From Matt Groening, the Simpsons’ father, to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, but also John Callahan, Don Hertzfeld or Corky Quakenbush, the United States underwent a real surge of “trash-animation”.

All of them having great talent, this new generation of creators seems to want to break with morals and institutions, founding principles of America’s “grandeur”.
Devoid of any moral sense, these “cineaste terrorists” heighten the “mean and stupid” humor to summits rarely attained in animation cinema.

Bill Plympton has us discover the most subversive American animators. He himself won the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 1990 for his film “Push Comes to Shove”, before being celebrated for his features such as “I Married a Strange Person” and “The mutant Aliens”, which was awarded the Grand Prix at the Annecy Animation Festival in 2001. Here, he helps us observe each animator’s course, and understand the reasons behind their worldwide success, there work here being illustrated by different film excerpts and sketches.

“Americans always think dirty, filthy humor is forbidden. Each joke must be clean and well meaning. I try to make cartoons likely to offend certain people, outrageous or completely twisted … I have always done things, not offensive, but that people find embarrassing.” Bill Plympton