Cars was all about the cars. How they move on the race track. How the light gleams on their shiny surfaces. Quite an amazing feat since the movie is computer animated. Someone had to carefully create every moment in a computer, so it would be as real as possible. The director spent a lot of time researching NASCAR and Route 66 in order to make a movie that feels real, even if it's not. That's probably the best part of this film, that those characters, the races, and the scenery all become real even if they aren't.
The animation in this film is amazing and often quite beautiful. The bluffs and canyons near Radiator Springs are breathtaking. The animators were definitely trying to capture the beauty of real places along Route 66 when they created that scenery. As for the cars themselves, they too are created with loving care. I can hardly imagine how difficult it was to create the scene where the cars cruise down the street at night, with the neon lights from the town reflecting off of their shiny metal bodies. Or, the way the cars move on the race track, or crash and fly around on the race track. If nothing else, this movie brings an artistic touch that shouldn't be overlooked.
Another wonderful thing about this movie was its attention to detail. The NASCAR races and the history and culture of Route 66 portrayed in this movie are amazing and were all carefully researched. If you watch the movie on DVD, take the time to watch the "Inspiration for Cars" bonus feature. Why do they call Route 66 the Mother road? What are those tiny little black objects that bounce across the racetrack in the cars' wake? Or, where in the heck did the name Mater come from? The answers are all found in the featurette. You find out that the movie was carefully crafted with love, which comes through in every scene of the movie.
at December 30, 2006 11:39 PMOne interesting implication, to me, of the whole "crafted with love thing"... it kept reminding me of "the money shot" so to speak. Every activity, every interest, in the hands of the most ardent followers has its version of the money shot. Of course there's the origin of the phrase, but beyond that: there's "camera porn", gleaming close-ups of camera gear; food porn, same thing; and, maybe above all else, car porn. Auto fetishists love not only the gleaming pics, but the overriding insinuation of porn in the literal sense. The "pulsing" engines, "gleaming" hot rod, friction of the tires.
Maybe it's just cause I'm perverse, but I kept thinking of that when Cars had its amazingly-animated shots of light glinting off the paint jobs and such, and it was a little jarring in a cartoon.
Of course, I was an english major, so I'm probably seeing stuff that isn't there. ;P
Posted by: brian at January 2, 2007 2:20 PMMaybe it's not the english major in you, but the grown up. Cars isn't blatant about the erotic undertones of car fetishes, but I think it does want you to enjoy what you are seeing just because you are looking at something visually pleasing. How that pleasure is felt obviously depends on the person, and their age. Kids probably won't probably see it being a "money shot" in that sense, but that's what kids films - or family films - are all about. There's the stuff the kids get and then there is the stuff for the grown-ups, that makes them shift uncomfortably in their seets and pray that the children don't ask what that was about, or they give each other knowing grins.
Two other comments. First, want blatant homo-eroticism applied to car fetishes? See Kenneth Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos. Second, can I reference Laura Mulvey here? I think that there are some points that she makes about scopophilia that are applicable to this discussion. Specifically "Originally. in his Three Essays on Sexuality, Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the component instincts of sexuality which exist as drives quite independently of the erotogenic zones. At this point he associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze." In this case, there aren't real people, but animated cars meant to be human. So, I think it uses those "mone shots" as ever film does to add to our enjoyment. I don't pretend to understand all the phychoanalytic mumbo-jumbo going on in Mulvey, but I do think that there are some interesting points made. See http://www.brown.edu/Departments/MCM/nothing/index.php/Visual_Pleasure_and_Narrative_Cinema for the complete essay.
BTW, you always thought Bugs Bunny was hot when he dressed like a girl bunny, didn't you?
Posted by: hope at January 3, 2007 1:08 AMI'll check that essay out. It's been a while since I read any of that "mumbo jumbo" (a gf's PhD thesis put me off it), but I bet I can muddle through.
The point holds some weight. "The gaze" itself is an entire discipline among the sorts of people that are into that, and its nature is endlessly debated and [dr]econstructed. I might disagree that it's independent of other "erotogenic zones" but at this late date I probably wouldn't be able to support that point coherently.
And I did not find Boobsy Bugs attractive, but the girl robot bunny was something else. Speaking of lipstick-on-metal, Blade Runner was on last night. I need to buy that.
Posted by: brian at January 3, 2007 8:20 AM