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Locating the
original influences on Asian animation can be a daunting
task, illustrated by the following two vignettes. 1. Sometime in
1923, the four Wan brothers, credited with starting
animation in China, sat in a Shanghai theatre enraptured by
three American cartoons shown that day. Forsaking any
luxuries and most necessities, the Wans for the next three
or four years devoted nearly all their time and money to
learn animation, strictly by experimentation and imitation.
Their first work, and China's first animation, Uproar in
an art studio (1926) was much influenced by the American
style, using the concept of the Out of the
inkwell series by the Fleischer brothers. In the
Wans' version, a painted figure on an artist's canvas comes
to life and commences to play with the brushes and paints
when the painter leaves the room. Admitted admirer
of the cartoons of Dave and Max Fleischer, as well as the
characters Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat, the Wans also
were influenced by Chinese shadow puppet theatre and Beijing
Opera, the latter subsequently inspiring Wan Laiming's
Havoc in heaven (1961). 2. One of Wan
Laiming's films and China's first full-length cartoon,
Princess with the iron fan (1941), motivated Tezuka
Osamu, Japan's premier animator, to seek a career in
animation. Tezuka was only sixteen when he saw the film.
Other powerful influences on Tezuka came from the west.
Calling Walt Disney an idol, Tezuka said he had seen Donald
Duck and Mickey Mouse cartoons many times as a child, and,
after World War II, had travelled from his Osaka home to
Tokyo to see Bambi no less than one hundred
times. When controversy
brewed in the early 1990s about the similarities between
Disney's The lion king and Tezuka's
three-decades-earlier Jungle emperor, some critics
remembered that Jungle emperor itself drew heavily on
Disney animation and cartooning style. In this essay, an
attempt is made to determine how and under what
circumstances animation came to Asia, the interplay between
foreign and indigenous animation, and the perceived impacts
of - and resultant reactions to - foreign-originated
cartoons. One thing for
sure about early animation in Asia was the prevalence of a
western (meaning Disney for the most part) influence. Thus,
in China, The smiling monkey was termed a copy of
Mickey Mouse,[1]
and India's The Pea brothers (1934), considered by
some as that country's first released animated film, was
said to be "very much in the tradition of Disney and other
foreign animators".[2]
In some cases, pioneer animators such as James Wang of
Taiwan, Payut Ngaokrachang of Thailand, Tezuka of Japan, and
Shin Dong Hun of Korea proudly accepted the title "the
Disney" of their respective countries, handed out by
journalists and adoring fans. [1]
Marie-Claire Quiquemelle, "The Wan Brothers and sixty years
of animated film in China", in Chris Berry (ed.),
Perspectives on Chinese cinema (London: British Film
Institute, 1991), 177. [2]
Jayanti Sen, "The neglected queen of Indian animation",
Animation world, October 1999. The outside
influence resulted from exposure to foreign cartoons early
on, and then from training abroad or onsite. Besides the
Wans and Tezuka, other animators told of being enamoured
with Disney and other U.S. works: Wang with Bambi
which he saw in China in 1946; Payut with Snow White,
Felix the cat, and others, which he said were the
sources of his dreams, and China's A Da with Snow
White. To hone in on
China as an example, foreign works were always imitated,
even during the times of Mao. As veteran animator Zhan Tong
explained, the first generation of animators was inspired by
Disney in the 1930s and 1940s, the second generation by
Soviet and East European masters, and the succeeding
generations from the 1980s on again by American
animators.[3] [3]
Zhan Tong, interview with John A. Lent, Shanghai, 15 August
1993. However, the
Chinese, perhaps more than any other Asian animators save
those of Japan, were insistent on adapting only those
elements of foreign animation that fit their culture, never
favouring full adoption. In a July 1936 article in the
periodical of the studio, Mingxing Company, the Wans
stressed and praised the importance of American cartoons,
telling of the influence of the Fleischers on them, but they
emphasised that other animation was also very good, citing
that of Germany and the Soviet Union, and that the Chinese
could not continue to imitate the U.S. Wan Laiming
wrote: [4]
Quoted in Quiquemelle, 178. A short-time
later, China produced its first feature-length animation,
Princess with the iron fan, and although the Disney
influence was still discernible, it did not have the usual
