The Killer’s Costume in the American Slasher Film and the Cultural Myth of the

Foolkiller

‘the violation of taboos confers power, it remains dangerous. It procures good luck,
health, riches, and whatever is desired. Also, in myth, the trickster, as the violator of
taboos, possesses almost unlimited powers. It remains, however, a source of danger
because the taboos and the protection they provide are set aside and defied.’
Makarius 200.

The costume and the mask worn by the killer are recurring motifs of the horror/slasher
1
film . In Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978), Michael Myers murders his sister dressed in a
Harlequin costume and wearing a clown mask; upon his return to Haddonfield 15 years later
he wears a blue working-class suit and a white Halloween mask stolen in a hardware store. In
The Redeemer: Son of Satan! (Constantine Gocchi, 1978), the killer wears an assortment of
grotesque costumes (clown, Elizabethan stage actor, medieval Death, etc.), each ‘adapted’ to
his victims and the way he is going to execute them. In Christmas Evil (Lewis Jackson, 1980),
Harry Stadlin dons a Santa Claus costume of his own making. During their punitive sprees,
Eric Binford (Fade to Black, 1980) and Kenny Hampson (Terror Train, 1981) wear several
costumes inspired by Hollywood cinema lore (among other things). The killer in The House
on Sorority Row (1981) appears at the end of the film dressed in a red and green jester
costume with a white collaret and pom-poms as well as a white and red clown mask topped by
the traditional jester hat with bells. In Friday the 13th Part 2 (Steve Miner, 1982), Jason
Voorhees wears a burlap mask evoking John Hurt’s in The Elephant Man (1980) that enables
him to hide his hideous features. From the third episode onward, he wears the iconic hockey
mask with which he is now associated. Though he is not technically-speaking wearing a
costume, Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series is also associated with a very
recognizable attire (a red and green striped shirt and a black fedora). More recently, the black-
clad killer from the Scream series or the fisherman costume worn by the killer in I Know
What you Did Last Summer (Jim Gillespie, 1997) provide other memorable examples of the
popularity of this trope in contemporary popular culture.
Surprisingly, this sartorial motif has been given little critical attention. Most of the
times, critics or film theorists have accounted for it by the will, on the film creators’ side, to
augment the killer’s terrifying aura and the narrative need to hide the killer’s identity (and
sometimes, his deformed features) in order to sustain suspense. 2 However, as anthropologists

1
In the case of this essay, I will define the slasher as a genre organized around the ritualized killing of sexually
uninhibited teenagers by a masked and/or physically deformed killer. Although Psycho and Peeping Tom (both
1960) have often been cited as playing an essential part in modeling the slasher film (Dika 1990, Clover 1992),
film historians usually date the official birth of the slasher film with the release of Halloween in 1978. Indeed, it
was Carpenter’s film that gave the genre a recognizable form/pattern and became a blueprint for subsequent
films. For a history of the slasher film, see Rockoff (2002), and Kerswell (2010).
2
As an example for this argument, we can quote horror magazine HorrorHound’s critic Kenneth Nelson
concerning Terror Train: ‘The killer assumes the costume of his latest victim which, as simple as it may sound,
drives the whodunit aspect of the film’s story since the characters just assume they are speaking to or interacting
with one of their buddies. Simultaneously, the audience is infused with a greater sense of tension as they are
aware that the unidentified killer is toying with his victims and are never quite sure when he will strike or merely
blend back into the commotion of the locomotive soiree’ (Horrorhound, special November issue 2012: 19)
have shown, donning a mask or a costume is never a meaningless gesture. According to
Jacques Bril, « Wearing a mask outside a specific time would not only be incongruous but
also […] sacrilegious. […] the mask is the sign of something sacred […] If there no masks
without religious celebrations, it is logical to suppose that, at least originally, there were no
religious celebrations without masks » (1983 : 44). In her important discussion on masquerade
in 18th century literature, Terry Castle notes the subversive potential of the costume:

