To Speak Is Not To Open Your Mouth

When watching an animated movie do you ever stop to think that Mammoth doesn’t always speak so kindly to that sloth, but wait? Animals don’t talk to each other, talk period, and Mammoths don’t even exist anymore. So why do we enjoy animated films and relate to scenes that cannot happen in real life.

   
     In The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, they say “conveying a certain feeling is the essence of communication in any form.” After reading Chapter One of The Illusion of Life, it became apparent to me how animation does communicate to an audience. The text discussed actions are not only seen as actions but show emotions, feelings, or fears. “Audience Involvement” is how animation remains to be successful. Communication is not so much speech. To communicate is to relay feelings and emotions.

   

We watch animation because we can identify with the storyline and thus we become involved. When watching a film like Ice Age we identify with the animated animals’ feelings of fear, emotions of loneliness and the feeling for the need to belong with some type of “herd”. The viewer’s response to animation is emotional. “We sympathize, we empathize, and we enjoy” animation because it showed something that is familiar to all of us. This can be an emotional reaction we all share, aspect of one’s personality, or a combination of things.

     Looking at a clip from the Pixar short film Presto, the rabbit in the clip communicates with the audience due to his emotional reactions and the situation that he is in. The bunny is kept in a cage right next to a carrot he significantly wants. When the magician, his owner, lets him out of the cage he thinks he’ll finally get his carrot but this does not happen.

     We all have had a time when we really really wanted something that was right before our eyes, literally but someone else would not let us have it. It could be when we were kids and we saw a cookie on the counter but mom said no cookies before dinner or when we saw food just like the rabbit in the clip when we were really hungry but had no time to eat it. Communication is based on emotion and connection. This clip communicates with the audience because it reminds the audience of a familiar situation and feeling. We sympathize with the rabbit because we know how it feels to want something we cannot have. Even though real life rabbits do not move and act as the rabbit in Presto, the situation he is in is human enough for us to understand. We also identify with the rabbits reaching out of his arms for the carrot and the magician pulling him away. Everyone has reached out for something they have wanted or reaching out for something in general is a sign of wanting something.

     Although animation is not always based on realism we the audience make it real. A talking sloth or a rabbit that moves like kid is appealing for us to watch because they communicate to us. Animation plays upon a communication between the audience and the characters. We believe in a character because we relate to its feelings and emotions.
What's that I hear...or see? Bugs Bunny is speaking to you.