heavy dosage of sweetness and prettiness. Further, the story
evolved from the Chinese novel, Journey to the
West. The Chinese added
more local stories to their animation repertoire after Mao
ascended to full power in 1949. In the 1950s, considered
China's golden age of animation, indigenous styles and
techniques such as paper-cut, ink and wash (shuimo dong
huapian), and folded paper were applied to what became
classic works. Writing in 1959, one of the two originators
of the post-1949 animation studio, Jin Xi, said that Chinese
animation must be educational, technically sound using
characters with human traits, and varied in subject matter
expressing a national character and the originality of
Chinese culture.[5]
Jin Xi's article was a reaction to the influence of the many
American cartoons shown before 1949 and Soviet ones in the
1950s. [5]
Quoted in Quiquemelle, 182. Indian animation
was started and nurtured over the years by outside factors
and individuals. The first animated shorts were produced
during World War I by the "father of Indian cinema," D.G.
Phalke, when he could not obtain adequate film supplies to
do live action features. The medium had steady growth during
the succeeding decades, incorporating many aspects of
Western animation. As Bendazzi wrote, Indian animation
always: [6]
Giannalberto Bendazzi, Cartoons: one hundred years of
cinema animation (London: John Libbey, 1994),
407. Outside
influences were especially prominent in the training of
animators. In 1956-1957, the governmental Films Division,
with financial support of UNESCO and an American government
foreign aid program, brought former Disney animator Clair
Weeks to the Cartoon Film Unit where he trained a group of
Indians, including Ram Mohan, Bhimsain, Satam, Ezra Mir,
A.R. Sen, and Pramod Pati. Pati also studied with Czech
animator Jiri Trnka and worked in both U.S. and Yugoslav
studios before almost single-handedly developing Indian
animation art films after 1960. In the early 1970s, Weeks
and British academic Roger Noake were responsible for
training graphic designers and artists at the National
Institute of Design, who themselves would train the next
generation of animators. The Zee Institute of Creative Arts
(ZICA) in Hyderabad initially operated an animation school
for its first three years, using Russian animators as
teachers.[7] As in the case of
the Chinese, some Indian animators trained in a western
tradition have, in the words of animator Jayanti
Sen,[8]
kept in touch with their own soil. Notable among these have
been Bhimsain and Ram Mohan. [7]
Ram Mohan, letter to John A. Lent, 23 June 1998. [8]
Jayanti Sen, "India's growing might", Animation
world, October 1999. Pioneer animators
of Taiwan had many connections to the U.S. industry. Chao
Tse-Hsiu, who directed Taiwan's first animated film, The
race between the tortoise and the hare (1967), studied
in Japan and the U.S. and learned some animation at Disney
studios. When he returned to Taiwan in 1964, Chao brought
with him four thousand pounds of animation equipment with
which he established the Tse-Hsiu Institute of Art
Production. One of Chao's trainee-employees was Mu-Tsun
Huang, sent to the U.S. for additional training. Upon his
return, in 1972, he opened the Nature Cartoon Company and
later Chinese Youth Animation Co. Huang went back to the
U.S. in 1978 to learn more of the Disney style. It was while he
was in the U.S., after completing his masters degree at
Indiana University and looking for ways to enter animation,
that James Wang convinced Bill Hanna of Hanna-Barbera to
back an offshore animation facility that Wang proposed in
his native Taiwan.[9]
His Cuckoo's Nest (Wang Film Productions) quickly became one
of the world's largest animation producers. [9]
James Wang, interview with John A. Lent, Taipei, 10 July
1992. Hanna
played a key role in establishing overseas studios in
Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. In each
case, the studio was structured with the Hanna-Barbera
production formula and emphasised recruiting and training
local staff and finding incentives and policies to overcome
cultural differences and work ethics. Thailand's first
animator, Payut Ngaokrachang, had done an animated short in
the mid-1950s that caught the attention of the U.S. Embassy
in Bangkok, which was looking for cartoonists to draw
anti-communism themes. Payut drew for the embassy a Thai
child sitting in the palm of a hairy hand carrying a sickle
and was quickly signed to a contract. In 1955, he started
nearly thirty-four years of work with the United States
Information Service, where he produced Hanuman pachoenpai
krangmai (The new adventures of Hanuman, 1958)
and Dek kub mee (A child and a bear, 1960).
