View of The District! and the Autonomous Story Zone

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63 Image & Narrative, Vol 11, No 2 (2010)

The District! and the Autonomous Story Zone Terence DeToy

Abstract: Áron Gauder’s 2004 film The District! makes use of some rather unconventional animation techniques. The faces of the characters are rotoscoped (in the manner of Waking Life) while the bodies are completely animated. This rather odd combination actually reflects a deep process of negotiation with recent trends within western comedic media, namely what I term narrative externalization and internalization. These processes involve characters, ideas, scenarios, etc. from one diegetic space entering into another and either (in the case of internalization) rearranging the events and sensibilities of the latter space to fit those of the former or (in the case of externalization) themselves becoming subject to its tendencies and attitudes. The District! strategically and self-consciously resists such comic maneuvers, though it does so not in revolt but in such a way as to negotiate a space for mutual recognition.

Abstract: Le film d’Áron Gauder The District! (2004) utilise quelques techniques d’animation plutôt non-conventionnelles. Les visages des personnages sont produits par rotoscopie (dans le style de Waking Life) alors que les corps mêmes sont complètement obtenus par animation. Cette combinaison peu commune renvoie en dernière instance à un dialogue avec certaines tendances profondes des médias occidentaux, que l’on peut appeler l’externalisation et l’internationalisation narratives. Ces processus affectent des personnages, mais aussi des idées ou des scénarios qui passent d’un espace diégétique à l’autre, que ce soit pour réorganiser les événements ou les sensibilités du premier espace afin de mieux les intégrer aux attentes du second (internationalisation) ou pour les transformer eux-mêmes en suivant ces mêmes attentes. The District ! s’oppose de manière stratégique et autoréflexive à ces manœuvres comiques, quand bien même le film ne le fait pas dans un esprit de révolte mais afin de trouver de nouvelles voies à une recognition mutuelle.

Keywords: The District!, animation, story zone, rotoscoping, narrative internalization, narrative externalization

Article

In 2004, Áron Gauder’s animated film The District! (Nyocker!) was released; the crude substance of the film paired with the radical innovation and originality of the visuals won it recognition and multiple awards, including top prizes at the prestigious Annecy International Animated Film Festival and the Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival. The film depicts a Budapest slum—district #8—populated by characters whose bluntness and absurdity are expressed most explicitly in their visual makeup, which consists of real faces rotoscoped and then placed atop fully animated bodies. The story revolves around a group of school children who strike it rich in the oil business by

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travelling back through time and burying a herd of wooly mammoths beneath the spot where Budapest would eventually be built. Of course, the true satirical substance of the film emerges in the aftermath in which the world economy is destabilized and powerful western nations begin to get involved in an attempt to protect their interests. While the configuration of the film—unique visuals, political commentary, lewd humor and what the DVD cover describes as a “wicked soundtrack of Hungarian hip-hop”—is certainly very intriguing, what is most interesting about The District! is that way it appears to be responding recent western comedic narrative innovations.

The District! inverts a trope that has come recently to prominence in comic cinema and television. This trope involves the self-conscious dissolution of the fictional fabric of a given story world for comedic effect; it is the result of interdiegetic contact— that is, artifacts or fragments of one story world penetrating a second story world. This effect tends to materialize in one of two general ways: the first is when fictional elements (most frequently, but not exclusively, characters) of a given story world find themselves in the real world, or what is represented as being the real world. Of course, the real world in this sense isn’t really the real world proper since we are watching these events take place on television, but rather this effect is achieved most frequently when elements of a highly stylized or self-consciously fictional story world—that is to say, a story world that is either animated, surreal or otherwise not immediately reconcilable with the real world—are put into the context of a story world that is far more realistic or loyal to reality in its depiction. Frequently, the intention behind this maneuver is to have the audience identify the secondary story world as reality. Furthermore, the sections of reality that are depicted in the latter story worlds tend to be rather unappealing. The source of the comic effect comes from witnessing characters from contexts that are otherwise sheltered from reality come into contact with the gritty details of real life such as drugs, disease, terrorism, crime, alcoholism, death, prostitution, racism and so on.

