Episode 79 - Bagpuss (Peter Firmin & Oliver Postgate, 1974) (with Chris Pallant)
Bagpuss (Peter Firmin & Oliver Postgate, 1974).
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!
Episode 79 marks a special edition of the podcast, recorded back in February 2021 as part of the virtual Fantasy/Animation @ Canterbury Anifest event where Chris and Alex curated a series of podcasts, themed blog posts, a roundtable on the topic of diversity and inclusion (returning to the Anti-Racist Syllabus) and a live Q&A, as well as premiering a brand new Fantasy/Animation podcast episode released exclusively for festival attendees. This Anifest special tackles Bagpuss (1974) the 13-episode stop-motion television series from the celebrated Kent-based Smallfilms studio. Joining Chris and Alex to talk through his ongoing research into both Smallfilms and its founders Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate is Festival Director of the Canterbury Anifest Dr Chris Pallant, who is also a Reader in Film Studies at Canterbury Christ Church University and President of the Society for Animation Studies. Chris has published widely across film and media studies, including his monograph Demystifying Disney: A History of Disney Feature Animation (Bloomsbury, 2011), and collections Storyboarding: A Critical History (Palgrave, 2015), Animated Landscapes: History, Form and Function (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: New Perspectives on Production, Reception, Legacy (2021). In this episode, Chris gives us a rundown of his favourite Top 5 Bagpuss episodes, with other topics including the modular structure of the series and its bricolage of storytelling and comic effects; the pleasures of ‘objectness’ vs. anthropomorphic representation; Bagpuss’ particular kind of character expressivity, pose and movement; fantasy rhetoric and the image of the ‘storyteller’; the vocal performances (and musical designs) of folk singing duo Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner; the seduction of the animation archive and locating lost production materials; how to tell animation history, and what gets include/omitted from industrial narratives; and the status of Bagpuss as a signature Smallfilms property, including the role of a saggy old cloth cat in shaping histories of this small but influential animation studio.
Suggested Readings
Moseley, Rachel. 2016. Hand-Made Television: Stop-Frame Animation for Children in Britain, 1961-1974. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Norris, Van. 2014. British Television Animation 1997-2010: Drawing Comic Tradition. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pallant, Chris. 2011. Demystifying Disney: A History of Disney Feature Animation. London: Bloomsbury.
Pallant, Chris, and Steven Price. 2015. Storyboarding: A Critical History. London: Palgrave.
Pallant, Chris, ed. 2015. Animated Landscapes: History, Form and Function. London: Bloomsbury.
Pallant, Chris, and Christopher Holliday, eds. 2021. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: New Perspectives on Production, Reception, Legacy. London: Bloomsbury.
Warner, Marina. 2014. Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Warner, Marina. 2018. Fairy Tale: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.