Article by Pedro Lauria released in Revista de Ciências Humanas da Universidade de Taubaté.
Esse artigo tem uma versão em português: https://oca.observatorio.uff.br/?p=628
Suburban Fantastic is a cinematic subgenre proposed by Angus McFadzean in an article (2017) and later in the book Suburban Fantastic Cinema (2019). In the author’s own words, it is
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.Typicalliy marked as children’s films or “family “ films, they were key parts of the childhood of late-Generation Xer’s and Millenials.” (McFADZEAN, 2019, p.1)
Suburban Fantastic encompasses films like E.T. – The Alien, Gremlins, The Goonies, Back to the Future, Fright Night, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Home Alone. The classification of this subgenre comes from Altman’s (1984; 2000) genre concepts, which simultaneously consider a film’s syntactic and semantic elements.
Syntactically, the subgenre is marked by the mixture of coming-of-age drama and the resolution of their interpersonal conflicts with the hero’s journey (Gleedhill, 1987; Williams, 1998 apud McFadzean, 2019). In other words, we are talking about a protagonist who, when unable to express his emotions to resolve interpersonal conflicts through dialogue, will need to do so through physical actions that involve courage, strength, dexterity or intelligence in the face of the irruption of the fantastic in his life. By performing such actions, he saves his friends, home, neighborhood, or even the world. McFadzean (2019) explains that as the narrative will be defined by the synchronization of the protagonist’s personal dilemmas with the appearance of the fantastic event, once the crisis of the fantastic is resolved, so is the protagonist’s melodrama. Thus, it is a journey of reconciling the character with some problematic aspects of society in exchange for a positive validation of his heroic identity in the face of romantic interest, friends, family and/or government.
Semantically, the subgenre is marked precisely by joining opposing characteristics as the trivial culture linked to the American suburbs to fantastic elements. Some of these semantic elements are:
a) The settings: suburbs and small towns; houses; tree houses; streets; schools; libraries; public swimming pools; pharmacies; markets; etc
b) Characters: nuclear families with two or more children; the newspaper delivery men; the grumpy older neighbor; bullies; the girl of the same age who will become a romantic interest; the school principal; the teachers; the neighborhood policeman; etc.
c) Suburban movements: the father who commutes; young people who go to school; children riding bicycles through the streets; dogs digging up gardens; neighbors watering the plants, washing the car, or reading the newspaper; young people watching movies, playing video games or using the computer;
d) Its fantastic characters: Monsters; robots; aliens; ghosts; zombies; devils; witches; spies; robbers etc
e) Its fantastic complications or implications: Scientific experiments; Conspiracies; dangers; Suburb Wrecks; Portals to the Underworld; kidnappings; etc.
As there is a more significant consolidation of the subgenre, narratives that take the work out of the suburb/small town setting emerged since “Suburban” comes to be seen as the representation of a set of values and not just a geographical place where the movie is set. Examples are *batteries not included, Home Alone 2 and Big, primarily set in urban environments, Casper takes place in a haunted house, and Back to the Future, which takes place in the wild west.
To understand the values represented by American suburbs, it is essential to investigate how its expansion in the 1950s was closely linked to the formation of a white middle class driven by the ideals of the “American Dream”. This was primarily due to government benefits given to veteran veterans of World War II. It is documented that the FHA (Federal Housing Administration) actively promoted the idea of ethnically segregated neighborhoods, with black populations being denied loans, which prevented them from moving to the suburbs (Jackson, 1987, p.241). In the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri, for example, of 70,000 new homes built between 1947 and 1952, only 35 were habited by black families (Gordon, 2008, p.86).
In many cases, the real estate agents worked as agents of this segregation. Until 1950, the code of ethics of the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) stated that “A broker shall never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood … members of any race or nationality, whose presence will be detrimental to the value of the property” (Kruse cited by Scott, 2017, p.123). In addition, reports from suburban magazines and newspapers defined “black people standards as wild, lustful and immoral” (Hirsch cited by Scott, 2017, p.124). Thus, as white people left the city for the suburbs, between 1940 and 1960, three million African Americans left the south (whose economy was still deeply rural) for the industrial cities of the north. It was the beginning of an economic and social decay of cities, which began to be abandoned by the government – homes for the elderly, blacks, Latinos, divorced, and LGBTQIA+ populations (Spiegel, 2001, p.33). As Ávila (2004) didactically summarizes, the United States has since been divided into “vanilla suburbs” and “chocolate cities”.
