"Cartoons are supposed to be for children."
Recently, a topic about domestic animation "parents bombarding Chinese strange tan" appeared on the top of the hot search.
One netizen posted that the first two episodes of "China Strange Tan" scared their children to tears and left "childhood shadows".
This series of animations jointly produced by Shanghai Meiying and Station B has 110 million views in just four episodes, and on Douban, about 90,000 people scored an average of 9.5.
The accusations of "no educational significance" and "detrimental to healthy growth" fell with a bang, and the news of "shelling" immediately aroused thousands of waves.
Many dissatisfied netizens questioned, who said that cartoons are for children?
Misunderstood cartoons
This is reminiscent of a question a few years ago, Zhihu: "My sons are 19 years old and freshmen, why do they still like to watch cartoons?" ”
For a long time, the audience of domestic animation has been mainly "young", and in the hearts of Chinese audiences, it has put a layer of "childish" coat on animation.
Child-oriented content doesn't seem to have a deep meaning.
The cartoon became half an hour for children to be rewarded after school to finish their homework, and if an old man came to the house, then Sasa Jiao could be extended to 1 hour and watch two more episodes.
But the English word for animation, Animation, is derived from the Latin word "Animare", which originally means "to inspire life" and "to give soul". From this connotation, animation should not only be an entertainment product exclusive to children, but should trigger deeper thinking.
The father of American animation, Winther McKay, is one of the first artists to invest in animation creation, and many of his works such as "Little Nemo's Dreamland Adventure", "How Mosquitoes Live", "Dinosaur Gerty", etc., the structure is rigorous and ingenious, and the content is also dark and terrifying, these far-reaching animations in the history of animation are not created for children.
The first animated feature film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" produced by Disney in 1937 was the first impression of fairy tales for many children.
But "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was created to encourage adults during the American economic depression, and the part of the film about witches was considered inappropriate for children. The Disney staff at the time said: "We only focus on how to make a good animation, and what will affect children and what plot will be suitable is not in our consideration." ”
Adults have always been an important audience for animation.
Returning to the starting line of Chinese animation, Shanghai Art Film Studio (referred to as Shanghai Meiying), the producer of "China Qitan", which has influenced generations of "China Qitan", has always been engraved with the DNA of "popular plot" rather than "young age".
Shangmeiying's classic masterpiece "Heavenly Book Strange Tan" is adapted from a niche original work, which does not use heavenly court and myth as a metaphor for the world, but allows us to experience the irony of reality in the face of all living beings. The villain flaunts his might, not a "happy" ending... This family-friendly cartoon, which is not everyone's joy, is still chewed repeatedly by generations and savored for a long time.
In 1999 and 2001, Shanghai Mei Film devoted the whole factory to produce "Pauline Lantern" and "I am crazy for song", which reflected the depth of animation thinking.
The agarwood created by "Pauline Lantern" that has gone through hardships and split mountains to save the mother has almost replaced the role of the original mythical "Erlang God" and has become the only spokesperson for "splitting the mountain to save the mother" in the hearts of the public, which shows the social influence of animation.
In the production of "I'm Crazy for Song", Shanghai Meiying fully embraced the market.
For the first time in domestic animation, we saw idolatry, girls' thoughts, and intergenerational conflicts between students and teachers...
It breaks the stereotype that children leave on animation: we don't have to learn from the blue cat, nor do we have to watch the father-son relationship between big and small heads, but we can do what we really like outside the classroom for the sake of dreams.
Many people once regarded "I'm Crazy" as the real beginning of domestic original animation.
However, after the new millennium, traditional national comics that have experienced the pain of market economy transformation have entered a long bottleneck period.
Under the attack of foreign cartoons with more novel themes, although the policy design is constantly tilted, and the national comics are supported by increasing the broadcast volume of prime-time domestic animations and introducing tax incentives, it has led to the industry's "brushing subsidies" becoming the trend, producing a large number of low-quality cartoons that are also copied by young people.
The impression of Chinese people on the childish and young age of national comics continues to deepen with the mass-produced cartoons on TV screens. The younger story has determined the most preferred audience, and national comics are crudely misunderstood as "what children watch".
Stuck in the slight of childish and pediatric, the national comic almost actively distances itself from almost all grand themes and complex emotions, and falls into a simple cycle of "rising and difficult, reviving but not prospering".
Cartoons also have precise typing
During the period from 2000 to 2010, when the government paid for the development of national comics, there were young-age cartoons such as "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf", which became the childhood memories of a generation of children, and the film side also achieved considerable commercial benefits.
