Episode 132 - Life, Animated (Roger Ross Williams, 2016) (with Janet Harbord)
Life, Animated (Roger Ross Williams, 2016).
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!
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**
Suggested Readings
Berry, Chris, Janet Harbord, and Rachel O. Moore, eds. 2013. Public Space-Media Space. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Harbord, Janet. 2015. “Agamben’s Cinema: Psychology versus an Ethical Form of Life.” Necsus European Journal of Media Studies 4, no. 2 (Autumn): 13-30.
Harbord, Janet. 2016. Ex-centric Cinema: Giorgio Agamben and Film Archaeology (Thinking Cinema Series). London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Murray, Stuart. 2008. Representing Autism: Culture, Narrative, Fascination. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Murray, Stuart. 2012. Autism. London: Routledge.
Pomerance, Murray, and R. Barton Palmer, eds. 2022. Autism in Film and Television: On the Island. Austin: University of Texas Press.