Fantasy/Animation

Wish (2023) (with Robyn Muir)

To celebrate Disney’s computer-animated film musical Wish (Chris Buck & Fawn Veerasunthorn, 2023) and the company’s recent centenary year, Chris and Alex are joined by Dr Robyn Muir, Lecturer in Media and Communication in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey. Robyn’s research is interested in how identity is constructed and interpreted within cultural phenomena, including images of femininity in the Disney Princess franchise. Her book The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Analysis (2023) explores Disney’s princess films, merchandise, and consumer experiences to account for the cultural pervasiveness and political power of Disney princesses, and to map their wider representations within society. Robyn is also the founder and director of the Disney, Culture and Society Research Network, an international and interdisciplinary space for Disney Studies scholars, and co-founder and co-editor of The International Journal of Disney Studies. Listen as they discuss Wish’s identity as nostalgic evocation of Walt Disney animation and tie-ins with the recent Disney100 Exhibition and Once Upon a Studio (Dan Abraham & Trent Correy, 2023) cartoon short; magic, Magnifico, and tensions between community desire and individual wish fulfilment; the gendered exceptionality of Asha as a woman of colour; power and the ‘imagined community’ of Rosas; the film’s hybrid aesthetic of cel- and computer-animated techniques; and the role of fantasy in providing the schema to know what to wish for.

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

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

Footnote #42 - Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories

Following up last week’s feature-length episode on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003), the latest Footnote looks at J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal essay “On Fairy Stories” that engages the definitions, origins, and applications of the fairy story; the fairy vs. faerie distinction and questions of magic and imagination; sub-creation and secondary belief in the construction of fantasy’s logically-consistent fictional worlds; and how Tolkien’s defense of fantasy literature can be helpful for the craft of fantasy stories across multiple forms of media.

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

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Chris and Alex conclude their journey through Middle-earth with this episode on the third and final entry into Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy - The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003) - where they reflect on the stylistic influence and cultural legacy of the franchise since its culmination over twenty years ago. Listen as they discuss the role of vertical space in fantasy cinema and its contrast with the portrayal of New Zealand’s sprawling landscapes; Andy Serkis, motion-capture, and the narrative ambivalence of Gollum’s technological body; the use of digital VFX n the creation of masses and multitudes; how the film divides its drama between narrative and spectacle plotlines; and Return of the King’s aesthetic extravagance and what it means to experience a Hollywood epic.

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

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

Footnote #41 - Canons

Footnote #41 looks at canon formation and value judgments in relation to the selection and privilege of art and culture’s masterworks, with Chris and Alex tackling the relationship between canons and consensus. Topics include canonisation as a political process of inclusion and exclusion; core-periphery models of how so-called untouchable art secures its prominence; the contributions of fan cultures to discourses of ownership, authenticity, and what is considered ‘official’; and the implications for syllabus design when it comes to thinking about the canonising of key texts in the classroom.

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

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

Life, Animated (2016) (with Janet Harbord)

Special guest Janet Harbord, Professor of Film Studies at Queen Mary, joins Chris and Alex to discuss the intersections between fantasy, animation, and autism in this examination of documentary Life, Animated (Roger Ross Williams, 2016), a film that reflects on the value and fantasies of animated media at the same time as it navigates and represents autistic apprehensions of the world. Janet’s research is primarily involved with cinema’s ability to create relationships between bodies, feelings and environments, but also how neurotypicality has historically framed our understanding of film, and she is currently one of the principle investigators on a four year Wellcome Trust funded project ‘Autism through Cinema’. Topics in this episode include Life, Animated’s treatment of protagonist Owen Suskind and images of neurodiversity onscreen; the canonisation of a certain version of Disney animation history through processes of repetition, ritualism, and re-enactment; Owen as himself a text and his status as an animator; the Disneyfication of autism and the importance of physical media in portraying animated fan communities; and what it is about (animated and fantasy) cinema that makes legible or holds an affinity with the autistic experience.

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

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

Footnote #40 - Puppetry

What is puppet animation, and are puppets a form of animation? The historical and theoretical implications of fantasy and animation’s relationship to puppet performance are the focus of Footnote #40, with Chris and Alex looking at the defining role of puppets in fantasy’s fête and carnival culture origins; the phantasmagoria of the puppet and the desire to express fantasy through puppetry; links to the earliest stop-motion shorts and rise of motion-capture technologies in an era of virtual puppetry; and whether evolving definitions of animation and its medium specificity are appropriate enough to encompass the volume and diversity of puppet forms.

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

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

The Dark Crystal (1982) (with Tanya Kirk)

2024 kicks off with this episode on The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson & Frank Oz, 1982), recorded at the British Library with Tanya Kirk, Lead Curator of Printed Heritage Collections 1601–1900, and one of the organisers and curators of the Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition that runs at the library until February of this year. The exhibition explores the history of the fantasy genre from its origins in fairy and folk tales to more recent incarnations in literature and film, and features original artwork, props, and costumes from well-known fantasy media including The Dark Crystal, as well as fantasy inspired tabletop and video games. Topics in this new year’s instalment include histories of craft and puppetry’s links to industry, skill, labour, and the pantomimic; acts of curation when it comes to preserving fantasy and animation’s archaeologies of materiality; the cultures and traditions central to The Dark Crystal’s fictional world; 1980s VFX technologies and the pleasure of characters moved ‘by hand’; and where Jim Henson and puppet performances fit into the British Library’s exhibition of fantasy storytelling.

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

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

Arthur Christmas (2011)

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**

Footnote #39 - Special Effects

What is so special about special effects? What role does technological innovation play in their convincing construction of illusion? What distinguishes ‘special’ from ‘visual’ effects? In this Footnote episode, Chris and Alex play with ideas of special effects in relation to fantasy and animation, going back to early cinema and the animated fantasies (or fantastical animations) of Georges Méliès to think about the history of pro-filmic illusions captured on camera; practical vs. digital distinctions in the articulation and realisation of effects imagery; and the growing influence of post-production processes in the era of computer graphics.

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

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

Disney: A Tale of Technology and Innovation (Live at the British Film Institute) (with Chris McKenna)

Episode 129 sees Chris flying solo in this conversation recorded live at the recent Once Upon A Time: A Disney Day held at the British Film Institute in London back in July, which was part of the Making Magic: 100 Years of Disney two-month season that ran throughout 2023. Discussing the Disney studio’s longstanding relationship to technological innovation is returning special guest Chris McKenna, current Head of Creative Operations at the VFX studio Moving Picture Company, who featured on the earlier Dumbo (Tim Burton, 2019) episode of the podcast. In this discussion panel, Chris talks further about his work on several of Disney’s “live-action” remakes, including The Jungle Book (Jon Favreau, 2016), The Lion King (Jon Favreau, 2019), Lady and the Tramp (Charlie Bean, 2019), and the recent The Little Mermaid (Rob Marshall, 2023), where he worked as Head of Layout and Animation at MPC. The duo reflect on Chris’ own history and how he got involved with this latest cycle of Disney features; whether or not to use the original animated film as a reference point; and the many challenges of adapting the Mouse House’s beloved animated classics for new audiences. They also field questions from those gathered together in NFT1 on everything from digital creativity; the links between realism, reception, and the potential loss of ‘magic’; and the collective labour involved in producing blockbuster computer graphics for the latest Disney’s animation.

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

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**