The suggestion that encouraging audience belief in the existence of narrative and characters is a form of realism makes sense in a medium where artificiality is so readily apparent and so many early works foregrounded their ability to craft narratives of fantasy or anarchy. Yet it also serves as a reminder of the difference between animation and live action, since a strong emphasis on narrative – such as the causal narratives of classical Hollywood filmmaking - would not usually be considered a realist device in the live action context. Quite the opposite: since our everyday lives do not revolve around a single narrative thread, with all events somehow relating to that end, and working towards a neat resolution, the idealised narrative pattern of classical Hollywood is itself a form of fantasy. When filmmakers eschew such narrative and instead feature narrative devices such as “dead time,” narratively unmotivated or irrelevant actions, or unresolved conclusions, it can often be to create an effect that more closely resembles our everyday life. Complementary stylistic approaches include long takes, handheld camerawork, untreated on-location audio, improvised dialogue and filming with real locations or untrained actors. The choice of subject matter and thematics can also enhance the resemblance to real life, by focusing on “everyday” people and avoiding trite morals or themes. While all these artistic approaches are familiar from non-Hollywood filmmaking (and are not unknown even within Hollywood),[1] in practice an uncomplicated use of these devices towards purely realist ends is not often seen, since these approaches tended to be complicated by other imperatives.[2] When they are seen together, however, the realistic effect they create can be termed “social realism:” a cinema that strives toward a depiction of the complicated, messy, downbeat nature of everyday life.

In practice, one could “unpack” this definition into several further overlapping and interrelated types of realism, for example by separating narrative, stylistic and thematic approaches, but for my purposes here this definition will suffice. This is because I raise such cinema as reminder of just how little Disney practice ventures in the directions we might think of as realistic in live-action cinema. The Disney features take place in storybook worlds, with a classical Hollywood style and narrative structure. Their narratives might have a certain realism compared to, for example, The Skeleton Dance, in which character’s actions are not psychologically motivated and the limited plot is dominated by magical acts, but this is simply a relative position. A true-neo-realist animated cinema, or animated cinema-verite style documentary, is probably rendered impossible (or at least highly compromised) by the technological means by which animated films are produced. Yet by keeping in mind the idea of social realism we can avoid foreclosing other artistic options from the form before they are fully explored. In introducing this discussion of types of realism, I raised the rhetorical question of whether Pinocchio or an early episode of “The Simpsons” is more realistic: “The Simpsons” is much less realistic in terms of most aspects of realism that I have discussed, but shows greater social realism.[3] An even greater degree of realism might be expected if full animation (in the Disney tradition or otherwise) were harnessed to more socially realistic subject matter: even with its rich layers of fantasy and caricature, there are the seeds of such an approach in the domestic scenes in Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Belleville (2003). It may be that there is little point in harnessing a more socially realist view to Disney-style animation. It is arguable that more limited, less showy styles of animation are more suited to such subject matter, or that such a project would indeed stray too far from the “inherent affinities” of the medium. However, discussions of realism in animation should not presume that this is the case, nor fail to be aware of the distance between Disney’s realism and approaches to realism in other cinematic modes.

Continue to Part 7 - Conclusion

[1] Robert Altman’s MASH (1970) features many of these traits, for example.

Contents

Introduction

Visual Realism

Aural Realism

Realism of Motion

Narrative & Character Realism

Social Realism

Conclusion