The Kid's Table

Up (2009)

In 1992, the animation medium hit a milestone when Beauty and the Beast was the first animated feature to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. Don Hahn, the producer, still remembers the weird call he received from Disney's CEO Michael Eisner, just before the ceremony: "If you win, could you say, Thanks, everybody that worked on the film - and now I'm going to Disneyland?" In the end, Beauty and the Beast lost to Silence of the Lambs, and the feeling behind it was that the world was not ready for this major achievement.

Things have not changed much in the past decades. So far, only three animated movies have competed in the Best Picture category: Beauty and the Beast(1991), Up (2009), and Toy Story 3 (2010). This behavior creates a classic separation between the "adults' table" and the "kids' table" (more on Vulture).

Real Movies

The dismissal of animation as a medium is nothing new. The treatment at the Oscars, for example, hasn't been the best. According to this IndieWire article, the Academy has been framing animation as a kids' genre. Filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Spiderman Into The Spider-verse, The Lego Movie) told Variety that an assembly of animators were once told by the head of a major animation studio that if they played their cards right, they would one day "graduate to live-action". On another occasion, a studio executive told them that one of their animated movies was so enjoyable that it reminded them of a real movie.

Not A Genre

If there is one thing that will upset animators, it is telling them that their art is only for kids, or that animation is a genre. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines genre as: " a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content". Medium, on the other hand, is "a channel or system of communication, information, or entertainment". Basically any genre can be found under the animation medium.

Live Action

With more live-actions on the rise, it brings up the question of how animation is treated and seen by the rest of the entertainment industry. It seems that more and more animated series/movies are being turned into live-action shortly after the animated movies or TV series premiere. Indiewire inquires if sometimes animation is being treated less as its own medium and more as a source material for the live-action remakes.

According to The Guardian, this seems to be all Disney's fault. Their mission of transforming their animated classics into CGI live-action seems to be influencing this change in Hollywood. Dean DeBlois, the director and screenwriter of the popular How To Train Your Dragon said that, regarding live-action remakes, it is easy to return to something successful that has been put together by a talented team after years of hard work and then redo it.

But that can be a missed opportunity to bring an original idea into the world (as read in Variety).

To Infinity and Beyond

As The New York Times puts it, animation has capabilities that extend beyond the reproduction of live-action. Animated features play with line, shape, perspective and color "infusing a film with a dual story: that of the world and characters, and that of the art which represents them".  Animation puts in just as much work as live-action movies, but are usually more costly, also taking much longer to get ready.

Nevertheless, that is not how it's perceived in the industry and by the world. Separating the Best Picture and Best Animated Feature award just makes it harder for animated features to compete for the top prize. As Guillermo Del Toro once said (full piece in The Hollywood Reporter). "Animation is cinema, animation is not a genre... Keep animation in the conversation."

Cheers,

Luisa

*Luisa Malin Melo is a junior content manager at Malin Entertainment