Horrific Humor and the Moment of Droll Grimness in Cinema

Sidesplitting sLaughter
Herausgeber: Dowell, John A.; Miller, Cynthia J.

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

When evil clowns menace the screen, do we scream or laugh? When zombies converge to tear a victim limb from limb, do we cringe and hide our eyes, or shriek "What??! Play that again!!"? What about those instances when these seemingly opposite reactions happen at once? This is the phenomenon known as sLaughter. Horrific Humor and the Moment of Droll Grimness in Cinema: Sidesplitting sLaughter presents the first focused look at the moment in audience reception where screams and laughter collide. John A. Dowell and Cynthia J. Miller bring together twelve essays from an international collection of authors across the disciplines. The volume begins with an examination of the aesthetics and mechanics of the sLaughter moment, then moves closer to look at the impact of its awkward frission of humor and horror on the individual viewer, and finally, broadens its lens to explore sLaughter's implications for the human condition more generally. The chapters discuss such box office hits such as A Clockwork Orange (1971), Fargo (1996), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Cabin in the Woods (2012), as well as cult classics such as The Toxic Avenger (1984) and Dead Snow (2009). Engaging and thought provoking, Horrific Humor and the Moment of Droll Grimness in Cinema will be of great interest to scholars of both humor and horror, as well as to those working in reception studies and fans of cult cinema.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Lexington Books
• Seitenzahl: 198
• Erscheinungstermin: 6. Dezember 2017
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 235mm x 157mm x 15mm
• Gewicht: 445g
• ISBN-13: 9781498564991
• ISBN-10: 1498564992
• Artikelnr.: 49095147

Autorenporträt

Edited by John A. Dowell and Cynthia J. Miller - Foreword by Molly Merryman - Contributions by Ben Betka; Thomas Britt; Iain J.W. Ellis; Moritz Fink; Ann Larabee; David Misch; William Quiterio; Don Tresca; Ben Urish; Colin Yeo; Cynthia J. Miller and John

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword: From "Stairway to Heaven" to "I Hate Mondays": Is Understanding
sLaughter Essential? Molly Merryman Introduction: The Hilarity of Terror:
Toward an Understanding of sLaughter John A. Dowell, with Cynthia J. Miller
Part I: The Aesthetics and Mechanics of sLaughter, or Welcome to the
Funhouse of Carnography-Please Watch Your Head 1. Troma-tized by Punk Iain
J.W. Ellis 2. "Must I Remind You of a Little Movie Called Deliverance?":
sLaughter and the Postmodern Pastiche Don Tresca 3. Phallic Noses,
Blood-Filled Balloons, Exploding Popcorn, and Laughing-Gas-Squirting
Flowers: Reading Images of the Evil Clown Moritz Fink 4. The Mechanical
sLaughterhouse: Horror, Humor, and Repetition in American Psycho and Fight
Club Colin Yeo Part II: Bodies in the sLaughterhouse, or You Might Feel a
Little Pinch 5. "Michael Eat Your Meat": Trauma, Satire, and Nostalgia in
Bob Balaban's Parents William Quiterio 6. Ha!/Aaah!: The Painful
Relationship between Humor and Horror David Misch 7. Igniting the Fuse of
Destructive History: Nation and Ablation in the sLaughterhouse Thomas Britt
8. sLaughter as Existential Epiphany Ben Urish Part III: Beyond Mere War,
or So Long and Thanks for All the Jokes! 9. Surfing Fascists and the
Masses: (Non-)Evolving Images of the Cinenazi Ben Betka 10. In the UnDead
of Winter: Humor and the Horrific in Dead Snow Cynthia J. Miller 11. Too
Soon?: Laughing at Disaster on the Cinematic Titanic Ann Larabee About the
Editors Notes on the Contributors