Supernatural Youth in Media

This academic collection of essays explores media about young people with supernatural, mythic powers, which have emerged as a popular genre since the turn of the millennium to the present.

Since the turn of the millennium, stories about young people with mystical abilities have enjoyed tremendous popularity. This volume is the first collection of essays to posit that such stories form a distinct teen- and young-adult-oriented genre, characterized by tales in which young people use ancient magicnot modern scienceto solve problems and save the world. Scholars explore the cultural implications of this phenomenon, considering how media's discourses about youthful gods, witches, fairies, and other magical beings address social change, youth, and modern identities. By examining stories whose protagonists stand at a crossroads between identities and states of beinghuman and not-quite-human, child and adult, mundane world and mythic world, old millennium and newthe volume invites readers to contemplate the cultural significance of the persistent mediated fantasy of magical youth. This is an engrossing collection of studies about supernatural youth media (SYM), each of which explores collective fears and fantasies of young people: power, magic, death, sex, technology, the occult. The essays illuminate how recent generations, particularly around the turn of the millennium, have been represented by movies and television shows as both victims and masters of unknown mystical forces. With a particular emphasis on gender and racial identity, the book offers a revelatory and distinctive assessment of this broadly appealing genre. Prof. Timothy Shary, Eastern Florida State College

Autorentext

Ilana Nash is an associate professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Western Michigan University. She is the author of American Sweethearts: Teenage Girls in Twentieth-Century Popular Culture (2006) and several articles on girls' representations in media. She serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Popular Culture. Rebecca C. Hains, Ph.D. is a professor of media and communication at Salem State University. She has authored and edited many books and articles on children's media culture from a critical/cultural studies perspective. A 2024 Fulbright Scholar, Hains serves on The Journal of Children & Media editorial board.

Inhalt

Acknowledgements - Ilana Nash/Rebecca C. Hains: Supernatural Youth in Media: The History and Meaning of a Fantastic Genre - Kyra Hunting: Growing Up in A Winx: Reworking a Children's Text for a Teen Audience - Cory Geraths: Sex Magic: Orgasm, Embodiment, and the Erotic Navigation of "the Circumstances" in The Magicians - Ilana Nash/Jana K. Schulman: Rewriting the Past and Present: Ragnarok, Norse Myth, and Teen Heroes - Gwendelyn S. Nisbett/Newly Paul: Mystical and the Mundane in Netflix's The Irregulars:Exploring Supernatural Narrative Engagement and Reception - Lori Bindig Yousman: Supernatural Savior or Sacrificial Lamb? The Contradictions and Cost of Young Supernatural Femininity: Chilling Adventures of Sabrinain a Post-Buffy Context - Eric M. Kennedy Jr.: Youth at the Border: Finding the Monstrous-Feminine in Marvel Comics - Erika M. Thomas: Saving Herself and Turning Rhetorical Tropes in Disney Films: Subverting the Monstrous-Feminine in Supernatural Genre Conventions - Hope L. Russell:A Zambian Fairytale: Shula and the Magic of Rungano Nyoni's I Am Not A Witch - Asha Winfield/Meghan Sanders/Rockia Harris/Hope Hickerson/Tiffany R. Smith: Where Are All of the Black Kids?: A Contemporary Search for Black Youth in the Fantastic World - Victor Evans: Queering Teen Supernatural TV Dramas: Fandom's Impact on LGBTQ Youth - Desirée Rowe: Welcome to the Witching Hour: The Craftas a Neuroqueer Allegory of Legibility - Notes on Contributors - Index.