Together with the suburbs, it was constructed an imaginary based on television, a device that became popular in the post-war period. We speak of the birth of “suburban sitcoms”, depicting the desire for millions of middle-class families, which have become behavior references for millions of homes across the United States. Series such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show showed the typical blunders of suburban families, always resolved through dialogue and the preservation of the nuclear family (Beuka, 2004, p.72) .
Thus, based on McFadzean’s reading, when he proposes Suburban Fantastic as a subgenre, he is referring to a set of films whose main plot boils down to solving a disruption caused in the suburbs, which affects its suburban white-middle-class values . The protagonist’s maturation syntax becomes intimately linked to his acceptance by that same society – since the heroic becoming of these films is achieved by resolving of problems that adults and authorities cannot accomplish. It is worth remembering that the subgenre begins within the context of “Reaganite entertainment” (Wood, 2003), an umbrella term used to refer to Hollywood films from the time of Ronald Reagan’s presidency (1980-1988) that were in line with some of his principles. Reagan is considered the first “suburbanite president”, being mostly elected by the population from the suburbs (Troy, 2005, p.51) – and who advocated the values of a Christian, consumerist and meritocratic middle class.
So it is not a superficial inference when McFadzean claims that Suburban Fantastic is a white, middle-class subgenre. Among the more than 50 films analyzed by the author (2019) between the origin of Suburban Fantastic in 1982 and its decline in 1998, only the horror The Creatures Under the Stairs had a black protagonist. However, McFadzean was unfortunate enough to release his book in 2019, analyzing the new cycle of the subgenre that began in the 2010s (which he calls Reflexive Suburban Fantastic Cinema ), with works such as Super 8, Stranger Things and It – Chapter I. However, the following year, 2020, marked the release of at least five films of the subgenre with black and black and/or Latino protagonists: My Spy, The Main Event, The Witches, Vampires x The Bronx, and A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting. The last three works are from Netflix, the studio responsible for releasing another film with these characteristics a year earlier, the science fiction See You Yesterday.
This recent body of works with black and Latino protagonists, together with the English Attack the Block, brings generic questions that could not be addressed by Angus McFadzean’s analysis (2017, 2019). After all, should such films be understood as a specific set within the subgenre itself (a cycle of its own, a kind of Peripheric Suburban Fantastic) – in response to social movements like #OscarsSoWhite and #BlackLivesMatter? Or is it a maturation of Suburban Fantastic as a subgenre, incorporating new semantic and syntactic possibilities linked to the racial and/or economic context that did not exist in its first productions? Or still, its structural and narrative novelties are sufficient to make these films be treated as a completely new subgenre?
This article seeks to delve deeper into these issues by analyzing two specific films of this new conjuncture, the ones mentioned above See you Yesterday and Vampires x The Bronx. In addition to the diverse ethnic and social backgrounds, such films no longer take place in suburbs or small towns but set their plots in the urban peripheries of New York: in the counties of Brooklyn and The Bronx, respectively (figure below).

- See You Yesterday
Directed by newcomer Stefon Bristol, and produced by Spike Lee, See You Yesterday have the presence of fantasy already suggested since its opening scene: two friends try (unsuccessfully) to build a time machine. The school holidays, however, seem to be an excellent time to dedicate themselves to the project. The two protagonists are represented as the most brilliant students at The Bronx High School of Science, a school of excellence – ranked as the 36th best school in the United States (out of almost 18,000) and the best public school in New York City, according to the ranking from the U.S. News & World Report (2020 data). This emphasizes that it is not the narrative of “two ordinary young people”, but characters who stand out for their intelligence and commitment to their studies. The same is true for Eduardo (Johnathan Nieves) Sebastian’s friend and C.J.’s “romantic interest”, a Puerto Rican descent who proves himself intellectually equal to his peers. The three are pictured living in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, an area that, while not considered dangerous, has higher per capita violent crime indicators than the rest of the city (New York Government data, 2018), an environment that is quite different from the usual “islands of tranquility” of the white suburbs.
