Art for Art's Sake

Do animators do this kind of thing any more?

And by “this kind of thing” I mean animation for the sake of animation, some little bit of the story to actually kind of leave the story behind and allow the artists to create art for art’s sake. Kind of like the nonsensical song-and-dance numbers that showed up in many an old movie before we all got tired of it and became sophisticated and wanted stories to tell stories, not simply be a story interrupted occasionally by song and dance.

I kind of like it. And I kind of miss it.

I keep thinking of what might be contemporary examples – the “Carl and Ellie” sequence from up, the “When Somebody Loves You” sequence from Toy Story 2. While they’re song and dance accompanied by beautiful animation, they’re not exactly the same as what I’ve got above. They’re expository. We get Carl and Ellie’s entire life story in one short sequence; we get Jessie’s backstory. The “Ride” sequence in Cars comes close, but it’s still more of a device to move the end story along rather than a bit put in because the animators and the song writers got together and decided to have a bit of fun.