Episode 112 - House of the Dragon (Ryan Condal & George R. R. Martin, 2021-) (with Kim Akass)

House of the Dragon (Ryan Condal & George R. R. Martin, 2021-).

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

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**

Suggested Readings

• Akass, Kim, and Janet McCabe. 2004. Reading Sex and the City. London: I.B. Tauris.

• Akass, Kim, and Janet McCabe. 2005. Reading Six Feet Under: TV To Die For. London: I.B. Tauris. 

• Akass, Kim, and Janet McCabe. 2006. Reading The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television. London: I.B. Tauris.

• Karlyn, Kathleen Rowe. 2011. Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism on Screen. Austin: University of Texas Press.

• McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass, eds. 2006. Reading Desperate Housewives: Beyond the White Picket Fence. London: I.B. Tauris.

• McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass, eds. 2007. Quality TV: Contemporary American TV and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris.

• Petersen, Anne. 2017. Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman. New York: Plume.

• Rowe, Kathleen. 1995. The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter. Austin: University of Texas Press.

• Sergeant, Alexander. 2021. “Across the narrow screen: televisual world-building in Game of Thrones.” Screen 62, no. 2 (Summer): 193–213.

• Tyrer, Ben. 2018. “The Reality of Fantasy: VFX as Fantasmatic Supplement in Game of Thrones (2011-).” In Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres, edited by Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant, 91-106. London: Routledge.