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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

01:05:33

Archive Episode - Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse...

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/07/29

For the final archive episode of 2025, Chris and Alex once again swing their way back into the superhero world of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman, 2018), revisiting their discussion of Sony Pictures Animation’s computer-animated film that featured special guest Simran Hans, film critic and culture writer whose work has appeared in The Observer, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, Dazed, The Fader and Sight & Sound. Lots here on Spider-Man: Into the

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56:57

Archive Episode - Wizards (1977) (Live @ Cinema Museum)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/07/14

Chris and Alex go all the way back to 2020 for the penultimate archive episode of the podcast for this summer, remembering their discussion of Ralph Bakshi’s high fantasy animated epic Wizards (Ralph Bakshi, 1977), which was originally recorded in front of a live audience at the Cinema Museum in Kennington, London in January 2020. Released first time around as Episode 42, the conversation turned to Wizards as a counter-cultural marvel of the 1970s; the politics and propaganda of the film’s adult

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01:03:27

Archive Episode - Inside Out (2015) (with Eric Herhuth)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/06/30

To coincide with the release of Pixar’s science-fiction computer-animated feature Elio (Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi & Adrian Molina, 2025) this summer, Chris and Alex take listeners back a decade to 2015 and the emotional worlds created by the studio’s earlier Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015). Originally recorded at the 33rd annual Society for Animation Studies conference at Teesside University (and released soon after in October 2022), this episode featured as its special guest Dr. Eric

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01:08:10

Archive Episode - Sub-Saharan African Animation...

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/06/16

For this second archive episode, Chris and Alex revisit Episode 81 of the podcast that gave listeners a quickfire journey through Sub-Saharan African animation with Paula Callus, a Professor in the National Centre for Computer Animation at Bournemouth University and an expert in Sub-Saharan African animation. The films covered in this instalment were Moustapha Alassane’s Bon Voyage Sim (1966), Ng’endo Mukii’s Yellow Fever (2013), Iwa (2009) from Nigerian filmmaker, illustrator and art director

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01:25:00

Archive Episode - Space Jam (1996) (with Paul Wells)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/06/02

To mark the return of the Fantasy/Animation archive instalments, Chris and Alex once more delve into the podcast’s back catalogue for this relisten of Episode 70 and their discussion of Space Jam (Joe Pytka, 1996), which featured very special guest Professor Paul Wells, Director of the Animation Academy at Loughborough University. Listen again at their analysis of Space Jam as emblematic of animation’s longstanding relationship with sport; the nostalgic callbacks that the film makes to Golden Age

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12:22

Footnote #65 - Pervasive Animation

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/05/26

The current cultural “pervasiveness” of animated media and the medium’s durable status as a vital intermediary between ‘us’ and ‘the world’ is the focus of this latest Footnote episode, which tackles “Pervasive Animation” as it has been understood within Suzanne Buchan’s 2013 anthology of the same name. Chris takes Alex through the requisite methodological challenges, considerations, and conundrums when looking at animation’s many forms within contemporary moving image culture, as well as what

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01:30:50

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Patrick...

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/05/19

This podcast special was recorded live at the recent Popular Culture Association Conference in New Orleans, USA, April 2025, where Alex was delighted to be asked to participate in a roundtable discussion on Amazon’s prequel series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Patrick McKay & J.D. Payne, 2022-). In a detour from our usual format, Alex is without Chris but joined by two fellow panelists, Alicia Fox-Lenz and Tim Lenz (both stewards of the Mythopoeic Society), alongside an enthusiastic

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14:37

Footnote #64 - The Golden Age of Animation

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/05/12

Fresh from last week’s discussion of Mickey Mouse, Chris and Alex are once again joined by Dr David McGowan (Lecturer in the Contextual and Theoretical Studies of Animation at the University of the Arts London) to map the mythology of the Golden Age of Animation, and in particular how this phase of the medium’s history has been framed in relation to the cartoon’s move from silent to sound technology but also its emergent stability and security as an industrial art form. Listen as they cover

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01:30:18

Mickey Mouse (with David McGowan)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/05/05

For this new episode of the podcast, Chris and Alex try and do justice to the global stardom of perhaps the most famous animated character of them all - Mickey Mouse. They are joined by David McGowan, who is Lecturer in the Contextual and Theoretical Studies of Animation at the University of the Arts London, as well as author of Animated Personalities: Cartoon Characters and Stardom in American Theatrical Shorts (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019), to explore Mickey’s enduring celebrity both

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11:09

Footnote #63 - The Censored Eleven

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/04/28

Chris and Alex take a look at animation’s historical and troubling relationship to race with this examination of the Censored Eleven, a collection of controversial Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons produced during the 1930s and 1940s removed from syndication since 1968 for their inclusion of harmful and offensive racist stereotypes. Topics include histories of animating the other, identity, and experience within the medium and legacies of minstrelsy performance; the visibility of Black