Like the Wans in China, Payut was influenced both by the
Fleischers and by local shadow theatre (nan
talung).[10] [10]
Payut Ngaokrachang, interview with John A. Lent, Bangkok, 5
August 1993. Much of Asia's
animation production since the 1960s has been tied to
foreign interests attracted by stable and inexpensive labour
supplies. For nearly forty years, Hollywood (as well as
Canadian and West European) studios have established and
maintained production facilities, first in Japan, then in
South Korea and Taiwan, and now also in the Philippines,
Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Indonesia,
and China. The economics of the industry made it feasible
for Asia to feed the cartoon world, to the extent that
today, about 90% of all "American" television animation is
produced in Asia. The usual
procedure is for pre-production (preparing the script,
storyboard, and exposure sheets) to be done in the United
States or other headquarter countries, after which, the
package is sent to Asia for production (drawing cels,
colouring by hand, inking, painting, and camera work). The
work is sent back to the U.S. or other headquarter country
for post-production (film editing, colour timing, and
sound). Asian animation
companies bid fiercely for part of the global business,
insisting that it provides employment and skills for young
people, brings in needed foreign capital, and adds to the
creation or enhancement of domestic animation. Most animation
workstations in Asia are staffed by young people, many of
whom are women sought for their "delicate touch." They are
enticed by wages low by western scales but competitive
locally, splashy perks, ceremonies, and celebrations, or
opportunities to be trained. James Wang believes one way of
satisfying, and therefore retaining, employees is to keep
their skills finely honed through many training classes.
"You cannot force people to work, but if you train them,
they feel they are not being used," he
explained.[11] [11]
Wang. Even in
situations where wages have been low and working conditions
poor, Asian animation officials rationalise away labour
exploitation. Ram Mohan, head of a dominant Bombay Studio,
said: "I don't see it as such [exploitation]. From
an Indian perspective, if I do animation for Hollywood, it
is an opportunity for young people to find a
career."[12]
The vice general manager of Shanghai Yilimei Animation
Co., Jin Guoping, also denied it was labour exploitation,
pointing out that his studio's wages were above median
compared with other companies involved in foreign
investment.[13]
Nevertheless, animators in offshore companies face a
precarious existence because of the seasonal nature of
animation work and knowing they can be easily replaced by
freelancers, computers, or cheaper labour
elsewhere. [12]
Ram Mohan, interview with John A. Lent, Bombay, 13 July
1993. [13]
Jin Guoping, interview with John A. Lent, Shanghai, 13
August 1993. A claim often
heard is that the offshore animation leads to the creating
and nurturing of a local industry, as an infrastructure is
built up, equipment is put into place, and skills are
transferred. By the latter decades of the century, certainly
Asia was in need of a larger supply of domestic animation as
television and cable channels proliferated, demanding much
larger supplies of programming. However, not much domestic
animation resulted from the presence of foreign-based
studios. In most countries, animators can point to only one
or two features or television series that have local
angles. An exception for
a brief time in the mid-1990s was South Korea, which, with
much government support, was bent on establishing a local
animation industry. In 1994, government officials recognised
animation as a "value-added" product and granted the
industry a number of incentives, such as a lower tax base,
low-interest loans, and a viable infrastructure. Studios
producing primarily foreign work increasingly turned
domestic, bringing out about a half-dozen features and
numerous shorts and episodes depicting Korean folklore,
humour, and culture. But, the boom subsided by the late
1990s, as overseas markets were not found and as the costs
of producing local animation far outweighed its popularity
among Koreans. South Korea is still the third largest
producer of animation worldwide, but 95% of its output is
manufactured by foreign order. Not one of the nearly 400
animation studios in Korea is devoted entirely to making
domestic shows. Shanghai
Animation Film Studio, which for decades produced only
Chinese animation, started to pick up foreign work by the
early 1990s, especially after it became Shanghai Yilimei
Animation Co., a joint venture with Yick Lee Development Co.
