The animation of Don Hertzfeldt was created with a mindset that exists outside the walls of the animation mainstream. Gone are Pixar’s quirky utopian princesses and Cigraph’s cutting edge algorithms that create photo-realistic fur. Hertzfeldt’s stories and animation style are simultaneously esoteric and full of mass appeal. His films scrutinise the mainstream animation industry as well as highlighting the banality of modern existence by using well-judged humour, a finely tuned animation skill set and a great sense of poetry.

He has achieved international recognition, while never compromising his artistic vision to offers of advertising work. Hertzfeldt is winning a war old as art itself; artistic integrity verses commercial success and as animation is a massively expensive and time-consuming art form, it’s no surprise that few other independent animators have been able to achieve this.

There is a punk authenticity and authority in his assertive minimalism…

However, times are changing in the developed world. The tools to produce and publish animation are readily available at a relatively low cost. Consumers have been reclassified as “Users”, and creative technology is potentially humanity’s new Big Mac. A glance over at Vimeo or Youtube will demonstrate that, like fast food restaurants, the public are producing and publishing digital media en masse. Unfortunately, this isn’t yet the golden age of consumer as artist.

Without a firm grip and understanding of moving image theory, an element that requires more than just a credit card, amateur productions can become meaningless; the media waste of society. It’s Hertzfeldt’s deep understanding of his medium, and his own pugnacious agenda, which enable him to remain successful while taking artistic liberties with his productions.

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In the opening vignette of REJECTED, Hertzfeldt demonstrates a clear and considered understanding of his own direction and politics. There is a punk authenticity and authority in his assertive minimalism; his characters are reduced to juvenile stick men, supported by only plain white backgrounds, and enough bile to corrode any happy memories of a Disneyfied animation industry.

His punk credentials are solidified further in his rejection of all advertising work, his independently produced animation and his condemnation of any notion of technique superiority within the animation industry. He affirms that he uses traditional techniques only because his films would be impossible to make digitally. He also denounces the playground bickering of computer versus traditional versus stop motion that seems to dominate much of the contemporary journalistic discussion of animation.

… his simple stick men become dexterous vessels of complex emotion …

Furthermore, Hertzfeldt consistently justifies his own anti-commercialism with his skilful animation and confident demeanour. Throughout REJECTED he brings his crass creations to life with excellent timing and strong poses; there is an irrefutable understanding of the animation process verified throughout his work as his simple stick men become dexterous vessels of complex emotion that communicate intricate ideas of modern humanity with their observers.

Collectively, Don Hertzfeldt’s films are known as Bitter Films. A title that seems to draw attention to a small movement in independent animation constituting of animators who seem disgruntled about the commercial animation industry. James Lowne’s OUR RELATIONSHIPS WILL BECOME RADIANT and David O’Reilly’s OCTOCAT ADVENTURE both subvert the boundaries of acceptability in professional standards. So much so that the latter can create a sense of disturbing unease with the viewer as it pushes the traditional identity of the cartoon into something horrific.

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Manipulating animation’s surrealistic nature to represent dysfunction in society is obviously nothing new. For instance, in GIRL’S NIGHT OUT, Joanna Quinn subverts the tropes of squash and stretch to in order to discuss ideas of body fascism and sexism in 1980s Britain. However, with animators such as O’Reilly and Hertzfeldt, the subject of suspicion is often the animation itself.

Recent cultural phenomena, like Youtube and powerful home computers, have nurtured a greater tolerance for creative destructivism with animation (and digital film) for viewers. In a sense, an increased saturation of non-Hollywood animation has acclimatised society for more left field productions, enabling subversive animation like that of Hertzfeldt to enter into at least the periphery of mainstream view.

… His seemingly random and absurd comedy style is reminiscent of FAMILY GUY …

However, despite all his anti-establishment rhetoric, there is a commercial appeal to Hertzfeldt’s films. His seemingly random and absurd comedy style is reminiscent of the postmodern humour found in FAMILY GUY and other mainstream animation. Certainly there are well-executed veins of self-referentialism, inter-contextuality and postmodern irony throughout Hertzfeldt’s work that are attractive to large audiences. However, Hertzfeldt’s true appeal is his ability to siphon truths and emotions that are not only contextually very acute, but also incredibly complicated to represent through moving image.

Hertzfeldt’s use of sound is excellent and has as much character as any other element in his films. It might be easy to describe his use of classical music as postmodern irony, as it is correct to say that his marriage of regal sounds with crude images is ironic. However, the music serves us much better as a philosophical waypoint into society’s timeline. The expert symbiosis of music and narrative suture the viewer into the story as much as the animation does. In THE MEANING OF LIFE, Hertzfeldt uses this device to great effect by selecting a piece of classical music as a conservative metaphor for the majesty of existence, which he then drowns in the selfish, repetitive micro-gripes of postmodern pessimism expressed by his characters. Hertzfeldt achieves something spectacular here as he manages to use his own esoteric fascinations to create metaphysical meaning with these socially contradicting elements. There is something quite special about a filmmaker with such auteuristic tendencies being able to create narratives this grand in scope.

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This is demonstrated again in EVERYTHING WILL BE OK, which describes the banality of contemporary existence in the developed world through a series of amusingly obscure observations. We follow Bill, a stick man defined only by his rather mundane hat, through his dull life. What is fascinating about this story is the emotion Hertzfeldt communicates through the mastery of his craft. Even abstract elements are executed with such confidence and concision that there can be no mistaking their intention.

During EVERYTHING WILL BE OK’s seventeen minutes, the film drifts in and out of abstraction; collapsing time, space and eventually the medium itself. As in REJECTED, we are offered a seat alongside Hertzfeldt as he uses his lead character, Bill to describe an external, figurative and external scenario that illustrates complicated and abstract internal emotions. It’s this marvellous union of opposing forces that enables Herztfeldt’s films to reveal what Werner Herzog would describe as a poetic truth.

A truth, in fact, that transcends the stuff of the Youtube’s mass media productions and the day-to day banality of literal advertised “truth”. Instead, by deconstructing his own artform and medium of choice, Herzfeldt offers us a seat on his observation deck outside of the walls of mainstream animation. Where in one direction we can see inside the walls, the hideous, Orwellian banality of advertised truth – and in the other direction a vast, unfathomable abstraction.

See the special Don Hertzfeldt programme on 23 and 27 September at Emmanuel College. Click here for details.