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.