Going against the big media perspective, East Flatbush is portrayed pleasantly, showing a montage of an everyday neighborhood using the light beat of the rap Hey Up by Buddy ft. Ty Dolla Sign. Underneath a golden afternoon light are street trade counters, fairs, and families walking along the gilded walls covered in graffiti and pits, hallmarks of a vibrant street art culture (figure below). Such semantic elements, while dissonant from the exclusively residential culture of the white suburbs, marked by the inexistence of shops, have some similarities with the “main streets” of films set in small towns such as Gremlins and Back to the Future. Their owners are people from the neighborhood, and their stores serve as a “social hub” for the characters to meet.
It is important to emphasize that the tranquility with which the characters walk around their neighborhood is an important element of suburban fantastic, as they establish the setting as part of their daily lives. The neighborhood dwellers are used to their rhythms and cycles, and residents can recognize if something extraordinary (or fantastic) occurs – which would designate the point of complication of the narrative. This idea is exemplified in the scene in which the community gathers at parties where several generations listen to music, have lunch, and play dominoes to the sound of rap and reggae. In such an environment, even if disagreements occur between young people, they are still resolved in (warm) discussions. And if such a correlation with films of the subgenre set in small towns is possible, the difference is explicit, however, with the greater autonomy of the characters to walk through other regions (the characters live in Brooklyn, but study at The Bronx). McFadzean (2019) points out that a hallmark of suburban fantastic is that “neighborhoods” are all the protagonist knows. Due to the spaced-out nature of the suburbs and small towns, “other areas” (such as the city) could only be explored by car (which makes it an adult-only possibility). In See You Yesterday, kids can take the subway to different New York City areas.

The protagonists are represented as figures who, despite spending most of their time building inventions in the garage, provide services to the neighborhood. It ranges from selling electronic products to repairing computers and cell phones. This communitarian aspect reflects East Flatbush’s portrayal, where neighbors throw parties, look after each other’s children and grandchildren, or play cards and watch TV together. Such a cut differs from the atomization of white middle-class suburbs, where families are closed in their consanguineous core and marked by their “moral minimalism” (Baumgartner, 1988). In other words, by the resistance to interfering in matters that are not directly related to their family – giving up greater communitarianism with the neighborhood. As Putnam (2000) points out, the very nature of the suburb, being distant from the cities (and work), makes its residents spend hours that could be dedicated to social activities moving around in their cars. However, it is necessary to emphasize that such characteristics are not new to the subgenre: films set in small towns corroborate the less isolated lifestyle. Contemporary examples are Stranger Things and Super 8, which show events that mobilize residents to act together and greater interconnection between families.
Going deeper into this aspect, it is worth noting that the protagonists’ family structure is in line with the construction of the nuclear family in the suburbs (which focuses on parents and children, excluding grandparents, uncles, and cousins). In See You Yesterday, Sebastian lives with his grandparents, and Eduardo and CJ are close to their grandmothers. Semantically, this proximity explains the absence of the figure of the ‘mentor”, outstanding characters in suburban fantastic who usually plays the role of counselor. The father’s absence, a recurrent feature in Suburban Fantastic since E.T. – The Extraterrestrial, gains new connotations here. Due to the social reality of the characters, we wonder how much violence or parental abandonment are possible causes of this absence, unlike divorce, a significant problem of the white suburban middle class in a large number of films of the subgenre (McFadzean, 2019).
The inherent and pervasive violence in the characters’ environment is perhaps the most striking difference between See You Yesterday and classic works of the subgenre: its surroundings, unlike the suburbs and small towns, are not safe. I remember that a hallmark of classic suburban fantastic is that the bubble of security is burst by the fantastic element, which is the complicating factor that will start the protagonist’s maturation process. In See You Yesterday, from the beginning, we see how the police generate apprehension among the residents, including being responsible for the death of a young man in the neighborhood, Frances Pierre, which erupted in protests inspired by the “Black Lives Matter”.”. Although East Flatbush has a more idyllic treatment, it does not omit a certain state of permanent tension.
The permanent “antagonism” of the police consolidates a significant inversion in the structure of suburban fantastic. In See You Yesterday it is not the fantasy that has disruptive power in the daily life of that neighborhood, but it is the everyday life, marked by police violence, that causes the drama experienced by its characters. No wonder the film’s narrative turn occurs when C.J.’s brother is killed after a violent police approach (image below). For this reason, the fantastic (time travel) appears as an attempt to repair that reality. In other words, the syntactic structure is not one of retaking the status quo from the resolution of the fantastic element, as is common in suburban fantastic, but of actively trying to fight against that reality imposed on the community using fanciful artifices.

