Viewing Materials: Thoughts on Gravity Falls
Sometimes one finds something that clicks. It finds the empty notch in your skull and completes the circuit. The circle closes. The sequence aligns. You uncover the clue that makes the code make sense. You decipher something strange, even though the world around you doesn't notice it.
I found Gravity Falls. Well, my younger sister did and thrust it into my orbit. I didn't know what to expect, and at first sort of it didn't quite click. But then it did, as many solid animation does, and it sank its roots deep.
Gravity Falls, for the uninitiated, is a Disney animated series that ran from 2012 to 2016. The series is about the summer the 12-year-old Pine fraternal twins spend with their great uncle Stan. The twins have the usual animated hijinx. But a serious underlying mythos undergirds the series, starting with hints. Then it takes over the story with tons of secrets, ciphers and clues the series drops every second it can. It's a mystery box that hit me full of nostalgia.
Yep. Gravity Falls has a mystery box-ness. That whole hidden thing going on that I had to find out. It had plenty of references for adults, but the humor is the right kind. Appealing to everyone, and not dumbed down. Instead, it's that kind of cartoony gag material that anyone can enjoy. Continuity and story and things that were rare in the animated series I grew up with.
Yet today it seems to be the floor for the current golden age of TV animation. Gravity Falls has those before it gets going. I'm avoiding spoilers in this as much as possible. But the heart of Gravity Falls is its own strange horror. The kind of horror that is toned down enough for some of its audience, but it still is there. It is that cosmic weird horror. The same kind that inspired Twilight Zone, the King in Yellow and others.
Even as a cartoon, Gravity Falls taps into the old school kind of horror, even as a comedy. Cosmic horror isn't about doing creepy for creepy sake. Or to be a weird flavor of opposition for some action tale. It taps into a darker fascination. That horrible facet where you stare at something that is beyond human understanding. Or so horrible you can't look away from it. That everything in your life or universe is at the whim of things beyond your comprehension.
Yes. You read my take correct. It is an animated series that rings of cosmic horror and your standard gag comedy at the same time.
Of course, Gravity Falls stays a comedy and doesn't walk away without some conclusion to its weird horror. Which helps it. All great fare like this needs comedic beats so that the dark truths are starker in tone. This never strays from the core themes of the series.
From personal experience, it's hard to put a period at the end of the last sentence of a story. To end it. It's almost as hard as starting a story. Ending something is important. Gravity Falls does this, and in doing so, it does the last true thing you need to do to give life to a story. You make it greater than the sum of its parts because anyone can start it and end it. Like being alive, you start it and reach its end, wishing for more and reliving joyful, brief moments.
There is the part of the series that struck me in a personal way. The notion of a summer spent with an older relative vibrated my heartstrings. Especially one who isn’t what you expect them to be. I remember driving with my grandfather to Montana. It was my first summer there without my parents coming along.
The memories about that trip are still in the back of my mind. Fond things about an old man, who I know for certain enjoyed spending time with his grandson. It isn't something you get told- it is something you sort of feel and can't unfeel when it happens. The memories stick harder because of his death that came a year later. Gravity Falls shares its own version of that. Enough that every time I remember of the series, I think of my grandfather too. The two fit together for me in that way.
Well, ciphers and codes were a core part of the audience experience in the series. This conceit is clever, as it spreads the mystery to viewers. And it infects you with a bit of the horror too, that you can't help but be fascinated by it.
What if the ciphers and codes and symbols weren't just in the series? What if there was some truth to it? Every episode ends with mysterious clues. The end finale of Gravity Falls included an ARG- an alternate reality game. It ended with players uncovering a core piece of the series as an actual, physical object in the real world. Something anyone could find, something others have found.
Something that, if its real, even though it was only an animated cartoon... could, in a small, horrible, fascinating way... be something that actually happened? That the mystery has bled through the page of reality.
It's still fiction. But the allure of that horrible mystery still lingering there. That seems like a valid ending for a series to have. Experience it for yourself, at least to find out if you that mystery can bleed through your own mind.
I found Gravity Falls. Well, my younger sister did and thrust it into my orbit. I didn't know what to expect, and at first sort of it didn't quite click. But then it did, as many solid animation does, and it sank its roots deep.
