In the animated short, “The Flying House” Winsor McCay uses the power of animation to visually depict the story of a married couple that decides to steal their home out of fear of losing it and run away with it by turning the house into a makeshift flying contraption. With the wings and propeller of a plane, the house putters to life and uproots itself from the ground, much like Carl Fredrickson’s house in the Disney/Pixar released film Up, and takes off.
Nearly this entire worldwide adventure unfolds within a long dream sequence that appears to be a manifestation of the wife’s subconscious mind. This animation is accompanied only with the sound of a continuous piano with subtle and slight changes in tempo from start to finish; it matches the action and rising tension scenes with a few quick-paced melodic riffs.
Through the use of onscreen dialogue boxes between the characters, an inserted clip of a handwritten letter and text-frames the audience learns that the couple plans to run as far away as they possibly can to a place where the interest collector on their mortgage won’t be able to find them. McCay’s use of stoic appearances and nearly expressionless reactions from the couple during their journey, in my opinion helps to amplify the comedic and the zany tone of this short animation because it acts an…show more content… Telotte states “One of the pleasures of animation, it has been argued, is that it affords viewers a sense of power over the everyday, thanks to its ability to bring into being a world unrestrained by the conventions of realism or of probability.” In my opinion he’s expressing here that what draws an audience in with animated material comes from a rooted desired to escape from the rigid social conformities of predictable reality and travel to a world that has different rules or no real ‘rules’ for a change. It’s why people enjoy animated shows like Family Guy, South Park and