My Favorite Comm. 345 Animation

After having taken Comm. 345, I would say that my favorite animation is still the show Futurama (Matt Groening) . The reason for this is the fact that I enjoy animation for both the animation itself and the use of humor geared toward teenagers and young to middle-aged adults. Futurama is a show that has both of my reasons and much more. For example, Futurama's humor is different than humor seen in an animated work such as Rugrats (Arlene Klasky), which is a show that I would consider to be geared more towards children. In a show like Rugrats, humor is censored more for younger viewers. If something more adult-humored does come up in a show like this, normally, it is hidden or spoken in such a way that a child would not understand it but an adult would. However, I believe that the method hiding and limiting adult-humor from children in a show like this also makes the humor less funny for older viewers, which causes older viewers to not be as interested unless, perhaps, they view animation in a scholarly manner.

One animation method that I learned through The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation book that I see in Futurama is the use of a mixture of exaggerated and realistic animation. Exaggeration is typically only seen on a few characters, but the one character in Futurama that comes to mind first is Hermes. Apparently, Hermes used to be a limbo champion, so on a few episodes he actually uses his skill of bending backwards to where his head and back are as low as his feet to accomplish impossible tasks. Many other characters on the show generally use human-like physics, for the most part, which creates a show with an unrealistic setting that mixes both exaggerated and realistic animation.

Futurama does a great job at creating humor for teenage to middle-aged adult viewers, which I do not remember being mentioned much in the class. The show does not go too over-the-top such as shows like South Park (Trey Parker and Matt Stone), which seem to be vulgar just be vulgar, but it does relate more toward an older audience than children. Humor in shows like these are created by both dialogue and actions. For example, in the episode "A Tale of Two Santas," the characters Fry and Leela go to the North Pole and find out that a greenhouse effect caused the North Pole to be warmer than usual. Two male elves that are always shown holding hands in the episode have on short shorts, which leads Fry to believe that the warm temperature was the cause. However, the elves were obviously just homosexual, which shows in the way their dialogue is said.

The animated show Futurama has been one of my favorites ever since it began. It is a shame that the Fox network seems to be planning on ruining the future of it by switching the voice actors. However, I am sure that I would still watch the show anyway unless too much about it changed. The show has plenty of humorous parts to keep me entertained. One other thing that the show definitely does not lack is the ability to create odd stories out of each episode. I would recommend that everyone check it out at least once.




" A Tale of Two Santas." Futurama. Dir. Ron Hughart. Fox. 23 Dec. 2001. Television.