Variable Distance in Animation

Today in our small group, we talked about how animation makes something that's usually hard to watch (i.e. war movies) and makes them easier to consume. In a film like Waltz with Bashir, we saw nearly constant warfare but it wasn't until the very end that we saw the real people affected by this conflict. We talked about how seeing the entire film recreated in animation and then finally seeing the live footage at the very end made it a lot more impactful. Specifically in this case, the film centered around a repeated scene and we decided it would have been a lot less impactful if we had seen the carnage that we saw in the final minutes of the film, repeated multiple times throughout. Ultimately, the choice to make this film in animation instead of live action gives us distance from the atrocities happening and makes it easier to watch. In contrast, the method of animation shortens the distance between the audience and screen in a film like Persepolis. In this case, we see a unique coming of age story that is far different than any of the experiences I (and many American viewers) can relate to. Here, the fact that it is animated plays on the subconscious nostalgia of animation and brings the viewers closer to the story. I think it's interesting how making the same creative decision to make the film animated can have such differing effects based on the content they are exploring.