Horrific Humor and the Moment of Droll Grimness in Cinema: Sidesplitting sLaughter (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781498564991)

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.

Author: John A. Dowell
ISBN-10: 1498564992
ISBN-13: 9781498564991
Publisher: Lexington Books
Language: English
Published: 12/08/2017
Pages: 198
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.20w x 0.70d