This process of removing elements from a self-contained story world and putting them into what is tacitly understood to be or represent reality I will refer to as narrative externalization. One infamous example of this that has since garnered a level of internet fame via Youtube and other such video sharing web sites is a brief sketch in an episode of the popular animated comedy Family Guy. In the scene, Bert and Ernie, the innocently quibbling duo from the long-running children’s program Sesame Street, are depicted as having left Sesame Street to share a dilapidated apartment in a crime-ridden section of the city. Bert appears to have taken up work as a homicide detective. The scene begins with Bert angrily getting out of a bed that he shares with Ernie. He answers a telephone call and describes to Ernie in gruesome detail the crime that has just been reported and then takes several large gulps from an opened and half-drained bottle of liquor. Ernie complains of Bert’s drinking habit at which point Bert begins to shouts verbal abuses at Ernie. The scene ends abruptly just after Ernie’s meek protest and an innocently cartoonish sound effect playing as Bert rolls his eyes. The source of humor in this bizarre sketch is the externalization of Bert and Ernie. The audience is used to them spending their time quibbling over silly things like cookies and the like. The reason for this is that Bert and Ernie live in Sesame Street and in Sesame Street there is simply nothing more severe or existential that needs to be discussed. By externalizing these characters, they become exposed to a much wider array of (generally negative) phenomena which have the effect of recontextualizing their speech, behavior and interactions.

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The corresponding element to be considered is that Bert and Ernie’s new scenario clearly is constructed in the fashion of a television crime drama, though a specific model is not named explicitly. Of course, the genre is so familiar to television audiences (largely because there are so many of them) that a specific example is not needed; the audience is most likely familiar with the tropes and conventions of this genre. The interest of the sketch is in seeing these characters removed from Sesame Street and placed in a context that more properly belongs in a different genre. Crime dramas, of course, come closer to representing the gritty muck of reality and so the effect of the skit is in resituating these characters with respect to narrative schemata. Because so much of Bert and Ernie’s interactions are tailored to a specific context, when they are placed in this new story world, their behavior begins to take on new meanings. Mark Turner generally refers to such contextually-based meaning variations as “emergent structures.” For instance, the interactions of Bert and Ernie, once abstracted from the context of a children’s show and placed in this alternative genre, take on whole new meanings. Dirk Eitzen argues that the “principal pleasure” of viewing filmic or television narratives is in “solving story problems” (88). He furthermore argues that “comic behavior….fails to fit into problem solving structure of cinema” (88). In this case, however, the humor itself may be the problem that needs solving. Instances of externalization are humorous because of what the audience must construe based on these emergent structures. The domestic argument and Ernie’s posture in bed—indeed, the very fact that they share a bed—suggest a homosexual relationship between the two, something which would be unthinkable in the original context. The re-characterization of these two figures takes place with these emergent structures; it is the audience that must grasp the relevant knowledge and connotations and construct their new identities by drawing the appropriate conclusions. It is, in other words, very much a problem-solving exercise. What is interesting is that this interaction doesn’t work both ways. If, for instance, the situation were to be reversed and a character from a crime drama were to appear on Sesame Street, we can expect the former narrative strain to be the dominant one. That is to say, Sesame Street’s thematics would be rearranged to fit the subject matter of a crime drama. We shouldn’t expect in such a case for the crime drama representative to tailor their speech and behavior to fit the standards of a children’s show; rather, we should expect chalk lines drawn beneath the Sesame Street sign. This, in fact, is an example of the second type of diegetic interaction that typically occurs in these brands of western comedy.