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01:05:44

Rise of the Guardians (2012)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/04/21

To mark the Easter break, Fantasy/Animation crack open Rise of the Guardians (Peter Ramsey, 2012), the 2012 computer-animated film produced by DreamWorks Animation studio and a Hollywood blockbuster adapted from the children’s book series by William Joyce. Something of a box-office failure and a film that prompted an $87 million loss for DreamWorks, Rise of the Guardians is, as Chris and Alex suggest, certainly a complex and uneven effort that nonetheless incorporates some intriguing animated

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12:13

Footnote #62 - Object Relations

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/04/14

The Fantasy/Animation Footnotes complete their unofficial ‘psychoanalysis trilogy’ with this look at object relations and a branch of psychoanalytic approaches to film that emerged as a competing way of thinking about cinema linked to the development of the conscious minds of children. Listen as Alex takes Chris through the contributions of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the influential work of Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott; the value of unconscious fantasies, creativity, and what it

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01:18:42

Up (2009) (with Tom Brown)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/04/07

Chris and Alex are back in the warm embrace of Pixar Animation Studio, looking at their tenth computer animated film Up (Pete Docter, 2009) - a real high point in the company’s run of critically and commercially successful animated features, and a film that comes almost at the midway point between Pixar today their debut with Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995) 30 years ago. To discuss whether adventure really is ‘out there,’ they are joined by special guest Dr Tom Brown, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies

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14:20

Footnote #61 - The Gaze

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/03/31

The Fantasy/Animation Footnotes return to psychoanalysis in order to make sense of the world through gazing and gaze theory. Alex once again takes the lead in discussing Laura Mulvey’s seminal work on the gaze but also how it offers just one way of thinking about the topic, drawing instead on Lacanian psychoanalysis to distinguish between the qualities of looking and gazing. Topics include the conscious and unconscious processes involved in Lacan’s ‘mirror stage’; the politics of cinema and the

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01:09:08

World of Tomorrow (2015-2020) (with Elizabeth Cox)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/03/24

For Fantasy/Animation’s very first look at California-born animator, writer, and independent filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt, Chris and Alex are joined by Elizabeth Cox, founder of independent animation studio Should We Studio, to discuss Hertzfeldt’s influential World of Tomorrow (2015-2020) featuring the tribulations of protagonist Emily. In her role as the Senior Editorial Producer at TED-Ed, Elizabeth has written and edited the scripts for over 200 educational animated videos including “How to Avoid a

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13:54

Footnote #60 - Psychoanalysis

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/03/17

Listen as Alex takes Chris through the desires and distresses of psychoanalysis in this new Fantasy/Animation Footnote, working through its status as a branch of psychological theory and the contribution of the seminal work of Sigmund Freud. Other topics in this instalment include the emergence of psychoanalytic thinking at the end of the nineteenth-century and its subsequent interdisciplinary influence; parapraxis and the interpretation, processing, and diagnosis of dreams; the ‘turn’ towards

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01:17:10

The Wind Rises (2013) (with Esther Leslie)

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/03/10

Chris and Alex return to Japanese anime and Studio Ghibli for this reflection on The Wind Rises (2013), Hayao Miyazaki’s then-final animated feature that plots the life of Japanese aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi, and which also offers a quasi-autobiographical tale of Miyazaki’s own animated career and the spectacle of his ‘last designs’ along the way. Joining in the discussion is very special guest Esther Leslie, who is Professor of Political Aesthetics in the School of Creative Arts, Culture

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12:44

Footnote #59 - Magic

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/03/03

Fantasy/Animation turns to a kind of magic for this latest Footnote episode, and the role of the magical in the distinction that lies within fantasy between the knowingness of illusion and the pursuit of rationality. Expect turns to how magic can embody both an appreciation of a non-scientific worldview and a magic show’s illusion and sleight-of-hand; theological superstition, spirituality and religion, and what this means for understanding belief in magic as a form of ‘social action’; magic as

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01:17:07

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022) (with Lisa...

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/02/24

Chris and Alex delve into the stop-motion world of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro & Mark Gustafson, 2022) for Episode 152 of the podcast, joined in this discussion of loss, love, control, and craft by musicologist and animation historian Dr Lisa Scoggin. Lisa is an expert in animation and its relationship to music, publishing widely on everything from United Productions of America (UPA) to Cartoon Saloon, and with expertise that covers film and television music,

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14:14

Footnote #58 - Wonder

Fantasy/Animation ·

2025/02/17

In this latest Fantasy/Animation Footnote, Chris and Alex wonder about wonder - a term that emphatically traverses both fantasy and animation as fields of study, yet with alternate meanings and connotations related to everything from mid-1990s cultures of special effects appreciation to fantasy’s historical links to the so-called “wonder film.” Topics include the “wonder years” of special effects production and reception during the 1990s via what Michele Pierson calls a growing “connoisseurship” of

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