Depiction And Fiction: Animated 'Truth'

A TALE OF TWO VASES

In the previous post on the subject of ‘Depiction & Fiction’, I argued that animated imagery was more complex than live-action imagery because it contained multiple layers of fiction (that the image from Labyrinth Labyrinthos was a depiction of a fictional toy that was itself a depiction of a fictional entity of the Toonerville Trolley, itself a depiction of the diegetic trolley). In this post, however, I’m going to argue the opposite, claiming that the imagery of hand-drawn animation is conceptually simpler, that it offers us a more direct depiction of diegetic information than live-action does, that it is in some ways 'truer'. To this end, let us leap straight into our titular hypothetical example, the comparison between a vase in a live-action film, and a vase in an animated one.

In live-action, we see a recording of a solid object that exists in front of the camera, the imagery that we see is a photographic ‘trace’ of the object and – as was mentioned in the previous post – would therefore appear to be a more straightforward image than a depiction. We look through the mediation of the recording process and see a true reproduction of the object that was recorded. When the director places the vase in front of the camera and shouts ‘action!’ in our hypothetical example, it allows us to see the vase more or less as we understand it to be in the real world. This is one of the central appeals of live-action cinema, from the earliest Lumiere brothers’ actualities, to critic Andre Bazin’s insistence that realism defined the cinematic medium from other art-forms, to the enduring fascination with documentaries and reality TV.

But when we consider the way in which fiction films operate, this becomes a more complex phenomenon. When we see the object in front of the camera, it is tied to the understanding that what we are seeing – most of the time – is an object purporting to be something else. In this case, what we are seeing is a prop purporting to be a vase. Within the fiction, the vase is an expensive and irreplaceable object, while outside of the diegesis, the prop of the vase is simply a plastic facsimile. As such, the live-action image takes on a dual status thanks to fiction – both real prop and fictional vase - and complicates the idea of the truth of the object. The prop, essentially, lies about being a vase.

With animation, as one might expect, this phenomenon is quite different. When we look at the vase in our hypothetical animated example, we do not have this same kind of doubling-up. The drawn vase is simply a direct depiction of the diegetic vase, there is no additional pro-filmic layer as there is in the live-action example. The fictional vase is all that there is, devoid of the additional layer of extra-diegetic prop. This might seem to be completely at odds with the claim of the previous post, where I argued that the animated image has multiple levels of understanding (the depiction and what is being depicted). Why is this phenomenon any different to our example of the pro-filmic prop? Simply, one is about complexity on the level of image, the other is about complexity on the level of fiction, our understanding of what we are supposed to be looking at.

While the Toonerville Trolley toy had, I believe, four different layers of potential understanding attached to it (the depiction of the toy, the diegetic toy, the cartoon object that the toy depicts, and the diegetic trolley that the cartoon depicts), all of these options were based upon decisions that the viewer made regarding their comprehension of the image. As an image, it could be all of these things simultaneously. As far as the level of fiction goes, the situation is far simpler – it is a direct depiction of a diegetic toy, not a prop purporting to be a toy as we have with our live-action vase.

Our hypothetical animated vase therefore is only the vase of the story, without the additional layer of pro-filmic understanding. This becomes more interesting when we move away from inanimate objects and look at characters. When we see a character in a live-action film, we are likewise able to look at the figure on screen in one of two ways – as pro-filmic performer or diegetic character. When we see Charlie Chaplin, we can either choose to perceive him as Charles Chaplin, the Hollywood writer, director and performer, who cavorts about the screen engaging in a variety of impressive slapstick set-pieces, or we can choose to see him as the Little Tramp, the hopeless, homeless man who finds himself in a variety of scrapes and scenarios that he has no control over.

But with an animated character like Felix the Cat, we do not have a pro-filmic performer to consider. We can only see the diegetic character of Felix, without the additional consideration of a performer. As such, I would argue that animated characters are more 'true' than their live-action counterparts because they lack this extra level of non-diegetic complexity. Michael Corleone in The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) can never sever himself from Al Pacino; the pro-filmic actor will always be hovering around our perception of the character, always potentially distracting us from Corleone as a complete and truly diegetic entity. But Bugs Bunny is capable of being just Bugs devoid of any non-diegetic complexity. The things that Bugs says and does are therefore, in a sense, more true than the words and actions of Corleone.

                                                                                                                  - P. S.

Depiction And Fiction

I find animated imagery fascinating. It is not simply the characters, stories, visual compositions or stylistic tropes that draw me to animation; there is something in the fundamental nature of the animated image as a depiction that – for me at least – opens up a variety of possible interpretations, or readings of the image, in otherwise fairly straightforward narrative moments. I have briefly mentioned in a previous post the idea of ‘depiction and fiction’, the multitude of interpretative layers that are introduced by the relationship between the animated imagery and the fictional worlds and objects that the imagery creates for us. These thoughts are really just an indulgence in this fascination, rather than an argument about medium specificity or the superiority of such images over more standard ones.

