Consumerism

The Lego movie is a recently animated childrens' film that talks about consumerism - or tries to. The film involves a villain named 'Lord Business' and gives us a main character who is painstakingly average, who doesn't haven many original thoughts and can not do much without instructions or doing what he is told to do - including things like buying extremely overpriced coffee and accepting it as normal. All in all, he is a pawn, as are most ordinary citizens shown to be, and the antagonist is evil, first and foremost, because of money and greed. This is not uncommon in films and popular media - more money is a path to more power, and more power is a very short path to tyranny.

 The film is not subtle about the villain's motivations; in fact, it wants to shove it in your face and really notice it. This is where the film contradicts itself though; for all of its messages against consumerism and capitalism, the film is advertising products for a whole hour and a half, and it's audience pays to see this. A common way of utilising consumerism is indeed by targeting the young, who influence their parents to buy what they have seen, and in turn, buy these things when they are older and parents themselves. Especially as expendable income increases with every generation, and toys and products are something that people need. Alternet says that the Lego Movie 'reinforces a lie about how in an era of casino capitalism that the corporation, democracy and self are somehow symbiotic, and can co-exist in a positive relationship with one another'. The lie is perhaps in the ending, where it is revealed that it is a child playing with the main character Emmet, and the pieces of Lego that are against Lord Business, with the villainous character being based on his father. The father eventually realises the unfair world he has created through this, ungluing character and letting his son play with the Lego with him, instead of having it as a solid, never changing collection set. This may seem like it is showing everything working together, but it can also be argued that it is this that could begin to unravel the ties of consumerism ravelled around the Lego world, and that with the control the child has now gained, all aspects of consumerism within their little ego world could be destroyed.

All in all, the film's message isn't that clear, discouraging consumerism while promoting it. This leads to questions like just how much is consumerism affecting our ways of communicating through media, when more and more things rely on it to even connect with an audience. Even other cartoons and forms of entertainment and forgoeing plot, narrative and immersive storytelling to instead make their shows more marketable and in turn, focus on the merchandise than actual viewing experience of their show (see specifically: Cartoon Network - Young Justice and Sym-Bionic Titan).

Cities and Film

A lot of art forms - animation and film especially, use cities to show the context - both time and setting of the story and to inform the viewers. The city can also be used to set the tone and atmosphere of the piece. This is very common in animation as by the time animation became big and was much more mainstream, film and photography and other art had already created these stereotypes around certain cities and places.

The film Ratatouille uses these stereotypes to set the tone of the film; Paris is known as the city of love, and is very associated with food. This lets us know that it will be a film involving food and romance, which is then reinforced by the lighting and colours of the film. There are also very solid split/separation/line between good and bad, poor and rich, with the beautiful, very idealised and shown in everything piece of media about Paris, and very not beautiful parts of the city - the much more realistic side. These locations are used especially, with the city centre/restaurants and sewers to show the split between the people with money and opportunities, to the people who have nothing, and would never normally get these opportunities. It shows how the idealised city isn't actually ideal and how the city can make you feel like more than you are. Remy, a rat who is one of the main characters of the film, feels like a person, very involved now in big Parisian life and following his dream, but then realises what he actually is when back home and does not feel a part of them anymore. This shows that however much you build up a place, it is never going to be as perfect as you think.

The game Fallout New Vegas is set, quite obviously, in LasVegas.This is a city of win or lose, all or nothing. Las Vegas takes capitalism to the extreme, putting emphasis on how people are part of 'the system's machine'. It has a retro-futuristic setting, taking inspiration from the post-war culture of America, and it's 'combination of hope for the promises of technology and lurking fear of nuclear annihilation'. It is this hope, but uncertainty, that suggests you can still do what you want and try to make your own way through the world. As the player's actions do influence the world, this atmosphere works very well, even if the game will never feel a optimistic as it would if it was in a setting with a much lighter history.

LA Noir is set in 1947 Los Angeles, again with a post-war kind of setting. It uses everything we associate with the Noir genre, including giving us a cynical/negative atmosphere as opposed to the optimism of the post-war time period. Since this genre and setting is so closely associated with detective stories/novels, the game puts great emphasis and story telling as opposed to mostly concentrating on game play. The lines between film and games is probably at it's blurriest in this game, and uses everything we would assume about this game from it's genre to inform us and add something to it's narrative.

