Audiences can be highly influenced by several media or entertainment platforms: newspapers and other kinds of informations (e.g. Television, magazines, events) have always been means of persuasion of very vast group of viewers. Nowadays these “traditional” means of information and persuasion have been sided by Social Media, Television and Web Sites.

Of course also Film and Animation can have other goals other that simple entertainment, becoming a very effective mean of influence and political persuasion: they can reach a large number of people and new technologies allow to produce more and more material capable of impressing its audience.

For this reason, in the last few decades, Print media has lost part of its importance progressively being substituted by new communication media: in particular some media platforms as social medias and podcasts have gained a great power of persuasion: when they are employed for propagandist intentions, the public can be easily manipulated due to the high sense of participation these means can usually lead to.

Also Films and Animation maintain their high power of persuasion thanks to the high number of new broadcast platforms they can use: more and more often these new platforms can mask subliminal contents that are easily dissimulated thanks to the impressive visuals they implement. The most common use of this power of persuasion is the commercial advertising: commercial communications are the outcome of thorough studies of the potential buyers and are produced with sophisticated techniques.

Nevertheless, sometimes communication media, and in particular films and animation are used to express personal struggle that the authors want to communicate to their public: in these cases these media assume their highest value because they become a way to share experiences and original points of view that can enrich the audience.

Also political persuasion makes a wide use of information and entertainment media: also politics are more and more spectacular because the new audience is used to impressive ways of communications and want to find the same modalities also in this kind of information.

Nowadays some sensitive issue are becoming more and more relevant: films and media are becoming a mean to explore and acknowledge some aspect of twenty-first century society as gender equality, race disparities, disability inclusion, ethical issues or political innovations.

All the considerations above can help to clarify how politics shapes media and communication: Cinema, Television and Documentaries have always been an important way of influence, but nowadays their transformation and progress make them more and more powerful means of persuasion.

Examples of politics affecting media in Animation:

“Wall-E” (2008)

Wall-e is an example of an animation film with a high political content well hidden behind entertainment and beautifully executed CGI. The first political message is the pointless use of Earth resources operated by mankind: the Earth where Wall-E (standing for “Waste Allocation Load Lifter- Earth” class) operates is full of rubbish and abandoned things that humankind left behind him when leaving the planet because all its resources have been exploited. World population is exiled on an immense spaceship where man are slaves of A.I. and robots. They have the illusion of having everything they want and build their happiness on superficial activities that distract them from the reality of facts: the movie can be considered a clear criticism over consumistic society and undiscriminated use of resources even if the apparent thread of the plot is just a robot love story.

Animated Documentaries

Animation has been mostly used to represent fiction and illustrate the non-fiction could constitute an issue: it is not conventional but has much potential. This potential, for instance, resides in its usefulness to represent what has not been reported.

What constitutes an animated documentary?

According to Honess Roe, something can be considered to be an animated documentary if it fulfills the following criteria. (Annabelle Honess Roe is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Surrey, UK. She has contributed chapters to a number of books and had articles published in Animation)

1. Has been recorded or created frame by frame.

2. Is about the world rather than a world wholly imagined by its creator.

3. Has been presented as a documentary by its producers and/or received as a documentary by audiences, festivals or critics 

The employment of animation within a non-fiction context is not recent: it dates back to the early history of animation. In 1918 Winsor Mc Cay created what is thought to be the first animated documentary, “The Sinking of the Lusitania“. This work resulted from a lack of recorded footage of the incident itself: what the animator did was to recreate the events, as retold by survivors, using animation, trying to show that there is no distinction between live-action and animation in terms of their ability to show us reality.

However, the modern use of animated documentaries nourished the idea that animation’s illustrative function to be modest and discreet since it is mostly employed to clarify, explain, illustrate and emphasise.

What are the implications of using animation in a non-fiction context?

The first impression on animation is that it could alter reality of facts and by that not being completely objective, however this is one perspective on it: it can present the observable events and the world in non-conventional subjective, giving insights on the emotional and cognitive impact of a human experience, which means that it has the potential of shifting and broaden the limits of what and how we can show about reality, by offering new or alternative ways of seeing the world.

Animated documentaries can be ‘…means of accessing the now absent past, especially pasts from which the filmmakers have been ruptured due to trauma or other events that cause a disruption in the continuity of personal and collective memory.’ For example, Ari Folman’s animated documentary Waltz with Bashir explores into the horrors of the 1982 Lebanon war and it manifests his personal memories of the war through a first person narrative.

What issues arise from the use of animation in documentary?

One of the issues with animation is that whatever is in the scene can communicate something which could leads to a lack of objectivity: animation changes how documentaries are perceived, undermining the conventional but misleading perspective that they are authoritative and objective. Somebody could argue that the creative take of animation keeps it real, reminding viewers that they are seeing a subjective narration: helping us to think of animation as a viable means of documentary expression is John Grierson who refers to documentary ‘as the creative treatment of actuality’.

In other words, Animation and Documentary should work together so tightly that the facts narrated become undistinguishable from the way they are represented, and the events or the notions reported are completely merged with the mean used.

However, the power of animated documentaries to override the mere reality is undeniable: but this power is not to be intended as a lack of objectivity, as it must be used to involve the audience at a higher level, this way fulfilling the “educational” intent usually attributed to documentary itself. When this goal is reached, the animated documentaries deny the critic often moved to them of interpose a layer – the animation itself – between the reality and the audience: the viewers are engaged as well as they would be in a “traditional” documentary.

Could animated documentary potentially detract from the seriousness of the situation?

The opinion of Animated material has been changing over decades in parallel with the advance in technique and technology that relies behind it. Even if some exceptional goals can be archived nowadays in terms of “credibility”, the role of animation is far from being seen as a representation of concrete facts and events. However an important default of live action seems to be forgotten: behind the production of a documentary there is an idea, a direction that the narrative takes on in order to represent the fact, and those facts are always considered to be true by the audience; but, what if those facts are the result of a subjective perception? So, at what extent animated documentaries can really alter reality more than live action documentaries do? Sure, for animation it might be more obvious and exaggerated but isn’t it our concept and opinion over it a bit prejudiced? Or, shouldn’t live action’s roles and parameters be reconsidered as well?

Could  it prevent a direct engagement with the factual content of an animated documentary?Could this be positive?

The audience engagement with the facts reported by an animated documentary can be the same of a live action narration: animation can be able to involve the viewers on a very high level, as well as – and maybe even more – than “traditional” representation.

There is a historical attitude that animation is for children and is not suited to grown up material? How far do you agree/disagree with this?

Most of the time, in our culture context we tend to categorise things giving them a precise role and definition, so that there are no halos of doubts surrounding them. This could be the case of the idea that animation – or even comics – are “children material”, but there are several examples of animated works that adults have appreciated as much as children have, or even more due to their more experienced point of view. Moreover, the concept of synthesis of ideas and forms via animation requires innovative thinking as much as technical skills: symbols and metaphors behind the “childish” figures are in front of the viewer but somehow hidden from the sight of those who refuse to grasp them.

Could it lead to a more universal level of identification? Why do you think this might be?

I think that, even though some symbols and behaviours are not fully shared by all cultures, the animated representation of reality can help to override this differences, because it is nearer to a form of art as painting, and for this reason it tends to be someway more shareable by different societies and populations.