The second means by which elements from highly stylized story worlds come humorously into contact with elements from reality involves the story world being invaded by or otherwise held to the standards of the real world (usually, though not always, via a more realistic narrative or story world). When people, ideas, events, occurrences, etc. from reality manifest themselves in an ostensibly self-contained fictional space, the result is absurd humor derived from the undermining of the fictional premise. Because Sesame Street includes large, talking birds and cookie-consuming or garbage can-inhabiting monsters, a tacit agreement is made between storyteller and viewer that the spectacle be understood as existing outside or independent of the of boundaries of what we recognize as reality. Because we don’t in ordinary life come across entities such as those that inhabit the world of Sesame Street, there can be no contact point with reality since these characters can have no real life referent. Characters and occurrences in the program are simply inconsistent with the types of experiences we

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come across in reality. Crime dramas, on the other hand, are far more reliant on realism. Even though the occurrences themselves are fictional, the crimes these programs observe the solving of are often consistent with the type of crimes that take place everyday and so these programs, while perhaps no more “true” or “real” than Sesame Street, can be said to have a great claim to realism.

The story world of a fiction like Sesame Street is designed to eliminate, disguise, or at least cover over its real life referents—the visual representation of Cookie Monster, for instance, isn’t totally fictional in a strict sense since the program depicts an actor (who really exists) wearing a mask (which also exists and presumably is stored away in a prop room somewhere). The fictionality of a figure like Cookie Monster emerges in the usage—the proper assembly—of these real life referents: the actor wearing the costume and moving/speaking in an appropriate manner. Fictions like crime dramas rely on less assemblage and thus are more immediately recognizable in their portrayals. However, I want to avoid the charge of what many theorists label the “referential illusion,” which David Bordwell defines as “the sense that a tangible world in some sense lies behind the screen, and that storytelling is simply a matter of highlighting this or that moment in the world’s unfolding” (110). I do not wish necessarily to align any aspect of narrative fiction with reality itself or argue that a fictive depiction can be slid neatly into the context of reality. Such a stance would necessitate that the premise of a given film ostensibly situated in reality is that it represents a story that actually took place (or will take place) that the filmmakers will now present to an audience. Of course, as I will argue with regard to Joyce’s Dublin, there is always a divide between the story world and reality, no matter how realistic it is described or depicted. My point is merely that a sizeable difference exists between stylized, animated or surreal narratives and those which are structured intentionally to be realistic. (Indeed, part of the thrill of crime dramas is the plausibility real life crimes grant the events they portray.) There is, however, no solid, discernible line between these two types of fictions; there are many subtle degrees of assemblage that a given fiction may require of its audience. I am thus not attempting to designate two exact types of visual fictions, but rather identify polar tendencies that form a sliding scale upon which a given film or television program falls. If externalization refers to the entrance of characters or attributes of a story world on the visually fictive side of the scale entering a context characterized by fictions more easily reconciled with reality, then the opposite may be termed internalization. Internalization occurs when foreign objects—objects from reality or from a more realistic story world—enter a more imaginative story space. When this happens, the premise of the primary story world is negated and there is a collapse into absurdity in which the ethical systems, dramatic styles, genres, etc. of the two story worlds literally struggle for dominance. An example is in order: in the popular late night comedy show Robot Chicken, there is a scene in which the avian flu virus makes its way into Sesame Street and infects Big Bird. Sesame Street finds itself quarantined by men in white suits. There ensues a struggle between the narrative protocols of these two story worlds. Although Sesame Street is in lockdown, this does not signify a total conquest by the invading diegetic elements. Even while caution-tape is being spread across everything on Sesame Street (even the iconic street sign bearing its name), the practices that characterize the program and characters are still conducted. For instance, Grover continues the tradition of naming a word of the day (he selects “quarantine”) and The Count, with a characteristic laughing “ah-ah-ah” between

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numbers, proceeds to count vials of vaccine. The humor of watching such an interaction emerges from witnessing the absurd situations and juxtapositions that the struggle between story worlds produces. The traditions and practices of the program remain intact, but now bear the trace of this contamination.

