Additionally disturbing are the actions of the leader of the Blue Meanies. This is because of the frightening and disturbing imagery featured throughout the film, such as the creepy smiles on characters’ faces, as evidenced by the smile the police officer gives to the camera after Ringo asks if he too can see the yellow submarine that has been following him. The camera’s panning left and right mimics eyes scanning across a page, its close ups are reminiscent of someone looking closer at an image on a printed page, and its cuts reference a page being turned.ĭespite this, Yellow Submarine is not for children rather, it is a storybook for adults. The aesthetic mirrors a child’s picture book and the camera acts out a child’s eyes as they look over the pages of the book intensely as it is read to them. Just as the narrative is similar to something one would find in a children’s book, so is its imagery and character movement. Yellow Submarine has at its core a simple concept which has been retold numerous times: perfect people live seemingly perfect lives in a perfect place until one day something happens which changes that, thereby sparking an adventure. Although they are set against elaborate backgrounds and appear to be human, they move like paper dolls, do not interact with one another, and show little variation in their face, even the man who cries.The main way the film uses its lack of fluid movement to its advantage, turning this quality into part of its aesthetic, is in the way it frames its narrative. These people, the footballers two women having tea the man on an empty street with his dog the close up image of a man crying and the the medium shot of rows of people standing holding black umbrellas, as if they are in mourning, mirror the desolate and depressing lyrics. When John Lennon asks, 'All the lonely people, where do they all come from?,' the film answers with bleak city imagery with realistic animations of people engaging in repetitive and solitary activities. The elaborate images shown act as a call and response in statement form to the questions asked in the song. The lack of fluid movement forces the audience to experience the weight of this moment, despite its aesthetic, and see every shocked, anxious, and pained facial expression as the camera zooms in for a close up shot of their face.ĭuring the second scene in question, the 'All the Lonely People' musical sequence at approximately the 12 minute mark of the film, the film again uses eccentric imagery to entertain the viewer while utilising limited movement and the lyrics of the song used to highlight the darkness of the world. The awkward movements of the characters and the simplistic, documentary style camera movements make the scene more horrific as the audience is able to witness every individual in Pepperland fleeing for their lives and see closely the damage which is inflicted on them. The lack of fluid movement in this context allows for the audience to take in everything which is happening, such as explosions on characters’ faces and their changing colour in close up. During a situation in which, in other films, fluid animation would be featured, both the characters and camera movement are staccato. In the first scene, the mental and visual dichotomy of the film’s vibrant and pop-up book inspired characters and background being subject to what is, in the context of the story, a violent attack, is created. There are two scenes within Yellow Submarine where the characters’ and the settings’ lack of fluid movement is utilized effectively to blur the lines between infantile and adult animated art: the Blue Meanies' attack of Pepperland at the beginning of the film and the 'All the Lonely People' musical sequence. Yellow Submarine calls into question the factors which delineate what can and should be considered child versus adult entertainment, itself choosing to straddle the two. Dunning’s film outrightly references Jones’ work in that he presents a film wherein a still image from the majority of moments which comprise it would lead an ignorant individual to believe it is intended for a child audience. ‘more stylized, often abstract approach to movement’ (Tolette 90).

In order that he achieve this, Jones championed a movement wherein artists created “deliberately designed worlds and. Animated films of this period, especially those made by Chuck Jones at Warner Bros., aimed to “reflexively shoo holes in conventional cinema’s reality illusion” (Tolette 90). Dunning’s film is one which is clearly influenced by “the rise of European art films in the 1950s and 1960s and increasing cultural fascination with-what Amid Amid iterms the ‘cartoon modern’” and early Warner Bros. George Dunning’s 1968 film, Yellow Submarine, is one which utilises a lack of fluid movement and a colourful and quirky aesthetic to deceive its audience and subvert their expectations of the animation genre.

Yellow submarine films