People are quick to pigeonhole animation as a genre solely for children—but nothing could be farther from the truth.
With the 97th Academy Awards fast approaching, it’s time to look back at an art form that has been deeply misunderstood by many: animation. The art can be defined as a sequential form of storytelling where drawings, computer-generated imagery (CGI), puppets, cutouts, and the like are combined in succession and manipulated to create the illusion of movement.
It’s not that animation isn’t recognized in award ceremonies. The Oscars, Golden Globes, British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA), and Emmy Awards all have separate categories for it, and there’s even the Annie Awards, which has been solely dedicated to awarding excellence in animation since the 1970s. Yet people still continue to dismiss it as a form of entertainment for children; one that adults can, at worst, perceive as juvenile, and at best, tolerate. Being labeled as something for children isn’t necessarily an insult, but it carries patronizing connotations that reduce a complex, versatile art form into a small shred of what it actually is.
So what exactly is animation, and why has it come to be both misconstrued and unappreciated?
READ ALSO: Why Is Horror Seldom Recognized By The Academy Awards?
Historic Moments
Animation has been around for some time. It’s not the oldest art form, but it’s got a pretty interesting history. One of the earliest forms of animation came in 1832, with Belgian inventor Joseph Plateau’s phenakistiscope: a cardboard disk with sequential illustrations that, when spun and viewed with a mirror, would give the illusion of movement. This was followed by Eadweard Muybridge’s early film projector in 1879, the zoopraxiscope —a spinning drum of images that could be switched out, creating the same illusion (you might recognize it as the wheel-like mechanism featuring a man on a running horse).
These were all progenitors for what film historians consider to be the first hand-drawn animated film: the 1908 “Fantasmagorie” created by French artist Émile Cohl using 700 drawings made with an illuminated glass plate. More animated pieces would eventually build upon these techniques, creating fluid, life-like visuals brimming with personality, namely 1914’s “Gertie the Dinosaur” by Winsor McCay; 1919’s Felix the Cat by Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer (the very first animated film star, born during the silent movie era); and most famously, Mickey Mouse in Walt Disney’s “Steamboat Willie” in 1928—the very first animated film synchronized with sound.
Disney, as everyone is aware, would go on to be a behemoth in the industry; redefining Western animation in more ways than one. It not only released the first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, but also went on to create the first ever animated film to receive an Oscar-nomination: Beauty and the Beast. While the technical-masterpiece didn’t bag the Oscar (Silence of the Lambs took home the trophy, though that in itself was another impressive achievement), it was still a momentous achievement. There was no separate category for something of its kind, so it was placed under the Best Picture category in 1992 just like its live-action peers.
Afterwards, another influential studio under Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar Animation, would make their mark with Toy Story—the very first computer-generated imagery (CGI) animated film in the world. In 1996, it received two Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Musical or Comedy Score, as well as the Special Achievement Academy Award.
In 2002, after the efforts of animation organizers and Academy governors Bill Littlejohn and June Foray, feature animation (full-length films) were recognized with their own distinct category. Three years later, British studio Aardman made history with Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a comedy of a cheese-loving inventor and his loyal dog that became the first stop-motion animated film to win an Oscar. Yet as the years went by, this special classification would elicit mixed feelings within the animation community. Eric Vilas-Boas details this in an article for Vulture, stating: “Best Animated Feature tends to go to kid-friendly films animated primarily in 3D CGI (19 times). Independent films, movies aimed at adults, or those created in different art styles rarely get nominated, let alone win.”
The Exceptions And The Snubs
Only three animated films have ever been nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards: Beauty and the Beast, Up, and Toy Story 3. What was amazing about Pixar’s Up and Toy Story 3 was that, even after the establishment of separate categories, the movies were so well-loved that Academy voters had to give them a nomination in Best Picture.
So then, is this simply a matter of taste? Was it just that other films were never as good as these three? It gives us a lot to ponder on, but as with many underrepresented and misunderstood “categories,” animation has had its fair share of snubs.
Dreamwork’s 2D-animated film The Prince of Egypt only received a nomination for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score and won Best Original Song for “When You Believe” in 1999, despite it being a visual feast unlike any other, and one that didn’t just adapt a story from the Bible, but did it in such an artful way that it transcended the boundaries of religion, presenting compelling questions about redemption, morality, family, and of course, faith.
