SCOTSMAN NEWS ARTICLE
Feeble wants to be king of the hill
MIKE ANDERIESZ
OF the many contenders for the title the new rock'n' roll recently vacated by stand-up comedy and video games, animation seems even less likely than most. Yet animators are regaining the impact they enjoyed in the Forties and Fifties with Hollywood names queuing to provide the voice-overs, networks fighting for the film rights and former backroom boys carving out six-figure production deals. For those who thought it had peaked with Bart-mania in the early Nineties, take a look at the merchandising in High Street stores now. The latest animated phenomenon is South Park, the irreverent tale of eight-year-old misfits with the now obligatory celebrity appearances of Isaac Hayes as a chef and George Clooney as a gay dog. The series has now been sold to 12 countries and the catchphrase "Oh my God, they killed Kenny" is beginning to rival Bart Simpson's "Eat my shorts". Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the show's creators, have just released their first movie, Basketball, which is receiving rave reviews and looks set to project them into Hollywood orbit alongside Mike Judge, very much the current king of animation thanks to the $80 million grossing Beavis and Butthead do America. "These are smart guys," says Emma Cochrane, the editor of Total Film magazine. "They come over all goofy because they are essentially comedians and comedians have been getting girls like that for years. But they are excellent businessmen and they know their market. They are using humour in the same way that rock bands use sex appeal." Developed in 1995 for $2,000 as a throwaway video Christmas card, South Park's use of simple paper-cut characters has democratised television animation. Each episode takes less than three weeks to produce and cartoons are becoming a highly cost-effective alternative to other forms of comedy. The financial consequences for studios are clear. The function of the television cartoon has changed over the years. From mainstream family fare in the Sixties (best illustrated by long-running Hanna-Barbera shows such as Top Cat) it moved to the children's domain for over 20 years, becoming a potent vehicle for toy merchandising in the Eighties. The scene changed again with the cult success of Japanese manga animations which alerted television chiefs to the potential of targeting cartoons at adults.