Animated cartoon as a genre

The author offers his contribution to theoretical writings on film genre which have become frequent in Croatia as well (Gilić, Turković). The author draws our attention to an indefinite status of animation, or rather, a frequent tendency to either ignore animated film (Alman) or treat it as a separate film genre. The fact that animation is treated marginally and incidentally undoubtedly lies at the bottom of a misunderstanding according to which an entire film form is reduced to genre. Furthermore, there are also some inherited classification problems within animation: the traditional one, according to which animated film is classified as the short and the long one, to latest attempts at classifying animated films according to animation or production types (Johnston and Thomas). On the other hand, Wells offers a different classification which arises from film animation development itself. He came up with seven basic genres categorized in relation to formal and stylistic parameters, motif and theme areas, iconic traditions, narrative structure and aesthetic ideology. This text advocates a materialistic and technical an approach to the problem of genre in animated film which is based on conditions and criteria that appeared in practical production, the one implemented by Frierson and Jouvance for example. According to this approach, animated films are directly dependant on technological and technical preconditions and the selection of the technique presumes an aesthetic result. On the basis of this approach, two central animation categories can be discerned: the animated image and the animated object. Both of them understand a number of genres, subgenres and types.

Midhat Ajanović