Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

the first time. In the United States, where the television
cartoon became increasingly characterized by its relationship
to other forms of popular culture—for example, series
about pop stars like the Jackson Five or the Osmonds, or
sitcom spin-offs like The Brady Kids (1972–1974) and My
Favorite Martian (1963–1966)—the cartoon lost its
capacity to shock or innovate. A reinvigoration of the
form came with Ralph Bakshi (b. 1938), who explored
adult themes and the spirit of the late 1960s counterculture
in his sexually explicit and racially charged feature
films Fritz the Cat (1972), Heavy Traffic (1973), and
Coonskin (1975). In effect, this was the first time that
animation in America—with the possible exception of
UPA’s early effort, Brotherhood of Man (1946)—
addressed adult issues. While Bakshi has been criticized
for some aspects of racial and gender representation in
these films, it is important to remember that they effectively
recovered the subversive dimension of the cartoon
so valued, for example, by the Fleischer brothers, and
later by John Kricfalusi in The Ren and Stimpy Show
(1991–1996), Mike Judge in Beavis and Butthead
(1993–1997), and Trey Parker and Matt Stone in South
Park (b. 1997), as well as in Spike and Mike’s Festival of
Animation.
Bakshi’s influence may also be found in Sally
Cruikshank’s Quasi at the Quackadero (1976); Jane
Aaron’s In Plain Sight (1977); Suzan Pitt’s extraordinary
Asparagus (1979); and George Griffin’s anti-cartoons. It
was actually the departure of Don Bluth (b. 1937) and a
number of his colleagues at the Disney Studio, in protest
of declining standards, that properly represented where
American cartoon animation had gone. Bluth’s The Secret
of NIMH (1982) did little to revise the fortunes of traditional
2-D cel animation, as it was clear that computergenerated
imagery would eventually dominate.
Jimmy Murakami’s adaptation of Raymond Briggs’s
When the Wind Blows (1986), like Animal Farm, Yellow
Submarine (1968), and Watership Down (1978), represented
attempts in Britain to innovate in the traditional
2-D cartoon, but it was Hayao Miyazaki’s Tenku no Shiro
Laputa (Laputa, Castle in the Sky, 1986), My Neighbor
Totoro, and Kurenai no buta (Porco Rosso, 1992) that
sustained and enhanced the quality of the animated
feature, while the partnership of Ron Clements and
John Musker for The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin
(1992), and Hercules (1997) revived Disney’s fortunes.
The Lion King (1994), clearly drawing upon Osamu
Tezuka’s television series, Janguru taitei (1965–1967;
Kimba the White Lion) and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, proved
to be phenomenally successful, showcasing songs by
Elton John and a spectacular sequence of charging wildebeests.
While the cartoon short enjoyed continuing inno-
Cartoons
vation in the work of Paul Driessen (Elbowing, 1979),
Richard Condie (The Big Snit, 1985), Cordell Barker
(The Cat Came Back, 1988) at Canada NFB, it was clear
that the impact of digital technologies would revise the
animated feature and production for television.
Matt Groening’s The Simpsons (1989–) has become
a national institution, and feature animation essentially
changed with the success of Pixar’s Toy Story (1995), the
first fully computer-generated animated feature. It is
clear, though, that the ‘‘cartoon’’ remains the core language
of the animation field. Joe Dante’s films, Twilight
Zone: The Movie (1983), Gremlins (1984), Gremlins 2:
The New Batch (1990), Small Soldiers (1998), and Looney
Tunes: Back in Action (2003), all reference the classic
Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons. While Maurizio
Nichetti’s Volere Volare (1991) and Bakshi’s Cool World
(1992) also combined live action and cartoon figures,
Robert Zemeckis’s film Who Framed Roger Rabbit
(1989), featuring the animation of Richard Williams,
best epitomizes the respect for the American cartoon: it
celebrates the major studios, and specifically recalls movies
where cartoon stars guest with live action counterparts,
like Tom and Jerry in Anchors Aweigh (1945) and
Dangerous When Wet (1953).
SEE ALSO Animation; Children’s Films; Walt Disney
Company; Warner Bros.
FURTHER READING
Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in the
Golden Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Beck, Jerry. The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000
Animation Professionals. Atlanta, GA: Turner, 1994.
Bendazzi, Giannalberto. Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cartoon
Animation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Crafton, Donald. Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898–1928.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American
Animated Cartoons. Revised ed. New York: New American
Library, 1987.
Merritt, Russell, and J. B. Kaufman. Walt in Wonderland: The
Silent Films of Walt Disney. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1993.
Peary, Danny, and Gerald Peary, eds. The American Animated
Cartoon. New York: Dutton, 1980.
Sandler, Kevin S., ed. Reading the Rabbit: Explorations in Warner
Bros. Animation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press 1998.
Wells, Paul. Animation and America. New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers University Press, 2002.
Paul Wells
SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM 227