CFP: The Global Suburban Fantastic
Oxford
Organization: University of Oxford, Department for Continuing Education
Title: The Global Suburban Fantastic
Editors: Dr Angus McFadzean (Oxford University Department of Continuing Education) and Dr Pedro Lauria (Universidade Federal Fluminense UFF, Brazil).
We are soliciting chapters/articles for an edited academic book on topics relating to the suburban fantastic subgenre of Hollywood cinema. Proposals from academics and independent scholars covering the reception of suburban fantastic cinema within different global film markets will be considered. We are particularly interested in contributions from scholars writing on the reception and production of movies in Asia, Africa, Oceania, Continental Europe, Canada and Hispanic America.
Suburban fantastic cinema is a Hollywood sub-genre that emerged to prominence in the 1980s. Mixing familiar science fiction, horror and fantasy tropes with the iconography of contemporary American suburbia, these films offer coming-of-age narratives in which pre-teens encounter fantastic entities that accelerate their personal issues around family, friends, bullies, love or generally their place in the world. The struggle with the fantastic externalises their personal dilemmas and usually, the pre-teens defeat the fantastic and resolve their issues. However, the manner of resolution tends to confirm their heroic masculinity and identify them as suitable heirs to a patriarchal, racial and class-divided social order, one particular to neoliberal capitalism in the late twentieth century.
Examples of films that participate in this model include Poltergeist (1981) and E.T. (1982), Gremlins (1984), The Goonies (1985), Back to the Future (1985), Explorers (1985), D.A.R.Y.L. (1985), Flight of the Navigator (1987), and Harry and the Hendersons (1987), to name only the most famous and popular from this period. Suburban fantastic movies were among the highest grossing box-office successes of their years and this propelled Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and other production companies to create further iterations of the sub-genre.
Through the 1990s and 2000s, the success of the sub-genre was maintained through such films and TV shows as Home Alone (1990), Jumanji (1995), Small Soldiers (1998), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), along with various hybrids and liminal instances (Jurassic Park, Toy Story, Addams Family, etc.). But in 2016 the success of the Netflix streaming series Stranger Things (2016-), which spawned its own subsequent sequel seasons and a host of merchandising opportunities, inspired a resurgence in suburban fantastic fiction that attempted to capitalise on nostalgia for 1980s Amblin movies.
This collection will expand our understanding of this sub-genre by focusing on the reception of these movies and TV shows in different national film markets (for example, Japan, India, China, Turkey, Mexico, Canada, Russia, South Africa, and the Middle East). Each contributor will focus on a different national film market and cover different aspects of the reception of suburban fantastic cinema.
Contributions could include, but are not limited to, the following topics:
· Release dates and significant delays in release (for example, receiving the ’80s movies in the ’90s); the impact this had on the reception and chronological understanding of the subgenre.
· The presence of suburban fantastic media on national TV networks and its intersections with other productions (films of other genres, soap operas, cartoons; etc.), forming an audiovisual culture of its own.
· Editing and censorship of movies; ratings and classifications.
· Dubbing, subtitling, translation and mistranslation of dialogue.
· The home video market versus theatrical release.
· Marketing strategies, promotion, alternative poster art, trailers, forms of repackaging.
· Reviews, generic connections made between titles.
· Box-office successes or failures of Hollywood ‘80s movies in international markets, and possible contrasts with the domestic release of these films.
· Comparisons between the suburban iconography of these movies with the real-world urban environments of audiences in specific markets.
· Interaction of these movies with political, economic and sociocultural realities, the Cold War, the Eastern bloc, geopolitical tensions, American hegemony, cultural imperialism.
· Legacy of these movies in these respective markets amongst the millennial generations.
· Interaction with forms of cultural nostalgia for the late twentieth century’s politics and culture (ostnostalgie, yugostalgia, Soviet nostalgia).
· Thematic concerns with childhood, gender, race, sexuality, patriarchy, and capitalism.
· Imitations, remakes, versions produced in domestic markets (i.e. the versions of E.T. in Argentina, Turkey, India, and South Africa)
· The success or failure of domestic variants.
· The reception of the contemporary revival of suburban fantastic media in the 2010s, especially Stranger Things.
· Contemporary instances of suburban fantastic cinema in specific markets (for example, Death of Nintendo (Philippines, 2020), a tribute to Stand by Me).
Submissions
To express interest and discuss submitting a proposal, please contact the editors at suburbanfantasticcfp@gmail.com. Prospective authors should contact the editors with any questions, including potential topics not listed above.
Please submit a 300-500 word abstract of your proposed chapter contribution as a Word Document (not PDF) with a brief bio (in the same document), current position and experience with the topic, affiliation (if any), and complete contact information to editors Angus McFadzean and Pedro Lauria by May 31, 2025. Full chapters of 6000-8000 words including all notes and references are likely due December 2025. A publisher has shown preliminary interest.
Proposals should be for new essays, not republications of previous works.
Please share this announcement with anyone you believe would be interested in contributing to this volume. Proposals from academics and independent scholars in relevant fields will be considered.
Note: Acceptance of a proposed abstract does not guarantee the acceptance of the full chapter.
Angus K McFadzean
