Binding: Paperback
Description: Featuring a new Afterword by the author. Illuminating the dark side of the American century The Monster Show uncovers the surprising links between horror entertainment and the great social crises of our time as well as horror's function as a pop analogue to surrealism and other artistic movements. With penetrating analyses and revealing anecdotes David J. Skal chronicles one of our most popular and pervasive modes of cultural expression. He explores the disguised form in which Hollywood's classic horror movies played out the traumas of two world wars and the Depression; the nightmare visions of invasion and mind control catalyzed by the Cold War; the preoccupation with demon children that took hold as thalidomide birth control and abortion changed the reproductive landscape; the vogue in visceral transformative special effects that paralleled the development of the plastic surgery industry; the link between the AIDS epidemic and the current fascination with vampires; and much more. Now with a new Afterword by the author that looks at horror's popular renaissance in the last decades The Monster Show is a compulsively readable thought - provoking inquiry into America's obsession with the macabre.
Title: The Monster Show A Cultural History Of Horror
Author(s): Skal David J.
Publisher: Farrar Straus And Giroux
Barcode: 9780571199969
Pages: 448 Pages
Language: English
Publication Date: 10/15/2001