studio making a political statement is a quaint anachronism from a bygone era. There's far too much at risk on the bottom line for a large corporation to risk alienating a big portion of their audience for something as ephemeral as a "political statement".

They can make it but it doesn't mean I'm going to want to watch it.

I don't know about any of you but I don't want to be lectured on a women's right to choose during Finding Nemo.

Some subject matter just loses it punch animated. It's like when you see anime porn, what are people thinking.

ed

Good question.

"Should" animators be political? If they want to. Real animation is about art and originality so anything goes. Independent producers and short film animation artists will always aspire to be political, I think. Just look at the many short films shown at Annecy - I'll wager up to sixty percent of all the material there is political or at least satirical in one way or another.
Political themes and big studios is another interesting part of the debate. The Simpsons is one of the most successful animated series of all times and extremely up-to-date as far as inner American affairs of the present, past and sometimes even future are concerned. South Park's recipe is satirical anarchy, also featuring strong, and often even blunt, allusions to political and historical events. Futurama had its fair share of political themes. Even Animaniacs featured various presidents of the United States and caricatures of Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein.

The Iron Giant came with a message which will always be modern, that war is a nonsensical monster fostered and blown out of proportion by paranoid suspicions and angst. Although the story was intentionally set in the McCarthy era, The Iron Giant was, I think, less specific in its criticism. I wonder, though: did Warner deem its political context and humanistic message unfit for a preteen audience and therefore failed to support it adequately?

Another thing I wonder about is that most animation is also part of the media and we all know that the media is influenced and even manipulated at times. How 'true' can the message of political animation be?

well, I was once told that the truth stops being true from the moment that anyone expresses it in words... From then on, it just becomes someone's point of view!

They also say a picture says more than a thousand words. (I hope the same is true for a couple of thousand animated drawings.)

There's such an animal as a political cartoonist--so why not a poltical animator? I see no distinctions between the two.

Hello.

I was thinking Brad Bird's IRON GIANT was an example of an entire film with an anti-war message.

Wonderful!

I stridently DISAGREE that IRON GIANT carries a anti-war/anti gun message.

If anything the film is very pro those issues, BUT with the theme of Military Might=responsibility.

Kent Mansley is seen as irresponsible and leads the military force astray with his paranoia. His is the "command" that gets the Nautilus to launch its missile, not the General. The Giant saves the town from the folly of our own weapon, the General insists that Mansley stays put and takes his "medicine" like a man.

Look at it this way:
Hogarth's Mom allows him to own and use a pellet gun.
He proudly, purposefully adorns a fighter pilots helmet in ritualized militray fashion.
There's a homage photo of Hogarth's (deceased???Missing????) dad on a F-86.
The military shown are shown to be professional, dutiful, if a little bit trigger happy.

All these things would have been grossly ridiculed, or avoided, were the film to have portrayed a anti-war stance.
There was a lone dissenting critic of the film on Amazon.com on the film, someone who stated that the film was full of liberal bias etc etc.........but they clearly missed those points I raised above. Obviously they were looking at the work through their own filters.

There's such an animal as a political cartoonist--so why not a poltical animator?

http://www.markfiore.com/index.html

There's such an animal as a political cartoonist--so why not a poltical animator? I see no distinctions between the two.

I believe Tex Avery was the first "political animator" with such films as The Blitz Wolf (1942) and Detouring America (1939). Or were there examples before those?