FOOTNOTE PODCAST — footnote episodes

The Fantasy/Animation Footnotes continue with this latest examination of the many ‘rhetorics’ of fantasy that accounts for the mechanics by which fantasy writers can and do achieve their fantastical effects. Drawn from Farah Mendlesohn’s influential work on fantasy literature Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008), this Footnote has Alex reflect on the categorisation of fantasy and the value of Mendlesohn’s self-declared “tour around the skeletons and exoskeletons of the genre” to distinguish and divide kinds of storytelling practices.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantOctober 28, 2024THEORY, PSYCHOANALYSIS, UNCONSCIOUSComment

Footnote #51 - Cinema and the City

The Fantasy/Animation Footnotes return with this consideration of the many relationships that cinema can have with - and to - the city. Building on their recent episode on Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007), Chris and Alex reflect on those scholars who have placed cinema in dialogue with issues related to space, urban design, and sociology, and who ask questions about how a city is represented onscreen, how its spaces are organised and mapped, and the stakes of re-animating a ‘real’ space to transform an otherwise authentic and accessible locale.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantOctober 14, 2024SPECTACLE, CITY, SPACE, LOCATIONComment

Footnote #50 - Postfeminism (with Eve Benhamou)

The Fantasy/Animation Footnotes reach their half-century as Chris and Alex are once again joined by Dr Eve Benhamou, teaching fellow in Film Studies at the University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France to examine the contradictory cultural and political space of postfeminism. A much-debated topic, postfeminism typically pivots on gendered discourses of agency, autonomy, potency, and physical empowerment.

Footnote #49 - Cyborgs

Footnote 49 looks at the fascinating figure of the cyborg as an embodiment of hybridity, resistance, and rebellion, interrogating the role of cyborgs as surrogate figurations that representing disparate forms of identity within both popular media culture and social reality.

Footnote #48 - Visual Effects

Having already tackled the topic of special effects in an earlier Footnote, this latest episode instead focuses on visual effects (VFX) as a way to think through the practical/digital distinction that has come to culturally and industrially define the specificity and spectacle of VFX imagery.

Footnote #47 - Aura

Art’s relationship to the auratic is the focus of Footnote #47, which engages cinema’s historical relation to ‘aura’ via the foundational work of Walter Benjamin who argued for technology’s “withering” of art’s uniqueness of space and time thanks to the potential for the creation of a “plurality of copies” that shift art’s “unique existence.”

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantApril 29, 2024SPECTACLE, AURA, SPECTATORSHIP, TECHNOLOGYComment

Footnote #46 - Multiplanarity

Footnote #46 responds to a listener email by focusing on the speeds and spaces of the “multiplanar” image, a term theorised in Thomas Lamarre’s writing on anime and its techniques which looks at how motion is able to divide animated landscapes into different planes of action.

Footnote #45 - The Disney Renaissance (with Peter Kunze)

Chris and Alex once again draw on the expertise of Dr Peter Kunze (Tulane University) for this discussion of the form and function of the period critically and culturally known as the Disney Renaissance.

Footnote #44 - Hanna-Barbera (with Jared Bahir Browsh)

A deep dive into the U.S. animation studio Hanna-Barbera provides the focus of Footnote #44, as Chris and Alex are once again joined by Dr Jared Bahir Browsh to discuss the origins of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s influential and prolific production company that strengthened the cartoon’s move from theatrical exhibition to television.

Footnote #43 - Disney Princesses (with Robyn Muir)

Fresh from their discussion of Wish (Chris Buck & Fawn Veerasunthorn, 2023), Chris and Alex are once again joined by Dr Robyn Muir, Lecturer in Media and Communication (University of Surrey), author of The Disney Princess Phenomenon: A Feminist Analysis (2023), and founder and director of the Disney, Culture and Society Research Network to discuss the historical and cultural power of Disney princesses, a phenomenon that traverses films, merchandise, and several ancillary media.

Footnote #42 - Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories

Following up last week’s feature-length episode on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003), the latest Footnote looks at J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal essay “On Fairy Stories” that engages the definitions, origins, and applications of the fairy story.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantFebruary 19, 2024WORLD, FANTASY, LITERATUREComment

Footnote #41 - Canons

Footnote #41 looks at canon formation and value judgments in relation to the selection and privilege of art and culture’s masterworks, with Chris and Alex tackling the relationship between canons and consensus.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantFebruary 5, 2024CANON, HISTORY, CURATION, AUDIENCE, FANDOMComment

Footnote #40 - Puppetry

What is puppet animation, and are puppets a form of animation? The historical and theoretical implications of fantasy and animation’s relationship to puppet performance are the focus of Footnote #40.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantJanuary 22, 2024PUPPETRY, LABOUR, TECHNOLOGY, BODY, ARTISTComment

Footnote #39 - Special Effects

What is so special about special effects? What role does technological innovation play in their convincing construction of illusion? What distinguishes ‘special’ from ‘visual’ effects? In this Footnote episode, Chris and Alex play with ideas of special effects in relation to fantasy and animation.

Footnote #38 - Storybook Openings

Footnote #38 tackles the recurrent motif of the storybook that so often begins Disney’s animated features, but which also takes other forms and styles as part of the studio’s sustained dramatisation of storytelling.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantNovember 27, 2023WALT DISNEY, NARRATIVE, STORYTELLING, STYLE, HOLLYWOODComment

Footnote #37 - Silent Cinema (with Lawrence Napper)

Special guest Dr Lawrence Napper, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London and expert in early silent and British cinemas, joins Chris and Alex once again - this time to talk about silent cinema in this Footnote episode of the podcast.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantNovember 13, 2023SILENT CINEMA, FILM HISTORY, TECHNOLOGYComment

Footnote #36 - Horror Cinema (with Stacey Abbott)

What is horror cinema, and where did it come from? What are its unsettling spectatorial effects and uncomfortable provocations? What codes and conventions define its big screen history, and at which points does it splinter into slasher sub-genres and monstrous cycles? What role does the gothic and supernatural play in its generic construction? And how does the body as both threat and as threatened play into horror’s fascination with the impacts of difference and otherness?

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantOctober 30, 2023HORROR, GENRE, HALLOWEENComment

Footnote #35 - Twice Told Tales

Chris and Alex return to the Footnote format for this latest episode on “twice told tales” - a term that, following its Shakespearean origins, has been applied by writers of fantasy to refer to fantasy’s relationship to oral literature and fairytales. Topics include the fairytale’s codification of oral culture; legacies of literary structures and the power of (re)telling the beats of a story; shifting narrative templates and the act of adding one story ‘on top’ of another; and the spectatorial pleasure of receiving the fantasy of twice told creativity.

FOOTNOTE PODCASTChristopher Holliday and Alexander SergeantOctober 16, 2023NARRATIVE, FANTASY, AUDIENCE, STORYTELLINGComment

Footnote #34 - Science Fiction (with Mark Bould)

Chris and Alex are joined once more by Mark Bould, Professor of Film and Literature at the University of West England, for this Footnote episode that explores the origins and definitions of science-fiction storytelling.

Footnote #33 - Can Colour Blind People Work in VFX? (with Chris McKenna)

Special guest Chris McKenna, current Head of Creative Operations at the VFX studio Moving Picture Company, joins Chris and Alex for this latest Footnote episode on the VFX industry, with a particular focus on artists with colour blindness and advice on the best avenues for getting into animation lighting and design.