19th of September, 2010
Yesterday, I watched the much talked-about 3D animation “Despicable Me”. From my observations, the cinema did not comprise of an audience of children. Nearly 75% of the seats were filled with teenagers out on a typical weekend gimmick. Probably this is because of the internet viral videos that circulated around Facebook and YouTube throughout the past few months, way before the animation premiered. The videos were basically cute explosion of a little girl named Agnes saying “Does this count as annoying?” and then making a cute annoying gesture of her hands hitting her cheeks. It was until watching the movie that I found out who the protagonist really is. And it wasn’t Agnes, as we all thought. It was really about Mr. Gru, an international villain who was also the protagonist on this typical transformation master plot. In other words, the leaked online videos indirectly misled the audience to thinking what the movie was really about.
But that is not my main point.
The thing is, technology nowadays seems like such a vital element in creating 3D animations. Aside from marketing and production, science and technology seems to be a recurrent theme in what the youth today is watching. It is present in animations like “Meet The Robinsons”, “Wall-E”, “Monsters vs. Aliens”, “The Incredibles”, "Bee Movie", and even in old semi-animations such as “Flubber”. What does it signify? What is the message being encoded? And more importantly, how do the children, the audience, decode these messages?
I know for one that it gears the thinking of the children towards progress and development, but that would be such a liberalist view of putting it. That is a western ideology synonymous to what is happening to the United States. Of course, it is but the home of these animations. One of the dangers of liberalism, however, is that there are too many rights, and of course, leading towards capitalism.
Am I overanalyzing these cute and oftentimes funny images exposed to the youth? Or are these honing the kids to become the consumers that we are today?
Photo from http://zestyfyxx.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/despica-ahhck-its-so-fluffy/
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