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Bringing You All The Important Animation Related News Established 15,000 B.C.

			Volume , January 1.


		Winsor McCay Animates The "Sinking Of The Lusitania"

	------------------------------------------------------------------------ Winsor McCay and The Lusitania: Art, Innovation, and Propaganda by Marc Poole (10/07/99) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The year 1915 found the world at a crossroads. Europe was embroiled in a conflict that surpassed the magnitude and devastation of the Napoleonic era. The Industrial Age of the 19th century had evolved into the Age of Invention and was rapidly changing the face of the world with its developments, and no end was in sight. These developments were as destructive and devastating as they were creative and utilitarian. This awakening to technological innovation can be viewed in certain respects as a latter-day incarnation of the era of the great Greek philosophers or the rebirth of an interest in technological advancement, as well as the arts, such as that experienced during the Renaissance. This sudden burst of advancement spawned innovation in virtually every endeavor one can imagine, and is quite obvious within the field of art. The ground-breaking styles of the 19th century Impressionists had paved the way for equally ground-breaking artists such as Van Gogh, Picasso and Duchamp with Cubism and Dadaism. Even for traditional illustrators, the door was wide open. The marriage of traditional hand-drawn artwork with the motion picture camera enabled artists to "bring to life" anything they could conceive. One prime example of how an artist could blaze new trails within the constructs of artistic, technological, and cultural importance is the animation "The Sinking of The Lusitania" by Winsor McCay. In this landmark animation, McCay introduced the world to an embryonic form of war correspondency, as well as refining new techniques to the equally embryonic world of animation. "The Sinking of The Lusitania" was perhaps the first attempt to visually document the horrors of war by an animation while exposing the general public to the events of May 7, 1915. The short film begins by setting the stage of events, giving credit to the landmark achievement of visually documenting the event by Winsor McCay. The technique of narrating the story with separate text shots is used throughout. It also describes, in laymen's terms, the gargantuan effort of hand-drawing the required 25,000 individual pictures that are to be recorded frame by frame. McCay, by the time of the actual sinking of the ship, was a successful cartoonist and animator in his own right, best known for his popular cartoon strip "Little Nemo," as well as setting standards in the field of animation with "Gertie The Dinosaur." The refinement of McCay's style with Gertie in 1914 allowed him to experiment with newer techniques in "The Sinking of The Lusitania." This movie helped pioneer the use of cels, which allowed the animator to place multiple objects on a background image in the interest of saving time by not having to redraw separate backgrounds. This use is quite evident in all of the ocean scenes, where a rather visually realistic sky remains still against the rough churning waters of the Atlantic. Stylistically, McCay's penwork becomes evident in line quality when compared to his other works such as Gertie, Little Nemo, and Sammy Sneeze. However, in an attempt to portray the event as realistically as possible, McCay depicted characters less caricaturized, with attention to protagonist/antagonist roles. Much in the same way we view news reports today, McCay gives us the details of the story intermingled with "B-roll" footage, illustrating actual people with photographs. Depictions of the Germans are relegated to stark silhouettes posed against the prowling submarine, stealthily stalking its prey. It is also important to place the event in its proper historical context. France's 19th century position of world domination was relegated to 5th place by the outbreak of WWI. Russia had experienced a 150% growth and led the new-found burst in growth, followed by England and Germany. However, it was England that led the war in terms of industry. The Balkan conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia forced Germany to side with Austria, and Russia with the Serbs. France's alliance with both Russia and England would mean that at the onset of conflict, Germany would have to fight on two fronts: The East and The West. The scope of this warranted the label "World War." America found itself as a distant neutral party, yet they aided the allied war machine with supplies. This put it in a dangerous crossfire, making American vessels targets for German U-boats. Germany had warned the United States of the danger, yet these warnings were largely unheeded by the general public. The word "Hun," derogatory of Germans, was not in the vocabulary in 1915, as illustrated in newspaper headlines.The sinking of The Lusitania, three years after the equally tragic Titanic disaster, became fresh fodder for those wishing to escalate the level of the war with the introduction of the United States. Although McCay's movie was not released until America had actually entered the war, it provided the public with an incentive to keep their battle-blood up and boost public support. It also provided a window of realism to the war for those who were a continent away. McCay purposely depicted people jumping overboard, left to float helplessly in the sea. It is not hard to visualize this short movie having the same effect on the public that the more recent Hollywood movie "Titanic" has on today's generation. Many of the scenes are identical in terms of content. With the use of the camera visually documenting the horrors of war in the 1850's during the Crimean War, animation provided another facet of representation in bringing representational images to life, embellished through the eyes of an artist. The impact that McCay's film had would be hard to understand without actually experiencing it. We have become somewhat sanitized in our current mode of real-time coverage, and the views we get today remain fairly one-sided, exposing us to clinical, antiseptic battles fought from the vantage-point of the winning team. The Vietnam War was perhaps the best example of how the media could sway public opinion, giving the population up-to-date reports on the horrors of war. It is interesting to note, however, that between 1965 and 1973, there were 37,000 combat related American deaths. In the one year period between 1917-1918 that America fought in WWI, there were over 126,000 Americans killed. Quite a difference indeed! McCay was aware of the tragedy, and even animated the ship it its death throes with representational "last gasps" depicted by the smoke coming from the funnels. His techniques should be regarded as groundbreaking in that he was visually telling a story through pioneering artistic elements. This whole innovation of animation was still, and is still today, finding itself. McCay himself even labeled the movie a "moving pen picture." These new techniques were in line with other artistic forms of expression, even when compared with the melding of art and music in animations. The rapid growth of experimentation in the world of art gave rise to new forms of self-expression, and provided creative outlets for anyone so inclined. The trouble of defining oneself seemed somewhat less important than the actual process of creation, and novel works that seem passe today had become the foundation for other animators to build on or create all-new tangents. McCay should be seen as a pioneer and innovator with "The Sinking of The Lusitania" in that he was able to bring forth these new techniques through such a monumental cultural event, which seems to make it larger than life. Not only did it make the story hit home, it gave the general public a sampling of news reporting that would not only become commonplace, but would become a cultural necessity. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Web Sources Trenches on the Web: A reference Library http://www.worldwar1.com/reflib.htm A Brief Biography of Winsor McCay http://vegalleries.com/winsorbio.html The RMS Lusitania http://www.titanic.cc/lusitan.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Movies "The Sinking of the Lusitania" Winsor McCay "Gertie the Dinosaur" Winsor McCay ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Books MacDonald, John. Great Battlefields of the World. MacMillan Publishing Co., New York 1984. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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