Identity

Identity is something that ties in a lot with Style and Subculture and has many different ways of manifesting itself. Identity, as it is now, in fluid and changeable and depends so much more on the individual now than on society. With the availability of media and ideas and especially the powers of the internet, people can discover so many more things, and people, and interests they may have. People are much more inclined to build their identity around the things they love and the people around them and people in the media are already so diverse, and there is much less worry about fitting in. There are still some limitations when it comes to appearance (that aren't always applicable to everyone) like many people being scared to/adverse to dress one way o that they aren't mistaken for a different gender/sexual orientation (which can sometimes be more a matter of safety than personal preference), but young people are almost expected to be individual and not conform to society's out of date standards and ideas, especially with so many of the older/parent generation being products of rebellion and subculture in their own youth.

In animation, identity from an animator/writer's point of view can be shown through an autobiographical piece of animation, or through consistent styles and views present throughout their creations (see Tim Burton), but one of the most important things about animation is the encouragement it gives to find your own identity and not just be a product on your environment and society.

In Brave, Merida is expected to marry at a very young age, without any experience in life or time to find herself. She is subjected to her parents' will whether it is good for her or not, and film shows her fighting against this to do what she wants, and to be able to shows how much more important her own expectations are.

Similarly, in Mulan, the titular character is expected to be one way - femine, a wife, a homemaker, and a daughter. She doesn't want these things, at least not at the time of the films, and she goes on to do things typically done by male protagonists and still expected to be done by males rather than females in real life. She subverts gender expectations by fighting in the war and actually having the intelligence and power to do things that help her side win. The film shows how she till has to act like and pretend to be make just to have this opportunity and to be accepted, especially in her Eastern Asian culture and though is something that is less relevant (specifically in England today), it shows just hard hard/extreme it would be for a woman to do anything other than what is expected from her.



Frozen shows the Queen Elsa break free from her royal responsibilities and have to stay locked away for the safety of others, and be able to be herself and express herself once she is free from her castle. This is also a metaphor for anxiety, depression and sexuality among other things, but shows how much happier she is when she is free to be herself and forge her own identity, and how it was only by doing that that everything around her, especially involving family were resolved.

Animations that focus on finding and accepting yourself, and subsequently being accepted by others is extremely important to do to encourage people, especially the younger generations to thing about what they want, how they want to be, and how it is okay to not be exactly how society expects them to be.

Style and Subculture

Subculture has always been a result of the younger generations aiming to rebel against society, and push away the ideal and standards pushed on them to make way for a mini-society that uses the values that the people involved in the subculture share.
It is harder to see subcultures that stand out as much as they did once in todays societies; not only is there a huge mix of past, recognisable subcultures shown in youths' styles of today, but with the freedom and ease people have with which to express themselves and try to make a difference on society, subculture just isn't as relevant anymore. People use it more as a mean of style and visual expression, with the word subculture loosely being able to refer to a following of people around a band or genre of music, having more in common than just style and the wish to rebel.

Subculture has never been something too relevant to animation, or at least the viewers of animation (the biggest example is one of 'weeaboos', fans of anime and manga that have absorbed so much of the Japanese culture show in these shows that they try to live it in real life, and almost fetishise Japanese culture as a result).

Certain genres or Auteurs may use these subcultures or almost a pseudo-subculture to appeal to a specific group of viewers, or to set them self apart from/rebel from the mainstream of animation and the views and values that mainstream animation may have. One example of this is Tim Burton's work, using very dark tones and styles (and arguably type of animation) to give his films settings almost a different culture than ours. It can be seen to take inspiration from Goth/Punk kind of cultures, especially with many of his protagonists looking so different from the usual animated protagonists and often the rest of the characters in the film. The protagonists are often outcasts, giving a feel or relateability to his target audience, and creating a space for certain viewers to enjoy themselves and feel comfortable in animation.




This is very important for any art form, but especially from mainstream, easy to find and literally all around you types of art like film or animation. People want to relate, or find others like them, and have their own space in society. When this space does not exist, then people like Tim Burton create it, and let generations of people who would have otherwise felt like outcasts of society themselves know that they are not alone, and are still important.