During the downturn, many animation companies also made efforts outside the children's market.
In 2007, the non-low-grade domestic animated series "Qin Shi Mingyue's Hundred Steps Flying Sword" became a blockbuster and became a game breaker.
This domestic animation takes history as the bone, the neatly unfolding plot, and the fascinating suspense setting tears a hole in the national comic market where young works are flooded.
In 2015, "Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Sage" was born, which has story logic, character shaping and theme expression, which is in line with the cognitive level of adults.
"The Return of the Great Sage" made the creators realize that people's viewing needs have shown a trend of differentiation and diversification, and it is necessary for national comics to tear off the warm and childish labels, begin to re-explore deep connotations such as irony and humor, and devote themselves to the creation of all ages and even specifically for adults.
This is a step for domestic cartoons to expand the market and break prejudice.
The more core feature of adult cartoons is complexity. Since adults are used to watching the autumn moon and spring breeze, only works that are complex enough and contain deep emotional impact can really touch their hearts.
This requires that excellent adult animation bear the responsibility of sincere and avant-garde expression.
The spicy and satirical American adult-oriented animation "The Simpsons", for more than three decades, has not missed a single major issue in American society, and many plots can be fulfilled one by one in reality.
"Millennium Girl" directed by the famous Japanese animation director Toshi Ima is a romantic love story that crosses time and space on the surface, but in fact, it is a metaphor for the journey of Japan along the way through the life of the heroine.
Even the cute Disney animation "Zootopia" tells the story of how ordinary people should deal with themselves in a society full of tears and opposition.
In the era when national comics were once at their peak, Shanghai Meiying also produced "Nezha Troubles the Sea" that questioned traditional filial piety and "Troubled Heavenly Palace" that rebelled against authority.
At the same time as the national comic market turns, the young-aged animation that once did not worry about food is also seeking to change.
Represented by the "Bear Haunted" series of movies, starting from the fourth part, the creators try to make the narrative of the childlike stories that children love to watch more ingenious, the structure more complete, the visual effects more exquisite, and the connotation more in-depth, so as to seek the benefit of all ages and open the animation route of "family fun".
At the end of the day, cartoons are just an artistic expression that is unique in the family of films because it goes beyond the movement rate of 24 frames per second and abandons live-action performance. It may be a little "inferior" in form, but good animation can also explore grand and profound themes.
Are today's cartoons really not suitable for children?
Animation is not only for children, adult orientation does not mean that it is not suitable for children, many adult movies are essentially all-age oriented, children can get happy, adults also have their understanding.
Like Harry Potter's wizarding world, there are many adult problems, but it never deviates from the theme of love and courage.
We may have read the courage of the Philosopher's Stone trio at the age of ten, understood the persistence of Sirius in Azkaban at the age of fifteen, and finally understood the tears of Snape in the Deathly Hallows at the age of twenty.
In the same way, people of a few years old can get the story of how old they are when they watch "Chinese Odd Tan".
"Summer of the Little Goblin" is indeed a lot of metaphors. The story setting is close to reality, the leader urges the completion of KPIs, the innovation in the work is denied, Party A constantly changes the requirements, and the adults fiercely substitute themselves.
However, in the eyes of children, this may just be the story of the kind little pig demon helping the four masters and apprentices escape the trap, and finally Sun Wukong defeats all the bad guys and gives the little pig demon a gift back.
Since animation is a "surreal" world, it should not exist only with one kind of imagination.
Children may find it difficult to understand the "black and deep" part, but filter out the metaphors of the adult world, and they will definitely feel the purest truth, goodness and beauty.
They may also make up their minds to use their lives to stop the Tang monk from entering the trap laid by the king and secretly wiping his tears when he is knocked down by Sun Wukong.
Children only need to perceive and discover, and parents are the ones who want to guide them.
Treating cartoons as "electronic babysitters" is actually parental slackness - trying to attribute parenting obligations to the outside world and make excuses for their own lack of homeschooling.
Instead of carefully questioning "what kind of world is safe for children to build in literature and art" and directly throwing the responsibility to cartoons, parents should think about how to guide and select information content, so that children can fall in love with the world and understand the world more autonomously in the immersion of literature and art.
Take a hundred steps back and think, why do cartoons have to bear the meaning of edification, and why do children have to learn something from cartoons?
Watching cartoons only makes you happy and relaxed, which is also a bonus.
Langlangshan will not shift, but people will grow up, and we will always see the bigger world.
Source: CCTV