Some time ago I said I have to tell you about a few new pixel art animations. After Boat Nomad and Black Crystal, here is Elvis & Dimmi. Equal parts loved and hated, the controversial animation comes from Ivan Dixon (on Tumblr known as @pug-of-warâ) and Paul Robertson (@probertson). Paul is especially well known in the pixel art scene (here is my old feature of his work). Both of them worked on plenty of gigs for Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, but most probably know their pixel art recreation of The Simpsons intro.
So, what problem do people have with Elvis & Dimmi? First of all, just watch it above if you donât want spoilersâgore and language warning though.
Back/still here? Alright. Apart from the obvious audience who dislikes gratuitous violence and swearing (they wouldnât be happy with Adult Swimâs Korgoth of Barbaria either) the other negative comments come from people who expect that good always wins over evil.Â
Elvis & Dimmi is a reversal of the usual black and white plot. The goblins here are the good guys compared to the unanimously dislikable duo of heroes. Itâs a play on the tropes we take for granted in RPGs. We often think of ourselves as the heroes, yet we break into every house, open every drawer and chest, and steal every piece of gold we can find for our own advancement. Killing monsters is often just a mechanic to level up the player as well. But who is the monster, when a âheroâs journeyâ is a plot device painted with breadcrumbs of dead bodies?
Dixon and Robertson successfully reverse the tables, but what most people canât swallow is that the newly-recognized bullies get away with it in the end. Just like the underlying criticism of the hero trope, this too is very intentional as you can read in Ivanâs post:
âin the real world petty, stubborn, ignorant and powerful bullies win all the time. Again, we donât endorse this. It would feel in-genuine (particularly in the current political climate) to have them receive poetic justice just because thatâs what we crave.âÂ
Unlike the more problematic rape-filled Truckers Delight that gets away with a 90% thumbs-up ratio on YouTube, the Elvis & Dimmi video currently holds 2k likes and just as many dislikes. Both of the videos are at the pinnacle of pixel art animation, the newer contender even more so with its 12-minute length. Why does it fare that much worse though? Maybe itâs that the subscribers to the YouTube channel werenât expecting something like this following the Simpsons intro. The 4/5 stars rating on Newgrounds points a bit in this direction. In my eyes the video is successful. It offers on-point criticism of unidimensional attributions of good and evil we so easily assume for our entertainmentâand worse, by extrapolation, in the real world.
In any case, art and controversy were never strangers, and this most prominent step towards a pixel art movie certainly gave everyone some food for thought.
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