Suburban Fantastic Cinema is a study of American movies in which
preteen and teenage boys living in the suburbs are called upon to combat
a disruptive force that takes the form of popular cultural figures of
the fantastic--aliens, ghosts, vampires, demons, and more. Beginning in
the 1980s with Poltergeist and E.T. (both 1982) and a cycle of films
made by Amblin Entertainment, the suburban fantastic established itself
as a popular commercial model combining coming-of-age melodramas with
elements drawn from science fiction, fantasy, and horror. The films that
exemplify the subgenre generally focus on a young male protagonist who,
at the outset, chafes at his stifling suburban milieu, wherein power is
invested in whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality. A fantastic
occurrence intervenes - the arrival of an alien, a ghost, or some other
magical or otherworldly force - threatening this familiar order,
thrusting the young man - at first unwittingly - into the role of
defender and upholder of the social order. He is able to rescue the
suburban social order, and in doing so normalizes (for himself and for
the primarily white, male, adolescent audience) its values.
This study discusses some of the key instances of this subgenre, such as
Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Jumanji (1995), and
Small Soldiers (1998), as well as its more recent resurgence in
Stranger Things (2016-) and IT (2017). Exploring the importance of
suburbia as a setting and the questionable ideological blindness of its
heroes, this book reveals these underappreciated Hollywood films as the
primary cinematic representation of late-twentieth-century American
childhood.