Occupational dress overthrew the hierarchy of rank and class, destroying distinctions between masters
and servants, consumers and producers. Ecclesiastical disguise merged sacred and profane, celibate and
anti-celibate. Transvestite costume mysteriously negated the antinomy of gender, and animal disguise
allowed one to pass out of the human realm altogether. […] Translated to a collective level, the level of
ideology, the festive fusions of the masquerade suggested the breakdown of lager conceptual
oppositions. By making magically available the body of the other, the body of dream and taboo,
costume collapsed the boundary between individuals. But this collapse in turn hinted at another, greater
indiscretion: the collapse of ideological polarities, those divisions around which culture itself was
organized. For when the human body escaped its own boundaries, and disobeyed the laws of
metaphysics by becoming its own opposite, the body politic, the civil body, was also affected. The
fundamental logic of culture –the logic of categorical opposition- was subverted. (Castle 1986: 76-77).3

In this essay I argue that the motifs of the mask and costume worn by the killer in
slasher movies are highly symbolical and endowed with deep anthropological and political
meanings. These meanings have never been comprehended because they have been hidden by
the theoretical construct of the slasher genre. Indeed, I contend that, far from being a ‘minor’
genre whose appeal is limited to a specialized niche, the slasher film is a contemporary
expression of a cultural myth that has never been theorized before: the myth of the Foolkiller,
with roots in the medieval clownish rites of justice such as the Feast of Fools and the
charivari. I believe that this cultural myth can shed some new light on the importance and
function of the killer’s array in these films.

A New Genre

As it seems to foreground an equation between sex and death and that ‘a basic slasher
film premise was a male killer stalking and slaughtering a bevy of young and attractive female
victims’ (Prince 2000: 351), the slasher film genre has traditionally been seen as a symbolical
backlash after the progressive social changes brought about by the sixties4, as well as an
expression of misogyny (Rockoff 2002; Ryan and Kellner (2004)). According to this widely
accepted view, Michael Myers (from the Halloween series) or Jason Voorhees (from the
Friday the 13th series) would be the vehicle of punitive, Old Testament morals, displaying
within the fiction the conservative ideology expounded by ‘Reaganite’ entertainments and
politics popular at the time (Britton 2009)5. The problem is that this reading, which informs
most histories of the genre, stands on shaky grounds. Indeed, many slasher film villains are
not psychotic killers punishing sexually liberated teenagers but physically and
psychologically weak individuals subjected to constant mockery from their peers or
hierarchical superiors, or to the irresponsible behavior of ‘practical jokers.’ Following a
3
In one of the few attempts to associate the trope of the costume with a larger cultural function, Ian Conrich
draws an interesting comparison between Jason’s hockey mask and the executioner mandated by the State to kill
legal transgressors (Conrich 2010: 180).
4
Here I use the term to refer both to a specific historical moment and its accompanying socio-political changes
(feminism, civil rights..) and to what can only be called a ‘mystique,’ the ‘sixties’ evoking for most people a
cluster of images, sounds, emotions having more to do with a deformed view carried over in popular culture than
with objective reality.
5
These critiques have not prevented slasher films from being extremely successful financially (Muir, 2007;
Bracke, 2006).
particularly humiliating incident of hazing or bullying or an accident caused by pranksters that
leaves them physically and psychologically traumatized, these victims (or their surrogates)
decide to avenge themselves by killing their bullies in a series of spectacular set-pieces.
Examples of this narrative pattern are numerous. In The Redeemer: Son of Satan!, a
physically disabled janitor (T.G. Finkbinder) uses clownish mannequins to execute bullies
who persecuted vulnerable students in high school. In Friday the 13th (Sean Cunningham,
1980), Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), kills the teenagers who, in her mind, stand for the
people responsible for the death of her mentally disabled and physically deformed son, Jason.
In The Burning (Tony Maylam, 1981), a summer camp janitor (Lou David), victim of a cruel
prank pulled by practical jokers that leaves him burnt and disfigured, comes back several
years later on the location of the ‘accident’ to execute his tormentors. In Prom Night (Paul
Lynch, 1980), a young man (Michael Tough) avenges the death of his sister killed because of
a child’s play gone wrong. Several years later, he hunts down the irresponsible pranksters
years later during the school prom. In The House on Sorority Row, the killer (Carlos Sério)
avenges the death of his mother, accidentally killed following a practical joke pulled by
immature students. In National’s Lampoon’s Class Reunion (Michael Miller, 1982), a comical
take on the slasher formula, Walter Bylor (Blackie Dammett) kills those who have mocked
him in high school.
With their a-typical, physically disabled, under-developed body, structurally opposed
to the powerful and muscled ‘hard’-bodies of those who mock them and embody the ‘ideal’
norm from the point of view of the dominant American ideology 6, these ‘grotesque’
murderers belong to the socio-cultural category of the ‘fool.’ The fool is defined by
sociologist Orin Klapp as a pathetic character, psychologically closer to the child than to the
adult (the fool may be simple-minded, like Marx Brothers’ ‘Pippo’), with grotesque,
ridiculous looks, and oftentimes suffering from a physical deformity (the fool is a category
overlapping with the ‘freak’7):

