A talking pig finds trouble in the cold, cruel city. A computer-animated ant longs to break out of a mechanized society. Yet another computer-animated ant fights to free his enslaved colony from the grips of a tyrannical grasshopper gang.”Babe: Pig in the City,” “Antz” and”A Bug’s Life,” all recent home video releases, carry on a long and rich film tradition. These critically acclaimed movies use critters to tell very human tales.
And one doesn’t need a magnifying glass to see the human parallels. Although colorful and charming, these films boldly explore such complex social issues as racism and classism. Only here it’s chimpanzees hurling racial slurs at pigs. Or grasshoppers looking down their noses -if grasshoppers have noses -at ants.
Scott Curtis, an assistant professor in Northwestern University’s film department, says filmmakers have used animals to explore the human condition since animation’s earliest days. He names Russian filmmaker Ladislav Starevich’s classic 1912 insect tale,”The Cameraman’s Revenge,” as “probably the first (film) to use critters to comment on human foibles.”
The story focuses on marital infidelity and features a love triangle between a beetle, a dragonfly and a grasshopper. In this short, Starevich brought dead bugs to life with stop-action animation.
Animation historians also point to the long-running cartoon series “Aesop’s Fables” as an early example of casting animal characters in human roles. Famed animator Paul Terry (“Mighty Mouse”) created this popular series in 1921. In fables such as”The Cat and the Monkey,” “The Fly and the Ant” and”The Dog and the Flea,” Terry used animal characters to depict fallible humans without insulting his audiences. Each ended with an Aesop-style moral.
Leonard Maltin, “Entertainment Tonight” film critic and animation historian, says anthropomorphic characters historically have made “satire and commentary more palatable to people. You can get away with some things with animals that you can’t with human beings.”
Dan McLaughlin, the chairman of UCLA’s graduate animation program, agrees: “It’s easier to hear truths and stories about little animals than grownups.” McLaughlin cites the 1939 short “Peace on Earth” as an animated film that made its point without offending or alienating viewers. Audiences embraced the poignant cartoon, which showed a world populated by animals. War had wiped out humankind. Although”Peace on Earth” took a pacifist stance, “(it) wasn’t a strong anti-war (film), which wouldn’t have played” with audiences during those pro-war days, McLaughlin says. The film garnered an Academy Award nomination.
Having animals act out human stories also can make a film particularly powerful for children who, unlike adults, can’t always comprehend the intricacies of real human dramas, Curtis says. “We all cried when Bambi’s mother died and Old Yeller died and the Yearling died. These are very sad, but on their face, very simple events. Whereas with (Shakespeare’s) `King Lear’ . . . the emotions that are bound up with his particular tragedy are more complex than the death of a mother, dog or pet.”
However, kids might find”Bambi,” “Old Yeller” or”The Yearling” more powerful, because they can’t understand the complexity of `King Lear. ‘ “
Therefore, although Akira Kurosawa’s gripping human drama,”The Seven Samurai,” might be beyond the grasp of an average 7-year-old, the rollicking “A Bug’s Life” -a very loose “Samurai” remake -is not. Here, kids can comprehend the cruelty that the evil grasshoppers inflict on the peaceful ants, and they can see the inherent unfairness in this master/slave relationship.
Some say children also feel safer when a harsh tale is told by animals. But others disagree. There is no proof that filmmakers consciously decide that “`this is tough stuff; we’d better wrap it in fur,’ ” says Dana Driskel, a lecturer on animation at the University of California-Santa Barbara.
Because kids identify with animals and understand their vulnerability, these stories actually might upset children more than movies with human actors. “If bad things happen to good animals, that can be more disturbing than if bad things happen to people,” Curtis says.
That might explain, in part, why “Babe: Pig in the City,” released in May on video, was a critical success but a major box office bomb. This G-rated sequel to the 1995 family classic “Babe” finds the “pig with a kind and steady heart” on a nightmarish adventure in the big city.
Through a series of mixups, sweet Babe inadvertently finds himself alone in an unnamed metropolis. There, he experiences the casual cruelty and indifference that people often face in urban cultures. Babe is conned by chimpanzees, taunted by an orangutan and attacked by a killer pit bull. He encounters abused and neglected animals and is terrorized by animal catchers.
Directed by George Miller (“Mad Max”), who produced and co-wrote the original”Babe,” this visually dazzling film is filled with wit and humor. But word got around about its gritty subject matter. The movie was deemed “too dark” for children and its core audience -parents and kids -stayed away. “George didn’t set out to make a sugar-coated cartoon,” says Johnny Friedkin, the U.S. representative for Miller’s Australian production company. “He set out to be real.”
Although animals have told stories about human societal behavior for decades, advances in computer technology have contributed to their recent popularity among filmmakers, says Adrian Sannier, vice president and general manager of EAI Interactive, an interactive software company. EAI also produced the “A Bug’s Life” CD-ROM.
“The stories you are able to tell are heavily dictated by the technology,” he says. Before, computer animators such as Pixar could only create believable expressions and movements for inanimate objects, such as the”Toy Story” toys.
Today, “computer animation has reached a new threshold in what it can do in both facial expression and body movement,” Sannier says. So it is now possible to make a believable, full-length computer-animated feature about bugs. With insects, “you don’t have to hit the nail so squarely on the head,” he says.
Computer animators are some distance from creating a film that captures the broad range of human motions and emotions, Sannier says. (Though Pixar’s Academy Award-winning short”Geri’s Game” -which accompanies “A Bug’s Life” and features a human protagonist -shows they are well on their way.) Consequently, animals and insects are now the obvious choice to act out human dramas.
And the entertainment industry seems to have unwavering faith in these creatures and their ability to stir audiences. This fall Turner Network Television presents”Animal Farm,” George Orwell’s classic allegory about totalitarianism and communism, with computerized man-made animals. (A 1955 British animated version also examined the political fallout that occurs after a group of barnyard animals oust their abusive owner and attempt to run the farm themselves.)
No matter how far computer animation advances, Sannier says, animal stories will continue to compel filmmakers and audiences. The movies, he says, “will simply get better, richer and more realistic.”
