Going by Jean-Luc Godard's 60s style, pop-culture is as 'serious' as it gets if the inspiration for conscientious belief is anything to go by (Alphaville).
Hyper-realism distorts reality by convincing us that an illusion is the real thing, when it is actually harbouring the profane serpent of distorted rhythm (prev.)
Pop-culture in Made In USA meant by-and-large movie images and the gangster myth of the 50s, and I propose to update that here to animation and Japanese anime.
I came-out in P198 against Pixar and that argument is worth extending both in terms of anime and traditional cartoon series with extensive narrative and design elements.
Pixar is machine-design, meaning something that is understood by algorithms (not humans.) Humans then 'animate' the designs - by placing skeletal shapes - but to my mind that means the narrative actually loses the design element.
Design is colour and shape in 2-dimensions; perspective can be added appropriately at times for implied realism and effect. 3-D is not design, it's simply machine-accuracy.
The story can be told but it can't be designed with colour and shape in the narrative. You may say the stories are just for kids and they don't recognize sophisticated atmospheric illusions, but kids grow-up and their experience amounts to something (in the developing psyche.)
Atmospheric illusions are unreal yet add to the physical sense of reality (inside the mind.) The psyche is entranced and this is the way the story is realised.
Hyper-realism has neither the physical illusion nor the psychic content that spur imagination. Rather than talk abstractly of kids cartoons, consider two disparate examples: the popular anime 'Cowboy Bebop' (from end of 90s); 'X-Men TV series' (from mid 90s.)
Granted that kids cartoons are for kids, these are about visualising characters with anarchic, interior lives and intermingled histories (I'm looking at you, Rogue.) The only way to do that effectively is to design them with shades of grey that show their expressive interior natures (psyches.)
One can't do that with machines; it creates a topsy-turvy world where fractals and vectors are mapped onto perspective coordinates of illusory 3D space (visible to the algorithm, natch) - used to produce something that has no internal life. The story is matted-onto their 'realism' and given Tom Hanks' voice.
Kids are misled into equating Tom Hanks with an artificial simulacrum. This illusory technical reality seems to match the Relativity time-speed of the mainstream (P198) - a topsy-turvy world where technique produces an illusion of reality (the vanishing-point of technique.)
'Cowboy Bebop'is blessed with psychic darkness - of nostalgia, loneliness - and a tonal palette to match. The score by Yoko Kanno - of 'Macross Plus' - is a jazz-funk maelstrom that matches the moods to perfection. Macross Plus also proved inspirational for its mix of sombre and wacky, the literal genesis for Cowboy Bebop's narrative style.
Yes, these are adult cartoons, but kids also have moods, and grow into adults. False accuracy cannot compete with unreal shades that match mood and fit the narrative like a glove.
To say that narrative is distinct from mood and atmosphere is to render it devoid of interior content (psyche). To only have narrative content is to miss the real point of narrative: to disturb and arouse the psyche.
As a sidenote, this over-emphasis on narrative seems to apply to live-action dramas such as, say, West Wing. There can be a case of too much narrative, too little action. The overwritten aspect applies to such films as 'Being the Ricardos' (the Lucille Ball story.)
I take my cue from Godard here, to whom words without action are a poor-man's cinema. Maybe I've come to think like my hero (so, sue me!)
From classic anime to the X-Men series which, although I haven't yet seen, is clearly not only designed with intent, but reads like a crash-course in X-Men history.
The design is based on Jim Lee's 1990s variant and, again, these cartoons can't work unless they're designed by a human hand. It's not about 3-D 'realism', it's about having s psychic content that is created by physical illusion.
Illusion is found in art because it affects the psyche; when reality becomes illusory then the psyche is lost. I read a bit about the X-Men series, and it seems to have been a bit of a collaborative effort. To have written a story encompassing X-Men #1 (Magneto) and X-Factor and Moira McTaggart and Days of Future Past is something of a feat!
There is a sense in which classic pop-culture is a sort of detritus that never goes away; it decays and rejuvenates and you need to tap into it.
Someone like BWS might find that distasteful, while to me it has an archetypal strength. Life is not perfect, and pop-culture just extends those. imperfections. The universe isn't composed simply of words, and the characters do what they do to the best of their abilities.
It's unreal and dark and archetypal, exactly what hyper-realism isn't. Simple sequences and ramshackle experience work on our psyche. There is no falseness and jokes are offhand. Physical illusion collaborates with psychic content. This is the off the wall strength of pop-culture that one can trace equally from Godard in 65 and X-Men in 63.