Suburban Fantastic Cinema, by Angus McFadzean (introduction)

SUBURBAN FANTASTIC CINEMA GROWING UP IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY

ANGUS McFADZEAN

INTRODUCTION

‘Suburban fantastic cinema’ is a name that designates a set of Hollywood movies that started to appear in the 1980s, in which pre-teen and teenage boys living within the suburbs are called upon to confront a disruptive fantastic force – ghosts, aliens, vampires, gremlins and malevolent robots.

These films emerged out of adult-focused, suburban-set melodramas, children’s fantasy stories, and old-fashioned sf, horror, fantasy and adventure films and television mainly of the 1950s, and became synonymous with the work of Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, Robert Zemeckis and Chris Columbus.

Typically marketed as children’s films or ‘family’ films, they were key parts of the childhood of late-Generation Xer’s and millennials. Indeed, suburban fantastic movies have been some of the top box-office performers of the last forty years. This suggests that they are not only well-made films in their own right, but that they are also tapping into something important within Western culture generally over the last forty years.

This book is the first attempt to bring this set of films together for critical scrutiny. It will explore the history of suburban fantastic cinema and develop a theory about these films. They will be defined by the synchronisation of a pre-teen or teenager’s personal dilemmas with the intrusion of a fantastic event. The protagonist’s melodrama develops in parallel with the crisis of the fantastic, and when the fantastic crisis is resolved, the protagonist’s melodrama is also resolved. On one level, this synchronisation permits a narrative of maturation. The protagonist is maladjusted to

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their world and the fantastic brings to crisis this maladjustment as part of a process of growing up. The protagonist learns the value of loyalty, duty, honour, friendship, love and courage. All of their contradictions are resolved with a feeling of magical wonder. However, this synchronisation also permits a narrative of socialisation. By looking closely at suburban fantastic films, we can see that they depict a symbolic moment in which a child is socialised into the dominant ideologies of society. The protagonist’s adventure fundamentally transforms their personality towards internalising a new set of values, which can be summarised as those of patriarchy. They are co-opted by a society of media manipulation, male domination and the rule of multinational capital. And at its most extreme, suburban fantastic cinema showcases a process of magical grooming, in which pre-teens reconcile themselves with even the most troublesome aspects of their society, in exchange for the positive heroic identity that will be validated by society.

This theory will be preceded by a survey of the historical development of the suburban fantastic. Chapter 1 will describe the historical origins of the suburban fantastic in the child-focused fantasy film, the small-town ‘family film’, and sf, horror and fantasy tropes from film and television. Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper, 1982) and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982) were among the first to recognise and exploit the new pre-teen audience and offer representations of the kind of suburban landscape in which they were growing up, as well as representations of the kind of fantasies that were common to the suburbs. The first cycle of Amblin pictures, up to Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985), developed a set of semantic and syntactic traits that other producers went on to develop.

Chapter 2 reviews the history of Hollywood, Amblin and independent productions over the last twenty-five years. Drawing on Rick Altman’s theory of genrification, it identifies some of the major trends of suburban fantastic cinema – its extension into stories with teen and adult protagonists, its use as a subordinate element within a generic mix, and its relationship to other generic developments, such as blockbuster cinema, suburban satires and family films.

Chapters 3–5 move on to elaborate a theory of the suburban fantastic through a number of different perspectives. The main area of focus is the meaning of the element of the fantastic that intrudes into the protagonists’ lives.

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Chapter 3 explores how male identity crises are reflected in the element of the fantastic. Although the appearance of the fantastic joyfully resolves the contradictions in the protagonist’s personal life, it also accelerates the protagonist’s socialisation. Their heroism is established at the cost of an implicit compromise with the patriarchal order. This chapter explores this idea by showing how suburban fantastic cinema focuses on male characters at the expense of female characters, lower class characters and outcasts. Male identity is shown to be torn between the image of the young boy as a robotic weapon that can bring great destruction and the contrasting image of the young boy as a heroic Superman who can save everyone.

Chapter 4 traces the connection between the element of the fantastic and televisual and cinematic images that burst through the screen into the real world. It identifies the different attitudes suburban fantastic cinema has towards television and cinematic images and connects them to a wider privileging of technology and science in these films.

Chapter 5 identifies multinational capital as an invisible force that produces the element of the fantastic disrupting suburbia. This takes the form of government, military and scientific forces, which are often implicated in the appearance of the fantastic. We look at stories that make suburbia appear irredeemably corporate and contrast them with stories where suburbia and the fantastic are naturalised. We also consider the representation of suburban property developers and explain the symbolic importance of suburbia within suburban fantastic cinema.

Through Chapters 3–5 we consider some of the key examples of suburban fantastic cinema (Explorers (Joe Dante, 1985), The Monster Squad (Fred Dekker, 1987), Matinee (Joe Dante, 1993) and Jumanji (Joe Johnston, 1995)) in order to explore variations of this sub-genre. Finally, Chapter 6 considers the most recent development in suburban fantastic cinema, a loosening of the relationship between the protagonist and the element of the fantastic. This is apparent in Hollywood productions, as well as in self-conscious pastiches of the suburban fantastic that are here called ‘reflexive’ suburban fantastic films. Super 8 (J.J. Abrams, 2011), Stranger Things (TV, 2016–) and IT (Andy Muschietti, 2017) are reviewed for the way that they consciously reference the history of the suburban fantastic, at the same time as adapting the sub-genre in response to new social,

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political, and technological realities and audience demographics. Indeed, it is through the emergence of these self-conscious suburban fantastic ďŹ lms that it has become possible to see the suburban fantastic sub-genre clearly for the ďŹ rst time.

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This study of American movies in which pre-teen 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 – begins in the early 1980s with Poltergeist and E.T. and a cycle of films made

by Ambling Entertainment. The suburban fantastic then established itself as a popular commercial model combining coming-of-age melodramas with elements drawn from science fiction, fantasy, and horror. It discusses some of the key instances of this sub-genre, 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 under-appreciated Hollywood films as the primary cinematic representation of late-twentieth-century American childhood.

“A MASTER CLASS IN FILM GENRE CRITICISM. THROUGH CAREFUL AND CLOSE ANALYSIS OF THE FILMS IN ITS CORPUS, THIS IS A GREAT EXAMPLE OF HOW MUCH MEANING IS LATENT IN POPULAR FILMS THAT ARE SOMETIMES DISMISSED AS MERELY JUVENILE OR CRASSLY COMMERCIAL.” BRADLEY SCHAUER, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

ANGUS McFADZEAN is a tutor in English literature at the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education.

THE SHORT CUTS SERIES is a comprehensive list of introductory texts covering the full spectrum of Film Studies, specifically designed for building an individually-styled library for all students and enthusiasts of cinema and popular culture.

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cover image E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982) © Universal Pictures

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