The person who hobbles, limps, or is physically awkward more easily acquires this role. The deformed
fool deviates in appearance from group norms of beauty, stature, posture, health, etc. He may be ugly,
dwarfed, crippled, gigantic, animal-like, or subhuman in appearance. Deformity has the symbolic
capacity to suggest various inappropriate roles of the fool. Artificial distortions through make-up are
used to suggest the deformities of the fool, as, for instance, the large feet and bulbous nose of the clown.
Any person who departs markedly from group norms of appearance is easily cast in the role of the fool.
Klapp (1949: 157-162)8.

Because of this difference from the norm and his (and sometimes her) physical weakness
which prevents him from retaliating, the fool often incites the mockery or the hostility of the
social group to which he belongs, and constitutes henceforth an ‘ideal’ scapegoat 9. As the
main character of the slasher films analyzed in this article is a “fool” but also a killer of
‘fools’ in the sense of the Old Testament (socially and morally irresponsible people), I call
this character the ‘Foolkiller’.
6
See Jeffords (1994).
7
Although both words could be used as virtually synonymous, they do not completely overlap as the word
‘freak’ is mostly used to describe someone distinguished by his physically “extraordinary” appearance, while the
word ‘fool’ is mainly used to define a behavior, a way of looking at someone in a funny/ridiculous way. The
clown, who mixes both characteristics (real or made-up physical deformity and a ridiculous social conduct), is a
figure at the crossroad.
8
For a typological elaboration on the fool figure, see also Ran (2007) and Willeford (1969).
9
‘The role of the comic butt is played particularly by deformed, weak, and simple fools. This may be defined as
the regular recipient of group derision and abuse. The butt is persecuted because his appearance constantly draws
derision or because he is too stupid, submissive, or cowardly to fight back’ (Orri n Klapp, op. cit., p. 158). On
the physical criteria of a ‘good’ scapegoat, see Girard (1989).
 So far, I have shown that, contrary to a deeply anchored belief, the slasher villain was
not the invincible ‘phallic’ threat or the depersonalized psycho-killer many critics and viewers
believe him to be, but a physically enfeebled ‘fool’ avenging his/her persecution or the
bullying of other vulnerable people (usually one of his loved ones). If this argument is
interesting in itself, it is even more so when one realizes that this ‘revenge of the
nerd/freak/fool’ scenario can be found in many movies not considered to be ‘slashers’ by film
critics or historians, many of which pre-date the official birth of the slasher film in 1978 with
Halloween: Willard (Daniel Mann, 1971), Horror High (Larry Stouffer, 1974), Phantom of
the Paradise (Brian De Palma, 1974), Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976), Kiss of the Tarantula
(Chris Munger, 1976), Massacre at Central High (René Daalder, 1976), Jennifer (Brice
Mack, 1978), Fade to Black (Vernon Zimmerman, 1980), Christmas Evil (Lewis Jackson,
1981), The Pit (Lew Lehman, 1981), or Christine (John Carpenter, 1983), to name but a few,
all feature the ‘revenge of the nerd/freak’ scenario 10. In a more comical vein, Revenge of the
Nerds (Jeff Kanew, 1984), The Toxic Avenger (Michael Herz, 1985), and Funland (Michael
A. Simpson, 1987) provide burlesque variations on the same script.11
As opposed to the slasher films which are mainly shot from the point of view of the
“practical jokers/bullies” (a group usually including the Final Girl12), these films are mainly
shot from the point of view of the victim turned murderous avenger. In this light, the slasher
film appears to be not so much a new genre as a formal inflexion of a pre-existing genre, a
‘syntaxic reorganization of semantic elements’ in the terms of Rick Altman (1999). Like the
tree that hides the forest, the theoretical construct of the slasher film genre has hidden another
generic form revolving around the scenario of the humiliation/vengeance of a ‘fool.’ I suggest
naming this ‘new’ genre comprised of many movies (some of which qualify as slasher films),
the ‘Hop-Frog movie.’ Indeed, I want to argue here that it can be taken to be a sort of
contemporary retelling of a story originally and archetypically formulated by Edgar Allan Poe
in his short-story ‘Hop-Frog’ (1849).