Since time travel comes from the intellectual capacities of the protagonists themselves, not being taught by any “mentor”, it opens space for an interpretation that education would be an engine to change history (in this case, literally) of the peripheral bodies. Even more superlative is that the film demonstrates the individual’s difficulties in altering the course of this history – always having the inevitability of violence as an answer. No matter how often they go back in time, one of the community members always dies. Even at its end, the film leaves the consequences of time travel open, without knowing if the past will finally be changed to ensure everyone’s safety. This message makes us wonder if police violence against black and Latino bodies will ever be interrupted.
It is impossible not to compare this narrative construction with the film that inspired it, Back to the Future. In Robert Zemeckis’s 1980s classic, historical changes are easily practicable – hence another allegory: how much less complicated is it for a young white man to alter history? In addition to this question, some aspects call attention to the film starring Michael J. Fox when placed in perspective with See You Yesterday. Firstly, once in the past (which happens accidentally), one of Marty McFly’s goals is to reconstruct his family history, based on the change in his father’s performativity – considered a coward – developing in him more “rugged” aspects. In doing so, McFly is rewarded with a more economically successful family when he returns to the present time. On the other hand, the issue of social ascension is not discussed in See You Yesterday, which has implications for the aspirations of each class. While the white suburbanite aims to increase their consumption power, the urban black dwellers do not seem to be able to afford this as a priority. After all, contrary to the reality of the suburbs, their security is not ensured by the public power, which is not only inefficient in resolving local issues (such as gang fights), but also presents itself as yet another threat.
Another point that shows how the black perspective lacks in Back to the Future relates to one of the (many) temporal changes caused by Marty McFly. In this case, the famous scene in which the protagonist steals the authorship of the song Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry, a black rock icon. The lack of problematization in the classic of suburban fantastic about this act underlines the white hegemony that took care of the subgenre – where even black and Latino actors and actresses were rare. Going deeper into this issue, Dwyer (2015, p.92) analyzes how such a scene is part of a larger context of iconic scenes from young 80s cinema, where white teenagers lip-sync or reinterpret songs by black singers( as) as Otis Reeding’s Try a Little Tenderness in Pretty Pink, Clarence “Frogman” Henry’s Ain’t Got No Home reinterpretation in Lost Boys and Harry Belafonte’s Jump in the Line reinterpretation in Beetlejuice. The author suggests that the white body of the protagonists of these films served as a “clean frame” to rewrite the history of this rhythm that emerged in the 1950s with subversive characteristics of media hegemony from black bodies.
Because of this conjuncture, the change in priorities in the time travel of See You Yesterday brings deep social reflections to the subgenre itself. Now, “taking the mantle” of Marty McFly, black bodies are allowed to dictate their own needs within a subgenre historically linked to whiteness (McFadzean, 2019). And they don’t do it to rescue their initial condition – but to change their reality. This, however, obviously does not mean the creation of a new syntax for this ethnic perspective of the subgenre, but a new possibility. As we will see below, Vampires x The Bronx brings a much more traditional syntactic construction, altough bringing new developments to the subgenre.
- Vampires x The Bronx
Directed by Osmany Rodriguez, Vampires x The Bronx begins by showing us some scenes from New York City and, more specifically, from The Bronx, where we are introduced to Becky’s beauty salon – a Dominican descent (just like the director) black woman. Her last client has just walked in: Vivian, a young white blonde woman. Becky questions if she’s lost, to which Vivian informs her that she’s just moved to The Bronx as her neighborhood (presumably Manhattan) rents have gotten too expensive. The beautician responds that the same is happening in the region, revealing the process of gentrification (increasing real estate and services in an area, which ends up preventing poorer residents from continuing to live in that place) that guides the plot. Becky also says that that is why she will sell her salon and “finally move to the suburbs,” revealing that the setting remains an icon of desire for a better quality of life – linked since the 1920s to the “American Dream” (Jurca, 2001). , p.5). Her dream, however, is soon interrupted: the woman is murdered by vampires.
