Wells: Theory of Animation

I never really knew how much thought went into animation.  Yes I may sound dumb and naive, but I thought that animation, at least the orthodox animation, was circulated around characters and narrative structure. As consistently exemplified, the Disney cartoons. All the Disney cartoons are recognizable animals and people.  Even though the characters are dressed in outfits that are unrealistic, the audience still perceives Donald Duck as a Duck and Tweety as a bird as previously stated in Well's article.  So when does animation cross the line to experimental?  Well where I get confused is if people don't recognize the shape or form of a cartoon, does it fall automatically under experimental animation.  What about those shows on the Adult Swim channel, sometimes the animators construct a cartoon that is either a blob or a meatball, but some of them aren't even recognizable.  So what if the cartoons are not perceived as known objects or characters, but have a narrative plot throughout, would that be considered experimental animation?  Wells discusses how experimental animation is more of dots, lines, colors, and sound, but has no real or known deeper meaning or message.  I disagree with that.  Yes, the "meaning" and "message" is  interpreted by each individual and there is actually no concrete message, but with certain colors, sounds, "animations" the film projects some type of motif, or reasoning behind it. If a viewer has any type of emotion for a reaction, then isn't the message sent?  I understand the message and narrative are two different things, and all though the dot on the film strip isn't going to buy milk at a grocery store, it still can bounce around to a beat and then stay still or do any type of action.  With that pattern, viewers start to feel for whatever is on screen, for this example, the dot, and starts analyzing the actions of the dots.  Of course we analyze everything, that's what we do best!  Even though animation is broken up into orthodox, developmental, and experimental, I still feel as if all these approaches and forms stand on ambiguous grounds.