‘Hop-Frog’ as a Cultural Matrix

Published in the journal Flag of our Union (17th of March 1849), ‘Hop-Frog’ tells the
story of a crippled dwarf, forced to be a jester at the court of a sadistic and tyrannical king.
Hop-Frog is the official whipping boy of the monarch and his ministers; subjected to constant
mockery he only finds solace in the company of his friend, the dwarf Tripetta (small, but
beautiful and well-proportioned) who is also a victim of the king’s cruelty. One day, after a
particularly cruel practical joke (while he cannot stand alcohol, the king forces the jester to
get drunk, then throws his goblet at Tripetta’s face) the fool decides to avenge himself and his
friend’s humiliation by executing those who have wronged him during a masked ball to be
held at the king’s castle the same night. Hop-Frog suggests the king and his ministers to
disguise themselves as orangutans in order to scare away the ladies and bring some fun to the
event. At night, as the festivities have started, Hop-Frog releases the ‘monkeys.’ As predicted,
the guests are shocked and many believe the men to be real ‘beasts’. Then he succeeds in
tying the bullies to the chandelier hovering over the room, while the rest of the guests watch
what they now believe to be a game. The chain then pulls the tyrants up via pulley
10
For a more complete list, see my articles Christol (2014: 18-33).
11
In Revenge of the Nerds, the nerds do not go so far as to actually murder their bullies, but their violence could
verge on the criminal if the comical generic layer of the film did not prevent it.
12
Film scholar Carol Clover theorized the Final Girl figure in a book which has become an important reference
in horror scholarship (1988). Unlike her friends who spend most of their time having fun, the Final Girl is
characterized by her seriousness, but also by her determination and her courage. One of the only people to
survive the massacre, she battles the killer in the climax of the film.
(presumably by Trippetta, who had arranged the room so) far above the crowd. The jester
climbs to their level and holds a torch close to the men’s costumes. They quickly catch fire.
As the aristocrats’ bodies burn, Hop-Frog escapes through the roof with Tripetta.
As can be seen from the outset, both text and movies share many motifs13:

-The persecution of a ‘fool’ by practical jokers/bullies

-The grotesque/deformed body: Like Hop-Frog, who is a dwarf and a cripple, many ‘fools’ in
the ‘Hop-Frog movies’ suffer from physical disability or deformity. In order to fight against
his bullies, Vernon Potts (Pat Cardi) in Horror High, makes a potion turning him into a
limping monster. In the same way, David (Derrel Maury), victimized by sadistic bullies in
Massacre at Central High, has a leg crushed by a car he is repairing and also starts to limp.
His sportive body (in several scenes he is shown jogging) is turned into a crippled body. In
The Burning, a camp janitor’s face and body are totally burnt following a practical joke that
“goes wrong.” The physically disabled janitor comes back on the camp locations years later to
avenge himself. Likewise, in Phantom of the Paradise, Winslow Leach (William Finley) has
his face disfigured following an accident. Other characters present birth defect, such as Jason
Voorhees or the killer of The House on Sorority Row, who have a bald, hypertrophied skull.