of Hong Kong. In the mid-1990s, 70 percent of the merged
company's funding still came from government, allocated on
the basis that the company completed a 300-400 annual
minutes of domestic animation quota set by the authorities.
Any money needed for development and creativity came from
the 500-700 annual minutes of animation done for foreign
firms. By the end of the decade, the state lowered its
allocation to 30%. Yet, China still produced about 6,000
minutes of domestic animation in 1998, doubling the previous
year's total. Similarly, the
Hanoi Cartoon Studio was changed significantly as Vietnam
adapted to the world economy in the 1990s, brought on by the
collapse of its donor nation the Soviet Union, the
re-establishment of diplomatic and trade relationships with
the U.S., and the linkup with the Internet, lowering
communication costs. The amount of domestic animation
produced by Hanoi Cartoon Studio had been formidable, five
to ten titles annually since 1961, for a total of 260 by
1998. The quality of the artwork was superb, for Vietnam is
a country with a long tradition of drawing and painting,
reinforced by the French colonisers who encouraged the
formation of art schools. Beginning in 1991, Vietnam became
a haven for overseas animation studios, first the Japanese,
followed by the French company Pixibox in 1994, and
American, Korean, Filipino, German, and Australian companies
since the mid-1990s. In 1997-98, Australia's Énergee
Entertainment struck a deal whereby Hanoi Cartoon Studio
would become its overseas facility and grant Énergee
distribution rights to its full catalogue of animation.
Creative aspects of animation, such as compositing,
modelling, and rendering of images, that used to be done
with high levels of skill in Vietnam, are retained in Paris,
San Francisco, or Sydney. Vietnamese artists are now sent to
Australia for training or are imbued with the "European
philosophy" brought to the Hanoi studio every three or four
months by visits from Parisian heads of
Pixibox.[14] [14]
Anne Aghion and John Merson, "Emerging Vietnam",
Animation world, August 1998. Reeling from
financial woes of the late 1990s and a decline in U.S.
television production, Asian service studios entered into
co-production agreements with American, Canadian,
Australian, and European partners. Benefits accruing to the
Asian studios include moving from strictly work-for-hire to
a more creative role in animation, enlarging capital
investment pools, being involved in larger, more prestigious
projects, and gaining a wider distribution abroad. Also,
because sales of animation in Asia were almost impossible
because of widespread piracy, Asian studios sought
co-production deals in which they would share in profits
from North America and Europe. The most formidable
partnership - that of Walt Disney International (WDI) and
Japan's Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co. to distribute the
latter's films worldwide through Buena Vista Home
Entertainment - did not involve a service studio, but rather
Studio Ghibli Co., a Tokuma subsidiary famous for the work
of its resident animator Hayao Miyazaki. The pact gave WDI
global video rights to market eight animated features
already produced by Miyazaki, as well as theatre release
worldwide of his Princess Mononuke. Perhaps more
importantly, it provided WDI entry into anime, which
one Disney official said, they hoped to "legitimise" and
bring into the mainstream. WDI already controlled 65% of the
Japanese market for children's videos. Critical of Disney
films, Miyazaki was not thrilled by the deal. Previously, he
would not grant rights for outside distribution of his
anime to foreign companies for fear they would alter
his work. He reversed his policy to help Tokuma, which, he
said, had always been good to him and now needed the money
to be gained from the partnership.[15] [15]
New York times, 24 July 1996, 1 February
1998. Co-production
arrangements grew steadily at the close of the 1990s. In
China, Morning Sun Studio joined with Fred Wolf Studios to
make Dino babies, and with Warner Brothers and Fred
Wolf to produce Sinbad the sailor; Shanghai Yilimei