The process by which a self-enclosed diegetic space is invaded by reality or narrative components from a more realistic story world plays out in much the same way as externalizing scenarios. Once again, regardless of what narrative elements show up where, those from the more realistic side of the scale tend to be dominant. To drag up the theoretical scenario I mentioned earlier, if a crime drama detective were to show up on Sesame Street, he/she would not, according to these standards, be disloyal to the traits that would define such a character in that genre in favor of behaving according to the standards of Sesame Street. Even though the narrative textures would clash, we would generally expect the more flamboyantly fictive realm to shift in order to accommodate the more realistic one. One thing to be noticed with regard to internalization is the fact that the comic effect largely depends on the invaded narrative space being comprehended as a discernible unit. Sesame Street as a place does not comprise the whole of the Sesame Street story world—there is, presumably, a world beyond Sesame Street even in the context of the program. And yet this single street is the locale for nearly all goings on in the program. Sesame Street does not represent the totality of the program’s story world, but it is all of it that we need familiarity with. In this sense, it can be understood as a story zone. A story zone is a designated section of narrative space within the story world that all or a majority of the events and characters of a given narrative are located. A story zone is always a fictional place, though it can refer to a real location like Dublin in Joyce’s Ulysses; or it can be entirely fictional like Middlemarch in Eliot’s Middlemarch. A story zone, furthermore, can nominally correspond to a real place without actually referring to it, such as Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (which was actually modeled on separate town despite the presence of an actual Winesburg in Ohio). A story zone can refer to no place in particular but be given a set of geographical parameters, such as South Park’s South Park, which is a fictional town that nonetheless is located in Colorado. The reverse is true as well: a story zone can refer to a specific place independent of wider geographical specifications, like The Simpsons’ Springfield, which supposedly refers to an actual Springfield, though it is never specified which (if any).

District #8 in The District! is most certainly a story zone; however, its role in the narrative of the film undermines many of the conventions just described. Internalization is a common tactic in programs such as Family Guy and Robot Chicken (along with many others) and the general protocol is to insert particularly unsavory elements of reality into story zones that we recognize as particularly innocent or sheltered spaces, like Sesame Street, Smurf Village, Rainbow Land or Care-a-lot (one episode of Robot Chicken portrays the Care Bears as engaged in an ethnic cleansing to purify the land of the Care Cousins). What is interesting about The District! is not just that it reverses this trend, but that it does so in a very peculiar way. If the tendency of internalization in recent comedic television narratives is toward the corruption of innocence, then, one might surmise, an opposite approach might involve the neutralization of this interaction and thus preservation. However, The District! recognizes another alternative; the presentation of a story zone that has no claim to innocence to begin with—a story zone that is so corrupt and unappealing that the seedy aspects of reality pale in comparison. This, of course, is

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the unsaid counterpart definition of “incorruptible”—the word could suggest either unwavering moral purity so sturdy that corruption cannot sway it, but alternatively moral degradation so severe that no further corruption can be achieved. Both states represent the idea of incorruptibility. District #8 is already so ethically-challenged and morally-vacuous that it simply cannot get much worse. In an episode of South Park (“Trapper Keeper”), the fiasco of the 2000 presidential election was juxtaposed onto a kindergarten class election. The proceedings, then, in accordance with the protocol of internalization, then become structured to fit the narrative parameters of the debate surrounding the election. For instance, a character named Flora fails to vote and is thus deemed undecided. The underlying principle guiding the unfolding of the narrative is the idea that the goings on in the sheltered world of a kindergarten class must be reorganized in terms of more serious occurrences. In The District!, however, when corrupt politicians try to enter district #8, they are confronted with alcoholic, coke-fiend adults who are even more corrupt than they are and school children who make bombs and solicit the services of sex workers. The story zone and its inhabitants (the children being the narrative focus) quite literally fend off what in western comedic media we would expect to enter and rearrange it.

Not only is this story zone more seedy than the narrative elements that represent reality and real life figures, these real life figures are brought down to a level of silliness we might expect to find in a children’s program. Most of the scenes that do not take place in district #8 depict the meeting of world leaders at the UN and the national ambassadors, especially the ones from America, Britain and Israel, are depicted as childlike. Ariel Sharon, for instance, fails to pay attention to the proceedings because he is preoccupied with toy bulldozers. The irony is that this childish behavior reflects very real and serious issues; it clearly is a reference to the demolishing of Palestinian homes in Gaza and the West Bank to make room for Israeli settlements. Humor in The District! is frequently laced with very serious undertones; what is unique is in the suppression of the serious in the face of the infantile and its resignation to undertones. This is a total inversion of current trends—it neither internalizes nor externalizes. This depiction doesn’t hinge on

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the corruption of innocence, but rather the making innocent of the corrupt. George W. Bush and Tony Blair are also presented as having child-like demeanors (the latter bizarrely attends UN meetings wearing a Darth Vader mask).

