WHEN I HEARD BOOLEANFLIX.COM was hosting a Shorts Week on the website, I admit I felt a strong feeling of inadequacy. Since its inception, BooleanFlix has featured a shorts section on the site, but I never paid much mind to it (except for a certain feature about a demented bunny rabbit). Not so much out of disrespect for the branch, but more in my lack of knowledge of it.
When it comes to movies, I’m as stuffy as can be. I’m perfectly intolerable of the mainstream, who shovel out dollar after dollar to see slander like Transformers 3, then brag crudely on their Facebook profiles upon doing so (“DUDE, It was EPIC!”). Those who draw a blank when I mention Hitchcock or Scorsese, the big Battle Royale not Citizen Kane versus Vertigo, but whether Blade was cooler than Blade II.
To sum it up, I can happily sit through three hours of The Tree of Life and decipher its allegorical resonances, but I will just as happily snore through seven minutes of a short film. Why? Sure, it’s because I never took the time to appreciate a short film like other people do. I find the lack of dialogue annoying, knowing that the lack of actual plot derives from the fact that the writer will only have minutes to dig himself out of what plot he or she creates.
You short film lovers may love this sort of thing. You get to decide what you think the film is really about. I just don’t care. Why?
Well, when I think why, I think of the societal biases that may have influenced my perspective, the modern educational system that may attribute to my lack of appreciation for implicit art, or perhaps the deteriorating psyche of those exposed to the same medium to long. Then the answer comes to me.
You’re American, you idiot. You were born without an attention span.
I feel comfortable saying this, because BooleanFlix is based in the UK and therefore none of you can be offended by this statement. If you are indeed an American, then I am sure you’ll agree with me. Our attention spans suck. We’re taught to watch television programs with more substance in the commercials with the actual program, to produce badly written pornographic Twilight fan-fiction that dominates the bestseller lists (but to be fair, Fifty Shades did just beat the last Harry Potter book on the UK bestseller list), and that’s not even to mention the load of political crap that sits on our map.
Ehem.
What is the solution to the attention-deficiency? I thought back. Animated short films. Animation itself is an underappreciated art. Before every Pixar film, we get a glimpse of an ingenious short film, sort of an appetizer. The recent Pixar movies may not have been quite up to par (Cars 2, Brave) but they were both preceded by fantastic animated shorts, Hawaiian Vacation, and my personal favorite of the Pixar short films bunch, La Luna.
So while the rest of Boolean looks cool and deals with actual live- action shorts, I’ll be spending this week trying to present shorts to the mainstream (see what I did there? It actually has relevance to the week’s subheading) through the best way possible- cartoons. Hey, if Pixar can do it for animation, why not for short films?
This week’s schedule, for you short attention- spanned, animation loving film viewers-
15th WEDNESDAY: Shorts of the 60’s-80’s (Animated)
19h SUNDAY: Shorts of the 90’s- 2000’s (Animated)
19th SUNDAY: Size Matters: Are short films superior cinema?
20th MONDAY: Short Films: A Study in Pixar
20th MONDAY: Short Films: The Unintended Sequel
