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The Monster Show

The Monster Show

A Cultural History of Horror

by David J. Skal
Paperback
Publication Date: 15/10/2001

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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.

ISBN:
9780571199969
9780571199969
Category:
Film theory & criticism
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
15-10-2001
Language:
English
Publisher:
Farrar Straus Giroux
Country of origin:
United States
Dimensions (mm):
205.74x140.97x30.48mm
Weight:
0.41kg
David J. Skal

David J. Skal is a leading American cultural historian and critic of horror films and Gothic literature.

The author of The Monster Show and Hollywood Gothic, he lives in Glendale, California.

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