Footnote #19 - Morphing

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!

Animation’s potential for quick change is the focus of Footnote #19, as Chris and Alex go through questions of transformation via a 10-minute look at morphing. Discussions turn to the spectacle of fluid, flexible bodies in relation to more concrete states of being; connections to digital VFX as an enabling tool that articulates pristine images of fragmentation and disintegration that push at the boundaries of realism; the morph’s implied stability as it moves from one form to another; and the politics of selecting an identity in relation to queer images of mobility-in-performance.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

Suggested Readings

• Ndalianis, Angela. 2000. “Special Morphing Magic, and the 1990s Cinema of Attractions.” In Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick Change, edited by Vivian Sobchack, 250–272. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.

• Pierson, Michele. 2002. “The Wonder Years and Beyond: 1989-1995,” in Special Effects: Still in Search of Wonder, 93–136. New York: Columbia University Press.

• Wells, Paul. 1998. Understanding Animation. London: Routledge.