Skip to main content[ONE NIGHT ONLY] Just several minutes into the NW Film Center's retrospective on Portland animator-director Laura di Trapani and you realize: Here is somebody who could tell you how to get to Sesame Street. First on the bill of di Trapani's short films is a catchy nonsense verse written for blue furball Grover, who is joined by a mid-'90s cavalcade of stars—Ray Charles, Robin Williams, Candice Bergen, Glenn Close, Spike Lee and the Simpsons—who are somehow persuaded to sing the words "wubba wubba wubba" over and over again. But this pales before di Trapani's magnum opus (honored in the Best of Sesame Street 20 Year Anniversary program at the Museum of Modern Art): an unforgettable segment titled "The Word Is No." For two minutes, di Trapani matches a gritty New Wave music video with a synth-driven tune that would not feel out of place at a Magnetic Fields show, and all of it explaining—with fingers wagging in rhythm—the things that you aren't allowed to do. A generation of Americans received, in this moment, a jovial introduction to a lifetime of rejection.
Not all of di Trapani's projects have been designed for kids' TV, but they all reveal a childlike sensibility in the best possible sense. Her 1993 collaboration with local icon (and WW cartoonist) John Callahan, I Think I Was an Alcoholic, may be the all-time sunniest approach to the disease. Callahan's characteristically bleak humor ("Thank You for Not Dying," reads a recovery-ward sign) is offset by merry circus music and toilets eager for their next meal of vomit.
This is about as edgy as di Trapani gets—whimsy and caprice are her tools as much as ink and stop-motion. (Her most recent work, We Three, looks like M.C. Escher obsessed with long gams and the Trinity.) What marks her as a local artistic treasure is how she puts her wackiest ideas to work in mainstream, even corporate, settings. Images of clumsy pastel cows advertise American Dairy Farmers, and a Parisian feline parade—very beatnik, these cool cats—is used to educate youngsters about the number seven. They're learning other things too, and it will be interesting to watch the effects surrealism has had on toddlers. Say what you will about the avant-garde possibilities of animation; Laura di Trapani proves that some of the best experiments are conducted in the Children's Television Workshop.
WWeek 2015