Episode 164 - The Polar Express (Robert Zemeckis, 2004)
The Polar Express (Robert Zemeckis, 2004).
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!
The Fantasy/Animation Christmas special pulls into the proverbial station with this look at The Polar Express (Robert Zemeckis, 2004), a computer-animated adaptation of the 1985 children’s book by Chris Van Allsburg and a film noted for its pioneering - if at times highly uncanny - application of motion capture technology as it portrays the magic of Christmas Eve through a young boy as he journeys to the North Pole. Topics for Chris and Alex in this episode include the state of computer graphics in the early-2000s and the emergence of the cyberstar; motion capture performance and the mechanics of virtual stardom; simulation, belief, time, and the digital long-take; strategies of narration and metaleptic transgressions between the world of the telling and the world of the told; fantasy and agency embodied through Tom Hanks as he inhabits multiple roles on- and off-screen; and how The Polar Express offers audiences a festive spectacular defined by the same shifting registers of fantasy that have shaped screen representations of Christmas and the magic of what it means to believe. Happy holidays!
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
Suggested Readings
Aldred, Jessica. 2006. “All Aboard The Polar Express: A ‘Playful’ Change of Address in the Computer-Generated Blockbuster.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 1, no. 2 (November): 153–172.
Brown, William. 2013. Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age. New York: Berghahn.
Genette, Gérard. 1980. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Gunning, Tom. 2006. “Gollum and Golem: Special Effects and the Technology of Artificial Bodies.” In From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, eds. Ernest Mathijs and Murray Pomerance, 319–350. Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V.
Todorov, Tzvetan. 1975. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wolf, Mark J.P. 2003. “The Technological Construction of Performance.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 9, no. 4: 48–59.