Episode 139 marks something of a first as Chris and Alex play ‘The Fantasy Adventure Board Game’ Dungeons & Dragons originally created and designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in 1974, taking on its array of characters, weapons, and quests live during the podcast with special guest (and Dungeon Master) Dr Cat Mahoney, Derby Fellow in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool. Cat is the co-editor with Jilly Boyce Kay and Caitlin Shaw of The Past in Visual Culture Essays on Memory, Nostalgia and the Media (McFarland, 2016) and author of the monograph Women in Neoliberal Post ..read more

The Fantasy/Animation podcast finally tackles the seminal Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), with Episode 138 looking at Pixar’s computer-animated feature and the film that transformed animation in Hollywood - and beyond - into a digital medium. Joining Chris and Alex to examine Toy Story’s computerised production and the pleasures of its pristine visual illusionism is Dr Lucy Fife Donaldson, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews, whose work focuses on film and television style, audiovisual design and 'below-the-line' labour, performance and the body, and videographic c ..read more

Footnote #46 responds to a listener email by focusing on the speeds and spaces of the “multiplanar” image, a term theorised in Thomas Lamarre’s writing on anime and its techniques which looks at how motion is able to divide animated landscapes into different planes of action. In this episode, Chris treats Alex to a rundown of Lamarre’s work on multiplanarity via the author’s citation of the optical logic of foreground and background spaces in relation to the window of a moving train; the particular geometric perspectives of anime against the graphic “hyper-three-dimensionality” of contemporary ..read more

Episode 137 appropriately begins at the end of the commercially and critically successful Indiana Jones franchise with this discussion of the fifth and final feature Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (James Mangold, 2023) featuring special guest Dr Sarah Thomas. Sarah is Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media in the School of Arts, whose research expertise centres on stardom/celebrity, media industries, and screen performance in Hollywood and transnational cinemas. She is the author of James Mason (BFI, 2018), Peter Lorre - Face Maker: Constructing Stardom and Performance in Hollywood ..read more

Chris and Alex once again draw on the expertise of Dr Peter Kunze (Tulane University) for this discussion of the form and function of the period critically and culturally known as the Disney Renaissance. Listen as they reflect on the complex and often contradictory place of the Renaissance as a crucial phase of renewal within Disney’s own internal history; the contribution made to the studio’s animated features by the repeating presence of key creative personnel; the influential role of Broadway upon Disney’s corporate synergy and the formal interplay between a ‘Broadway style’ and 1980s and 1 ..read more

The author of Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance (Rutgers University Press, 2023), Dr. Peter Kunze (Tulane University), is the special guest for Episode 136 of the podcast which looks at the impact of Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, 1991) and both the industrial and stylistic stakes of the film’s adoption of a Broadway style of musical arrangement. Topics include the film’s place within the Disney Renaissance period of the studio’s animated features and the role of key figures like Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Howard A ..read more

A deep dive into the U.S. animation studio Hanna-Barbera provides the focus of Footnote #44, as Chris and Alex are once again joined by Dr. Jared Bahir Browsh to discuss the origins of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s influential and prolific production company that strengthened the cartoon’s move from theatrical exhibition to television. Topics include the studio’s origins and defining animated products; their particular application of limited animation and the relationship to elements of character and background design; the industrial and aesthetic circumstances that came to support their ..read more

Chris and Alex are delighted to welcome Dr. Jared Bahir Browsh (Assistant Teaching Professor, University of Colorado Boulder) to the podcast to discuss William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s landmark animated sitcom The Flintstones (1960-1966), the first cartoon series to occupy a prime time slot on U.S. television. Listen as they discuss Dr Browsh’s research into the political economics of the media and his recent book Hanna-Barbera: A History (2022) through a consideration of The Flintstones as a highly influential animated product, one whose Stone Age setting, multi-episode narratives, and anar ..read more

Fresh from their discussion of Wish (Chris Buck & Fawn Veerasunthorn, 2023), Chris and Alex are once again joined by Dr Robyn Muir, Lecturer in Media and Communication (University of Surrey), author of The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Analysis (2023), and founder and director of the Disney, Culture and Society Research Network to discuss the historical and cultural power of Disney princesses, a phenomenon that traverses films, merchandise, and several ancillary media. Topics for Footnote #43 include the industrial framing of Disney femininity and its politics of inclusion and exc ..read more

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 acco ..read more