Triple Bladed Sword

We kick off our journey through fantasy film from the 1980s to the 2020s with Conan the Barbarian, the much-maligned box-office hit that kicked off a plague of direct-to-video loincloth knockoffs. Yet it's an important moment in the history of fantasy film, with production design anticipating the "fantasy-as-history" approach of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Furthermore, it's a well-made film in its own right, championing the role of the warrior woman in adult fantasy in ways that are less reductive than other films of the decade. I mention the excellent Fan/Anim podcast in this episode. Here's the link to get there! https://www.fantasy-animation.org/all-episodes

It's the start of a new series on fantasy film from the 1980s to today! This week, I deliver a brief history of fantasy film along with the reason why we're starting in the 1980s and not back in the silent era.

Early in her career, naysayers told Gail Carriger her books "weren't steampunk enough." A little over a decade later, Carriger and a host of female writers are the "top of the pops" on Steampunk lists on Goodreads. This week, I'm talking about how we approach researching literature, and how sometimes, we're missing some of the most Important Things in the world.

Leaning heavily on Scott McCloud and his excellent Understanding Comics, I give a quick breakdown of some of the tools we can use to analyze comics, using Marjorie Liu and San Takeda's brilliant steampunk fantasy, Monstress.

While steampunk's first wave (or trickle?) was mostly narrative, its second wave jumped beyond page and screen and into the real world: from fashion to to music to Maker spaces, steampunk was no longer a fantastic imaginings - you could wear it, work on it, or, in the case of steampunk culture, live it.

Just like Disney, Hiyao Miyazaki's films represent a huge influence on the development of the steampunk aesthetic. While early American steampunk writers were developing a literary subgenre, Miyazaki was doing the same in cinema, from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind to Howl's Moving Castle, leading up to Steamboy, Katsuhiro Otomo's second-wave-steampunk homage to Studio Ghibli's Castle in the Sky.

This lecture takes a look at the influence of Walt Disney and film adaptations of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells's works as a significant influence on the growth of first and second-wave steampunk. Thumbnail Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

A retrospective of the first wave of steampunk, from antecedents to inception to the madcap assortment of comics, games, books, and films that formed the genre's early years.

Using steampunked Star Wars art, this lecture identifies three key features of steampunk narratives and art: technofantasy, retrofuturism, and hyper vintage. Thumbnail image by Bjorn Hurri Music: "Freedom Fighters" by Machinimasound