partnered with CINAR of Canada on a TV series Rumble
& growl, and other studios with Yoram Gross Village
Roadshow of Australia, Network of Animation (Canada), the
Storm Group of England, Tokuma Group of Japan, and Moro
Animation Film Studio of Spain. In January 2000, a
state-owned group called Shanghai Telefilm Group was set up
to produce, distribute, license, and merchandise Chinese
animation. Though not strictly a co-production arrangement,
the group did combine Shanghai Yilimei Animation, Shanghai
Cartoon Culture Development Co., Shanghai Animation Fine
Drawing Studio, and Cartoon king magazine in a
partnership to produce a 52-episode TV series, Music
up and a second animated feature after Lotus
lantern, as well as to establish the Shanghai Animation
Institute. Realising they were pricing themselves out of
work-for-hire animation, Korean studios also tried to
develop creative partnerships after 1997. Besides the
Disney-Tokuma Shoten cooperative effort, others in Japan
were formed between MADHOUSE Studios and Korea's Samsung
Entertainment to produce Alexander, Nippon Animation
and Mitsui and U.S.'s LA Animation to work on The monkey
king, Tezuka Productions and RAI of Italy, Nippon
Animation and Doro TV, also of Italy, and Nippon Ramayana
Films and Ram Mohan of India. The latter partnership
resulted in production of the epic Ramayana and
Swan Princess III. Because of fears by the Indian
government that the story might be trivialised and lead to
religious turmoil among Indians, Ramayana took ten
years to reach the screen. Ram Mohan and his team provided
visual reference and key drawings, from which the Japanese
worked to create an interesting fusion of manga
(comic book) style and Indian design. Animation
dominated by foreign programs tops all children's television
in Asia. Much of the foreign animation arrived with the
multinational television broadcasters Star TV, TNT, BBC,
Disney, Cartoon Network, etc. For example, 66% of television
animation in the Beijing market is foreign, of which
one-half is Disney; in recent years, CINAR of Canada signed
with CCTV to broadcast Arthur and Germany's EM. TV
supplied fifty-two episodes of Blinky
Bill. The foreign media
conglomerates compete furiously for the cartoon market of
Asia, launching customised cablecasts as Disney Channel did
in the Philippines in 1998, dubbing into local languages as
TNT & Cartoon Network did in India the following year,
and using all types of strategies to make themselves
welcomed. All outsiders
used gimmicks to woo audiences and placate parents in the
mid - to late - 1990s, but perhaps Cartoon Network was the
most persistent and innovative. In 1997, Cartoon Network
Japan was set up as a joint venture, combining Japanese and
Western animation in 24-hour broadcasts; shortly after, the
service was expanded to Australia. Also in 1997, Cartoon
Network on Tour came into being as a musical production of
animated characters who took to the road to perform in
various Asian shopping malls. That same year, the network
split its Asia Pacific feed to cater to specific regional
preferences of Southeast Asia, Australia/New Zealand, and
India, and in January 1998, TNT and Cartoon Network found a
spot on Hong Kong's pay cable system Wharf TV. In India,
Cartoon Network fine tuned programming and transmission
timings, organised children's events, co-sponsored the
release of Space Jam in four cities, and organised a
campaign to donate toys to orphanages, including that of
Mother Teresa. Despite such
efforts, foreign animation continues to spark controversy
and condemnation in Asia. For years, Chinese authorities
have on and off banned western favourites to make room for
local cartoon characters, have released feature productions
to eclipse western cartoons not in tune with China policy
(e.g. Red River Valley was released to offset
Disney's Kundun, which sang the praise of the Dalai
Lama), and have cancelled or postponed the showing of
American animation as a reaction to the U.S.- China trade
wars. Of course the
main objections to the importation of American and Japanese
animation have to do with the presenting of values which are
anathema to Asian cultures or the depicting of violent or
