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 Jan 12, 2026
Monday Jan 12, 2026
Just as it did to kick off 2025, the Fantasy/Animation podcast returns once again following the festive break to celebrate the New Year with another visit to Oz, with Chris and Alex reflecting on movie musical Wicked: For Good (John M. Chu, 2025) that as with the first instalment released in 2024 discussed a year ago adapts Stephen Schwartz’s successful 2003 theatre production. Topics for this first episode of 2026 include Wicked: For Good’s heightened reflexivity around performance, deception, and the power of illusions that take place in front of and behind the curtain; Elphaba’s political radicalism vs. the pragmatism of Glinda; necropolitical action and the film’s targeting of who gets to live and who must die; ‘wickedness’ and the emptiness (and reclaiming) of language; and where Wicked: For Good succeeds - and ultimately fails - as it seeks to find its own narrative in the intriguing ellipses of the Oz lore.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
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