Watching this film, I was surprised at how little it felt
like the storyline followed that of a traditional children’s animation feature
film. The main character is an old,
grumpy man, as opposed to other main characters who are often young and
overflowing with energy. The traditional
constructs of a family are not present, as Carl and Ellie were never able to
have a child of their own, and Russell comes from a broken family, with a father
who lives with a woman that wasn’t his mother, and who barely visits. As this article points out, Carl and Ellie
both also come from non-stereotypical families, as Carl’s is “quiet,
Puritanical, and inexpressive,” and Ellie’s is described as “loud” and
“raucous,” whereas the “traditional” family would lie somewhere in the middle
of this spectrum.
This article opened up my eyes to some of the issues with
the message being told in this film.
The biggest problem, in my opinion, is the way Ellie is treated as a
character. As Dennis Tyler points out,
she evolves from an outgoing, energetic child to an “unassuming” adult by the
end of her life, changing to be more like Carl.
As an adult, we never even hear her voice. While it is true that people do lose energy
as they get older, it does seem as if this change is congruent with the
evolution of their relationship. However,
another argument could be that Ellie changes after realizing that she will not
be able to give birth to their child, and the change has less to do with Carl
turning her into a quiet, obedient housewife.
Another issue that this article brings up is that Ellie is never able to
fulfill her dream, while Carl is able to fulfill hers as well as his own, of
having a child, by becoming the substitute father for Russell. However, it could also be argued that Carl’s
relationship with Russell is not the same as him having his own child, and Carl
will never be able to raise Russell as his own.
As you can see, while Tyler’s arguments do have substantial backing,
there are also some convincing counterarguments to what he is saying.
The way Disney and Pixar use animation techniques were also
very interesting to me, and something I had never heard or thought about
before. Tyler explains how in this film,
“character traits of actors were exaggerated to give the animated characters
the quirky individuality of “real people.”
This was something I could visualize immediately, as the movements of
Carl from Up or Cinderella, were much
more realistic than, for example, those of Charlie Brown or Bugs Bunny. Another way Tyler argues that viewers
identify with characters is by making their faces less realistic and more
iconic, which is why Carl and Dug are less realistic depictions of a human and
a dog than Carl Muntz and his other dogs.
This is the opposite of what I would predict. After all, the point of
exaggerating movements was to make characters more realistic, and as a result
easier for people to identify with.
However, Tyler makes a good point that by making a face more iconic, it
is less identifiable, and as a result viewers can imprint their own representation
of this character, becoming more attached to that character. This is a strong
argument in my opinion. All in all, I
came to realize just how complex it is to create animations, whether it is by
hand-made drawings or through computer animation.
No comments:
Post a Comment