Budapest is spared at the end of the film due only to a silly, childish error in which these two mistake Bucharest for Budapest—a silly, childish error that causes immense damage and destruction (which the viewer is not privy to; the scene cuts at the mushroom cloud).

The District! reverses the recent dependence on externalization and internalization by undermining the premise of the terms. These comedic modes presuppose that the real world is harsh and cruel, and furthermore rely on a self-contained story zone that is innocent and sheltered. The District! uses no such premise. Much like South Park (to which the film is often compared, despite its frequent use of these thematics), the most

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worldly, capable and knowledgeable characters are those we otherwise assume to be the most naive: the children (the children of the story zone, moreover). However, in terms of power and material resources, these characters are impotent. Like in South Park, it is the selfish and oafish adults in The District! that have all the power despite the fact that they are the least capable of wielding it. It is the world leaders and politicians—those who posses actual, palpable power—that are the least informed and competent. Not only does the film portray diegetic autonomy and resistance to the standards and events of the outside world, it in fact launches a counter-invasion. The film’s portrayal of UN leaders is characterized by the inclusion of quirky behavior, as was discussed earlier. However, Ariel Sharon’s toy bulldozers and Tony Blair’s Darth Vader helmet represent more than just ad hominem lampooning; they, it can be argued, do more than just portray world leaders as simple-minded children. This comical presentation is satirical in that these objects included for the sake of ridicule have the effect of revealing truth. The portrayal of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as playing with toy bulldozers, although cartoonish and quite silly, is arguably more closely correlated to reality—that is, to actual Israeli policies—than the bureaucratic paper shuffling and political proceedings that he and his administration are typically associated with.

The significance of this development should not be overlooked. Not only is The District! signaling that realism lacks the absolute power to reorganize any cartoonish or immature narrative at will (indeed, it is difficult to imagine the creators of Family Guy or Robot Chicken performing their usual tricks with this film), but also it demonstrates that cartoonish narratives posses the potential to approach truth in a way that reality simply cannot not; the portrayal of Sharon (and his policies) in this film is arguably more “true” than most portrayals of him in the media.

The plot of the film revolves around a group of children who, seeking wealth, travel back through time to kill and bury a herd of wooly mammoths beneath the streets of District #8. Once the children return to their present time, of course, the dead mammoths have materialized into a pocket of oil which they use to start their own international oil company. When these children arrive in the past, it is curious how much

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remains the same. All of the adults they encounter are caricatures—indeed, exact replicas (minus the clothing, of course) of the Roma adults back in the present (eerily, the kids do not have counterparts, as if the absence of the children in the future translates into an absence in the past).

This draws on a common trope in which an alternate time or space is presented as a thinly veiled version of the present. The popular animated comedy Futurama, for instance, uses the same premise. Ostensibly, this program is set in New York City in the year 3000, but the story world depicted is just a silly version of the present, structured in such a way that commentaries can easily be slipped in: topics and situations that arise in the program are generally closely reflective of current events or contemporary developments. Tokens of science fiction narratives, such as space travel, robots and alien life forms, are frequently presented as foibles for the development of the commentary. Futurama, in other words, isn’t about the future at all; it’s about the present. Ironically, the present-day New York City that the main character, a pizza delivery boy named Fry, begins the story in and returns to occasionally (whether literally or in flashbacks) presents comparatively little in the way of social references or contextualization. Thus, a seemingly paradoxical scenario emerges in which an outrageous future setting is more closely aligned with the viewer’s present reality than the setting which depicts it. The same can be said for this scene in The District! When the children travel back in time to find and find an adult population that closely resembles the one they left behind (minus Csorba), they also find these adults behaving in the same self-interested manner that their counterparts will in the future. The figure corresponding to Ricsi’s grandfather, for instance, swindles Simon out of his watch (as the adults in the present time will eventually swindle the youngsters out of their entire company). The effect, however, inverts that of Futurama, whose premise is an internalizing one. Rather than present an alternative timescape that ultimately refers to or comments upon the outside world, The District! presents a closed circuit. The alternative timescape is a means for the film to comment upon its own characters; the entire narrative structure of the film, in this regard, is self-enclosed. Furthermore, the film proceeds with utter irreverence to make dictations to the outside world—it proffers, for

