Episode 131 - The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson & Frank Oz, 1982) (with Tanya Kirk)
The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson & Frank Oz, 1982).
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!
2024 kicks off with this episode on The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson & Frank Oz, 1982), recorded at the British Library with Tanya Kirk, Lead Curator of Printed Heritage Collections 1601–1900, and one of the organisers and curators of the Fantasy: Realms of Imagination exhibition that runs at the library until February of this year. The exhibition explores the history of the fantasy genre from its origins in fairy and folk tales to more recent incarnations in literature and film, and features original artwork, props, and costumes from well-known fantasy media including The Dark Crystal, as well as fantasy inspired tabletop and video games. Topics in this new year’s instalment include histories of craft and puppetry’s links to industry, skill, labour, and the pantomimic; acts of curation when it comes to preserving fantasy and animation’s archaeologies of materiality; the cultures and traditions central to The Dark Crystal’s fictional world; 1980s VFX technologies and the pleasure of characters moved ‘by hand’; and where Jim Henson and puppet performances fit into the British Library’s exhibition of fantasy storytelling.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
Suggested Readings
Krzywinska, Tanya. 2006. “Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests, and Backstories: World Creation and Rhetorics of Myth in World of Warcraft.” Games and Culture 1, no. 4: 383-396.
Perkins, V. F. 2005. “Where is the world? The horizon of events in movie fiction.” In Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed Analysis of Film, edited by John Gibbs and Douglas Pye, 16-41. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Sergeant, Alexander. 2019. “Crafted wonder: the puppet’s place within popular special effects reception.” In The Crafty Animator: Handmade, Craft-based Animation and Cultural Value (Palgrave Animation series), edited by Caroline Ruddell and Paul Ward, 181-202. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Available here.
Warner, Marina. 1994. From the Beast to the Blonde: on Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. London: Vintage.
Warner, Marina. 2018. Fairy Tale: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.