The film then cuts to its opening credits with the Dominican song “Melon” by Lázzaro Colon. We are introduced to some settings and day-to-day scenes from The Bronx. Basketball courts, food sales on the street, large buildings graffitied and graffitied, and young people playing cards in the street – semantic elements very different from classic suburban fantastic. The protagonist “Little Mayor” makes his way around on bicycles (this is a typical element of the subgenre) while greeting several residents. As already pointed out, this familiarity with members of the neighborhood is a typical feature of films set in Small Town (Rowley, 2015), and which here are adapted to the concept of black and Latino neighborhoods in New York.
On the light poles, another element of the subgenre: the “Missing” pamphlets. However, if in the suburbs they appear as a clear irruption of the fantastic as it occurs in It – Chapter 1, Jumanji (Joe Johnston, 1995) and Stranger Things, here they gain social connotations – since such pamphlets are typical of areas that suffer from urban violence (figure below). This theme will be brought up several times in the plot, since one of the reasons for the arrival of vampires to the neighborhood is that, according to the residents , the authorities simply do not care about the disappearance of people in The Bronx. Such an inference is very similar to what occurs in the 2020 remake of The Witches, where witches go to black suburbs to kidnap children, knowing they are less likely to be noticed there.

In See You Yesterday, the vampires operate in The Bronx through the real estate business: the Murnau Properties, whose slogan is “Building new Communities”. The vampires from Murnau buy establishments in the region and replace them with businesses aimed at greater purchasing power – butter shops, gourmet coffee shops, vegan ice cream, and vintage furniture sales. As one of the characters infers, “Do you know how [this change] starts? When white people using cloth bags appear”. In addition to sarcastically facing the gentrification process, this statement also nods to Freud’s (1976) concept of “Unheimliche”, commonly evoked by Suburban Fantastic. The term, which means “familiar strangeness” refers to the perception of something routine is different (although it is not identifiable what) – and which is no longer recognized.
This question goes back to one of the central conflicts of “Little Mayor,” who, according to his mother, tries to resist the natural change process – as if he was fighting against maturation. This plot is quite similar to two other famous films of the subgenre: The Goonies and *batteries not included – both following protagonists who try to fight real estate speculation and the end of their communities/neighborhoods. Here this is symbolized by his attempt to raise funds to save “the bodega”, the grocery store of Dominican descendant Tony.
Tony fits the figure of the “mentor” in Vampires x The Bronx. In addition to his Bodega being the “social hub” of the characters, it is shown that he played an important role in the creation of young people of the neighborhood. While their parents worked, Tony’s grocery store was where young people “studied, played video games, and mostly stayed out of trouble.” This mention refers not only to the issue of the region’s communitarian appeal but also to the ever-present danger of young people getting involved with gangs or trafficking in areas abandoned by the state. So it’s not surprising that “Little Mayor” uses Tony’s improvised baseball bat as a stake to avenge the shopkeeper’s death at the film’s end.
It is important to emphasize that despite the affective relationship of “Little Mayor” with its neighborhood, Vampires x The Bronx builds the representation of its region in a way that violence is always shown. In addition to there being inferences that his father was involved in crime, one of his best friends, Bobby, is enticed by a gang, which causes his friends to be threatened by criminals. At no point does the film suggest that this problem is likely to be solved by the characters – it is up to Bobby’s dramatic arc only to detach himself from the constant attempts to be enticed. In other words, although Vampires x The Bronx brings a final victory over vampires, it does not propose to stipulate that it is possible, in the time of a film, to transform the social reality of the region – emphasizing that such a process cannot be faced in superficial way.
Violence, by the way, is present all the time. Within its context of social conflict (marking that vampires are white, rich, and from Europe), the film, despite being aimed at a younger audience, does not avoid showing the death of its characters – whether they are vampires or residents of the neighborhood. In this sense, it is remarkable that the film takes a political stance on the issue of violence as an act of resistance. This is particularly important in a film that came out in the same year as the protests against the death of George Floyd (killed by police violence) – which were often “delegitimized” by the public authorities and/or the press based on this non-violent rhetoric. In the end, it is precisely the uprising of the community (figure below), which is responsible for facing the vampiric threats – the same community that will have parties to celebrate their victory and tributes to honor their dead.

Final Considerations
This analysis highlight some of the significant semantic and syntactic differences that See You Yesterday and Vampires x The Bronx have to classic suburban fantastic. This reading justifies our initial questions: whether or not they start a new cycle or subgenre. However, their particularities are precisely what make us believe the opposite: that these films are an inherent part of the revitalization of the subgenre. I speak, more specifically, of the black directors and/or descendants of Latinos, who may, perhaps for the first time, bring their readings of the subgenre that marked their childhood/adolescence.
