I thought I'd share a thought of mine with you, and hear whatever you have to say about it.
All my life I've disliked gross-out, but loved horror. Today I started to wonder, what makes animation portraying gross things work in certian shows, but not others?
I thought I'd share a thought of mine with you, and hear whatever you have to say about it.
All my life I've disliked gross-out, but loved horror. Today I started to wonder, what makes animation portraying gross things work in certian shows, but not others?
First off, I apologize about the title, which is a bit misleading. This is not about the animation of a show/piece of work itself being ugly, but rather ugly things being animated. What makes the works of David Firth and Jhonen Vasquez work, where most gross 90's cartoons fail?
I think that it has a bit to do with the reason why the show is showing us gross things. If it's just spit, wounds, vomit, and feces for comidic purposes, I think it fails. I suppose it differs from person to person, but none of those things are very funny to me. It just creates a feeling of disgust, which isn't unpleasant in a good way. (Horror can be unpleasant in a good way, is what I mean. Gross things for the sake of gross things are not.)
I suppose it can also be just how gross the gross things are. In Invader Zim, for example, the world looks gross and unpleasant, but never to the point where you want to look away from the screen. I suppose that's for several reasons, the first being the fact that the animation is not at all realistic, and never tries to be, so the gross parts never look real enough. It's obvious enough what is on screen for us to be a tad uncomfortable, but not enough for us to feel full on disgust. It's kind of like a horror movie, in the way that the subtle "creepy" parts of the movie are usually the ones that work the best, and not the ones only showing guts and gore. It's more about the feeling in the imagery.
In Invader Zim, I think that part of the reason why the gross works better than in other shows, is that it's usually not happening to any characters, it's part of the backgrounds. (Except for in Dark Harvest, ofcourse.) We don't cringe at anything gross in the series, because ususally the gross parts are run down, ugly buildings, or streets littered with trash and dirty puddles. We don't see any of the characters having a puss-filled wound, or spitting out barf mixed with blood.
What works in David Firths animation is a bit harder to pinpoint for me, and is something I would like help with. If you do not know, David Firth is the creator of "Salad Fingers" and "Spoilsbury Toast Boy," along with many other creepy animated series online. If you have not watched anything he's made yet, I highly reccomend you do. It's very starnge and other-worldly.
Firths animation disgusts you. It disturbes you. Everything from the strange background-music to the uncanny and stiff flash-animation is weird and creepy. He's one of my personal idols, for creating pieces of art that gives you a strange feeling of fear that I've yet to experience with any other horror-animation.
Let's get the obvious part out of the way first. Firths works are horror, not comedy. He dosn't try to make blood, puke, or gore funny. It's there to disturb you, not make you laugh. Still, as I said, the horror that works best is usually not the bloody and gross one, it's the subtle and creepy. Firths work manages to be both at once, creepy all the way trough, but with a gross world, and gross moments. Firths gross-out is more realistic than the one in Invader Zim, (understandably) with more realistic splatter, colours, and disgusting noise to acompany the artwork. Watching one of his videos, you can really feel the sticky substances that he puts on screen. It actually feels like you could touch them. Still, it's far from looking real. It usually only consists of two or three shades of a colour, along with some white highlights. I wonder if this has part in making his gross-out work.
I also wonder if it might be due to the fact that the gross-out is never cringe-induceingly realistic. We never feel the pain on the actutal characters. It also feels like it belongs in his world, more than most gross-out shows. It feels... starngley natural and fitting in his world, where everything is stiff and strange and uncomfortable.
So, what do you think? Could you help me pinpoint why gross imagery works in certian shows, but others not? Do you agree or disagree with my thoughts?
