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 May 23, 2022
Monday May 23, 2022
The fantasy of the fantastic is the subject of Footnote #7, as Alex takes listeners (including Chris) on a journey through the origins of the fantastique and a term that often describes certain stories with impossible elements. Other topics includes the fantastic as initially a literary impulse and fantasy as a genre that codifies dimensions of that impulse into narrative expectations and archetypes; Tzvetan Todorov’s work on “the fantastic” as an historical genre of writing that involves characters experiencing a momentary narrative “hesitation”; psychoanalysis and the uncanny; and what the fantastic means for the reader-/viewer-response of popular fantasy media.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
Monday May 16, 2022
Monday May 16, 2022
Episode 97 of the podcast takes on the intergalactic conflicts and rebel alliances of Rogue One (Gareth Edwards, 2016), an anthology feature film and prequel to Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977) that tells the origin story of the ‘Rogue One’ starfighter squadron and the creation of the Death Star. Special guest for this episode is Dr Jonathan Wroot, who is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for Film Studies at the University of Greenwich. Jonathan has published research on home media formats and Asian cinema distribution, including the co-edited collection entitled New Blood: Framing 21st Century Horror (2021) and his recent monograph on the Zatoichi film and TV franchise. He has also contributed to the podcast series Beyond Japan and Second Features, as well as the 2022 Japan Touring Film Programme. Listen as they discuss Jedis, the Jidaigeki (時代劇) period film, and longstanding East Asian influences upon the Star Wars saga; the relationship between Zatoichi the blind swordsman and Rogue One’s own blind warrior Chirrut Îmwe; hope, alliance, and the religious structures of Gareth Edwards’ spin-off story; the generic implications of ‘the Force’ upon science-fiction/fantasy distinctions via questions of rationality; digital de-aging technologies and the virtual recreation of youth; and the challenges of Rogue One to expand the Star Wars brand by taking spectators back into the fictional world of Hollywood’s most famous space fantasy.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**This episode was produced and edited by Leon Waldo**
Monday May 09, 2022
Monday May 09, 2022
The business of talking animals is the focus of Footnote #6, as Chris (with a bit of Alex) takes listeners through the shared histories of anthropomorphism and animation, and the acquisition of humanlike qualities (sentience, subjectivity, and selfhood) by non-human animated characters. Topics include the visual curiosity of the anthropomorph as a hybrid figuration caught between humanity (ánthrōpos) and the non-human (morphē); the role of persuasive personality and affinity within identifiable cel-animated, object, or virtual characters; collisions between nature and culture embedded in the anthropomorph’s fractured identity; affiliated terms such as ‘therianthropy’ that speak to gradations of humanity in animated animals; and why anthropomorphism as a representational strategy perhaps lies at the very heart of animated filmmaking.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
Monday May 02, 2022
Monday May 02, 2022
Based on Elizabeth Goudge’s 1992 children’s story Little White Horse, the 2008 fantasy The Secret of Moonacre (Gábor Csupó, 2008) is the subject of Episode 96 of the podcast, with Chris and Alex joined in their discussion of morality, class, and the power of the ego by the film’s screenwriter and Associate Producer Lucy Shuttleworth, who is also Senior Lecturer in the School of Film, Media and Communication at the University of Portsmouth. Listen as they examine the influence and inspiration on Gábor Csupó’s film of a number of literary sources, from 14th Century text Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; the wood and forest as a site of technological expressivity as much as narrative hostility and sanctuary with fantasy cinema; comparisons with big-screen adaptations like The Golden Compass (Chris Weitz, 2007) and Enola Holmes (Harry Bradbeer, 2020); VFX technologies and gender representation; and what The Secret of Moonacre tells us about the perils of the adaptation process and the power of effective visual storytelling.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**This episode was produced and edited by Leon Waldo**
Monday Apr 25, 2022
Monday Apr 25, 2022
Footnote #5 seeks to embrace the sub-division of fantasy literature through distinctions of “high” and “low,” whereby the era of post-Tolkien fantasy was culturally and critically understood through the identification of the genre’s specific storytelling modes. Listen as Chris and Alex (well, mostly Alex) give a rundown of the role of alternative worlds and mythic tropes used in such divisions; sword-and-sorcery genre elements, folkloric imagery, and character archetypes; how such categories relate to the evolving language of fantasy scholarship, including the criteria for “immersive” and “intrusive” fantasies; and the political stakes of both identifying and splintering fantasy through the overlapping categories of “high” and “low.”
