Animated Films

On Tuesday, Jodie Mack, a reputable filmmaker, came to the lecture to show us two of her animated films.  To start off the lecture, Mack expressed a few of the themes that inspired her films.  Love and desire are overall the general themes of her animated films, but she likes to divulge a little deeper than that.  The three main aspects of love and desire that she touches upon go as: the desire to be loved, which is debatably a natural instinct for every human being, the desire for eternal love, and how the media informs our view of love especially through music. 

The first animated film of Jodie Mack that I watched was “Unsubscribed 4”.  Unsubscribed 4 was heavily based on pop music to portray a sad love story.  The whole film stemmed off the initial phrase “Will you love me tomorrow?”  A young girl falls in love with a young man, and she is super happy and believes that it is great, but then the music turns into “ I got your boyfriend”.  From there, the film ends with the young girl being sad that she lost the person she loved.  Mack uses lots of different textiles and shapes throughout all of her film, but it was more pronounced in this short film because the music told the story more than the images as opposed to the film, “Yard work is Hard work” which I will discuss later.  In this short film, though, Mack used crazy shapes that would turn into hearts, but the images would move very quickly.  These fast images represent the craziness of when people first start dating.  In the previous lecture with Lucy Brown, she stated that the early stage causes people to become obsessed with the other person and constantly think about them.  Mack uses these quick images and quick lyrics to show realistically how that actually happens in a relationship.

The second animated film that Jodie Mack showed in the lecture was “Yard work is Hard work”.  Yard work is Hard work is a short film about a young man and a young woman.  It starts out with both of them talking to their friends saying they are not interested in dating or a relationship, but then they both met each other and they started to like each other.  As they spend more time with each other, they begin to fall in love.  From there, they decided to get married, and then they face the challenges that every newly wed couple faces.  They have to search for the right house, which they find, and then they have to move in and start paying bills and such.  Finally the mortgage and bills become too much, and they decided to enter a contest to win money by making their house “green” to save more money, but they do not win.  However, they still save some money and they work on their relationship. 

There are many aspects of love and desire in this film.  Especially since it is a story, we see the different stages of love and desire.  At the beginning of the film when the couple starts to fall in love with each other, they begin singing out how in love they are.  Even the music during this part is very joyful and innocent, and the couple mentions how it was “fate”.  This really represents peoples’ idealistic nature and their desire to be in love forever.  Everyone desires to meet the “one” and have it be magic, and especially in the beginning of meeting someone, this is how it can feel.  It’s like the couple is “high on love”, which in fact in Lucy Brown’s lecture is mentioned.  The beginning stage of love is very euphoric and is a natural high which can be addictive.  Also, when the couple searches for a different and unique house in a suburban area, they are trying to fulfill the “American Dream” by getting married, getting a house, and having a successful life.  This represents how the media changes our views because this is the type of traditional love that everyone imagines in America in order to be accepted by society.  Therefore in order to be truly happy and in love, it must be socially acceptable too.  Then at the very end, the couple constantly fights over every little thing because they do not know how to communicate towards each other when things become difficult and they do not have that much money.  This represents peoples’ desires for a “perfect love”.  So many people want to meet someone and be so blissfully and happily in love and everything will work out and they will live a trouble free and happy life.  This is not how love really is, though.  Therefore, Mack shows these fantasies people have of love that are not realistic to actual life.