Chris and Alex take to the basketball court for a sports-themed instalment of the podcast by looking at Space Jam (Joe Pytka, 1996), the part-animated, part-Michael Jordan sports comedy that has lots to say about the spectacle of stylistic hybridity, animation’s longstanding relationship to sport, and nostalgia via its many callbacks to Golden Age Hollywood cartooning all through the lens of NBA basketball. Joining them for Episode 70 is Professor Paul Wells, who is Director of the Animation Academy at Loughborough University, as well as being an internationally established scholar, screenwriter and director, working across and within both academia and industry contexts. Paul’s work has been central to the study, practice and research of animation as a field, and he has also written and directed numerous projects for theatre, radio, television and film. Listen as they discuss Space Jam as a laboratory for thinking about sport as a social metaphor for how societies should run; animation’s status as controlled drama (versus the unscripted nature of sport); notions of the professional versus the amateur in relation to sport’s rules, codes and conventions; the cultural practice of stars Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny, and their ability to act as ciphers for the contemporary moment; how the medium provides a version of ‘perfect motion’ through its excessive lyricism; the politics of race and what Space Jam tells us about black identities and whiteness through its black musical vernacular; and how Joe Pytka’s film reveals how animation can manage the very metaphors of sport.
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) (with Nick Jones)
Footnote #31 - Claymation
Monster House (2006) (with Jane Batkin)
Footnote #30 - Franchises
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) (with Rhianna Dhillon)
Footnote #29 - Transmedia
Arab Animation (1937-2015) (with Omar Sayfo)
Footnote #28 - Adult Animation
Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) (with David Sorfa)
Footnote #27 - Surrealism
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) (with Jyotsna Kapur)
Footnote #26 - The Cinema of Attractions
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) (with Daniel White)
Footnote #25 - Photorealism
Peppa Pig Revisited (with Sarah Ann Kennedy)
Footnote #24 - Hyper-Realism
The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)
Footnote #23 - Phantasy
Czech Animation (1946-2011) (with Adam Whybray)
Footnote #22 - Boiling
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