Animation is the Truest Medium of Film
On why animation is film's most manipulative form.
A More Egotistical Medium
Picture a thing. Seeing it, you are actually seeing two things. These are distinguishable but not necessarily distinct. We see, when seeing a thing, the thing itself (1), and simultaneously our perception of the thing (2). Reality is interesting this way because the perception of reality will always be inseparable from but never the same as reality itself. In the lens we look through will always and forever be the scars of our biases, our life experiences and our worldview. This is what it means to be an individual.
What may be red in my eyes may be green in yours — we know this, but make peace with it — so long as what you call red I also call red.
When we wish to convey a thing, or a sequence of things — a snapshot of subjective reality, as it were — film is often the medium of choice. This is because film is a more egotistical medium, than say literature.
When I write a book, I am giving you, the reader, a loose framework within which to project your imagination through the glass bricks of the words I choose. I say 'beautiful girl', you picture your beloved, just as I was picturing mine when I wrote it. I say 'dazzling snowy peaks', thinking of the Himalayas — I may even name them as such — but you, having never seen the Himalayas, say, can only picture the Andes, which you have seen.
Art is itself egotistical in that it is the impression of the self or of the impression of a notion which the self (invariably) possesses, but no medium but film puts the subject of description in such concrete and non-negotiable terms. Other art forms describe visuals — sculpture, painting, photography — in such a way that the framing, the composition and the subject matter itself leaves less to the imagination than words do. It is true. However, we do not perceive reality in a still snapshot. We perceive things in motion, and the stillness of these visual art media at least leaves to the viewer's imagination temporal context.
Say I paint — and show you — a man in a chestnut suit, with mottled skin and a pallid, sunken face, wearing a crooked hat that is a size too small and not quite the same shade as the suit. He is looking at you, the viewer, with a piercing and contemptuous gaze. He is standing on an empty street on an overcast day on the cobbled footpath in front of a lime washed plaster wall that is peeling in places, exposing the bare concrete beneath and in a spot the rusted rebar within (Note how who you may be picturing may be entirely different than who I may have been when describing this to you, such is the magic of words).
You don't know who this is. You don't know why they are standing there, how and why they are looking at you (me, the painter, rather) with such contempt. You don't even know why I chose to paint this man and not the pretty fountain just out of frame to the right (Not that you would know such a fountain exists — but it just might — there's no way of knowing for sure).
This is not true with film. With film, I have shown you the man, I have shown you the greater context he is set in. I may leave questions unanswered deliberately by omission of information, but the fact remains it is not in the nature of the medium. With my multiple angles, with my scenes and my dialogue — I leave much, much less to your imagination. Unlike with literature, there is no rubric within which you may furnish your mind's eye, instead I am telling you exactly what I want you to picture, even if I may leave room for interpretation of what I have pictured for you.
I will never say the medium has no nuance — that it cannot be interpreted in more than one way, or that it is 'bad' or 'worse'. But it must be agreed upon that film is a medium which most heavily relies on the specificities of the creators' vision.
The Fullest Possible Extent
That being said, animation is, in my opinion, the sub-genre of film that advances this egocentric narration to its fullest possible extent. With animation, I may exaggerate the specific qualia that I myself place emphasis upon.
Imagine an establishing shot of the entrance to my childhood home. You watch, over my shoulder, as the door creaks open and I slip inside as if afraid to be heard, and the camera reveals the room as I hurry forward to scurry up the stairs to the second floor.
In the live action, you see this as an observer peering through a magic mirror should, as if you were in the room with me watching me wordlessly. This is delightful, and allows for immersion not quite like any other medium. Recall, however, the non-negotiation which film holds at its core. I (the man in the shot, whose home it is; or as the director) may find most interesting in this scene the grandfather's clock in the corner. Yet, as is often the case in real life, nothing I can do can stop you, the viewer, from marvelling at the detail of the staircase instead. So marvelous you may find the railing that you may never even notice the clock to begin with. And so I, the creator, have not been able to fulfill my goal of impressing to the most extent possible my intention upon you.
Consider, in contrast, animation. In untethering myself from the smothering shackles of reality, I may, high upon my despotic throne, choose to entirely forego all detail in the room save for the clock in question. Hell, I can even make the shot muted greyscale and the clock bursting with vivid and unimaginable colour — the kind a clock would never be. But this does not bother me. Because with animation, I am the manipulator of reality itself. You can see my inner monologue float above my head as characters around me talk to me at the same time — something entirely impossible for the magic mirror observer of the live action.
With animation, I can now show you not only what I see but how I see it, and in doing so I share with you the part of my soul that exists in that miasmic second layer of my own perception that clings to mundane reality.