Episode 89 - Mickey's Christmas Carol (Burny Mattinson, 1983) (with Amy M. Davis)
Mickey's Christmas Carol (Burny Mattinson, 1983).
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!
For the 2021 Christmas special episode of the podcast, Chris and Alex turn to the short Mickey’s Christmas Carol (Burny Mattinson, 1983), the Walt Disney Studio’s cel-animated retelling of the Charles Dickens masterpiece directed and produced by longtime Disney storyboard artist Burny Mattinson. Joining them to discuss Disney’s cultural relationship to Christmas and its longstanding history of festive-themed productions starring its most beloved characters is Dr Amy M. Davis, Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Hull. Amy is the author of numerous books, articles and chapters on Disney and animation, including the monographs Good Girls & Wicked Witches: Women in Disney’s Feature Animation (2006) and Handsome Heroes & Vile Villains: Men in Disney’s Feature Animation (2013), and the recent edited anthology Discussing Disney (John Libbey Publishing, 2019). Listen as they discuss Disney’s synergistic company strategies when it comes to representing Christmas across its multimedia products; animated adaptations and what it means to ‘cast’ fantastical cartoon stars in recognisable roles; Disney, Dickens and even Mickey Mouse himself as master storytellers; the consistency of vocal performance across different iterations and phases of animated characters; the themeable nature of Mickey as he is ‘recostumed’ across time and space; and how Mickey’s Christmas Carol parallels the Mouse House’s relationship to the vault as an audiovisual archive given the cartoon’s heightened reflexivity and engagement with the audience’s media memory.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
Suggested Readings
Elsaesser, Thomas. 2005. “Cinephilia or the Uses of Disenchantment.” In Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory, eds. Marijke de Valck and Malte Hagener, 27-43. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Mason, James. 2018. Disney Connections & Collections: Volume One: Movies. Theme Park Press
Mason, James. 2019. Disney Connections & Collections: Volume Two: Television. Theme Park Press.
McGowan, David. 2018. “Walt Disney Treasures or Mickey Mouse DVDs? Animatophilia, Nostalgia, and the Competing Representations of Theatrical Cartoon Shorts on Home Video.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 13, no. 1: 53-68.
Mittermeier, Sabrina. 2021. A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks. Bristol: Intellect.
Mollet Tracey. 2020. A Cultural History of the Fairy Tale. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sergeant, Alexander. 2019. “High Fantasy Disney: Recontextualising The Black Cauldron.” In Discussing Disney, ed. Amy M. Davis, 53-72. Bloomington, New Barnet: John Libbey.