THE PRICE WE PAY FOR STORY

[NOTE: Blogger (or is it YouTube?) doesn't support archived YouTube videos that are more than a year or so old. This post relies on video reference and suffers from the loss. Even so, the text is still worth reading and the subject is an important one.]

I like a good story, even in short TV cartoons (this page is about TV shorts), but I sometimes have to remind myself that story comes at a price, sometimes a very high price.

It's a case of losing something to gain something. With story-emphasis you lose or drastically reduce the likelihood of humor, good music, memorable performance, innovation, atmosphere, funny cartooning and funny animation. What do you get in return? So far as I can tell...momentum. You're less likely to get up to get a cheese sandwich if you're wondering whether Scooby Doo and his friends will discover that corrupt real-estate dealers are behind the so-called haunted house. Is the price worth it? Watch the story-light cartoons on this page and judge for yourself.





One of the greatest casualties of today's extreme story emphasis has been music. Can any story that animation writers are likely to come up with match the entertainment value of Cab Calloway's band in the "Snow White" film above (topmost)? Nowadays studio musicians are given a cartoon after it's already been written and animated. Musicians are almost an afterthought when budgets are figured out. Does that make sense? Isn't music the most fundamental of all the arts?




And what about atmosphere and texture? How do you like the atmosphere in "Mysterious Mose" (second film from the top, above)? Would a cartoon with story emphasis have had time to play out the rich atmosphere and gags in Betty's bedroom? Would the story that replaced the atmosphere likely have been as memorable or as funny? Would "Bimbo's Initiation" (above) have been improved with the addition of more story?

[Chuck Jones came up with a memorable story for "Scaredy Cat" (later remade as "Claws for Alarm") but that was more a situation than a story. Arguably situations fit short subjects a lot better than stories.]




Another casualty of story has been performance. Great cartoon performances need time to play out. Story-emphasis cartoons are always racing ahead to the next plot point. What's the rush? We have to remind ourselves that stories exist to justify and give context to great performances. Audiences crave great performances, that's why we have the Oscars every year.