Short in length, but long in sincerity

Animated shorts are able to communicate more emotional sincerity than most scripts these days, and they do it wordlessly.

I’m arguing this within a culture of binge watching, where it’s been said that the integrity of a television show is lost due to the exchange of cliffhangers and suspense for Netflix marathons.

Binging doesn’t allow time to speculate, to wonder, to reflect, to digest one bag of Cheetos before you think about opening another.

Walter White of “Breaking Bad” doesn’t mean nearly as much to me as characters of my youth, with whom I built a kinship during months and years.

I feel cheated because  I can’t remember the nuances of his story and I can’t share them with a community, constantly being shushed at the risk of spoilers for
people who have yet to catch up.

But intimacy is earned instantaneously in shorts.

With a story that’s meant to be consumed quickly, every moment counts. Every frame has to be smart or funny, and always, always important. There’s a very clear sense of those characters because of the immediacy of the plot.

And you can share it.

In the time it’d take to summarize a short to someone, they could have watched it. Maybe twice.

With an explosively viral video like “Paperman,” it’d only take a friend the time to check their Facebook notifications before the two of you can baptize yourselves in tears together about the sentimentality of a love shorter than a commercial break.

You can experience a character’s universe of dreams and secrets within the space of six minutes.

You can do it all without that overwrought, you-know-it’s-coming, last-minute-dash to the airport witnessed in almost every pile of hot, suppurating garbage that comes out of the Hollywood machine.

I don’t take issue with imaginative, quality shows for being other than neat little packaged bows.

They couldn’t have expected the culture of binge watching and aren’t responsible for the detachment I feel from them or my increase in pants size.

But what about Hollywood films meant to exist solely within the space of an hour or two? What’s their excuse?

If they were to use that extra time to be as emotionally exploitative or as clever as shorts, or anything other than an amalgam of trite clichés, would we even be able to lift ourselves out of our theater seats from the sheer awe of human emotion?

There’s a presence of sweetness and romanticism and metaphor and nostalgia in shorts, and it’s all performed quickly, effectively and memorably.

With no dialogue.

I’m not saying I’m only seeking the wordless encounters of relentless adoration that can be found in posts on IU Secret Admirers or in the marriage sequence of “Up!”
Short stories’ emotive power, and their ability to shatter audiences in the best way, is that pointedness and the element of surprise.

Hollywood should seek to extrapolate that to all film endeavors, even ones where actual human words come out of mouths.

Maybe that’s when it matters the most.

­— ashhendr@indiana.edu