Fantasy/Animation

The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)

The Netflix feature The Mitchells vs. the Machines (Mike Rianda, 2021) gets the Fantasy/Animation treatment, as Chris and Alex offer up a discussion in this episode of the film’s dysfunctional family dynamics, road movie structure, and its spectacular sentient robots techno-narrative. Topics include the contribution of Sony Pictures Animation to the Hollywood computer-animated film industry and stylistic links to both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, 2009) and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman, 2018); The Mitchells vs. the Machines’ critique of technology that seemingly sits at odds with its own visual enjoyment of the pleasures of screen culture; timeless vs. timely storytelling via the contemporaneity of the film’s intertextual referencing and depiction of digital natives; the historical whiteness of AI and the racialising of voice-activated virtual digital assistants; the realisation of Katie’s queerness and the fraught logic of equating screen visibility with progress; the potential to read the family through neurodivergent frameworks; and how Mike Rianda’s film provides an ultimately uneven and highly performative portrayal of ‘madcap’ antics, female creativity, and outsiderdom.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Footnote #23 - Phantasy

The story of phantasy (with a ‘ph’) forms the basis of this latest Footnote episode, a term that is as muddy and complex as its more familiar ‘f’ counterpart. Whereas ‘fantasy’ is associated with carefree, escapist enjoyment in the imagination, phantasy describes a process of meaning making within the human psyche, and is a psychological act that is a regular part of our engagement with - and understanding of - the world. In Alex’s 10-minute survey of the term, topics include its relationship to the language of psychoanalysis; the pleasurable frivolity and creativity of fantasy vs. phantasy’s more pointed link (as a basic mechanic of how our brains work) to the imagination of situations that are not happening in front of us; and the implications of applying psychoanalytic theory and phantasy to the study of fantasy cinema.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Czech Animation (1946-2011) (with Adam Whybray)

For this brief survey of the politics and pleasures of Czech animation, Alex and Chris are joined by special guest Dr Adam Whybray, who lectures in Film Studies at the University of Suffolk and who is also the author of The Art of Czech Animation: A History of Political Dissent and Allegory (London: Bloomsbury, 2020). Listen as the trio discuss a number of canonical and controversial examples from the recent history of Czech animation, featuring Vzpoura hraček/Revolution in Toyland (František Sádek and Hermína Týrlová, 1947), Ruka/The Hand (Jiří Trnka, 1965), Žvahlav aneb šatičky slaměného Huberta/Jabberwocky (Jan Švankmajer, 1971), Balada o zeleném drevu/A Ballad About Green Wood (Jiří Barta, 1983), and A King Had a Horse (Aleš Pachner, 2011). Topics for Episode 113 include the styles and rhythms of Czech animation and its particular use of stop-motion and puppet forms; avant-gardism and specific Czech traditions of surrealism; the utilisation of worn and imperfect everyday objects to reflect the resistance and retaliation to power, as well as themes of agency and control; fantasies of craft, creativity, and labour; and how the many allegories of Czech animation offer spectators a reflexive animated space that plays with variant notions of humanity.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Footnote #22 - Boiling

The second Fantasy/Animation footnote of the year sees Chris and Alex discuss boiling, an often-unintentional aesthetic effect involving the visibility of undulating animated lines that surfaces due to slight deviations within repeating drawn images. To unpack the pleasures of animated variation, they examine the modulations and discontinuities caused by images as they are ‘crafted’ imperfectly by hand; comparisons with the illusion of life generated by the industrial and standardised cel-animation process, and the staccato movements of stop-motion effects; and how in its many traces of artistry the animated images that ‘boil’ manifest the labour of difference and repetition, movement and stillness.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

House of the Dragon (2021-) (with Kim Akass)

For Episode 112, Chris and Alex are joined for this discussion of HBO’s television series House of the Dragon (Ryan Condal & George R. R. Martin, 2021-) - the prequel to Game of Thrones (David Benioff & D. B. Weiss, 2011-2019) - by Professor Kim Akass, who is Professor of Radio, Television and Film at Rowan University, Glassboro. Kim is is one of the founding editors of the television journal Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies (SAGE), co-editor of the “Reading Contemporary Television Series” for I.B. Tauris, and managing editor of CSTonline. Listen as they work through world-building and storytelling within long-form televisual fantasy; the narrative function of the series’ array of digital dragons and VFX imagery; why fantasy and animation lend themselves to sprawling franchises and extended mythologies; histories of unruly femininity and its (false?) equivalence with madness, anger, and rage; and the many ways in which House of the Dragon asks what it means to be at war with your own body.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Footnote #21 - World-Building

