"It's PoMo! (beat) ...Post-modern. (beat) ...Weird for the sake of weird."
—
Moe Szyslak, The Simpsons
Moe Szyslak, The Simpsons
Postmodernism is one of the things that are very difficult to put in words. Postmodernism began in the late 20th century. A movement based in various forms of arts including architecture, literature, listing everything postmodernism touches is rather pointless, that came from modernism. Mostly Postmodernism is a very skeptical outlook and critique of almost everything modernism provided, showing itself in deconstruction .
However I looked at what postmodernism has achieved in the grounds of animation. It did not include any grand new techniques or anything similar, but inserted more of a critique and self-aware narrative into it. It thrived in satire, parody and most of all irony of everything that came before it. A good example is the Shrek franchise. The first movie was an ironic and an iconic twist on the classic fairy tale genre. Forcing the characters we would usually serotype as something else into a whole new box. Or in other, more accurate terms destroying the box in general and making them 3D. Not in the way of animation that is, but giving them personality traits that no one would originally associate their character stereotypes with.
This attack Shrek did on these fairytale stories could also
be traced back to the fact that the animator and director who started DreamWorks
previously worked at Disney because he didn’t agree with the franchised films
they were making over and over. All for a bigger profit. Shrek his first
production was a critique on that and a stab at his previous co-workers. Ironically
same fate awaited the Shrek franchise as it sold itself out with Shrek 3 and
Shrek 4. The more you know.
Moving on another trait in animation and storytelling which appeared during the movement is not only the critique of a higher narrative, and character stereotype parody’s but also a lot of attempt’s to break down the fourth wall. As mentioned before, making the cartoons become self-aware that they indeed exist in this drawn world. This showed itself as self-insertion into the show (as in mocking the animators or pitying them about all their work they put in) and as mentioned above self-awareness of being a cartoon and even occasionally taking a go at society’s structure, problems and etc.
Moving on another trait in animation and storytelling which appeared during the movement is not only the critique of a higher narrative, and character stereotype parody’s but also a lot of attempt’s to break down the fourth wall. As mentioned before, making the cartoons become self-aware that they indeed exist in this drawn world. This showed itself as self-insertion into the show (as in mocking the animators or pitying them about all their work they put in) and as mentioned above self-awareness of being a cartoon and even occasionally taking a go at society’s structure, problems and etc.