sexually explicit content. Authorities in at least Korea,
Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia
have made such complaints, in some cases, such as that of
Malaysia, leading to the development of more culturally
appropriate local animation. Filipino parents,
newspaper columnists, and religious and educational figures
complained about Japanese robot anime as early as
1979 when the genre was introduced to the Philippines. One
critical writer, Renato Constantino, even suggested these
films were "intended to facilitate acceptance of Japanese
war technology."[16]
Reacting to the parents' objections, President Ferdinand
Marcos ordered the Board of Censors that the showing of all
robot programs be proscribed immediately. At the time, the
Japanese show, Voltes V, was rated number one of all
television programming with a 40% viewership rating. More
recently, in 1995, the head of the movie review agency met
with television executives to demand that violent scenes be
removed from carton shows "to help children grow up properly
- physically and mentally." The executives agreed to excise
violence from twenty-seven cartoons. [16]
Quoted in Asiaweek, 14 September 1979: 15. Although
Singapore authorities have been very strict in keeping out
cartoons considered in bad taste or containing explicitly
sexual or violent content, some liberalisation of censorship
policies occurred in the 1990s. Before then, and to a degree
yet, cartoons were expected to use humanistic themes, moral
messages, and educational values. In 1994, Singapore
Broadcasting Corporation permitted Japanese anime
with some sex and violence to be shown after midnight, which
made little sense as the broadcasters see animation as being
children's fare, and the censoring board extended the hours
per week that could be filled with anime from two to
four in the early 1990s, and from twelve to fifteen in 2000.
But none is shown in primetime. The television station
chooses the anime by its popularity and clean
content, often looking at past records of particular
cartoons in other nations. Anime was
banned in Korea and Taiwan for decades because of the fear
of Japanese cultural imperialism, understandable as both
countries had been occupied by Japan. However, in neither
country was the inflow of anime abated as piracy ran
rampant. Commissions were set up in Korea and Taiwan to
censor and ban anime, staying in existence until the
1990s. In Korea, the maintaining of a censoring body for
Japanese cultural products had no logical base whatsoever,
since such products were not allowed to be there in the
first place. Calls for the
banning of Disney's Aladdin as a racist film in 1993
did not advance very far in Muslim Southeast Asia, partly
because of lack of attention by the mass media. In Malaysia,
very little publicity was given to the charges, according to
one study,[17]
because Malays are Muslims, but not Arabs; the public
perceives animation as just cartoons not to be taken
seriously, and the distributor of Aladdin had taken
steps to offset negative publicity. The reaction was low key
in Indonesia, because the country must protect a
highly-developed film industry, which has had past troubles
with Hollywood. Since 1989, Indonesia has been on a U.S.
watch list for copyright infringements relative to films and
videos; at another time, Hollywood had threatened to
completely take over film distribution and exhibition in the
country. Concluding their 1995 study, White and Winn said
that though Islam is a powerful force in the region, so are
money and the love of Disney. They pointed out that
fundamentalists calling for a ban of Aladdin sought
publicity in newspapers highly-dependent on advertising,
much of it from movie theatres. The end results: Muslims
were torn between their religion and Arab solidarity and
their love of movies and Disney animation; governments
between public groups offended by Aladdin and the
demands of the mainstream for their "Disney fix." As White
and Winn wrote, Disney won.[18] [17]
Timothy R. White and J. Emmett Winn, "Islam, animation and
money: the reception of Disney's Aladdin in Southeast Asia."
