Sometimes when your family doesn’t accept you, you can go out and make yourself a new better one. Stoned for Christmas, an animated short from Talking Cat Productions written and directed by Morgan Young, explores this idea in both its story and the way it was assembled. By my count, Stoned for Christmas is actually 13 animated shorts edited together one after the other, each telling one segment of the story as a whole, like building a community through the making of a short film.
The segments range stylistically from hand drawn, digital, stop motion, video game, real life elements, 1930s Betty Boop to even more. The constant shifting gives great energy to the already frenetic life of our main character “The Courier” (played by JJ Moon), a weed delivery person on Christmas, a Santa Claus of marijuana.
The Courier wakes up to texts requesting a delivery from an overly friendly but ultimately nice regular customer and a deadnaming Christmas wish from a family member. At at time when the right is increasingly targeting trans people, and some on the left seem more than willing to sell them out, the Courier gets misgendered by some drunken partiers. But that is just one of many obstacles in a day full of bicycle deliveries, including catching a moving postal truck in the middle of the freeway in a thrilling sequence with a nice upbeat song attached.
Besides the Courier, the other recurring character is “Steve” (played by A Friend). We get to see them both as clay and different animation styles and photographic stills of their real life human selves. The consumption of art from different perspectives increases empathy. The changing representations here, especially seeing the flesh and blood counterparts of the animated characters, deepens that sense of connection. It’s not groundbreaking to say of course, but getting to know people from all walks of life will make you more understanding and nice.
Stoned for Christmas is a lot more subtle than this glaringly obvious after school special type message I’m describing though. There’s plenty of humour throughout including my favourite part, a suspicious subway pigeon delivering a non-sequitur “God bless us, everyone!” Plus various other small trials and tribulations.
I was reminded of Vera Drew’s brilliant The People’s Joker. Yes I’ll admit because both have a trans main character, but also because they both share a kaleidoscopic approach. Whereas The People’s Joker tends towards the dark vibes of Gotham City, Stoned for Christmas ends with the hopefulness of a 60s era animated Christmas special. It was very nice in the end credits sequence to return to each individual animated part and see the names of the artists who created them. It felt like seeing old friends and reaffirmed that sense of community.
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