Tag: Stop Motion Animation

‘The Boxtrolls’: Better Than Its “Man in a Dress” Jokes

In a nice contrast to many children’s films and books, the character at the start who goes against the mob is a girl, Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter, Winnie (voiced by Elle Fanning in a mid-Atlantic accent passing as British). Although Winnie, in her pink ruffled dress and blonde ringlets might look like other storybook heroines, her fits over never being believed or taken seriously by adults and her morbid fascination with the boxtrolls make her more like Daria than Alice in Wonderland. When she asks another character if boxtrolls ate his parents, she adds, “Did they let you, I mean, make you, watch?”

The Boxtrolls

Written by Ren Jender as part of our theme week on the Academy Awards.

Critics are loath to say out loud that well-made (and even some not-so-well-made) films, like the rest of pop culture, influence us in every way–fashion, language, and politics. But the proof that critics understand the political power of film comes to light in indirect ways: critics aren’t giving much publicity to the racist but groundbreaking and, in its day, critically acclaimed film, The Birth of a Nation in this, the year that marks a full century since its premiere. And since a North Carolina man shot, execution style, his Muslim, charity-minded neighbors (and a rash of anti-Muslim actions have followed) the (mostly male) cadre of critics who previously were singing the praises of American Sniper, a film that depicts Muslims as perfectly appropriate, shoot ’em up targets, stopped doing so.

Deciding what to write about The Boxtrolls (directed by Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi), a film I enjoyed on many levels but which contains some destructively retrograde messages–mixed in with its mostly progressive ones–was difficult. I should make clear that I’m not usually an eager consumer of entertainment designed for children. I don’t have kids of my own and although I liked the one Harry Potter book I’ve read I never felt the need to read the others. But The Boxtrolls is beautiful to look at (and comes from LAIKA, the same folks who gave us Coraline)–stop-motion animation set in a steam-punk version of 19th century England. With a great deal of economy (the clever script by Irena Brignull, Phil Dale, Adam Pava, and Anthony Stacchi is based on the book, Here Be Monsters! by Alan Snow) the film sets up the premise: boxtrolls, small monster-like creatures who get their name from the cardboard boxes they wear and draw themselves into, turtle-like, at the first sign of danger, scavenge the town streets at night for scraps and goods they can take to their underground lair. Archibald Snatcher (played, magnificently, by Ben Kingsley–it’s the best role he’s had since Sexy Beast; he should play villains more often!) is an opportunistic striver who seeks to elevate his station, first by demonizing the harmless boxtrolls and then capturing all of them, making the streets “safe” for the townspeople and collecting his reward from the town’s ruling elite, headed by Lord Portley-Rind (voiced by Jared Harris) who resembles the king in a deck of cards and has about as much depth.

In a nice contrast to many children’s films and books, the character at the start who goes against the mob is a girl, Lord Portley-Rind’s daughter, Winnie (voiced by Elle Fanning in a mid-Atlantic accent passing as British). Although Winnie, in her pink ruffled dress and blonde ringlets might look like other storybook heroines, her fits over never being believed or taken seriously by adults and her morbid fascination with the boxtrolls make her more like Daria than Alice in Wonderland. When she asks another character if boxtrolls ate his parents, she adds, “Did they let you, I mean, make you, watch?”

Winnie’s curiosity about the boxtrolls ends up with her encountering them in their own lair–and meeting Eggs, named after the box he wears, (and voiced by Isaac Hempstead Wright) a human boy adopted by the boxtrolls who doesn’t realize he’s not one of them, though he’s twice their height. After he disavows all the ways he is different from his adopted kin he can’t really argue when Winnie suggests, “Then let’s see you fit in your box.”

WinnieEggsBoxtrollsSmall
Winnie and Eggs

 

The two work together to try to stop the machinations of Snatcher (whose name, manner and appearance seem to be a tribute to the “child catcher” in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) though as in most films, the boy takes on the main role in vanquishing the villain. In spite of how vivid the animators and Fanning make Winnie, this film does not even come close to passing the Bechdel test. One of the few women characters, Winnie’s mother, is played by the great Toni Collette but she barely gets a line in. And the boxtrolls must reproduce by cloning because we never see one who’s female.

But the huge problem at the center of The Boxtrolls are the scenes when the screenwriters, to show how propaganda can influence the actions of otherwise reasonable people, have Snatcher put on a corset and an evening dress and assume an alter-ego, a red-haired, French chanteuse who sexily sings about killing boxtrolls while she charms all the men in town (who don’t seem to see beyond the wig). I’ve written before about the history of murderous trans* women in film but I was particularly surprised to find this trope–along with the one in which a trans* woman hides her identity and the men who were attracted to her are chagrined once she is outed–in a film that aggressively courts a progressive audience.

Not only is The Boxtrolls full of messages about not dehumanizing those who are “different,” and that adoptive families are just as loving as other families, but it also has kind of an Occupy moment when its boy hero tell others, “Stand up for yourselves. Don’t be afraid anymore.” At the end of the film over the credits we hear “The Boxtrolls Song” an explicitly pro-queer-family anthem by Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame) that includes in its laundry list of different kinds of families those with two Moms or two Dads.