What does the phrase ‘depiction and fiction’ refer to? Put simply, when we look at a recorded image of something (whether recorded photographically or digitally) we see a trace of the original object, but when we look at a rendered depiction of something – that is, an image that has been created through a combination of shape and colour to resemble something that we can identify – then this image has a dual status. The image we see is both a depiction and the thing being depicted. We have the option of either looking at the image (seeing Simba from The Lion King as a drawing) or looking through it (seeing Simba as a diegetic lion). Although the notion of ‘trace’ and the apparently unmediated nature of the live-action recoded image is, quite rightly, viewed with some suspicion by many scholars, my focus here is predominantly with the created imagery of traditional animation and thus I will just be conceptualising the live-action image as a recorded trace for the sake of ease. If one wishes to argue that a live-action image is also doubled (both ‘Cary Grant’ and a ‘flat projection of a recording of Cary Grant’ simultaneously) then all this means is that the animated image becomes equivalently trebled (the character ‘Simba’, the ‘hand-drawn depiction of Simba’, and the ‘projection of the recorded image of the drawing of Simba’). For simplicity, I shall therefore continue to consider the live-action image more ‘transparent’ than the animated one.

I intend to return to this idea of depiction and fiction in future posts, exploring the implications that it has for narrative comprehension, diegetic integrity and the ‘truth’ of the animated image. But for now, to lay the groundwork, I shall briefly demonstrate what I mean when I talk about multi-layered nature of the animated image when considering the relationship between the depiction and the fiction that it depicts. Let us consider the following image:

Here we have a fairly straightforward image from a Hollywood Golden Age short – The Toonerville Trolley from 1936 by Van Beuren Studios. We can see the image in one of two ways – as a flat depiction or as the diegetic space, objects and characters that have been depicted. Our understanding and acceptance of animation is so ingrained in our civilisation that we do not look at the image and struggle to comprehend it. We can happily make out a countryside environment, a train track, a trolley running along the track (though our understanding of the trolley might be dependent on our historical knowledge of the almost totally defunct form of transportation), and the Skipper riding the trolley. The degree of caricature, of simplification and exaggeration, contained in the image does not confuse us. Although we have never encountered a man who looks exactly like the Skipper in our real lives (with those exact proportions or textures), we have a good enough grasp of animation convention to successfully look through the depiction and see a man driving a trolley along a track in the countryside. Yet simultaneously, we are also able to see nothing but the caricature, looking at the image and its overt differences from what we understand it to be depicting.

This next image is, of course, a photographic record of a toy. But let us for the moment ignore the photograph and focus on the toy itself. The toy, as a hand-made object designed to convey an impression of something rather than being the thing itself, is also mode of depiction. But here the levels of fiction contained within the depiction have increased. It is on one level a toy and we can appreciate it as a three-dimensional object. At the same time we can look through the toy and see the same trolley and Skipper within. But there is another layer of fiction in-between these two, which is the possibility of looking through the depiction of the toy and seeing the animated image. The object can therefore be the diegetic trolley and driver, the animated depiction of the trolley and driver, and the hand-made toy of the animated depiction of the trolley and driver. As an object, it has a three-fold existence depending on how we choose to appreciate it, what we choose to see (and therefore the actual photograph of the toy that you’re looking at now has a four-fold existence). Just the toy itself, as both an object and a double-depiction, has enough visual complexity to keep me happy for hours, even though it appears to be a fairly unremarkable object.

But we are not done yet. This next image is from Labyrinth Labyrinthos, a segment directed by Rintaro from the 1987 anthology film Neo Tokyo. In this array of tin toys that are suddenly brought to life we can make out some generic tin toys (the tortoise), some thinly-veiled analogues (the not-quite-Mickey Mouse) and, in the centre of the shot, the Toonerville Trolley toy. As one can predict, we now have further layers of appreciation and understanding at work in this image. It is a hand-drawn animated depiction and we can appreciate it on this level. We can look at the detail of it, the ways in which light and shadow are used to create a greater sense of depth and texture than we find in the first image. Although a single image doesn’t allow us to, we can also conceivably appreciate the movement of the depiction as it makes its way across the screen. But we can also appreciate it as a toy, looking at both its form and movement in the same way that we would the actual tin object. And because of the ‘actual’ nature of the toy (it refers to a real toy in our world that we could possess) it also contains the layer of fiction of the original animated image. It is a drawing of a toy of a drawing of a diegetic trolley; a depiction, of a depiction, of a depiction of a thing. Although on-screen for all of five seconds, the Toonerville Trolley toy in Labyrinth Labyrinthos serves as a reminder of the inherent complexities of the hand-drawn imagery of animation. The multiple layers of possible interpretation are unavoidable.

The simultaneity of the animated image, that it is one, or two, or three, or more things all at once, is one of the principal fascinations of animation (and the visual arts) for me as an individual. Just as with Satoshi Kon’s use of depiction and fiction to play elaborate visual games with flat surfaces and depicted spaces, all animated characters, objects and environments are able to contain multiple diegetic layers, each one potentially a web of meta-fictional references.

                                                                                                             - P.S.