January 23, 2005

Puppets are animation, according to the NY TIMES

As you may recall, in last month's NY TIMES, film reviewer A.O. Scott erroneously wrote that Henry Selick's stop motion animation in THE LIFE AQUATIC was computer-animated. Apparently, the writers at the NY TIMES not only can't tell the difference between stop motion and CGI, they also don't know what animation is. Joel Schlosberg wrote us this morning about their latest error (reg. req'd):

In today's New York Times, in the "Week in Review" section, there's an article commenting on the "SpongeBob is gay" nonsense, pointing out (and rightly so) that there's a long history of controversy over cartoon characters' antics, and that the medium of animation is subversive and boundary-pushing. So far, so good. But the list of cartoon characters that have been objected to in the past includes, along with the likes of Bugs Bunny and Betty Boop, Bert and Ernie and the Teletubbies' Tinky-Winky. So now filming a person in a suit is considered "animation"? It's just indicative of the unbelievable degree of carelessness affecting much reporting on animation.

Posted by AMID at January 23, 2005 01:56 PM