Awards

• Runner-up for Oddest Book Title of the Year—The Guardian's Diagram Prize 2023 (United States)

Overview

The frightening yet comic clown is one of the best and most enduring characters in literature, theater, television, and film. Across the centuries, from Shakespeare's Porter in Macbeth to Edgar Allan Poe's ""Hop-Frog,"" or Stephen King's Pennywise, horror and comedy have blended to create the perfect recipe for entertainment. This volume gives an in-depth analysis of the clown horror genre, including essays by revered horror scholars such as Kevin Wetmore, Dale Bailey, Kim Hester Williams, Jennifer K. Cox, and Joanna Parypinski. Their essays cover topics such as nostalgia, race, class, and new portrayals of the scary clown as zombies or phantoms. It also offers interviews with actors and directors working in the clown horror genre: Eoghan McQuinn (Stitches), Kevin Kangas (Fear of Clowns), and Jaysen Buterin (Kill Giggles). Some of fiction's most terrifying creations--like the Killer Klowns, Captain Spaulding, Art the Clown, Krusty, Frowny, the Joker, and Twisty--jig through these pages of analysis and deconstruction, asking what these many iterations of scary clowns have to say about our society and its fears.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ron Riekki
Publisher:   McFarland & Co Inc
Imprint:   McFarland & Co Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 0.90cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.245kg
ISBN:  

9781476680910

ISBN 10:   1476680914
Pages:   182
Publication Date:   30 May 2022
Recommended Age:   From 18 years
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Ron Riekki Part One: Television and Film Clown Horror A Clown in the Living Room: The Sinister Clown on Television Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. Killer Klowns vs. the Blob: Klowning Around in the Generation Dale Bailey Corpses, Rejects, Afterlives: Welcome to Zombieland Jason V. Brock “Art for Art’s Sake”: Art the Clown, Visuality, and the Cruelty of Allegoresis Mattius Rischard Clowns, Bogeymen, and the Anxiety of Strangers: Analyzing the Cautionary Elements of Jon Watts’ Clown (2014) Debaditya Mukhopadhyay Out of the White (Terror) and into the Black (Presence): Difference as Monstrous in Stephen King’s It: Chapter Kim Hester Williams Part Two: ­Real-Life Clown Horror The Return of the Killer Clowns: A Field Guide to Surviving the Zombie Clown Apocalypse Jennifer K. Cox The Transcendental Anonymity and Moral Ambiguity of Phantom Clowns Joanna Parypinski From Scream to Screen: “Killer Clown” John Wayne Gacy on Film Benjamin Radford Part Three: Interviews and Accounts Interview with Kevin Kangas (Fear of Clowns, 2004) Ron Riekki Stitches (2012) Eoghan McQuinn Interview with Jaysen Buterin (Kill Giggles, 2020) Ron Riekki About the Contributors Index

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Author Information

Writer and actor Ron Riekki has won several screenplay awards including best sci-fi/fantasy from the International Family Film Festival, best comedy from the Los Angeles Film Awards and the Nuclear Pen Award from the GenreBlast Film Festival.

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