Episode 152 - Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro & Mark Gustafson, 2022) (with Lisa Scoggin)
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro & Mark Gustafson, 2022).
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!
Chris and Alex delve into the stop-motion world of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro & Mark Gustafson, 2022) for Episode 152 of the podcast, joined in this discussion of loss, love, control, and craft by musicologist and animation historian Dr Lisa Scoggin. Lisa is an expert in animation and its relationship to music, publishing widely on everything from United Productions of America (UPA) to Cartoon Saloon, and with expertise that covers film and television music, ludomusicology, and twentieth-century American and British art music. Topics include where Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio fits within Hollywood’s growing stop-motion renaissance; puppetry, agency, monstrosity, and the “terrible joy” of Pinocchio’s creation; the film’s wartime context and contribution of its Fascist imagery to images of collective national trauma; Geppetto’s narration and twice-told tales foregrounded as memory; the ‘lyrical’ role of lullabies and folk songs in depicting Pinocchio’s self-growth; and what del Toro’s film tells us about how things that take time to build can be destroyed in an instant.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
Suggested Readings
Mihailova, Mihaela, ed. 2021. Coraline - A Closer Look at Studio LAIKA's Stop-Motion Witchcraft. London: Bloomsbury.
Scoggin, Lisa. 2016. The Music of Animaniacs: Postmodern Nostalgia in a Cartoon World. Sheffield, MA: Pendragon Press.
Scoggin, Lisa. 2020. “Grief, Myth, and Music in Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea.” Animation Studies Journal 15.
Scoggin, Lisa, and Dana Plank, eds. 2023 The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music: Making Movement Sing. London: Routledge.