Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi is one of those people I would love to sit in a room with and listen to his rants. Since I'm still working on my John K. Kidnapping Machine, I have to settle for his blog (Warning: NSFW), which he's been using to provide sage advice to people interested in becoming animators and cartoonists, and to slam the conventions of modern day animation, most notably on shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. On this post, he talks about how characters in old cartoons evolved at a much faster rate than characters on any of the aforementioned shows. As ideas grew and changed, so did characters. He writes: "You have to be raised in an uncreative environment in order to blindly accept how bland and crappy everything is today." Later in the post he adds: "No one should accept professional work that looks like they could do it themselves."
In the comments section of the same post, he further asserts that "the very concept of animated sitcoms is faulty in the first place." His argument is that no character in an animated sitcom has ever been able to emulate the best actors in the best sitcoms. And as pure animation, they don't exactly hold up, either.
I'm not writing this post as a response to his evaluation of primetime animated fare, nor as an argument for or against it. What intrigues me about his rant is that it touches on something that has been prevalent in many artforms for some time, which is that one aspect is often done very well while another isn't. I can't argue that pretty much anyone with even the slightest bit of artistic talent could draw Bart Simpson, but it would be much more difficult to convince me that just anyone could write stories or dialogue that even come close to the best episodes of that series. The comics page is another example of this. I enjoy the strip Pearls Before Swine because I find the writing to be very clever, but the creator cannot draw to save his life. A 2001 Onion AV Club interview with cartoonist Berkeley Breathed alluded to a comment he made in the late 80s, in which he claimed syndicates were only looking for "a situational strip drawn by a disaffected office worker who saw funny things going on around him, and who had no artistic experience and could only draw a little," portending the likes of Dilbert, which hit newspapers one year after he made his comment. It would seem that artistic skill has taken a backseat to writing in both print and television.
Kricfalusi's comparison of South Park and The Simpsons to old Warner Bros. shorts may seem like apples and oranges, but his point seems to be that animated sitcoms stifle what makes animation so much fun to watch: "I know great cartoonists who worked on The Simpsons and shows like it and they hated their jobs." I imagine that for him watching these animated sitcoms is like someone who has studied music their whole life turning on the radio and hearing a punk band. It doesn't matter how popular the band is or what bold statement they might be making, nothing is going to convince that person that what's coming from the speakers is anything but a gaudy alternative to actual music. Perhaps Kricfalusi's viewpoint seems atavistic, and I would argue that shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park are more script-driven, thus the term "animated sitcom," but I think he brings up a couple interesting points: why is it so rare to find cartoons these days where both the writing and the animation is top notch, and why do we seem to demand less these days?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-28-2006 @ 2:58PM
Vito said...
Simplest answer would be time, training and costs, right? When those studios were around, they weren't being pressured to outsource the majority of their work overseas. Nowadays, if you don't make something as cheaply and quickly as you can, they're inclined to fire you and bring in someone else. Not to say that kind of thing didn't happen then, but technology and globalization have really made it a bigger problem.
Though I'd argue that the decreased quality is really just a natural progression from the really gorgeous stuff from the past. Trends are always cyclical, especially in the arts, and really beautiful, inspiring stuff in one generation is almost sure to bring about deliberately crude and absurdist stuff in the next.
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5-28-2006 @ 3:07PM
JoshG said...
It's not that the animation is BAD in animated sitcoms. It's that they are not the end-all, be-all of these shows, they are not the primary reason we watch. Matt Groening has stated on several DVD commentaries that he has explicitly demanded that the show NOT be "cartoony." He doesn't want boingy, bouncy sound effects, or characters and environments that bend and flex with a crazy elasticity--it's why the first version of the Simpsons pilot (found on the S1 DVD) was rejected by the producers, thus delaying the show's start until Christmas. He wants animals to behave realistically and it drives him mad when this rule is broken every now and then (though he concedes at times that it can be funny anyway). For Groening and MacFarlane, and Parker & Stone, the animation is the means to an end; for John K., the animation is the end in itself.
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5-28-2006 @ 3:19PM
Animatorguy said...
OK, let me get this straight...the guy who created Ren & Stimpy is complaining about the drawing quality of other animators? Am I the only one who sees the irony here?
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5-28-2006 @ 4:17PM
beanspants1 said...
i think "uncreative, bland and crappy" is a pretty good description of ren & stimpy.
haha farting is funny!
haha, so is an exreme closeup of a nasty hair!!
haha, ren just called stimpy and idiot again!!!
anyways, the reason we don't get top-notch animation anymore is the expense. the early disney movies (sleeping beauty, lady & the tramp, cinderella, etc) were incredibly expensive, and as thus, we haven't seen it since.
the economics of TV just don't support the expense, as execs don't know if the show is going to be a hit & worth it until it becomes a hit.
you could make the argument that the simpsons, family guy, etc, art should improve as the shows become more economically successful, but people get used to the animation, and as thus, it becomes less important to be good, and just needs to be recognizable.
anyways, in terms of animation + story, i'd put the sunbow cartoons from the late '80s as close to the top of the heap. gi joe, transformers, mask, teenage mutant ninja turtles are some examples of really good animation and passable stories.
the stories were simple, and child-focused, and are derisively called "30 minute toy commercials," but they hold up better than you would think, and the animation was awesome.
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5-29-2006 @ 2:13AM
MosquitoControl said...
Ren and Stimpy always gave me a sharp headache. It was literally painful to watch. Outside of the cousin Sven episode it made my brain bleed.
South Park makes me crack up, still.
Family Guy has hit a huge rut. It has an amazing line or two an episode, but the rest is meh.
Simpsons have been unwatchable for about 6 years now.
But Futurama... Futurama was the pinacle of television. I was pretty against it as I hate scifi, yet I'm a nerd so I get all the scifi references. And I love it.
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5-29-2006 @ 10:59AM
Cyberphin said...
Well I was going to rail against John K, as another bitter old animator, but most people have pointed out the same stuff I would have.
1. Ren and Stimpy wasn't all that impressive, especially when compaired to some great Anime out there. All toliet humor, funny but not sofistamacated.
2. Great Animation is not always about great technical detail, it's about telling your story in the best means. So the Incredibles , used computer animation, but could have used that 2-d retro that they used in the opening, which would have been greater animation? hard to say.
3. If his animation was so great why wasn't it on as long as the simpsons, south park, etc. I know there was a dispute with Nick, but if it was as hot as it was in season 1 some how it would have lasted. But the same old jokes got tired fast, from my recollection.
ps there have been times when I thought the Simpsons should close down but every now and again there's a new jem in the season.
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6-15-2006 @ 1:03AM
Carrie said...
I love to watch Family Guy, Simpsons and Futurama! I watch the shows for the smarta-- comments and very adult humor. The more raw the humore the better! Where else can you get great puns, political jabs and pottyhumor all in one? Oh, and don't forget... we sick minded stay stuck at home moms need to laugh at a cartoon that is on our level for once! I haven't been able to watch Ren&Stimpy since I stopped using dope 8yrs ago in high school!
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