Animation Firsts

[pasithea]

Okay okay, I know. Every other post I make seems to reference The Illusion of Life but this post is to be no exception.

One thing that's been consistently striking me as jarring about the book is that the writer always refers to the people he works with as 'The Men'. Never even as 'the guys' or 'the boys'. So I get to the part about the Ink and Paint departments (which is a horror story unto itself from his summary) and anyhow. IaPers are called 'The Girls' except in a few places where they are 'the women' but mostly they're 'The Girls'.

Yes, I understand this is The Way Things Were but that doesn't mean I have to like them or not question them. My number one question, of course, is: How the heck did women tolerate that kind of world? I mean seriously. Not being allowed to have their 'dream job' because it 'wasn't suitable for girls', being kept from sports, only a few years earlier at that point, not being able to vote, and just a little before that, not allowed to own property. Heck, you WERE property. I'd have been really pissed off all the time. How the Hell did they keep from just losing it and beating the shit out of everyone in sight? the same goes for blacks. The first black animator was Frank Baxton at Warner in 1957. The first woman animator was Lillian Friedman at Fleisher in 1932 but she was the exception, not the rule and got paid 1/3rd of what 'The Men' got. It wasn't until the mid 70's that Black and Women animators were able to find work at big studios in any significant numbers, and by then, the 'golden age' was passed and it was already in decline.

It's interesting the things that we take for granted but depressing that it was ever and issue at all and that someone had to fight long and hard to make it so easy for me. :/

Comments

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

Well, these days one person can make an entire animated feature essentially on their own, armed with a few computers and Lightwave, I'd take these days over the golden age any time. :)

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

What I mean by "Golden Age" is back when people were animating for the joy of it and pushing the envelope on what they could do. Before corporate american had taken an interest in Hollywood and said, "Don't do anything new and novel. Stick with what makes money." and sucked the life out of films. Animation in particular was religated to 'childrens fair, and kids will watch anything so long as it's brightly coloured'. The 70's through present are the height of corporate greed and 'downsizing'. Probably the real reason they started hiring women and blacks was because they could get them cheaper than white men. That's really depressing to think about. It wasn't how good you were but how cheap you were. :/

Anyhow, I agree. Now is the time to be. There's a new golden age coming. Maybe not for feature films but at least a rebirth for the greatness of the old shorts. I can pencil-test for basically 'free'. Ink and Paint I can largely automate and if I want to change a colour scheme midway through it's approximately 3 mouse-clicks to do so. I can simulate a full orchestra on my keyboard with the aid of my computer, and all this is just 2D. As you point out, in a lot of ways, it's even cheaper and easier in 3D. So yeah. Hurrah for technology!

I was just reflecting on how frustating it must have been for women and other minorities back in the day. Would you want to paint at all if the only way you could do it 'for a living' was by sitting day in and day out filling in flat solid colour on someone else's outlines?

[paka.livejournal.com]

If you gotta obsess about a book, that's a good one to obsess over.

Again, Culhane wrote a couple of books and one of them is more personal history. What brings this up is that I think he does refer to the other Fleischer animators as the guys. In contrast to Illusion of Life's portrayal of Disney animators as these studious constant observers, the Fleischer guys stack up as yet more mooks from Brooklyn who'd split poker games and beer together after work. Very much a guy atmosphere - just in a less formalized context.

[prickvixen.livejournal.com]

How do atheists get it into their head that there's a God to be complained about? You drill the idea into their heads from birth. Not that people are born atheists, but the idea of a God will persist even when they no longer believe it intellectually.

I've heard black comedians do bits about this, about talking to guys who are like "If someone told me to pick cotton I'd shoot them with my nine and then get in my Cadillac and drive away." Pretty shallow joke, but it illustrates the point. You can't know what it's like to have lived in that time, except to imagine that everything in that society is pushing you to be in this role, and it's been that way all your life and no other way of living is conceivable for most people. (This was true even for white men, who didn't have a lot of latitude in what they could do with their lives, even if they were relatively free.) And even if you can think of another way to live, it takes incredible bravery to resist the system, all by yourself... it's also kind of foolish, since unless you have allies you can't possibly win, and the consequences of failure were dire. Nevertheless there was the occasional revolt or protest... while early acts of resistance were more or less hopeless, they presented the idea of change, so that later resistance stood a better chance of succeeding, and ultimately changing society.

For instance, slavery wasn't abolished merely because Lincoln said it would be; Lincoln himself disliked abolitionists. But over time, enough of the white majority had sickened of it that calling for abolition became a viable strategy. This was because many blacks were brave enough to resist and lucky enough to escape, and they found whites who were sympathetic and who would stand up for them among the white majority, and promote the idea that slavery had to stop. (I should say that many northern whites who were against slavery during the Civil War weren't as tolerant when recently freed southern blacks made their way north to start new lives.) And it built from these early, nearly hopeless acts of resistance.

[yay, I'm writing more essays than I ever did in school]

[shizouka.livejournal.com]

For every advance we have today, it was the pebbles of people who would say "No, this is not fair." that we have built the society we have now.

Just need to keep stacking the pebbles...