And that means, in the first place, bringing the narrative to an environment more familiar to its demography: the urban peripheries. After all, in the same way, that black men and women, Latinos and Latinas, were prevented from entering the suburbs in its expansion in the 1950s, the same occurred (and still happens) in the American film industry. Therefore, nothing is more coherent than, once given a chance to produce a work of the subgenre, to bring it to the “chocolate cities”. In this regard, I repeat that we should not take the term “suburban fantastic” as a conceptual prison in which the suburb is a necessary semantic element in the film. This was already surpassed in the 1980s and 1990s by already-cited works such as Back to the Future III (which takes place in a small town in the Wild West) and *batteries not included (which takes place in Manhattan).
That said, it is important to emphasize that incorporating black and Latino bodies into the subgenre challenges the whiteness seen as an inherent characteristic of Suburban Fantastic – and not as part of an elitist and hegemonic moment of the industry. Even so, it is impossible not to consider that the entry of such bodies is part of the broader conjuncture of the discussion of representation in Hollywood cinema from movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and #OscarsSoWhite. I remember that “Black Lives Matter” is even part of the plot of See You Yesterday. However, taxing such films as a cycle linked to racial manifestations in the United States would assume that such changes are momentary and isolated and not part of a more extensive restructuring of the industry itself, meeting the new demands of the market and society. This in fact, does not seem to be the case since such transformations are also perceived beyond the subgenre studied here, in works of horror, superhero, action, etc.
In addition to these notes, the present work highlighted how such films represent a welcome subversion of the subgenre’s maxims. Based on Dwyer’s analysis, we saw how this lack of black and Latino perspective was a hallmark of young cinema in the 1980s, which did not problematize specific issues that today seem somewhat evident to the hegemonic media. Thus, with the entry of black and Latino bodies, this perspective is gained, and the nature of the subgenre itself is also highlighted. Suburban Fantastic is about the maturing process that comes from defending your home, and as it stops focusing exclusively on the white middle class, the urban peripheries are also seen as a possibility of setting.
With this other perspective, problems of non-hegemonic realities are presented: gentrification, police violence, the formation of gangs, the grooming of minors, racism, and social invisibility. These subjects were practically not dealt with in the subgenre until then, representing an increase in the scope and range of possibilities. And the same must be said of the profile of its protagonists. Both plots analyzed here bring characters that stand out – either for their intelligence and knowledge or for their charisma and civic engagement – going against the classic construction of the subgenre of a “normal young person” without exponent qualities or attributes. Such representation points out to another big syntactic difference – the characters’ maturation doesn’t come from discovering how special they are but from committing themselves more and more to the problems that involve their communities, to the point of risking their lives and well-being. I recall that the whiteness present in classic suburban fantastic made many of its narratives contemplate issues linked to emotional or familiar (and not social) problems, similar to what Catherine Jurca ironically calls the “White Diaspora” (2001).
Having made such considerations, it is important to emphasize that, as much as this work advocates for not calling the current moment a “black/Latino cycle” of Suburban Fantastic, there is no guarantee that it will not become, if the industry again abandons the protagonism of these peripheral bodies in their plots. For now, there is a potential of “trend reversal” seen in productions made since 2019 – being too early to make any other more definitive statement. However, the present work also recognizes the importance of gender studies in highlighting these productions and bringing increasingly inclusive perspectives to an industrial model (Hollywood) marked by androcentrism and whiteness.
A new decade is ongoing and it will be imperative to follow the new productions. We saw how Attack the Block, in 2011, seemed quite out of place within the productions that brought suburban fantastic to the urban periphery, being eclipsed by other works such as Super 8, It – Chapter 1, and Stranger Things. Perhaps streaming platforms like Netflix, betting on productions for different audience niches, are more interested in contributing to the subgenre. In this sense, we hope this does not mean that the black and Latino perspective of Suburban Fantastic is restricted to an ethnic audience. After all, if William Wimsatt (2008) in his manifesto “Bomb the Suburbs” brings the maxim that “a problem is only a problem if it reaches the suburbs” – perhaps one of the ways in which this can be done is by making the problems of the urban peripheries reach the screen of the suburban residents.
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