Description

"Cotton Candy Autopsy: Deconstructing Psycho Killer Clowns" is an essay by Mark Dery, from his book THE PYROTECHNIC INSANITARIUM: AMERICAN CULTURE ON THE BRINK (Grove/Atlantic, 1999), on clownaphobia and the Evil Clown as cultural icon.

Using Lon Chaney's chilling observation that "there's nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight" as his point of departure, Dery deconstructs the postmodern archetype of the psychopathic clown. In this perversely funny, closely argued essay, Dery ranges broadly over the psychic geography of American culture.

Balm for the souls of those scarred for life by childhood encounters with balloon-twisting bogeymen.

Keywords: evil clowns, clownaphobia, John Wayne Gacy, Cacophony Society, culture jamming, Batman, The Joker, R.K. Sloane, Shakes the Clown, Jim Knipfel, John Bergin, The Fool, Randy Johnson, Stephen King's IT, Quentin Tarantino, American pathologies, Bakhtin, the carnivalesque, Arkham Asylum.