Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical | Introduction to the History of Animation
The history of animation is a common enough topic that multiple excellent articles and books already exist. My introduction focuses specifically on themes that will arise during the creation of the hypothetical animated musical, including the art of the ancient world and medieval period, parallels between world religions, the influence of animation on other media, the erasure of non-white and working-class figures from history, censorship, and the evolution of animation from hand-drawn to computer animated.
Using a moving image to tell a story came long before the advent of animation. Pottery in Ancient Greece and later Ancient Rome depicted gods, heroes, and everyday life, often with multiple scenes from the same story. Medieval churches told stories to a population with a low literacy rate through the use of icons, stained glass, and illumination on manuscripts. This visual storytelling was not limited to Christianity, as practitioners of Hinduism and Buddhism created artwork featuring stories from their holy texts, while Muslim scribes illuminated their copies of the Qur’an.
By the late 19th century, the world had entered the time of animation. Magic lanterns, similar to modern projectors, showed images projected onto a wall in a “stereopticon show”. Still used by hobbyists of the Magic Lantern Society of the United States and Canada and the Magic Lantern Society of Great Britain, the show included live narration and music. The concept of moving images became possible with the invention of the camera. Photographer Eadweard Muybridge took an interest in the motion of horses to settle a bet: Does a horse lift all of its feet off the ground while running? The answer was yes, and Muybridge discovered that the series of photographs recording the full gait could be viewed in rapid succession to capture the motion. His work captured the attention of Impressionist artist Edgar Degas, who created several sculptures of equestrian movement, one of which I recently viewed at the Harvard Arts Museums. More recently, the artwork was referenced by the sci-fi film Nope (2022), directed by Jordan Peele, which highlights the work of Black professionals in the equestrian industry. The horses of Muybridge photoshoots were prominently ridden by a Black jockey whose name was not recorded, although the photosets were identified by the names of the horses.
Special effects were debuted by French filmmaker Georges Méliès in the early 20th century. He created whimsical films inspired by author Jules Verne, including A Trip to the Moon (1902) where a spaceship famously lands in the moon’s eye. His work went unappreciated through much of his career and Méliès became bankrupt in 1913, around the beginning of World War I. Méliès and his work were rediscovered near the end of his life, fictionalized in the young adult novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (2007) and its film adaption Hugo directed by Martin Scorsese (2011).
As Méliès worked in live action, Winsor McCay began animating, debuting his short film Gertie the Dinosaur in 1914. He was not alone. Max Fleisher bridged the world between live action and cartoons through the invention of rotoscoping in 1915, which he patented two years later in 1917. Fleisher created the iconic early animation characters Betty Boop and Popeye, then opened his own studio in 1929. Other studios opening in the twenties were Disney Studios (1923), Warner Bros. (1923), and MGM (1924). Animation began as a wild west in the entertainment industry, but soon found itself under fire along with Hollywood. By 1934, the industry abided by the Hays’ Code, also called the Motion Picture Production Code, which banned topics deemed inappropriate or indecent. Self-censorship allowed artists to shape their work without government intervention, but it limited the materials they could produce. Fleisher and his Betty Boop character were particularly affected by the Code, as detailed in an episode of the podcast Imaginary Worlds. While materials became more family friendly, these rules inhibited important discussion on real world topics.
The 1940s and 50s proved a tumultuous time for workers in the industry. As mentioned in my post on Tolkien’s Foreword, workers of the Screen Cartoonist Guild (SCG) organized a four-month strike at Disney in 1940 to protest the firing of unionized employees and unfair pay. The next year, in 1941, these workers created the Industrial Film & Poster Service, which later became United Productions of America (UPA). While the company folded in 2000, the Library of Congress preserved several of its culturally significant films on the National Film Registry, including the short film Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950) narrated by Dr. Seuss, which won the Oscar for Best Short Subject (Animated) that year. Around this time, in 1957, MGM closed its animation studio, prompting William Hanna and Joseph Barbera to create their own studio with characters like the Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, and the Smurfs.
In this post-war era and the baby boom that followed, cartoons on Saturday mornings became a standard for the few existing television stations, and live action shows were performed in real time, heralding in the “First Golden Age of Television”. At the tail end of this age came a proliferation of holiday specials, including classics like Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964), A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966). The Hay’s Code lifted in 1968, beckoning in a different wave of animated films. The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine arrived immediately in 1968, while animated music videos from MTV took on a psychedelic flavor.
Moving into the late 1970s and 1980s, animation in the United States stagnated. Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings: Part One (1978) was rotoscoped at this time, as noted in my article on Peter Beagle’s Introduction, but the film failed at the box office. During this slump in the Western world, Japan created its own industry. Japan had been a source of finishing American-based animations for years, including collaboration between stop-motion studios Rankin/Bass and MOM Productions in Tokyo to film Rudolph. With the creation of anime, Studio Ghibli and other animation teams turned to manga or Japanese comics, adapted books for screen, studied history, and wrote completely new stories. The cult classic Akira (1988) with its dark and gritty tone greatly influenced science fiction both in Japan and worldwide media markets.
When American animation seemed bleak, the Disney Renaissance began. From 1989 to 1999, the studio produced a series of crowd-pleasing animated musicals often with a score by Alan Menken and lyrics by Howard Ashman. This era defined the modern animated musical, and although my own graphical and musical styles differ from Disney, the structure of these films will provide the skeleton for my theoretical production. Across the pond, studios in France and Central Europe collaborated on Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998) based on a West African folk tale. While not made in West Africa, an African voice acting cast and realistic depictions of historical rural life made the film feel authentic, although the film received criticism for its portrayal of non-sexual nudity.
By the mid-nineties, with the rise of the computer, animation went in a different direction. Pixar released Toy Story in 1995, the first full-length computer animated feature, and consistently produced hits for the next eleven years as an independent company before its purchase by Disney. Seven years later, in 2002, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers featured Andy Serkis in an unfortunate depiction of Gollum (Where is his coat with the hood and all the pockets?) as the first motion captioned character in an animated film.
Today, the majority of modern animated films use a combination of “pure” 3D computer animation and motion caption. Storylines from major studios aim to become more inclusive, as seen in Disney’s Coco (2017) about a magical Mexican family, Encanto (2021) about a magical Columbian family and Seeing Red (2022) about a magical Chinese Canadian family. I sense a pattern. Unfortunately, these major studios drown out the voices of independent creators. While organizations like Latino Film Institute and African Animation Network provide support for animators, their marketing budgets cannot compare to those of multibillion dollar publicly traded companies. The diversity of animation techniques are drowned out by a more standardized commercial style. Even though these films are often visually beautiful with excellent acting and music, they lack the creativity and daring of earlier animation. My vision for the hypothetical animated musical is to explore its connection to other disciplines such as music, dance, and fashion. My experience researching and drawing period accurate hairstyles, costumes, architecture, and landscape allows me to create novel character designs and distinct environments, breaking out of the current mold for modern animation.