Gravity Falls, for the uninitiated, is a Disney animated series that ran from 2012 to 2016. The series is about the summer the 12-year-old Pine fraternal twins spend with their great uncle Stan. The twins have the usual animated hijinx. But a serious underlying mythos undergirds the series, starting with hints. Then it takes over the story with tons of secrets, ciphers and clues the series drops every second it can. It's a mystery box that hit me full of nostalgia.
Nostalgic Mystery Box Hit to the Alien in the Head
The nostalgia hit of Gravity Falls struck me in a particular fashion. I don't know how common an experience it is, to spend whole summers away from home as a kid. The idea of a TV series about it struck a chord. Although I never experienced the same mysterious goofiness the Pine Twins did. I was more than weird enough for my cousins to give me the nickname "Alien." So perhaps the strange was in me all along. That made me curious about Gravity Falls to give the series a watch over the holidays.Yep. Gravity Falls has a mystery box-ness. That whole hidden thing going on that I had to find out. It had plenty of references for adults, but the humor is the right kind. Appealing to everyone, and not dumbed down. Instead, it's that kind of cartoony gag material that anyone can enjoy. Continuity and story and things that were rare in the animated series I grew up with.
Yet today it seems to be the floor for the current golden age of TV animation. Gravity Falls has those before it gets going. I'm avoiding spoilers in this as much as possible. But the heart of Gravity Falls is its own strange horror. The kind of horror that is toned down enough for some of its audience, but it still is there. It is that cosmic weird horror. The same kind that inspired Twilight Zone, the King in Yellow and others.
Even as a cartoon, Gravity Falls taps into the old school kind of horror, even as a comedy. Cosmic horror isn't about doing creepy for creepy sake. Or to be a weird flavor of opposition for some action tale. It taps into a darker fascination. That horrible facet where you stare at something that is beyond human understanding. Or so horrible you can't look away from it. That everything in your life or universe is at the whim of things beyond your comprehension.
Yes. You read my take correct. It is an animated series that rings of cosmic horror and your standard gag comedy at the same time.
Of course, Gravity Falls stays a comedy and doesn't walk away without some conclusion to its weird horror. Which helps it. All great fare like this needs comedic beats so that the dark truths are starker in tone. This never strays from the core themes of the series.
Good to the End
Gravity Falls has a beginning and an ending. It starts and ends. You can watch the whole thing from episode one to the finale and the story reaches a conclusive end. That isn't easy to do, and that is rare.From personal experience, it's hard to put a period at the end of the last sentence of a story. To end it. It's almost as hard as starting a story. Ending something is important. Gravity Falls does this, and in doing so, it does the last true thing you need to do to give life to a story. You make it greater than the sum of its parts because anyone can start it and end it. Like being alive, you start it and reach its end, wishing for more and reliving joyful, brief moments.
There is the part of the series that struck me in a personal way. The notion of a summer spent with an older relative vibrated my heartstrings. Especially one who isn’t what you expect them to be. I remember driving with my grandfather to Montana. It was my first summer there without my parents coming along.
The memories about that trip are still in the back of my mind. Fond things about an old man, who I know for certain enjoyed spending time with his grandson. It isn't something you get told- it is something you sort of feel and can't unfeel when it happens. The memories stick harder because of his death that came a year later. Gravity Falls shares its own version of that. Enough that every time I remember of the series, I think of my grandfather too. The two fit together for me in that way.
The End that Remains Unending
Yet Gravity Falls ended. Even then, it still...Well, ciphers and codes were a core part of the audience experience in the series. This conceit is clever, as it spreads the mystery to viewers. And it infects you with a bit of the horror too, that you can't help but be fascinated by it.
What if the ciphers and codes and symbols weren't just in the series? What if there was some truth to it? Every episode ends with mysterious clues. The end finale of Gravity Falls included an ARG- an alternate reality game. It ended with players uncovering a core piece of the series as an actual, physical object in the real world. Something anyone could find, something others have found.
Something that, if its real, even though it was only an animated cartoon... could, in a small, horrible, fascinating way... be something that actually happened? That the mystery has bled through the page of reality.
It's still fiction. But the allure of that horrible mystery still lingering there. That seems like a valid ending for a series to have. Experience it for yourself, at least to find out if you that mystery can bleed through your own mind.
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