It seems like a million years ago, sometimes, but it was really fewer than 20: In 1991, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made “Beauty and the Beast” the very first animated feature in the history of the Academy Awards to be nominated for best picture.
Ten years later, the Academy recognized the importance of animation in world cinema by creating the best animated feature category in 2001. While the gesture was certainly appreciated by animators and their advocates, some are questioning whether or not the best animated feature category has become a ghetto from which no animated film can ever escape.
The reason for this speculation comes on the heels of “WALL-E” being left out of the best picture category despite being one of the most well-reviewed films of the year. (So was “The Dark Knight,” of course, but that’s another discussion altogether.) “WALL-E” was honored as best picture by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (of which I am a member) and rated a 96 percent “Fresh” on RottenTomatoes.com, making it the highest-ranked film of 2008 on the critic-tracking Web site.
Film critic and animation expert Charles Solomon says the genre constantly gets short shrift from Hollywood, despite its popularity with both audiences and critics. “Animation remains at the forefront of contemporary filmmaking — four of the 10 highest-grossing films in the U.S. last year were animated,” he notes, citing the success of not only “WALL-E” but also “Kung Fu Panda,” “Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa” and “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!”
And while no one expects the Academy to pay attention to box office — unless they decide to nominate something like “Ghost” or “The Sixth Sense” for best picture — many of today’s animated films rank among the most acclaimed movies of our generation. If you look at Rotten Tomatoes’ honor roll of the best-reviewed films from the years in which the site has been tracking reviews, one animated title after another pops up: “Ratatouille,” “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit,” “The Incredibles,” “Finding Nemo,” “Spirited Away,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Shrek” and “Chicken Run” were all at or near the top of the list in their respective years of release.
But when it came time for the Oscars to select the five best films of the year, none of them made the cut.
“A lot of it has to do with the box that animation has been slipped into,” says Dean DeBlois, co-director of the Oscar-nominated “Lilo & Stitch.” “Just the fact that animation is referred to as a ‘genre’ unto itself is cause enough to question the perception. Animated features come in as many genres as their live-action counterparts; their stories have as much potential to move, frighten, delight and provoke their audiences as any other medium. (The recent Japanese animated feature) ‘Paprika,’ for example, is as much a sophisticated, high-concept thriller as most live-action films of its genre, but few in the U.S. recognize it beyond the boundaries of ‘anime’ or ‘cartoon kiddie flick.’ It could simply be our society’s stigma on animation as entertainment for young people.”
Why can’t animated films be ranked among the best?The industry’s tendency to isolate animated films as something separate from the “real” movies that everyone else is making got a mild scolding from “WALL-E” director Andrew Stanton, in a gracious statement he made the morning that the film received six nominations that, of course, didn’t include best picture. Part of Stanton’s statement read, “This is a tribute to all of us at Pixar and Disney who do our best to make films, not just animated films, but films for everyone that just happen to be animated.”
Waiting for Hollywood in general and the Academy in particular to bridge the gap and to treat animated films as just another kind of moviemaking may just be a dream (which, thanks to Walt Disney, we know is just a wish your heart makes). “The best animated feature category seems to have been instituted to isolate the medium,” Solomon laments. “If ‘Spirited Away,’ ‘The Incredibles,’ ‘Ratatouille’ and ‘WALL-E’ can’t be ranked among the year’s best films, what can?”
Leonard Maltin, whose career as a film critic includes two books on animation, feels that for the Academy to have taken any steps toward recognition of the genre represents a represents a rare paradigm shift. “I think most Academy members feel that having created a separate category for animation is a very big deal — after all, they’ve added very few categories to the Oscars since the 1930s.”
He has a point — this is an organization that didn’t create a category honoring achievement in makeup until 1981, more than 50 years after the death of Lon Chaney. And every year, we hear of groups within the industry, from stuntmen to hairstylists, whose pleas for recognition from the Academy get voted down, usually with the excuse that the show is already too long. (As if audiences wouldn’t rather watch clips of stunts and hairdos over another meaningless montage or bad dance number.)
With the Academy’s exclusion of “WALL-E” and “The Dark Knight,” one could argue that members of the group fail to appreciate artistic achievement when it takes place in genres that aren’t considered “important.” And that seems to be where animation finds itself at Oscar time — at the kids’ table, with its little spotlight, well out of the way of what the adults are doing.
Cultural prejudices die hard, but at least they’re not universal. “In Japan, Hayao Miyazaki is as big a director as Steven Spielberg,” observes DeBlois. “A great film transcends the tools used to make it. If it moves you, it’s a triumph.”