Disney’s adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame wasn’t fully appreciated, likely because it deviated from Disney’s standard fairytale formula through darker themes—but watch it again and you’ll wonder why. There’s also 1999’s The Iron Giant, a cult classic that will make even the most stoic shed a tear as they watch a sentient robot, meant to be a weapon, realize what it means to choose his own destiny.
The list goes on with international and mature animated films that simply never “made it” to the prestigious awards. The more recent example of this is the animated adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s shortform manga Look Back (2024)—arguably one of the most poignant and creative stories on friendship and what it means to be an artist in the past decade. It translated Fujimoto’s unique storytelling techniques perfectly, rendering it through breathtaking and expressive animation that’ll tear your heart out.
Genre vs. Medium
From this history, we can see that there was a time when animated films were recognized just like live-action films. One could argue that lumping them together was a result of the awarding body being unprepared to recognize what was, at the time, considered an anomaly of sorts. Still, I—and many other fans of animated works—can’t help but wonder why there’s a need for a separate category, when time and time again, seasoned filmmakers have argued that animation is not a genre solely for children, but rather, a medium meant to enhance a story.
People often make the mistake of calling animation a “genre,” but it’s really not. A genre, for the most part, classifies films based on shared conventions, tropes, themes, and ideas—not really for the medium in which they’re delivered. Animation is a medium because it’s a form of storytelling in film, the way a painting can be made through oil paints, acrylic, or mixed media.
If you remove any preconceived notions about animation being for children, does someone describing a film as “animated” actually give you a clear idea of what to expect? Not at all. Animated works, from film to television, are so varied and diverse that to simply define them just as “animation” feels like a disservice.
Filmmaker Brad Bird—who’s responsible for beloved films like Ratatouille, The Incredibles, and yes, The Iron Giant—said it best: “People think of animation only doing things where people are dancing around and doing a lot of histrionics, but animation is not a genre. And people keep saying, ‘The animation genre.’ It’s not a genre! A Western is a genre! Animation is an art form, and it can do any genre. You know, it can do a detective film, a cowboy film, a horror film, an R-rated film or a kids’ fairy tale. But it doesn’t do one thing.”
Guillermo Del Toro (the visionary behind Oscar-winning The Shape of Water, as well as Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, and Crimson Peak) while not an animator himself, has also been vocal about recognizing the art for what it is. “Animation is not a genre for kids. It’s a medium for art. It’s a medium for film. Animation should stay in the conversation,” he expressed while accepting a BAFTA for his fantastic animated retelling of Pinocchio.
An Art Form For Everyone
The beauty about animation is the seemingly limitless possibilities it presents as a medium. It’s capable of effectively delivering anything from horror to fantasy, slice-of-life to action, mythology to sci-fi, and so on.
2018’s Into the Spiderverse didn’t just win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature: it redefined what the medium could do, showcasing how well it meshed with the superhero genre. The series Scavengers Reign centers on scientists stuck in an unfamiliar planet brimming with vibrant alien life unlike anything you’ve probably ever seen. Satoshi Kon’s horrifying thriller Perfect Blue was a predecessor to Darren Aronofsky’s acclaimed Black Swan, chronicling the twisted psychological spiral of a pop singer as she deals with the pressures of fame. “LOUISE,” a short film by animation students from French art school Gobelins, is a gorgeous pastel piece reminiscent of Edgar Degas’s ballet paintings—a mask used to juxtapose the dark truth of sexual exploitation that 19th-century ballerinas had to face.
Mainstream media and awards might continue to give the impression that only children can enjoy these kinds of films, but those who’ve come to understand and appreciate animation can attest that it’s so much more. That said, it’s also interesting to note that adults are quick to dismiss anything loved by children as something to either outgrow or detach themselves from, mainly because they lack the depth one might expect from “real” and “serious” cinema.
But Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese filmmaker behind the world-renowned Studio Ghibli, understands that children are more than capable of comprehending the complexities of life (and even if they’re not, they’ll one day be able to spot these same ideas again with more clarity). His films explore darker themes of grief, identity, and even environmental collapse without him ever feeling the need to “dumb down” concepts, subtly weaving them into imaginative worlds without patronizing audiences—which is probably why they’re so well-loved by adults and children alike.
Animation is for everyone—and the sooner people let go of misconceptions, the sooner they can open themselves up to a wider world of exceptional art and stories.
Banner photos from “LOUISE”; “Look Back”; “Scavengers Reign”; “Perfect Blue“; “Kubo and the Two Strings,” and “The Prince of Egypt.”
