| Sumario: | This essay speculates about the generic ascendancy of fantasy in American popular movies and television series since the millennium--and the correspondent disenchantment and decline (although not disappearance) of science fiction. This shift to fantasy in American culture seems the result of a number of discrete but coincident cultural phenomena: major advances in CGI technology and changes in film industry economic strategies; the inappropriateness of postmodern irony after 9/11 and the ongoing (and highly visible) catastrophes to follow (wars, climate change and its disastrous consequences, global financial collapse, mass shootings, political gridlock); the perceived failure of science and "rational" thought to solve major problems; and, most important, the impact of digital technology and consumer electronics on our daily lives--and our modes of cognition. The essay argues that all of these phenomena have encouraged (and in the case of digital technology, enabled) the rise of a form of associational logic known as magical thinking--and fantasy film and television as its primary mode of expression. The development of this argument draws upon quantitative and qualitative data about the shifting popularity of sf and fantasy film and television from 2000 through 2013, as well as anthropologist Bronis³aw Malinowski's 1925 essay "Magic, Science and Religion" and more contemporary social science research on magical thinking.
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