When I began to think of what topic I would
select, I planned to write something that might not be that abstract like the
topic Melancholy in the previous English class. So I decided to talk about
animation because it is close to my life. I have never stopped to watch it
since I’ve grown up. That’s the same for some of the adults. I know this could
be taken as naïve for other adults especially the parents. They may try to be
mature in front of friends. Some parents may get a feel that animation is so simple
because they may have been spending too much on watching the children
animations with their kids. There’s a common sense that animation is supposed
to be simple and created for children first, while the needs of adolescents on
the types and contents of animations are not satisfied well at most time. Let
alone the adults’. So a development of animation would not happen since all the
audiences cannot see the animations that they want to watch. Only a small group
of audiences always has the chance to watch the targeted animation. So what? Is
it really important and needing our thinking? Anyway animation is just one kind
of entertainment. It may not be considered as serious as the textbook that is
treated as the significant education for students. It may just want to tell a
tiny story. It may not leave anything in your mind after you watch it for three
days. It may just make you laugh for a while. Does it require our more
consideration and research on it? I was thinking and trying to dig out the
meanings behind.
The
answer I thought out is yes because this status that foreign animations play a
role in our mass media market could lead to several results. One result is that
older adolescents and adults get inclined to watch the prominent animation from
Japan or America where the animation industry is quite developed and get
influenced by the cultural values reflected in the animation. I don’t object
importing the animations from other countries. It is not a bad thing to touch
them. But I cannot evaluate how deep these foreign animations can influence. No
one can do it. We don’t need to publicize our own cultures and core values all
the time but we have to build it because our children and adolescents like
animation and are probably being influenced. And then the inheritance of our
local culture may have somewhat in danger. The other result is the quality of
the foreign animations has become a standard in the heart of our animation
fandoms. That means our animation fandoms have already had high requirements on
local animations. Once there is a little deficiency in our animation, it is
easy to be pointed out and criticized by the fandoms. So our animators have
very high pressure. Why aren’t our animators able to generate excellent
animation? We don’t lack of human, technologies that are imported directly by
using a lot of money, and foreign resources. What do we lack of on earth? Some
foreign media said that Chinese students are very inflexible and not creative.
Well, I think this is not the root reason. So it could be meaning for my topic
if I can find out some deeper reasons.
May
I should find it from the bottom of animation that is what animation is in
essence. What should a good animation look like? These years, we have spent
plenty of money on the technologies to make 3D animation or introduce foreign
big animation companies. So what? We simply think that once we have advanced
technologies we can generate great animation. However it turns out that we
still can’t succeed in the box office such as Legend of Rabbit. We do tell
stories but it looks like the Kung Fu Panda. “So this is just copying.” What I
see is confusion that means our animator don’t know what to create. Because
Kung Fu Panda succeeded and our audience couldn’t believe and ask for a prominent
animation that included our culture and panda, Legend of Rabbit was born in
this situation. It does talk about Kung Fu and Panda. But the plots are just
dry. The audiences actually want to see a new good story. They want great
storytelling in the end. What can tough the audiences is the actions and the
change of feelings from the characters, not the technologies. We may find the
sources from our lives.
As
we know, rating system is the basis of animation industry. But except for guiding
the animation audiences, there must be some benefits from it I need to find out
so that we can see more importance of it. I remember a Hong Kong director said
that since there is no proper rating system in the film market in the mainland
he is not free to create one type of film freely in the frame of rating system.
Because the film needs to meet a lot of kind of audiences including adolescents
and adults, it could not be too much violent, horrific or romantic and so on,
which bothers the film makers. I think the animator could encounter a similar
situation.
Since
I explored much on each key term in my alternative perspective like I did in
the vignette, I would use most of its contents in my synthesis essays to
explain those key term in detail. But I still need to think about abridging the
first synthesis essay carefully and make them more focused on a certain problem
and serve for my working thesis well.
