Episode 15 - Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982)

Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982).

Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982).

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!

In Episode 15, Chris and Alex log on to Tron (Steven Lisberger, 1982), a watershed moment in the history of computer animation and one that taps into the early electronic spectacle of digital visual effects within a Hollywood context. Representing the wonder of - if not the cultural anxieties surrounding - the newness of computers and virtual reality (as well as the growing popularity of videogames), the film reframes cyberspace as a complex three-dimensional fantasy world. Tron invites spectators into the labyrinthine geographies of hardware and software, asking us to marvel at a series of magical mainframes but also to speculate over what digital technology might look like, and how it could be represented onscreen.

Suggested Readings

  • Mendlesohn, Farah. 2008. Rhetorics of Fantasy. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

  • Pierson, Michele. 1998. “Welcome to Basementwood: Computer Generated Special Effects and Wired Magazine.” Postmodern Culture 8, no. 3 (May), available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/1608.

  • Pierson, Michele. 2002. Special Effects: Still in Search of Wonder. Columbia: Columbia University Press.

PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantSPECIAL EFFECTS, DIGITAL, COMPUTER ANIMATION, TECHNOLOGY, VIDEOGAMESComment