-The practical joke that goes ‘too far’: As in ‘Hop-Frog’, where the fool is victim of a cruel
prank, the mean practical joke (i.e. Carrie’s humiliation at the Prom) is a central trope in these
films.

-The isolated setting: The suburbs, high schools, and isolated camps in which the action of
these films unfolds evoke the isolated castle of the king.

-The festive/carnivalesque occasion: The recurring festive manifestations such as proms,

fraternity hazing or parties (the party organized by Willard’s boss, Carrie’s prom, Swan’s
wedding in Phantom of the Paradise, Christmas in Christmas Evil, Halloween in The Pit, etc.)
can be seen, in this framework, like avatars of the masked ball in ‘Hop-Frog’.

-The mask/costume of the killer: Like Hop-Frog, who is dressed with the motley costume of
the jester, the killer in the movies, as we have seen, often wears ‘grotesque,’ ‘monstrous’
disguises and outfits oftentimes linked to a specific festivity (Halloween, Christmas) or
celebration (a masked party, a fraternity hazing).

-The protection of the weak/vulnerable people through vigilantism: Like Hop-Frog, who
avenges and punishes his own humiliation but also Tripetta’s, the Foolkiller executes those
who have wronged him/her but also those who have imperiled or hurt one of his/her loved
ones. Thus, Willard (Bruce Davison) punishes his boss Martin (Ernest Borgnine) after he has
killed Socrates, his innocent rat, and tyrannized the frail Joan (Sandra Locke). Vernon defends
Robin (Rosie Holotik) in Horror High, and Winslow (William Finley) protects Phoenix
(Jessica Harper) in Phantom of the Paradise. In Massacre at Central High, David defends the
nerds bullied by the “jocks” and Melvin Ferd (Mark Torgl) defends the most vulnerable
people of Tromaville in The Toxic Avenger. Although presented as a murderer deserving
punishment (he kills people who are not criminals in the legal sense of the word), the
Foolkiller plays an important social role normally taken over by social institutions (the police,
family…): the protection of vulnerable and defenseless citizens (children, disabled or old

13
This list is not exhaustive. More a more complete one, see Christol, op. cit.
people…) and the sanction of irresponsible ones 14. Far from being a misogynistic psychopath
or an incarnation of Puritan morals, he is a sort of ‘grotesque’ vigilante, as if the clownish
Joker suddenly played the social role of Batman.

A Marginalized Cultural Myth

I believe that the links between these films and ‘Hop-Frog’ legitimates baptizing the
genre from Poe’s tale. Of course, I am aware that the characters of the king and the fool, the
theme of the revenge of the weak upon the strong, of the exploited over the exploiting run
through many cultures and have been given various narrative treatments in literature and
drama (we can think here about Shakespearean or Hugolian fools, such as the ones in King
Lear, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Man Who Laughs, or Le roi s’amuse). Obviously,
Poe’s tale does not have the monopoly of these tropes. So why should I decide to elect ‘Hop-
Frog’ as the template for this genre? The reason is simply because none of the works cited
above displays the complete configuration of the persecuted fool who avenges himself by
murdering his bullies in a ‘carnivalesque’ setting. In fact, when considered under close
scrutiny, these stories/novels/plays fundamentally differ from this scenario in major ways.
‘Hop-Frog’ is, to the best of my knowledge, the only short story that gathers all the elements
appearing in the films I discuss15.

