Have you noticed characters’ hidden faces before? How did that make you feel?
I don’t know about you, but it has always annoyed me—especially when there is no reason explained for it. This practice has been going on since the beginning of televised animation.
But that is because in the earlier days of animation, having “faceless” characters saved a lot of money. Yet, it continued that way into the 2000s.
Sometimes, animators change their minds and decide to show those characters’ faces later in the cartoon. This has happened in some TV shows I’ve grown up with.
Codename: Kids Next Door is one of them. Numbuh 1 – 4’s parents’ faces show later in the series. But for some reason, Numbuh 5’s parents’ faces stay hidden.
This has also occurred in The Fairly Odd Parents. Timmy’s parents’ faces show after the shorts end and the main series begins. The same happens to a mean boy in the same show, named Remy. His mom and dad’s faces show later on.
In the original Tom & Jerry series from the mid-20th century, a certain woman’s face shows at some point in later episodes.
At times, there are also reasons for why some characters’ faces do not show.
In The PowerPuff Girls, Miss Bellum’s face is hidden because the creators didn’t want people to be distracted with beauty. In other programs, it’s because the creators want the audience to focus on certain characters and not others.
Then there are times when no reasons are given, like in Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Mac’s mom’s face is never shown and there is never a reason why. That has probably bothered at least some viewers besides me.
Is her face unattractive? Does she look like someone one animator hates and they hide her face to avoid getting in trouble?
I don’t watch live TV anymore. But this concept still annoys me, especially if the creators provide no explanation to why the characters’ faces remain unshown.
How do you view this specific practice? Are you okay with it? Or does it bother you?
I don’t know if the PowerPuff Girls’ creator argument about Ms. Bellum holds when you consider that they always show her at chest level! Anyway, I always assumed it was a trick to have you see things from the kids’ eye level, like the fact that you only see Nanny’s legs in the original Muppet Babies. Characters do feel incomplete to me without faces, though…
That’s an interesting point.