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instance, an alternative theory of how Pangaea split (it involves a group of misfit children and a well-placed nuclear weapon). Much the way district #8 positions itself as an economic center of interest for oil-seeking nations, The District! asserts itself as an object worthy of attention; it positions itself rather than reality as the center of attention and does so firmly in opposition to programs and films such as Futurama that situate themselves passively as conduits for attention to contemporary culture.

The District! also in its very narrative texture resists the internalization/externalization models. The film is an updated and tweaked version of Romeo & Juliet. It would probably be more accurate, however, to refer to this narrative as “Roma & Julika,” the former term referring to Ricsi and several other characters’ ethnic affiliation, while the latter is “Julie” pronounced in Magyar, the primary language of Hungary’s white population. The point being made is that the conflict standing in the way of the would-be lovers is not limited to strife between families a la Shakespeare’s play, but rather these characters have to contend with the hostilities that exist between their respective ethnic groups, which is a much more serious affair. Already, a potential manifestation of internalization has been neutralized. Romeo & Juliet, as much as it is a meditation on love and desire, is a very grim story. One could easily imagine a scene in line with contemporary comic trends in which mistaken contextual inferences, interfamilial violence and suicide invade a previously innocent narrative about young love: perhaps a recreation of the famous tomb scene in Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty (the developments of mistaken identity and unnaturally induced slumber would provide necessary narrative points of contact). Such narrative integration would certainly conform to the emerging standards of comic presentation in the scenes and sketches of many popular contemporary television programs and films. However, this is not the effect that we get from The District! Far from presenting a story zone that is invaded and victimized by another narrative or set of diegetic elements, this film portrays a failed coup d’état— that is to say, the Romeo & Juliet schema that is initially presented fails to imprint its narrative shape onto the developments of The District! This is because, simply, the presentation of the story zone is more referential to the grim realities of the human condition than the invading narrative. Romeo & Juliet takes place in front of a backdrop of family feuding; The District! unfolds in front of a backdrop of ethnic tensions, derogatory language and even violence; what is more, these serious and terrible developments are addressed generally with humor or in song fashion. Of course, the issue of warring families is not altogether fazed out of the film, but it is worth pointing out that boisterous and oafish fathers—the two prime but blundering antagonists—are presented as spokespersons for their respective racial groups (and yet their many similarities cleverly call into question the legitimacy of the racial divide). Even the erotic subtleties that have led many savvy readers to view the play as having a somewhat gritty, even seedy, texture are amplified to the point of obviousness in the film; in fact, the meeting at which the children’s time-travel plans are codified takes place in a pornography shop.

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The result is that the Romeo & Juliet narrative schema is overpowered by a story zone that is more intensely real. The tendency (in American comic presentations, at least) is for the internalizing narrative to be in some sense more severe and in touch with the gritty details of reality than the story world into which it is integrating. However, The District! prevents such an osmosis; there is no way for a narrative that closes with the untimely death of young lovers to make more severe the corresponding narrative when that narrative closes with the obliteration of an entire city. Similarly, there is no way for a tale that begins with a family feud to intensify the corresponding narrative when that feud is already charged with undertones of ethnic violence, drugs and prostitution. The invading narrative simply has nothing to add and thus falls by the wayside. The Romeo & Juliet schema originally is presented quite genuinely as a narrative counterpart to The District! The film even includes a rendition of the famous balcony scene.