The Fantasy/Animation Footnote podcasts return for 2023 with this 10-minute discussion of world-building, which examines both fantasy and animation’s ability to create believable and credible ‘worldly’ spaces. Chris and Alex wrestle with a number of ideas related to the appreciation of cinema beyond character and narrative, drawing on V.F. Perkins’ influential writing on film’s many fictional worlds to discuss the question of art’s connection to world-building, worldliness, and worldhood. Topics include cinema’s narration of almost imperceptible worldly details; the parameters of fictional horizons in relation to character (and spectator) knowledge; the interplay between onscreen and offscreen space; and the many bits of information that ‘go without saying’ to help convince and build our aesthetic encounters with the worlds of fiction.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) (with Gary Trousdale)

For the first episode of 2023, Chris and Alex are back into the world of Disney Feature Animation, following up earlier discussions of The Emperor’s New Groove (Mark Dindal, 2000) and Treasure Planet (Ron Clements & John Musker, 2002) with Episode 111, which looks at the studio’s 2001 feature film Atlantis the Lost Empire (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 2001), a science-fiction adventure that draws inspiration from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870). Joining them as their very special guest is the film’s co-director, Gary Trousdale, who was part of the celebrated Disney Renaissance and together with Kirk Wise also directed the Disney features Beauty and the Beast (1991) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Gary was first hired by Walt Disney Feature Animation back in 1984 as an effects animator on The Black Cauldron (Ted Berman & Richard Rich, 1985). He then moved onto story for Oliver & Company (George Scribner, 1988) and worked as a Storyboard Artist for The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements & John Musker, 1989), before finally taking up directorial duties on Beauty and the Beast that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. Gary later moved to DreamWorks and, more recently, is credited as creative consultant for the 2017 reimagining of Beauty and the Beast (Bill Condon, 2017). Listen as they discuss the Disney Renaissance as a period of industrial and creative renewal via the studio’s return to a Golden Age sensibility; the siting of Atlantis: The Lost Empire within Disney’s post-2000 era of narrative and stylistic heterogeneity; the 1914 setting of the Verne-inspired film, and how its images of war bear the influence of advancements in early twentieth-century technology; the formal connection between animated musical numbers and action sequences; and what the adventure narrative of Atlantis: The Lost Empire and its application of CGI has to say about Hollywood animation’s own technological frontier.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Footnote #20 - Christmas

What makes a Christmas film, and why are fantasy and animated films so popular during this festive period? How is cinema consumed and ‘used’ at Christmas by both the popular film industry and families as a source of comfort? How is Christmas is narratively and thematically presented in our favourite festive-themed films? All these questions and many more are tackled by Chris and Alex in the final Footnote episode of the podcast for 2022, which looks at the very nature of Christmas onscreen as sometimes animated but almost always a fantasy. Happy holidays!

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

The Snowman (1982) (with James Walters)

The 2022 Fantasy/Animation Christmas special is here, with Chris and Alex well and truly ‘walking in the air’ (!) for Episode 110 of the podcast as they wonder at the delights of The Snowman (Dianne Jackson, 1982), the 26-minute television special released on Channel 4 in the early 1980s and based on Raymond Briggs’ picture book. Joining them for this tale of festive fantasy and to celebrate the film’s 40th anniversary is Dr James Walters, who is Reader in Film and Television Studies in the Department of Film and Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. James’ work embraces film and television aesthetics, and he is the author of two monographs regularly cited on the podcast - Fantasy Film: A Critical Introduction (2011) and Alternative Worlds in Hollywood Cinema (2008) - among other recent work on television comedy and performance. Listen as they discuss the relationship between British and Hollywood fantasy cinema in the 1980s; the contribution of Channel 4 to the evolution of British television animation; depth, energy, movement, and sincerity in The Snowman’s cosy construction of fantasy, and the spectators’ ability to ‘take off’ with its defining images of flight; childhood and the power of snow as an enchanting (if always fleeting) force; texture, detail, and stillness in Brigg’s original drawings; divisions between interior/order and exterior/chaos; and the way that fantasy - like Christmas - can mean different things to different people. Oh, and there’s a bit about David Bowie too. Happy holidays!

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Footnote #19 - Morphing

Animation’s potential for quick change is the focus of Footnote #19, as Chris and Alex go through questions of transformation via a 10-minute look at morphing. Discussions turn to the spectacle of fluid, flexible bodies in relation to more concrete states of being; connections to digital VFX as an enabling tool that articulates pristine images of fragmentation and disintegration that push at the boundaries of realism; the morph’s implied stability as it moves from one form to another; and the politics of selecting an identity in relation to queer images of mobility-in-performance.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**