Animation is one of my favorite genres of film. I love the crisp line work and painted backgrounds used in 2D/hand drawn animation. I love the camera movement, character detail, and lighting allowed in 3D/computer animation. I also love the level of time, effort, and craftsmanship (not to mention a masochistic level of devotion) put into stop-motion/clay animation. To this day, "Toy Story" and "The Iron Giant" rank as some of my favorite films of all time. There is a near limitless amount of objects and ideas that animation is capable of producing. Despite having this near limitless potential, animation is still viewed as a lesser form of art in the eyes of many film critics and the broader western film culture.
We can see evidence of this in the Academy Awards and similar awards presented for film. Animated films (many that even got better reviews than some of the Best Picture nominees) are rarely nominated for major awards and are usually just kept within the Best Animated Film category. Throughout the entire 80+ year history of the Oscars only three animated films have ever been nominated for Best Picture ("Beauty and the Beast" in 1991, "Up" in 2009, and "Toy Story 3" in 2010). The Best Animated Feature category (which has only existed since 2001) is an appreciated addition to the awards roster, but it still feels like a half-hearted attempt placate animation fans so the Academy Members won't actually have to nominate any animated films for the major awards.
To many that I see in the film industry, animated films (even the high quality ones) are still viewed as children's entertainment first and foremost. This could be seen as a form of stigma aimed at children's films in general, but that is a topic for another time. While I have nothing against this (children's films are important for instilling ideas and entertainment at an early age) animation is capable of expanding into more areas of film. Due to the popularity and success of Disney we, in the west, associate animated films with family entertainment. While adult animation has found success on television (with the likes of "The Simpsons", "South Park", "Bob's Burgers", and "Rick and Morty"), adult animated films in the west have had little staying power. However, their have been some quality examples of people attempting to break out into more adult areas of film.
"Fritz the Cat" was an adult/erotic animated film from 1972 and was a comedic satire of race relations and the free love movement of that era. It was a financial success and became the first X-rated animated film. "Heavy Metal" was a 1981 animated scifi-fantasy anthology film that wasn't shy about expressing its self with eroticism and gory violence. The most recent example of an adult film, this year's "Sausage Party" was both a critical and financial success. There has also been success for adult anime films in Japan since the Japanese do not appear to have the same "family friendly only" stigma that most western animated films have. For example, the 1995 anime film "Ghost in a Shell" (which is a dark scifi noir that featured heavy nudity and graphic violence) received such high critical and financial success that it is even getting a live action remake in 2017.
While these show that adult animation is possible, they are still the exception and not the rule. These few that I mentioned only scratch the surface of animation's full potential. The adult films I have mentioned deal with violence and sex almost solely within fantasy worlds. Imagine an animated film used to convey the feelings of real world events. Imagine an animated film that uses unique visuals and animation to convey the harsh feelings of a war or genocide. Imagine animated films entering unique genres. We could see an animated horror film, an animated war drama, or even an animated biopic. Animation's limitless ability to create almost anything one thinks of is a unique attribute that should be expanded throughout film. I see animation as one of the purest forms of film; the ability to convey a story, characters, and themes primarily through visuals.