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However, this narrative schema breaks down with the friendship that is established between the two fathers (which promptly dissolves when the oil money disappears) and the revelation that Julika has no interest in Ricsi because she is actually a lesbian. These developments directly sever any and all such narrative ties. The complete rejection of the Romeo & Juliet schema represents more than artistic nuance; it is a clear political statement. The over-exaggeration of seedy realism on the part of the story zone in The District! represents an assertion on the part of the filmmakers of cultural autonomy. What gets blocked in the film is not merely the Romeo & Juliet narrative schema, but the very idea of narrative internalization/externalization itself. The creation of a diegetic story zone so corrupt and unappealing that it is rendered impenetrable stands as a direct affront to the comic sensibilities of recent western entertainment. District #8 represents more

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than just an alternative model for story zone construction; it represents Hungarian cultural autonomy. Furthermore, this is reflected in the visual style of the film.

The visual presentation of The District! is highly unorthodox. The faces of the characters are taken from video footage of real actors and rotoscoped—a technique, recently popularized by Richard Linklater’s films Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, that involves a layer of animation being drawn over real life images. The bodies of the characters, as well as everything else, are completely animated. This specific animation technique is quite novel and it has a very peculiar effect on the viewer. What is interesting is that there appears to be a dimensional discrepancy between the presentation of the characters’ heads and their bodies. The film’s creators seem to be using some sort of stop-motion or cut-frame animation when presenting the characters’ heads and faces. In order for a character to speak, change expressions or turn his/her head, there appears to be a cut in frame followed immediately by the insertion of a new frame set, which continues the animation with the necessary change already in place. There is discernable progression or fluidity of motion, in other words, which creates the observed motion. Much like early South Park animation, if a character turns his/her head in The District!, instead of seeing a three-dimensional animated head turn, we see a series of spliced two-dimensional images of the head each denoting a certain amount of progression and which in succession demonstrate the process of the motion. Of course, this process, roughly speaking, describes all drawn animation, including the characters’ bodies in this film— that is how animation works. However, there is a noticeable difference between the amount of gap-filling animation that is given to the bodies and that given to the heads. The face is very important component for communication. Researchers who programmed Kismet, for instance, MIT-manufactured robot designed to emulate human emotions and take part in human interactions, faced with developing a series of facial expressions to communicate the bulk of human emotional experience identified “nine basis (or prototype) postures that collectively span this space of emotive expressions” (Thagard 167). This basic set of fundamental expressions, in other words, forms the basis or platform of visually-oriented human emotive expression: “This basis set of facial postures has been designed so that a specific location in affect space specifies the relative contributions of the prototype postures in order to produce a net facial expression that faithfully corresponds to the active emotion” (Thagard167). In other words, these nine platform expressions form a continuum on which a given emotive state, regardless of its exact makeup, falls. The attention to detail in the emulation of facial expressions on the part of the researchers is hardly superfluous; the human face is an inestimably important element that underlies things like emotional recognition and human communication. Carl Plantinga describes what he calls the “scene of empathy” in film and identifies it as a moment when intimate or emotionally-charged character speech or interaction is supplemented with the exchange of close-up facial shots and argues that the prominence given to facial expression “harkens back to prelinguistic communication” (219). The human face and facial expressions serves as an important guide to emotive comprehension when experiencing cinema. What makes the experience of watching The District! so unsettling is that the animated dimensionality of bodies is far more thorough than that of faces. If a character turns his/her body, we do not get a crude series of spliced frames the way we do with facial motions and head turns. The depth of dimensional animation used and the variety of angles taken into account by the animators creates the

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illusion that these characters posses three-dimensional bodies. When a character turns his/her body or the viewer’s angle changes, the transition is seamless—there is no gap or sudden jump from one state to the next as there is with the presentation of faces. This technique has a rather odd effect; the characters’ bodies, though completely animated, are actually more consistent with our visual experience of reality than the characters’ faces are, despite the fact that the faces are based on real images of actual people (and despite the importance faces are for emotive recognition). This is a very interesting reversal; the faces, which in one regard are partially “real,” are in another less “real” than the bodies which are completely fabricated, and often outlandishly so. The experience of watching The District! is unnerving precisely because it is difficult as a viewer to reconcile these different aspects of the characters. This is particularly so because, as it has been suggested by researchers, viewing animation triggers reactions in areas of the brain that are involved in registering intention (Whitfield 922). The heads appear to be their own spectacles: objects of a certain nature simply floating atop their more conventional, and often crude or cartoonish, bodies.