As surprising as it may seem, the parallel between ‘Hop-Frog’ and these horror films
seems to have never been made (I have not found any reference to this short-story in the
books, journals and magazines I have read for this research). Of course, this does not imply
that the screenwriters/directors/producers of these films were not familiar with the short story:
Poe is an integral part of the American cultural imagination; he is still widely read and studied
today and his tales appear on many high schools and college curricula. However, it is likely
that the makers of these films did not have ‘Hop-Frog’ in mind when they created them. My
belief is that, for reasons that will be developed below, Poe’s tale is but one expression of a
cultural myth (in other words, a socially valued story informing a trend in culture and which
finds a strong resonance with a part of American society) that the movies activated more than
a hundred years after Poe wrote ‘Hop-Frog’.

In the rest of this essay I will try to understand/describe this myth more precisely. In
order to do so it is necessary to study the main cultural referents in ‘Hop-Frog’ (the myth’s
original formulation). Citing Barbara Tuchman as his source, Jack Morgan (2002), suggests
that ‘Hop-Frog’ is explicitly inspired by the story on the ‘Bal des Ardents’ at the court of
Charles VI of France, in January 1393. At the suggestions of a Norman squire, the king and
five others dressed as Wild Men in highly flammable costumes made with pitch and flax.
Four of the men died in the fire, and only Charles was saved. According to Marie-Yves Bercé

14
From afar, Halloween seems to be foreign to the generic dynamic studied here (Michael Myers does not
appear to be directly victimized). However, I think that it also belongs to the Hop-Frog movie genre. Indeed,
Michael performs the function of Foolkiller played by the avenging victims in the Hop-Frog movies. At the
beginning of the film, dressed in the ritual costume of the clown/jester, Michael murders his irresponsible sister
who prefers making out with her boyfriend than watching over her vulnerable younger brother. Michael also
watches over Tommy Lloyd, a child bullied by his school pals. For a development, see Christol (2010).
15
Granted, beyond a geographical and temporal shifting of the action from medieval times to contemporary
America, there is an important difference between ‘Hop-Frog’ and the ‘Hop-Frog movies’: at the end of Poe’s
story, Hop-Frog escapes with impunity after the king’s execution while, in the films, the fool dies. Thus, Willard
is killed by his rats, Carrie is knifed by her mother and crushed under the ruins of the house, Eric Binford (Fade
to Black) is taken down by a sniper, etc. This difference should not, however, deter us from foregrounding the
striking links between the two objects.
(1976: 41), the aristocrats dressed as savages because they participated in a charivari. I
believe that this cultural reference can throw some significant light on ‘Hop-Frog’ and the
‘Hop-Frog’ movie genre, as well as on the on ethics of violence displayed by the Foolkiller
and on the symbolical dimension of his costume.

