Episode 113 - Czech Animation (1946-2011) (with Adam Whybray)

Ruka/The Hand (Jiří Trnka, 1965).

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 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**

Suggested Readings

• Baudrillard, Jean. 1994. “The System of Collecting.” In The Cultures of Collecting, eds. John Eisner and Roger Cardinal, 7–24. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• Bell, John. 2008. American Puppet Modernism: Essays on the Material World. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

• Brown, Bill. 2001. “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry, 28 no. 1: 1-22

• Herhuth, Eric. 2016. “The Politics of Animation and the Animation of Politics.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 11, no. 1: 4–22.

• Klein, Melanie. 1930. “The Importance of Symbol Formation in the Development of the Ego.” In The Writings of Melanie Klein Vol. 1, 186-198. London: Hogarth Press.

• Klein, Melanie. 1932. The Psychoanalysis of Children, The Writings of Melanie Klein Vol. 2. London: Hogarth Press.

• Segal, Hanna. 1964. Introduction to the Work of Melanie Klein. London: Hogarth Press.

• Whybray, Adam. 2020. The Art of Czech Animation: A History of Political Dissent and Allegory. London: Bloomsbury.