Kinema 2. no.3 (1995): 58-59. [18]
White and Winn, 65. Over the years,
animation was fitted to Asian societies and their mass
media. Politically, filmed cartoons have served governmental
and bureaucratic goals, particularly in China, Vietnam, and
the Philippines. Most Chinese animation stressed morals,
such as wholehearted service to the people (The panda's
shop); promoted campaigns; or exposed enemies of the
state, such as the Gang of Four in One night in an art
gallery (1978). In the 1960s and early 1970s, Vietnamese
cartoons carried wartime themes, such as those of The
kitty (1966), which depicted a kitten who successfully
organises against an army of invading rats, or The
talking blackbird (1972), the story of a Vietnamese boy
and his blackbird companion who together defeat the
Americans. Ironically, it was the Marcos dictatorship that
advanced animation in the Philippines, the type deemed
useful to the administration, such as propagandising for the
presidency and its favourite projects. In economic
terms, animation also found its niche in parts of Asia. As
previously mentioned, the enticement of foreign studios and
their work-for-hire and co-production schemes brought in
foreign money, especially capitalised on by the Korean
government when it found out that animation represented most
of the country's cultural products exports. In the same
vein, the Singapore government recognised the economic
advantages of attracting computer animation firms to that
techno culture, and in the 1990s, helped set up animation
training programs in three polytechnic
institutes. At the end of the
1990s, the Hong Kong government signed an agreement with
Disney to create a Hong Kong Disneyland theme park, with
hopes of reviving sagging tourism and offsetting a 5.1% fall
in Hong Kong's gross domestic product in 1998. The park was
expected to generate a net economic benefit of US$19 billion
over forty years, an annual increase of three million
tourists, and ninety-five thousand low-skill
jobs.[19]
Reactions varied concerning the park, scheduled to open in
2005. Asiaweek commented that, like Tokyo Disneyland,
the complex will celebrate "Americana, seen through the eyes
of Hollywood,"[20]
while the other Hong Kong-based newsmagazine, Far Eastern
economic review, editorialised that the Hong Kong
government's joint venture with Disney "is hard to describe
in any other way except, well, goofy".[21] [19]
Asahi evening news, 7 March 1999:1. [20]
Asiaweek, 12 November 1999: 53. [21]
Editorial, Far Eastern economic review, 18 November
1999: 90. Disney chief
Michael Eisner had alerted stockholders about the deal in
his 1998 report to them: "I am completely confident that the
Chinese people would love Mickey no less than a Big Mac. As
evidenced by the popularity of McDonald's, we could be
getting close to the time for a major Disney attraction in
the world's most populous nation."[22]
He had good reason to be confident; Tokyo Disneyland in its
first sixteen years grew to be the world's most popular
theme park, wooing 229 million visitors. Culturally,
animation was moulded to Asia through the use of indigenous
artistic styles and techniques, such as paperfold,
paper-cut, and ink and wash in China, or shadow theatre in
China, Indonesia, and Japan, and localised plots based on
literary, religious, or folkloric stories. Finally, a
symbiotic relationship has existed between animation and
other mass media in Asia. In Japan, manga and
anime feed off each other, and in Hong Kong and
Taiwan, many Japanese anime evolve into live action
films and television drama serials. Hong Kong musicians
write and sing Cantonese versions of anime theme
songs, and other Asian artists, such as Lat of Malaysia,
Nonoy Marcelo of the Philippines, Dwi Koendoro of Indonesia,
or Pran of India adapt their print cartoon characters to the
screen. [22]
Asiaweek, 5 February 1999: 8
4686 words
Abstract
| Printer
version
Origins of
animation in Asia
In
a Chinese film, one ought to have a story based purely
on real Chinese traditions and stories, consistent
with our sensibility and sense of humour....Also, our
films must not only bring pleasure, but also be
educational.[4]
betrays
the ethnic heritage of local animators and almost
always borrows from Western productions. The few films
referring to the extremely rich figurative, pictorial
and colourist tradition of the country can be counted
on the fingers of one hand and to quote a young Indian
animator and journalist (Kireet Khurana) - "Animation
in India is still waiting for a
prince."[6]
Work-for-hire
animation
Move to
co-productions
Dominance of
foreign animation
Animation's fit
to Asian societies
