It is probable that the main motive for usage of animation is to pay homage to the original medium of the graphic novel. Animation allows the filmmakers to enhance certain objects or alter some of the visual aspects to give the film more of a cartoon feel. Marv’s bandages are enhanced to look whiter, not only to pay homage to the graphic novel, but also to enhance the contrast between the bandages and Marv’s heavily shadowed body. It is also used to enhance the first appearance of Becky (Alexis Bledel). Her jewelry is made to look brighter and her figure is silhouetted against the light of Rafferty’s approaching car. It’s as if there exist three different levels of visualization: the jewelry, Becky’s figure, and then the lights coming from the vehicle. It adds to the aesthetic by contributing to the depth of field. The animation acts as a layering effect.

I have talked before about genre’s enforcing a pre-reading. Over the years animation has gone from a medium purely aimed at children to a medium that has been marketed toward adult audiences with television programs like South Park and Family Guy. Anime certainly enters the discussion here but anime has also been used for children’s entertainment as well. The point I am driving toward is something that is certainly obvious to animation scholars; that animation signals to its audience that the events are not real.

Paul Wells discusses this issue in his book Understanding Animation (1998). His efforts focus on animation’s ability to portray realism. He brings up the topic of Felix the Cat cartoons from the early twentieth century. The audience was aware that this was not a real cat because it was animated and consequently everybody knew that certain things were possible because of animation – events, happenings, occurrences that would not be possible in the real world. Wells moves from Felix the Cat to discussions about Disney. He explains that Disney’s ability to balance aspects of realism with unrealistic events as is the case with Pocahontas (Mike Gabriel, Eric Goldberg, 1995).

Clearly, animated films which do move towards a realist ethos have to be evaluated on other terms. Former Disney chief, Jeffrey Katzenberg, says of Pocahontas (1995), the studio’s most live-action oriented cartoon feature, that it is exaggerated reality, where the real possibility of Pocahontas diving 100 feet from a cliff into a pool of water may be made more spectacular if she were to appear to dive 300 feet, a feat enacted in entire safety, and with persuasive plausibility, in the animated form, (Wells, 1998).

What Wells seems to be suggesting is that animation must straddle the line between the real and the unreal. It must be made real enough so that audiences will believe what is happening on screen, but why not take advantage of the medium being used to intensify the effect. The filmmakers must simply make the film believable enough. This would seem to be the goal of, not just Sin City, but all films based on graphic novels (a heightened sense of reality all its own). This issue is even further complicated by allowing film noir, again with a reality all its own, to enter the discussion. This is the area where animation makes its biggest impact on film noir.

I will begin by discussing the simple effect of intensification that animation has on film noir and then move to more theoretical discourse. It intensifies the film noir aesthetic. The elements of film noir provided by Schrader and Neale emphasize highly-stylized, highly contrasting visuals and animation only adds weight to the effect. Animation’s effect seems to be limited; only influencing those aspects related to the visual elements of the film. Animation intensifies the look and feel of rain. The rain feels like it has more weight signifying that each drop hits the ground and creates a miniature earthquake. The rain, with the added weight, likens it to a veil shrouding the scene. However, it can also act as a layering effect as mentioned in the previous paragraph.

While animation allows for a world of unrealistic events, noir is somewhat similar. As mentioned before, noir is world all to itself with hard-boiled characters, characters with physical, mental, and emotional problems. It is world seemingly dominated by psychology with its own abstract rules and hyper-realist tendencies. Noir plays with issues of reality, altering it much like how theorists view film noir in general: an alteration, heightened version of other genres. It is reality in a noir style. The point I am moving toward is that noir takes place in an alternate reality, a kind of pseudo-reality. In placing events in alternate reality, noir allows for some kind of emotional distancing. In recognizing noir today, a viewer immediately thinks of the mid-twentieth century. This provides distancing in two ways. For one, it is a world that is gone. It no longer exists. And second, noir of that time period is going to feel different than any contemporary example because of censorship and possibly cultural restraints not allowing a bloodier, grittier, grimy view of the world. For example, if a person were to be shot, they would topple over and there would be very little blood, if any. One could argue that for all its negativity and bleak outlook, classic noir is somewhat innocent.

This is certainly not the case with Sin City and animation only adds to this effect. We know that because Sin City is noir, it operates with a heightened sense of realism. Basin City is different world. Animation adds to this effect because animation has traditionally been a signal for fantasy. Things that happen in animation, like in Felix the Cat or in Pocahontas are imaginations, fantasies. This is what animation furthers with Sin City: its fantastical element. When characters are shot, the blood that does appear doesn’t feel real. It looks like paint splattered on a jacket. Animation signals to the audience that they are entering an alternate reality. This is not real life. Further, by placing the audience in an unfamiliar physical location allows the film a certain emotional distance. These characters are not real. They live in Basin City which is not part of the real world.

Animation aides in the coding of a film in noir. It facilitates a reading of noir. Just as genre enforce a pre-reading, preparing the viewer for what is on the screen, so too can animation help in that pre-reading. Noir only takes a film to a certain point. It can only code so far. Animation allows noir to be taken further by altering, heightening, and intensifying the reality to which it aims.