I was sad that this otherwise delightful, humorous (some of Kingley’s lines made me laugh like I haven’t since Obvious Child), anti-capitalist film nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar had to pollute itself with “man in a dress” jokes, especially considering that these jokes couldn’t be mere throwaways–stop-motion films take years of painstaking effort to create (which could also explain the “Occupy” theme). I wondered if anyone involved in the film knew that a generation ago, making fun of the rest of the queer community would have been considered acceptable children’s entertainment too.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2dFVnp5K0o” iv_load_policy=”3″]

 

Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

On Stop Motion Animation and Starting a Project–Whether You’re Ready or Not

This is a guest post by Cait Davis.
In 2009 I wrote a series of short stories that were supposed to be a Halloween costume. My plan was to go as “The Unconscious” and hand out the stories as first person narratives for the receivers of said stories. But I didn’t make the costume and I was left with the stories. I loved them. They came from a different part of myself than what I am aware of in my everyday thinking, and I am fascinated with this part of myself, fascinated with this as a part of human nature. What is the river that runs beneath our every day meanderings? Who are we really? And what does that even mean–to be someone for real? These little glimpses of those sailing depths were what I held on to, and I wasn’t really sure what to do with the stories.
Photo of my old project binder

I took the nine short stories I had written, and I put them into script format. I printed the scripts out, and I looked at them and I put them in a binder, and then I made other movies. I told my friends that those scripts were for later in my career, when I could make them the right way. In part I meant when I could afford to make them, but I also meant when I felt ready to make them. That’s always a funny idea, when a person feels ready for something. It’s pretty abstract, but you know it when it’s there.



Stories of the Unconscious logo–an original lino print

About six months ago I launched a campaign using the film-centric crowd-funding website Seed&Spark. In collaboration with my friend and producer Sara Murphy, Stories of the Unconscious was launched onto the internet, and funding was successful. The campaign process sounds so simple when it’s written in two quick sentences, but it was an arduous task and a tale in and of itself that I’ll leave for some other time. 
Now is where we can come back and revisit the idea of being “ready,” because “feeling ready” meant only that I was ready to not feel quite ready, if that makes any sense. I was ready to feel nervous and push forward; I was ready to not know what was going to happen; I was ready to have anxiety and frustration; and I was ready to get excited and have confidence and experiment with new creative processes. And it even meant that I was ready to make this project even if I wasn’t sure I was ready, if all of this needs further unclarification…
One of the many ways we sold our souls for crowd-funding dollars
Sara and I had the money and now we were ready to make a movie. We organized the scripts from “easiest” to “most difficult” to ease our way into the production. We went on to film five of the stories over the next five months. There were confusions and stresses and things that needed figuring out and happy accidents and frustration and excitement and elation. 
A still from “The Statue,” one of the nine stories that make up Stories of the Unconscious. Cinematography by Alex Hill.
We’re now on the sixth film, and it’s going to take the longest amount of time to complete. This film is the only one in the series that is entirely stop-motion animation. I’m collaborating directly with my theater designer friend Damon Pelletier, and neither of us has any real experience with stop-motion animation.
The studio work table
Together, we collected reference images and discussed the look of the project. The central character of our story is made from wire and computer parts. Damon scoured the streets for tiny pieces of rusted metal, circuitry boards, discarded hard drives, and various interesting trinkets. We bought armature wire and watched online tutorial videos. Damon went through at least three versions of the character before he was satisfied with one.
A shot of the central character on the set of our stop motion animation
For the set construction, we decided on cardboard, a readily available material and one that doesn’t have to cost anything. Once again, Damon took to the streets, focusing on industrial buildings that discard more durable cardboard pieces. He also is not shy about diving into dumpsters and trash bins in search of the right material. Once acquired, he sorts the cardboard into different qualities and thicknesses. My favorite is when we walk down the street and he picks up a piece of cardboard and, holding it to his ear, he knocks on it and then says, “Oh, that’s a good piece of cardboard.” He’s turned into the cardboard expert. 
Damon making columns for the set of “In the Well”
Most recently, Damon and I have been working on a suburban sidewalk set that utilizes forced perspective. What this means is that each house in the set is actually smaller than the house before, creating the illusion of greater depth than what is actually there. This makes a space or a scene look larger than it really is.
Unveiling the trickery of forced perspective: the beginning of some urban house facades
For the rooftops of the houses Damon is peeling off the top thin layer of a standard piece of cardboard, exposing the ribbed interior and therefore creating a roof shingles-like texture. We haven’t figured out the backdrop yet, but it may be a painted sky or some sort of rear projection. At this time, we are required to vacate from our current studio and so have to move our set up into the basement of Big Irv’s. After we complete this short, we’ll have three more before the whole series is filmed.
I guess, at the end of all of this, the big lesson I’m learning is that you won’t ever really be ready, so you just have to go ahead and start doing it when you feel like it. It’s like Robert Rodriguez says, “So you want to be a filmmaker? Wrong. You are a filmmaker.” Or, as David Lynch says, “The beautiful thing is the doing and if you love your work, that’s the greatest blessing.”
Cait on the set of “Smells Like Chewing Rubber”
To follow the progress of ‘Stories of the Unconscious,’ click LIKE! on the official Facebook page. 
Cait Davis is a media creator of short films, installations and video experiments. She is co-creator of an experimental slide show shown at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. A feature script written by Cait and her father, Derek Davis, was accepted into IFP 2010 Emerging Narrative program.