When researching my contribution to Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant’s collection Fantasy/Animation, I examined a range of sources that demonstrated the enormous box office success, both in the United States and in the rest of the world, of fantasy and science-fiction movies, and of ‘animation’ (a category here understood to include live action films heavily reliant on computer generated imagery) in recent decades.
Read MoreFantasy and animation, especially when combined, are often associated within popular discourse with children’s media. Referring predominantly to stop-motion animation, this post offers some thoughts on what the intrinsic association between children, fantasy and animation might mean in the context of another genre that has a more problematic relationship with child audiences: horror. Although horror is rarely considered a children’s genre, horror films addressed to children do exist, and across various forms of animation and live-action: the stop-motion animated Frankenweenie (Tim Burton, 2012), CG-animated Monster House (Gil Kenan, 2006), or the live-action Hocus Pocus (Kenny Ortega, 1993).
Read MoreIf a dragon were to suddenly swoop down from the clouds, spread its huge wings over London, and wrap its mighty body around Big Ben, it would certainly be strange. Unusual. Weird. Fantastic. Maybe even queer. Of course, such an incredible event is not about to happen. Dragons, faeries, wizards, elves, hobbits – all remain firmly in the realm of fantasy.
Read MoreWelcome to Fantasy/Animation! Co-founded by Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant, Fantasy/Animation seeks to examine the relationship that exists between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation.
This network began as an edited collection Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres (Routledge AFI Film Reader, 2018). As editors, we worked alongside a number of world-renowned film and media scholars to produce a collection that examined a range of animated fantasy media, from the avant-garde experimental animation of Bret Battey to HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Read More
