Episode 142 - The Thief of Bagdad (Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger & Tim Whelan, 1940)
The Thief of Bagdad (Michael Powell, 1940).
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!
The Fantasy/Animation podcast is soon to break for the summer, but not before a few more episodes to round off the series - this time, it is the “Arabian fantasy” The Thief of Bagdad (Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger & Tim Whelan, 1940) that provides the focus for Episode 142, as Chris and Alex try to make sense of its story and style drawn from the “One Thousand and One Nights” collection of Middle Eastern folktales and its reproduction of Orientialist imaginaries and iconographies. Topics include The Thief of Bagdad’s sustained fascination with the Orient and storytelling interest in the exoticism and erotics of magic and spells; fantasy and animation’s historical links with the development of Technicolor, and how The Thief of Bagdad marks the inaugural use of the Technicolor blue-screen travelling matte process; the stylistic influence of Powell’s film on the characters and setting of Walt Disney’s Aladdin (Ron Clements & John Musker, 1992); and how the film manifests insidious tropes of Empire within its broader Anti-Arab sentiment.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
Suggested Readings
Butler, David. 2009. Fantasy Cinema: Impossible Worlds on Screen. London: Wallflower Press.
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
Semmerling, Tim. 2006. Evil Arabs in American Popular Film: Orientalist Fear. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. 1994. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London and New York: Routledge.
Sim, Gerald. 2014. The Subject of Film and Race: Retheorizing Politics, Ideology and Cinema. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Thomas, Ebony Elizabeth. 2019. The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. New York: New York University Press.