What’s the difference between live action film and animation? Well, a lot of things. A difference I’ve been thinking about lately is how each relates to reality. Live action is meant to depict a fictitious reality but actually presents a true reality (the performance) out of context (the film’s production). There is a suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience, who know it’s being presented out of context. Contrast this with animation, which transparently depicts the fictitious reality itself. In other words, there is no additional layer of reality. While live action depicts real events that happened, just not in the way implied by the presentation, animation strictly depicts things that never happened.

Consider how this difference appears in depictions of violence. In some media like the TV series Columbo, violence is unrealistically minimized. Murders are shown taking place but involve little to no blood. This requires a suspension of disbelief for viewers who are aware that things like bullet wounds produce more blood than that. On the other hand, when Elmer Fudd shoots Daffy Duck in the face and it just makes his bill spin around, that’s just how guns work in the Looney Tunes universe. It doesn’t require the same kind of suspension of disbelief because Elmer Fudd’s gun was never a depiction of a real gun.

This makes animation both more detached from reality and simultaneously more immediate to the viewer. This combination of factors is what allows cartoons to depict absurd events without raising viewers’ eyebrows. Contrasting animation and live action has been the focus of some films such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where characters abide by completely different laws of physics. Animation and live action is also combined in modern CGI, creating something that is somewhere between animation and live action.