ANIM 345 Blog #6 "Stupid Heart"

In terms of animated films and kid's features, educational films are a kiss of death. Educational films appeals to a very small number of the mass media demographic, often catering to very young children or their parents. Teaching children the Alphabet and basic math skills are often left to daytime programming, scheduled before or after the children leave daycare. It is rare when an educational film enters mainstream theatre distribution. Documentaries are being released in select theatres where the demographic for them is high. The general public is not kind to intellectual features.

So animators and directors try to appeal to the baser instinct. Rather than commanding one's intellectual faculties, they demand emotion from people. Intellect and learning varies from individual to individual and is impossible to predict. Emotions are nearly universal. For example, some may have never read any work by Dante, but everyone knows what's it like to feel frustrated. Mass media doesn't avoid intelligent content because they believe audiences are stupid, they do it to simplify the story so that more people understand it.

There is still intellectual stimulation to be found in emotion. For example, having a character react in an unexpected way can create discourse as people try to reason why this particular action was taken. Unexpected twists and shifting emotions in characters can get a lot more people talking than a quote from Bronte. Communication is not about intellectual numbing, it's about uniting the viewer with the film through emotional connection.