Charivari and the Political Use of Carnivalesque Costumes

Also known as ‘rough-music,’ the charivari was a burlesque judicial ritual in which
people who had violated the social code or had engaged in certain foolish actions were
publicly ridiculed. The ritual was typically employed in cases involving some apparent
violation of the community’s standards for proper sexual or marital behavior, but also to
sanction “mean”/unchristian behaviors such as the mockery of vulnerable people (Zemon-
Davis, 2007). Traditionally conducted by young men dressed as clowns or wearing the ritual
motley costume of the court-jester, it usually took the form of a mock procession in which an
effigy of the guilty party or a person dressed up to look like him (or her) was paraded through
town seated backward on a donkey. The victim of the charivari was also frequently turned
into a ‘wild/ savage man’, and forced to wear horns/beast skins. He was then hunted down
through the village, trialed, and symbolically sacrificed.
This moral and social censorship through laughter, ridicule and/or violence, can be
apprehended as a civil extension of the Feast of Fools, a winter celebration in which the low
clergy elected a ‘king’ or ‘abbot’ of ‘Misrule’ to preside over wild revelries and engage in a
wide range of blasphemous yet officially approved clowning within the Church. In spite of its
blasphemous dimension bordering on anarchy, it was at its core a celebration of the weak, the
persecuted innocent who most resembled Christ, the ultimate scapegoat figure.
More generally, these rituals were cultural expressions of the Carnival, in which social
hierarchies dissolved and people usually marginalized exercised symbolical powers over the
community. The fool/freak/dwarf was temporarily “crowned” King of fools, while the king
became the abused fool. Participants poked fun at authority figures and celebrated the
‘grotesque’ body.16
The costume worn by young people in the Feast of Fools and the charivari was a way
for them to be “officially” invested with the socio-political prerogatives and the licence to
criticize culturally attributed to the court-jester. As Enid Welsford remarks, ‘The adoption of
motley [...] is very understandable. They were wearing the dress because they were adopting
the role and tacitly claiming the privilege of the licensed court-fool. The whole point of the
jest depended on their wearing the recognized garments of imbeciles who could not be
blamed because they were irresponsible’ (1961: 218-219) 17. The origins of this process
through which young people played a moral and political role in society, can be traced back to
Greek and Roman festivals in which it was permissible to mask oneself, imitate magistrates,
and publicly proclaim the vices and faults of others (Zemon-Davis, 2007: 101)18.
The carnivalesque costume also helped them access the position of symbolical (and
sometimes real) executioner by helping negotiate the violation of taboos, an act conferring
16
‘Carnival inversions of normal life came in an extraordinary variety of forms – peasants imitating kings,
artisans masquerading as bishops, servants giving orders to their masters, poor men offering alms to the rich,
boys beating their fathers, and women parading about in armor. Carnival was an especially attractive venue for
giving voice to subordinate groups. The ironic Christian text, the “Sermon of the Jews” from Carpentras,
portrayed the reversal of fortunes for the Jews forced to live among Christians by depicting young David’s
victory over the giant Goliath’ (Muir, 1997: 89-90)
17
On the political powers of the jester or the ritual clown, see Welsford and Willeford.
18
As Gerry Bowler notes, ‘This period of licensed misbehavior was partly a carry-over from similar midwinter
festivals in Ancient Rome, Saturnalia and the Kalends, as well as an attempt by Church authorities to maintain
long-term order by sanctioning a time of temporary disorder’ (85-86).
power but which is also dangerous1920. As Jack Morgan remarks, ‘Carnival mayhem, its
world-out-of-kilter characters [...] can [...], in actual and in literary terms, facilitate entry into
an uncanny landscape, what Simpson characterizes as “the mythic territory reserved for the
most extreme taboo”’ (Morgan 2002:143). The mask in particular was a piece of costume
which enabled the subject to go beyond/escape legal constraint. As David LeBreton writes,

The symbolical efficiency enabled by the mask deploys the (oftentimes repressed) resources of the
individual before he becomes what he is. It transfigures him outside the common law and its ancient
prohibitions, it reveals it to himself. Here is the potential power of the mask, to free the locks of the
numerous aspects composing the person. […]. The mask suspends […] the moral exigency. It raises the
verrou du moi and lets the drive free (LeBreton 2003: 240).

