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.
Episodes
Monday Dec 18, 2023
Monday Dec 18, 2023
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 the bureaucracy and labour of Christmas; Aardman’s own industrial image of craft and the symbolism of automation versus those presents delivered ‘by hand’; the narrative function of Santa Claus as an ‘actor’ and an ‘actant’, and his complex identity as a mythic figure; Arthur Christmas’ ambivalent images of generous consumerism; spectatorial positioning in relation to the intrusion of festive fantasy and ideas of belief; and how the film negotiates what it means to represent and reinvent Christmas onscreen.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
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