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
Monday Apr 18, 2022
Monday Apr 18, 2022
Episode 95 is a special Fantasy/Animation double header, with two recent computer-animated films up for discussion as Chris and Alex look into the stories and symbols of contemporary Ukrainian animation - the country’s first 3D CG film The Dragon Spell (Manuk Depoyan, 2016) based on the stories of Ukrainian writer Anton Siyanika, and The Stolen Princess (Oleg Malamuzh, 2018), a fantasy that adapts the fairytale Ruslan and Ludmila by Russian poet Aleksandr Pushkin. This week’s instalment features as its guest an expert in the politics and aesthetics of modern Russia and the Soviet Union, Dr Joshua First, who is Croft Associate Professor of History and International Studies at the University of Mississippi. Joshua’s work includes the monograph Ukrainian Cinema: Belonging and Identity during the Soviet Thaw (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015) and Sergei Paradjanov: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (London: Intellect, 2016), as well as a number of articles on the visual cultures of Eastern Europe. Listen as they discuss Ukrainian history post-Soviet Union and The Revolution of Dignity; how such historical moments open up the Ukraine’s reclamation of pan-European/Russian mythologies; notions of recovery, the politics of recognition, and how stories can impose the image of a nation; the interdisciplinary status and activist potential of ‘useful’ animation; the ‘Frozenification’ of the computer-animated fairytale; and how both The Dragon Spell and The Stolen Princess offer fantasy worlds that reflexively provide folkloric understandings of what Ukrainian animation might be.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**This episode was produced and edited by Leon Waldo**
Monday Apr 11, 2022
Monday Apr 11, 2022
In Footnote #4, Chris and Alex unpack the uncanny spectacle and affecting effects of stop-motion animation, from understanding the hands-on labour that crafts its illusions of life to the oneiric ‘stopped-motion’ worlds of Ladislas Starevich, Willis O’Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Jan Švankmajer, and the Quay Brothers. Listen as they spend 10 minutes working through the European found object tradition; the use of stop-motion as part of the armoury of Hollywood effects technology; the power of awarding objects and puppets sudden sentience; Aardman’s contemporary ‘claymation’ and the work of the LAIKA Studios; and the broader accessibility of stop-motion as a popular technique of animation.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
Monday Apr 04, 2022
Monday Apr 04, 2022
Chris and Alex finally talk about Bruno (among other things) in this latest episode of the podcast, turning to the fantasy and family of Encanto (Byron Howard & Jared Bush, 2021), Disney Feature Animation’s computer-animated musical that tells the story of the magical Madrigal family via protagonist Mirabel, ably supported by lush visuals, colourful abstractions, and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s score inspired by the vallenato, cumbia, bambuco and rock en español genres. Joining them for Episode 94 is Dolores Tierney, Professor of Film at the University of Sussex and an expert in the aesthetics and politics of transnational imaging practices between Latin America, the U.S. and Spain. Topics up for examination this week include the film’s rhetoric of ‘authenticity’ with regards to Colombian representation; the growing role played by family and community in contemporary Disney Feature Animation; the maligning of Latin America within Trump-era politics; Encanto’s narrative and aesthetic links to Pixar’s Coco (Lee Unkrich, 2017) via engagements with Classical Mexican cinema and the influence on the film of Latin American telenovas; the portrayal of Colombian culture and how animation can navigate the ‘touristic’ gaze; the importance of the quotidian in magical realist storytelling; and what Encanto has to say about the relationship between individuality and exceptionalism.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**This episode was produced and edited by Leon Waldo**
Monday Mar 28, 2022
Monday Mar 28, 2022
A short note on the ongoing strike action currently happening across a number of UK Higher Education Institutions over devastating cuts to pensions and deteriorating pay and working conditions. More information about the strikes can be found by visiting the UCU website: www.ucu.org.uk.
Monday Mar 21, 2022
Monday Mar 21, 2022
A short note on the ongoing strike action currently happening across a number of UK Higher Education Institutions over devastating cuts to pensions and deteriorating pay and working conditions. More information about the strikes can be found by visiting the UCU website: www.ucu.org.uk.