Happiness

The short animation shows a city of rats. They ride the underground, go to work, look at screens, watch advertisements and shop. All of them are looking for something, whatever the billboards say. A new product comes out and they all run to the shop. Then pills, then another product. Nobody stops. Steve Cutts made it. It runs a little over four minutes and was produced entirely by one person. Steve Cutts is an illustrator and animator working in Britain, known for short pieces published online, and this is his most watched work. The narrative is wordless; no dialogue, no narrator and, apart from the music, little use of sound. The method is exaggeration: the rats are dressed as people, and human behaviour shown in animal bodies is comic and disturbing at once. The subject is consumption and dependence; the narrative shows one product beginning where another ends, and the circle never closes. The visual manner comes from old cartoons; the rounded forms and exaggerated movement are chosen deliberately. Who it is for: viewers who like short animation and social satire. Who it is not for: the message is very plain, there is no narrative, and it rests on repetition.