We can read this effect as working to undermine the internalization/externalization methods of western comedy. Narrative internalization and externalization tend to privilege the realistic; it is a way for the viewer to experience a sort of imaginative colonizing or conquest. When avian flu wreaks havoc on Sesame Street, the effect on the viewer is a laughing excitement over the standardization of rules and sensibilities consistent with our real life experience. Sesame Street exists within its own diegetic space, which in turn is governed by its own ethics, rules, and sensibilities. These narrative guidelines are manifest in the sorts of events, behavior, and topics of discussion that appear in the television program of the same name. What we witness in Robot Chicken’s scenario, for instance, is the rearranging of this whole value set. The narrative terrain, the quirks of the characters, the subtle moral contours—all it gets rearranged and set into a new mold. This all happens in response to the entry of an object from our reality. The humor of the sketch is tied closely to the sensation of one’s own value system and experience of reality is prevailing over another. What The District! accomplishes is the preservation of the autonomous story zone. In this film, the incursion of reality is negated; in fact, reality itself becomes a subjugated presence. The faces of these characters, though taken from the faces of actual people, are presented with shoddy animation. Despite the faces’ claim to reality, the thoroughness of their animation is far less than that given to nearly every other visual aspect of the film. The District! tolerates no such incursion; the story zone of district #8, as I said earlier, is already crude enough.

The presentation of an autonomous story zone in The District! is likely more than just a call for cultural autonomy; there is an ambiguity surrounding the cultural inferences that can be drawn from the film. The District!, after all, is flooded with western (particularly American) influences: the frequent hip-hop music intervals, for instance. Furthermore, even in challenging the internalization/externalization comedic models, The District! is acknowledging them and thus still orienting itself relative to these primarily western standards. The question is what to make of these seemingly contradictory tendencies. Klára Muhi situates this problem around the transition of Hungary from a socialist economy to one based on free market capitalism, which occurred in 1989 (151). At that point, Hungary’s borders were forcibly opened to western imports, which all but signaled the demise for many of the country’s domestic cultural productions, including its

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flourishing animation studios (151-152). It would be naïve, however, to comprehend this film simply as a call to reclaim Hungary’s animation and artistic industries, although that doubtless factors in. Many of the film’s makers grew up in a culture that was deeply influenced by western media, hence not only their appreciation for certain aspects of it, but also their awareness of emerging trends like externalization and internalization. This film, then, represents not just much a direct challenge to internalization/externalization, but an attempt to redefine their parameters and explore their potential effects. It’s relationship to them is love-hate; it undermines these comedic modes in a way that is decidedly conversant, attempting in the effort to join the ranks of the western films and television programs responsible for developing them. It is a bid for recognition as much as it is an assault: a call to the world the makers of the western comic programs I have been mentioning would surely appreciate.

References

Bordwell, David. The Poetics of Cinema. New York: Routledge, 2008. Eitzen, Dirk. “The Emotional Basis of Film Comedy.” Passionate Views:

Film, Cognition and Emotion. Ed. Greg M. Smith & Carl Plantinga. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. 84-103.

Muhi, Klára. “Suspended Animation.” The Hungarian Quarterly. 48:188 (Winter2007): 150-155.

Plantinga, Carl. “The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film.” Passionate Views: Film, Cognition and Emotion. Ed. Greg M. Smith & Carl Plantinga. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999. 239-257.

Thagard, Paul R. Computational Philosophy of Science. Boston MIT P, 1993. Whitfield, John. “An MRI Scanner Darkly.” Nature 44:22 (June 2006): 922-924.

Terence DeToy is currently completing his MA at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. In the Fall of 2010 he will begin working toward a PhD at Tufts University in Boston, MA. His general interests include 20th Century literature, narrative, cognition and critical theory. terencedetoy@gmail.com