No hotel room, no hookers.
Animation fandom is stranger than any other form of entertainment.
What I'm about to say is not a direct comment, but a tangent, on some recent remarks on the Cartoon Speakeasy section of Animation Nerd's Paradise. Those remarks got me thinking about how this job differs from those of more traditional critics - say, Siskel and Ebert or Pauleen Kael. I'm not whining; I volunteered for this job. However, it is very different from other kinds of criticism.
First of all, the animation people I've spoken with are glad to have adult fans. Everybody who creates wants the appreciation of knowledgable people. But they know that animation fans above the age of 12 or so are a minority of a minority. They also know that their continued work and paychecks depend on grabbing those under-12 viewers, and not worrying about the older ones.
Adult animation fandom is an underground experience. When I go to Disney and Universal, places that are based on the love of animated characters, adults don't want to be seen enjoying Mickey or Woody in the park. They take children along as "beards." Go to the parks and look for solo adults who enjoy seeing the characters. They may be enjoying them - until they see you watching them. Then they blush, cringe and find someone to duck behind.
One of the reasons so many people keep pushing for "mature" animation, why anime fans emphasize the sex and gore in anime rather than anime's charming fantasies, is so they won't look like senility cases receeding into second childhood. It's better for your public image to look like a letch and a pervert than to show an interest in "childish things."
That makes it hard for animation critics to get the attention or respect of the industry. A critic like Roger Ebert can see rough cuts or pre-production work on movies. Animation critics generally don't get that, aside from the famous mid-production showing of Beauty and the Beast which filled in missing animation with pencil tests and still shots.
Movie and TV critics are feared but respected by their industries; while they can do some harm to a lousy movie or show, they can also build an audience for a production they like. So they get treated like royalty. On the other hand, I can't see animated cartoons any earlier than you, the general public. Consequently, I'm more of a historian than a critic. The only place my writing might have an influence is on the video release of theatrically-released animated movies. I don't get pre-release copies of direct-to-video releases or sneak previews of animated TV shows. I'm not given buffet dinners or hotel rooms equipped with hookers to influence my opinion about an animated film.
This isn't whining; it's just fact.
The legitimacy of animation fandom is hurt by the lack of real money in the hobby. In American society, legitimacy is usually tied to money. Of all the varieties of genre entertainment I can think of - fantasy role-playing gaming, comic book collecting, toy and doll collecting and science fiction fandom - animation fandom has the least money associated with it. People can claim to collect comic books or cards from the Magic: The Gathering game for financial benefits (although they're lousy investments). I can't claim that a copy of Hunchback or buying a Bugs Bunny doll at Wal-Mart is "a valuable investment which will grow in value in years to come."
True, anime fans pay a lot for their tapes, and for various junk merchandise imported from Japan related to their wide-eyed characters. But no one gets rich from anime, least of all the people who dub and produce the tapes. (They also have to tolerate the hatred of hardcore fans who despise anything with English dialog.) And if you're a fan of American animation (like me), God help you, for there's even less money in that - and therefore less legitimacy.
I can hear someone out there chanting, "Animation cels!" But that's less of a collector's market and more of a fine-art market. A collector's market requires something that can be mass-produced; cels are individual works of art. A collector's market also requires a system that can be controlled by the guys who make the collectibles. The Franklin Mint, the Beanie Baby company, Wizards of the Coast and Marvel Comics can manipulate their respective collectible markets by making things rare or scarce. That creates the artificial value of collectibles, the illusion of a real investment that gets little old ladies and desperate middle-agers thinking they can make a "killing" on them.
By comparison, animation "sericels" aren't mass-manufactured and they aren't perceived as ways to build up money for your retirement. And on the dealer's side, they're not seen as a business where a sharpie can profit from mobs of easily-duped saps. The world at large sees cel collecting as worthless. Look at the best-known cel collector in the world, Gary Dell'Abate. His boss, Howard Stern, perfectly depicted the popular view of cels as "pictures painted on plastic crap." Stern considered Dell'Abate retarded for following "the stupidest hobby in the world," especially because Gary mispronounced the name of his favorite Hanna-Barbara character as "Baba Booey." (Which, as Stern fans know, has become Gary's permanent nickname.)
This lack of collector money is a problem for animation magazines dedicated to the art of animation, rather than the business. Animation Magazine can get advertisers for cel paint, pencil test systems and 3-D animation programs because they're selling equipment to professionals. What can you advertise to animation fans who read TOON or Animato? Cels, not a high-profit-margin collectible. Almost every other animation item, like toys and dolls, are available at your corner toy store and don't need special dealers. That lack of a captive fan market makes animation magazines more expensive, harder to find, and less respected. It also precludes gifts from grateful sponsors, like those hotel rooms with hookers I mentioned earlier.
Don't forget the seasonal activity of animation, either. I view the animation "season" starting with the television industry's fall premieres, in September. A series that starts in September can be over before December, invalidating any reasonable reviews; witness Kids WB's Calamity Jane, dead before the first review hit the Internet. A long-time series like Superman: The Animated Series can run through the majority of its seasonal episodes by March, with a long spring and summer of reruns - and nothing new to review. (On Superman I've seen the Toyman episode, "Fun and Games," about eight times this year.) The new stuff comes jammed in the early part of the season, making it hard to keep up. Then there's a long spring and summer of scrounging for any news tidbits upon which to base a column.
To sum it up, it's a strange life for a lover of an art form. It's a life without monetary benefit, without respect, and without those hookers in the hotel room - the true mark of "making it" in show business, whether you use the hooker's services or not. I wouldn't trade my advocation for any other kind of fandom; I think it's worthwile and serves a need, and that's all that matters to me. I think Michelle Klein-Häss and TOON's Michael Swanagan cope with the madness of this business fairly well - and of course, so do the people at Animato! and Animerica and the other magazines. It's one thing to write nasty remarks on a newsgroup; it's another to put your own money on the line, and these esteemed publishers have a great deal of courage.
Still, I keep in mind a name most of you have never heard, James Agee. Back in the 1940's and 1950's, movie criticism was called "making a living solely by puking." Agee didn't care. His reviews paved the way for movie criticism to be taken seriously, and for people like Pauleen Kael, Judith Crist, Richard Schickel and other movie critics to establish movies as an art form. If I can be even a little bit like a James Agee of animation, I'll be happy. Even without the hotel room or the hookers.
Thomas E. Reed is a television engineer in Orlando, Florida. He notes that Kids WB is still promoting a lot of classic Warners characters in their promos and bumpers, even though Bugs, Daffy and Taz only appear on the weekday Bugs 'n' Daffy Show and not the weekend. And those are classic (i.e. old) cartoons. Is this a harbinger of something new at the We Be Network? Perhaps they're thinking of turning out some new Bugs or Daffy cartoons? Talk to him about it at tomreed@sundial.net, or start a message string right here on the ANP Cartoon Speakeasy.
Other Voices Index|Back To Menu
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
Page last updated 11/1/1998
This web site was built by Catseye Creative Services, Ink.