Walt Disney, Alice in Cartoonland, 1924. Film and Animation.
Live-action cinema has inspired numerous debates about what may be recognised as 'realism'. This is really a consideration of what may be recognised as the most accurate representation of what is 'real' in recording the concrete and tangible world. Clearly the animation form in itself most readily accommodates 'the fantastic', but Disney prefered to create a hyper-realism which located his characters in plausibly 'real' worlds which also included fantasy elements in the narrative. Crucially, Disney's version of 'realism' sought to properly reproduce perspective illusionism in the frame, and not the surreal and 'eccentric mise-en-scene of the Fleischer Brothers' films. Overall, animated films have a tendency to create their own realms which obey their own 'inner logic', however, and though a film may be fantastical, abstract, non linear, surreal and so on, it will probably obey its own codes and convention which establish its own authenticity and plausibility (Paul Wells)
