This is the next installment of my personal canon "Movies I Think About When I Think About the Movies"American members of Generation Y and Z may have a good deal of trouble imagining this but it's true: once upon a time, animated movies were considered highly uncool. They were strictly for babies. Teenagers disdained them. Adults took their children under duress. They barely caused a ripple at the box office. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ignored them. CGI was not part of the national vernacular. Strange but true.
In a very short window of time, from November 1989 through February 1992, three major events changed modern perceptions of the animated film in a gargantuan way. Let's take them in reverse order: The final big-bang was the moment when Beauty & the Beast (1991) was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, the first (and still only) time that a cartoon has received that pinnacle mainstream honor. The middle part of the three-part revolution was when hipster American audiences began to discover that there was more to the form than Walt Disney. Katsuhiro Ôtomo's anime sci-fi classic Akira was the key that opened the door for anime, now very big and influential business in America. Which brings us to the beginning: the first key event of animation's turnaround was the release of Disney's "28th animated classic" The Little Mermaid; an orgasmic reawakening of the most flexible and fantastical of film mediums.
Continue reading "She's Gotta Have It"...
for more on Ariel's coming of age, Britney Spears and Madonna, the rebirth of the musical, and more --yes, this one's all over the place.
Tags: movies, cinema, The Little Mermaid, moviemusicals musicals, animation,film, Britney Spears, Madonna,Walt Disney, mermaids,cartoon, fairy tale
