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PODCAST

Fantasy/Animation

Fantasy/Animation

Christopher Holliday is Senior Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education at King’s College London (UK). Alexander Sergeant is a Lecturer in Digital Media Production at the University of Westminster (UK), specialising in the history and theory of fantasy cinema. Each episode, they look in detail at a film or television show, taking listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation.

tv & film

All Episodes

14:03

Footnote #43 - Disney Princesses (with Robyn Muir)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2024/03/04

Fresh from their discussion of Wish (Chris Buck & Fawn Veerasunthorn, 2023), Chris and Alex are once again joined by Dr Robyn Muir, Lecturer in Media and Communication (University of Surrey), author of The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Analysis (2023), and founder and director of the Disney, Culture and Society Research Network to discuss the historical and cultural power of Disney princesses, a phenomenon that traverses films, merchandise, and several ancillary media. Topics for

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01:08:17

Wish (2023) (with Robyn Muir)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2024/02/26

To celebrate Disney’s computer-animated film musical Wish (Chris Buck & Fawn Veerasunthorn, 2023) and the company’s recent centenary year, Chris and Alex are joined by Dr Robyn Muir, Lecturer in Media and Communication in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey. Robyn’s research is interested in how identity is constructed and interpreted within cultural phenomena, including images of femininity in the Disney Princess franchise. Her book The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist

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15:27

Footnote #42 - Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories

Fantasy/Animation ·

2024/02/19

Following up last week’s feature-length episode on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003), the latest Footnote looks at J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal essay “On Fairy Stories” that engages the definitions, origins, and applications of the fairy story; the fairy vs. faerie distinction and questions of magic and imagination; sub-creation and secondary belief in the construction of fantasy’s logically-consistent fictional worlds; and how Tolkien’s defense of fantasy literature

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01:17:08

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2024/02/12

Chris and Alex conclude their journey through Middle-Earth with this episode on the third and final entry into Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy - The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003) - where they reflect on the stylistic influence and cultural legacy of the franchise since its culmination over twenty years ago. Listen as they discuss the role of vertical space in fantasy cinema and its contrast with the portrayal of New Zealand’s sprawling landscapes; Andy Serkis, motion-capture,

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12:41

Footnote #41 - Canons

Fantasy/Animation ·

2024/02/05

Footnote #41 looks at canon formation and value judgments in relation to the selection and privilege of art and culture’s masterworks, with Chris and Alex tackling the relationship between canons and consensus. Topics include canonisation as a political process of inclusion and exclusion; core-periphery models of how so-called untouchable art secures its prominence; the contributions of fan cultures to discourses of ownership, authenticity, and what is considered ‘official’; and the implications for

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01:04:00

Life, Animated (2016) (with Janet Harbord)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2024/01/29

Special guest Janet Harbord, Professor of Film Studies at Queen Mary, joins Chris and Alex to discuss the intersections between fantasy, animation, and autism in this examination of documentary Life, Animated (Roger Ross Williams, 2016), a film that reflects on the value and fantasies of animated media at the same time as it navigates and represents autistic apprehensions of the world. Janet’s research is primarily involved with cinema’s ability to create relationships between bodies, feelings and

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15:07

Footnote #40 - Puppetry

Fantasy/Animation ·

2024/01/22

What is puppet animation, and are puppets a form of animation? The historical and theoretical implications of fantasy and animation’s relationship to puppet performance are the focus of Footnote #40, with Chris and Alex looking at the defining role of puppets in fantasy’s fête and carnival culture origins; the phantasmagoria of the puppet and the desire to express fantasy through puppetry; links to the earliest stop-motion shorts and rise of motion-capture technologies in an era of virtual puppetry;

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01:12:53

The Dark Crystal (1982) (with Tanya Kirk)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2024/01/15

2024 kicks off with this episode on The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson & Frank Oz, 1982), recorded at the British Library with Tanya Kirk, Lead Curator of Printed Heritage Collections 1601–1900, and one of the organisers and curators of the Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition that runs at the library until February of this year. The exhibition explores the history of the fantasy genre from its origins in fairy and folk tales to more recent incarnations in literature and film, and features

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01:06:34

Arthur Christmas (2011)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/12/18

The Christmas special of the Fantasy/Animation podcast is finally delivered, and a perfectly wrapped episode it is too (!), with Chris and Alex enjoying the magic and mayhem of Arthur Christmas (Sarah Smith, 2011) - the Aardman studio’s second foray into computer animation and a film that confronts head-on Christmas as a collective fantasy through the comedic conflicts between generations. Listen as they discuss tensions between old and new, magic and technology, in the film’s playful portrayal of

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15:06

Footnote #39 - Special Effects

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/12/11

What is so special about special effects? What role does technological innovation play in their convincing construction of illusion? What distinguishes ‘special’ from ‘visual’ effects? In this Footnote episode, Chris and Alex play with ideas of special effects in relation to fantasy and animation, going back to early cinema and the animated fantasies (or fantastical animations) of Georges Méliès to think about the history of pro-filmic illusions captured on camera; practical vs. digital distinctions

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45:15

Disney: A Tale of Technology and Innovation (Live at...

