Description
Book Synopsis 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,
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
