The E.T. Book: New Perspectives on The Classic 1980s Blockbuster
Editor: Dr Matthew Melia (Kingston University)
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Released in 1982 and grossing over $792 million, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial stands as Spielberg’s second highest grossing film after Jurassic Park (1993). The film, which deals with the friendship between two young boys – one a lost alien, accidentally left behind on Earth and the other a human child named Eliot, went on to become a cultural milestone and opened the way for a wide range of child friendly science fiction films (or films that were at least marketed as such) throughout the 1980s (e.g. Gremlins [1986], The Goonies [1985], Ghostbusters [1984]) to the present where its influence may be felt in the hugely popular Netflix drama Stranger Things (amongst other things)
In a recent interview Spielberg stated that he considers E.T to be his most “perfect” film. So what is it about the film that has come to embody Spielberg’s work as a director? Is it the universality of its appeal? Its themes of childhood and family? Is it in the way that the film balances an outwardly sentimental exterior with a much darker interior – engaging themes of the breakdown of the American family, divorce, loss, abandonment, imperilled children and Reaganite cold war paranoia? This book, the first edited collection of critical scholarship dedicated to the film, follows in the wake of its Bloomsbury predecessors, The Jaws Book (2020) and The Jurassic Park Book (forthcoming 2023) and invites fresh and contemporary scholarship around Spielberg’s film in the wake of its 40th anniversary in 2022. You are invited to submit chapter proposals dealing with all aspects of E.T’s production, development and reception history; its cultural and cinematic legacy; its influence and influences; historical and cultural contexts and fandom and fan engagement. Furthermore the book not only invites chapters on E.T but also aims to critically and comparatively consider the presence of extra terrestrials elsewhere across Spielberg’s filmography (either as director or producer) – not least in his 1977 science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Subjects considered for proposal will include (but not be limited to)
- E.Ts production and release history
- Merchandising and promotion
- E.T and its place in Spielberg’s filmography
- Cultural and cinematic legacy of E.T.
- Critical responses and audience reception
- Novelisations
- Michael Jackson and E.T – The soundtrack album
- Music and E.T – John William’s Score
- E.T. Reagan and the Cold War
- E.T and politics
- E.T. suburbia and the American landscape
- Family, Divorce and Childhood
- Youth and Adolescence
- E.T. and the Gothic
- E.T.'s status as a children’s film
- Science fiction and horror in E.T
- The influence of E.T on Spielberg’s other Aliens
- Science and Scientists in E.T
- Home and the domestic space in E.T.
- Unmade E.T: early incarnations and abandoned sequels
- Story development: Melissa Mathison and the script.
- E.T and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
- Lostness, alienation and friendship
- ‘E.T Phone Home’ – communication and language in E.T
- E.T and animatronics
- E.T and A.I: Artificial Intelligence (2001) – critical overlaps
- E.T and space (terrestrial and outer)
- Environmental issues in E.T
- E.T, nostalgia and fandom
- E.T and Alien conspiracy theories.
- E.T.-sploitation movies
Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to [log in to unmask] by September 1st 2023.
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