Across screen media genres, supernatural beings have been used as abject subjects who disrupt conventions of social order. In challenging boundaries and borderlines between categories, witches, werewolves, and zombies provide a locus for anxieties around shifting gender norms.
I Married a Witch
(dir. René Clair, 1942),
Season of the Witch
(dir. Dominic Sena, 2011),
The Craft
(dir. Andrew Fleming, 1996),
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
(1996–2003),
Charmed
(1998–2006),
American Horror Story: Coven
(2013–2014), and
The Witch
(dir. Robert Eggers, 2015) explore changing notions of feminine power and sexuality using the figure of the witch. In
An American Werewolf in London
(dir. John Landis, 1981),
The Company of Wolves
(dir. Neil Jordan, 1984),
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(1997–2003),
Ginger Snaps
(dir. John Fawcett, 2000),
Being Human
(2008–2013),
Dog Soldiers
(dir. Neil Marshall, 2002), and
Trick ‘r Treat
(dir. Michael Dougherty, 2007), male werewolves succumb to, or revel in, an innate bestial masculinity, whereas female werewolves defy conventional femininity by expressing aggression and rage. Post‐9/11, films and television such as
28 Days Later
(dir. Danny Boyle, 2002),
Shaun of the Dead
(dir. Edgar Wright, 2004),
Zombieland
(dir. Ruben Fleischer, 2009),
World War Z
(dir. Marc Forster, 2013),
In the Flesh
(2013–2014),
The Walking Dead
(2010–present), and
The Girl With All the Gifts
(dir. Colm McCarthy, 2016) focus on social prejudice and the breakdown and reconstitution of patriarchy in an age of terrorism and global pandemics, using the trope of the zombie apocalypse.