As we continue to predict what the future of media will look like in our chaotic 21st century, one thing to keep our eye on is animation. There has already been a revolution or two in this field–particularly with the development of CGI and the collapse of Disney as the sole animation studio in the country (yes, I know about Hanna-Barbera and Don Bluth–but look up where their animators came from, or went). Now any nerd with a computer can make their own animated movie, which means that all problems of the rest of the fragmented media landscape are about to fall on the animation world too.
Still, animation has something that live-action media simply can’t: flexibility. And this may be its opportunity to flourish at a time when the rest of the media landscape is lagging. If it is the case that anyone with a computer can make a movie (and in an age of AI that is more and more likely), then we have a vast ocean of possibility for those with the creativity, drive, and talent. We may be on the edge of an animation renaissance comparable to the Disney Renaissance of the 1980s.
Not that there aren’t obstacles, of course. Animators will need budgets and independence–two things which are mutually exclusive most of the time. (They will need more budget than Patreon or Indegogo or whatever will provide, but more independence than the big studios will allow.) Some of the smaller public studios have already done some interesting work here (if you’ve not seen The Breadwinner or The Secret of Kells you are missing out on treasures), and this may be the way to go in the future.
So where does that leave us? In holding mode right now, but with a good deal of hope for the future. Where the big studios have become moribund and the indies haven’t caught up in terms of quality, it might be that animation can hit the sweet spot where talented filmmakers can combine with professional equipment to recapture the best that American media has to offer.
Dr. Coyle Neal is co-host of the City of Man Podcast an Amazon Associate (which is linked in this blog), and an Associate Professor of Political Science at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, MO
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