Terrific graphic design, extremely informed by the un/discipline of advertising. There’s the film’s pretty formidable bite. Unlike, say, the much earlier Gerald McBoing-Boing cartoons, Ersatz doesn’t belie its modernist look and method by selling out. In fact, it’s kind of omni-cynical. It’s a bracing attitude, in small doses. As I’m sure we all know, seemingly simple animated films can be extremely sophisticated, and can have a lot to say. For instance, this prefigures Althusser and Baudriard (ideology and simulacra), but discusses it all much more efficiently. Nothing is real but the nail that kills us. (Beckett? Ionesco? 1961 certainly suggests that these luminaries, and others besides, are on somebody’s radar.) The lady’s bathing suit is a particular triumph of graphic design, and a scream to boot.