MaxwellMurder said:
I have noticed that western animation gets a lot of disrespect in the media, on the internet, on the bus, in my house, and at my college. Why is it disregarded as crap for kids when there are gems like Ratatouille and Up? Don't get me started on the Spielberg cartoons of the 90s. If Up was live action It would have won best picture.
i think this problem stems from multiple reasons. here are the ones that come to mind:
1) in the west, people haven't gotten over the "saturday morning sanitized kids cartoons". adults, who aren't up to speed with anything, still think cartoons are just "for kids" and treat them as such. hence why anime is also treated badly.
2) nostalgia- "everything was better on my earth!" (cookie for those who get the reference). peopel THINK their cartoons were better, even if they weren't. case on point: my dad has been fawning over the cartoons of his childhood, which were either russian imports (like "nu pagadi" (sp?) or other eastern-european low-budget kids fare.) i found some recently on youtube and i have to say, they sucked. badly animated, badly voiced, bad and generic stories etc. but for him, they rule. to him, cartoons of the 90s which i grew up with "sucked" and there's no way to prove him wrong
3) cartoons in general have declined. (might also be #2 for me) for a few years now i haven't seen more than 2-3 cartoons i found entertaining, and i watch cartoon network a lot more than i should at my age.
i feel like we're going through another animation dark age, like in the 70s. pretty much cartoons have gone full circle. from the rise of the 50s with theatrical cartoons (tom and jerry) to the tv breakthrough and decline in quality (hanna barbera everything), to the complete decline of the 70s (when soccer moms took over), the revival of the 80s (when cartoon started becoming good again) , the awesomeness of the 90 (batman, need i say more?), the unstable 00s (good cartoons, but risky and not as successful), to the god-awful badly budgeted and unimaginative/crazy decade we live in (flapjack..srsly fuck that show!)
so everyone has mostly given up on american cartoons, with very few gems sticking out, most of which are done anime-style anyway (ben 10, avatar, xiaolin showdown, witch, totally spies if we count success into the mix).
i think american animation will come around, but that will only happen once our generation hits 40 and we're cleansed of the old "cartoons are for kids" generations of today. otherwise, cartoons will stay stale for a long time.