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/12/04

Episode 129 sees Chris flying solo in this conversation recorded live at the recent Once Upon A Time: A Disney Day held at the British Film Institute in London back in July, which was part of the Making Magic: 100 Years of Disney two-month season that ran throughout 2023. Discussing the Disney studio’s longstanding relationship to technological innovation is returning special guest Chris McKenna, current Head of Creative Operations at the VFX studio Moving Picture Company, who featured on the

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12:31

Footnote #38 - Storybook Openings

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/11/27

Footnote #38 tackles the recurrent motif of the storybook that so often begins Disney’s animated features, but which also takes other forms and styles as part of the studio’s sustained dramatisation of storytelling. Listen as Chris and Alex discuss the importance of the prologue within definitions of the Disney formula; animation’s decorative function as a way of actualising and illustrating narrative events; visual developments in the trope and the role of literary legitimisation; and how the

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01:12:25

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) (with...

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/11/20

Chris and Alex continue their journey through the world of Harry Potter for Episode 128 of the podcast, looking at the fourth instalment Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Mike Newell, 2005) accompanied by special guest Dr Taylor Driggers. Taylor is an academic researcher specialising in fantasy literature, theology and religious studies, gender, and sexuality, whose PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow focused on fantasy literature’s potential to offer queer and feminist

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14:38

Footnote #37 - Silent Cinema (with Lawrence Napper)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/11/13

Special guest Dr Lawrence Napper, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London and expert in early silent and British cinemas, joins Chris and Alex once again - this time to talk about silent cinema in this Footnote episode of the podcast. Topics include the role of piano accompaniments, string quartets, and full orchestras within early film culture; the locating of silent cinema as a Victorian leisure practice and connections to pantomime; aesthetic shifts in narrative, editing, and

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01:07:47

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) (with Lawrence Napper)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/11/06

For Episode 127 of the podcast, Chris and Alex travel through (film) history to examine the negotiation of the past through computer manipulation, focusing on Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) and its use of digital techniques to re-articulate the sounds and images of the First World War. Joining them to discuss the technological mediation of national traumas and triumphs is Dr Lawrence Napper, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London, who is an expert in early silent

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14:32

Footnote #36 - Horror Cinema (with Stacey Abbott)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/10/30

What is horror cinema, and where did it come from? What are its unsettling spectatorial effects and uncomfortable provocations? What codes and conventions define its big screen history, and at which points does it splinter into slasher sub-genres and monstrous cycles? What role does the gothic and supernatural play in its generic construction? And how does the body as both threat and as threatened play into horror’s fascination with the impacts of difference and otherness? Answers to all these

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01:05:56

ParaNorman (2012) (with Stacey Abbott)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/10/23

As Halloween rolls around once more, things take a positively spooky turn as Chris and Alex discuss the stop-motion animated horror film ParaNorman (Sam Fell & Chris Butler, 2012) with very special guest Professor Stacey Abbott, who is incoming Professor of Film at Northumbria University and an expert in histories of gothic and horror in film and television. Topics for this discussion include the role of horror cinema in processing trauma, including the special case of children’s horror that is

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12:43

Footnote #35 - Twice Told Tales

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/10/16

Chris and Alex return to the Footnote format for this latest episode on “twice told tales” - a term that, following its Shakespearean origins, has been applied by writers of fantasy to refer to fantasy’s relationship to oral literature and fairytales. Topics include the fairytale’s codification of oral culture; legacies of literary structures and the power of (re)telling the beats of a story; shifting narrative templates and the act of adding one story ‘on top’ of another; and the spectatorial

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01:05:26

Cats (2019)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/10/09

Chris and Alex return from their extended summer break with this discussion of the much-maligned musical Cats (Tom Hooper, 2019), a film whose reputation as a big-budget misjudgment has perhaps overwhelmed the intricacies of its uncanny constitution, and in particular how the narrative’s negotiation of its A-list performers speaks to the vexed question of actorly labour and agency in an age of heightened visual effects production. Listen as they wade through Cats’ unsettling feline character design

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01:39

Fantasy/Animation - Announcement

Fantasy/Animation ·

2023/07/31

A quick message about Fantasy/Animation's Summer Break, as well as ways that you can get in touch to support all things fantastical and animated. From listening back through our podcast archive and leaving us a quick review and star rating, to dropping us an email or sending in a blog post idea or submission ready for when we return, we would love to hear from you! In the meantime, have happy summers wherever you are and see you in October!

en

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