Fantasy Film Post 9/11

Examining a range of popular fantasy films released in the past decade, including the Harry Potter films, Jackson's Lord of the Rings series, and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies through to The Dark Knight and Avatar, this book explores the reasons for these films' incredible success. Pheasant-Kelly explores the meaningfulness of such films to current audiences while considering how technology, spectacle, and an increasing affinity for magic and mysticism have been important in promoting the turn to fantasy. The imagery and themes reflecting 9/11, new millennial anxieties, the war on terror, and environmental disasters have furthered fantasy's rise to dominance. Fantasies offer ways to subconsciously re-enact or work through traumatic memories of these issues for viewers reluctant to witness real images of death and destruction.

Frances Pheasant-Kelly is MA Award Leader and Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. She is the author of Abject Spaces in American Cinema: Institutional Settings, Identity, and Psychoanalysis in Film (2013) and has published articles in New Review of Film and Television and the Journal of War and Culture Studies.