The socio-political prerogatives attributed to the youth through the wearing of

carnivalesque outfits gave young people rights and powers that could constitute a threat to
official powers. Carnivals sometimes turned into riots or political uprisings. In medieval
Europe, and well into the 17th century, when political figures (kings, lords, church authorities)
abused their power, emblems of the carnival could be used as tools of protest and political
violence. As Yves-Marie Bercé writes, ‘the normal sanctions of the youth kings and kings of
fools — burlesque tribunals, charivaris, skimmingtons, and mock sacrifices — were endowed
with obvious aggressive potential. These burlesque weapons could offer passages from
carnival to revolution and appear as subversive’ (16). 21 Authorities feared carnivalesque
occurings, aware that they could become riotous or revolutionary. As justice came more and
more to be administered by the State in Western Europe, carnivalesque rituals came to be seen
as disruptive and were gradually censored in the 16th and 17th century (Stallybrass and White;
Muir). The church came to regard carnival and its items (masks, excessive expression of
seuxality) as immoral, devilish activities (Burke; Townsen 1976:20-21)
This cultural reference to the medieval rites of justice performed by the youth sheds a
symbolical political light onto the Foolkiller violence in “Hop-Frog”. By making fun of two
innocent fools/’freaks’, the King and his courtesans commit a moral transgression which, in
Western Europe, could have been the occasion for a charivari. We have seen that when the
State/king was no longer legitimate, the carnival fools could “turn political” and rebel against
the king22. This is what happens in “Hop-Frog”. By using violence against people who no
longer appear as legitimate targets of abuse but as innocent and defenseless people, the king
loses his status of legitimate sovereign and becomes a sort of disorderly and tyrannical mock-
king imperiling the social structure. The fool re-establishes order and justice by killing the
tyrannical king through a political and lethal charivari. Jack Morgan has underlined the way
the jester’s vengeance was culturally inspired by the sacrificial execution of the Carnival king
(145). The dressing up of the king and his courtesans in ‘savage’ beasts ritually degrades the
tyrants. Hung from the chandelier of the ballroom, exhibited in front of the guests, the king
and his ministers are subjected to the mocking laughter of the guests, like the victims in the
ritual of the charivari. Moreover, the fool’s vengeance takes place in a costumed party. In her
seminal book on the masquerade in 18 th century literature, Terry Castle (1986) has

19
‘the violation of taboos confers power, it remains dangerous. It procures good luck, health, riches, and
whatever is desired. Also, in myth, the trickster, as the violator of taboos, possesses almost unlimited powers. It
remains, however, a source of danger because the taboos and the protection they provide are set aside and
defied.’ (Makarius, 1983: 200).
20
Makarius 1983.
21
N. Zemons-Davis ( ) and Bryan Palmer (5-62) have elaborated on the use of charivari as a political
force.
22
underscored the links between the masked ball and carnivalesque medieval rituals such as the
Feast of Fools.
By punishing those whose irresponsible behavior imperil innocent and defenseless
people, the jester in ‘Hop-Frog’ plays the role of ‘moral censor’/executioner played by the
masked people in the medieval Carnival. The primitive enthronement of a ‘fool’ as ‘mock-
king’ is probably the matrix for subsequent carnivalesque rituals in which a ‘marginal’ person
was given royal prerogatives to violate taboos and cultural categories, thereby gaining
“magical” powers, ‘rule’ over the society for a few days, then be collectively executed.
Because he had originally been a mock-king, the jester retained kingly attributes, both
aesthetically (costume, mock-scepter) and ‘politically,’ through his capacity to provide
satirical comments and overtly criticize the politics of the king. The symbolical enthroning of
the fool as (mock-) king becomes a solution to the political crisis. Faced with the
disintegration/unreliability of official state power, the dwarf becomes a symbolical substitute
to the king himself.

The Charivari of the Foolkiller: the Case of Christmas Evil

We have seen that, in Carnival, via grotesque disguises, young people were ritually
endowed with socio-political prerogatives and could use violence to punish wrongdoers
within a realm (moral and sexual behaviors) not ‘covered’ by the law. This cultural frame and
function of the disguise/mask can shed some new light on the grotesque attire worn by the
killer in the Hop-Frog movies. I will here focus on Christmas Evil, a film which has received
poor critical attention so far. The story bears all the generic topoï of the ‘Hop-Frog movie.’
Following an oedipal childhood trauma, Harry Stadlin (Braggon Maggart) has developed a
regressive, abnormal social behavior typical of the fool psychology. He works in a toy factory
where he is mocked and abused by his colleagues. After a series of events which reactivate his
trauma, he is going to disguise himself as Santa Claus and kill those who mocked him and
took advantage of his kindness.
Far from being a purely decorative motif, the Santa Claus costume plays, within the
cultural frame developed in this article (the medieval carnivalesque rites of popular justice), a
strong symbolical role. Santa Claus is indeed the Americanized version of Saint Nicholas, a
historical and mythical figure who shares a privileged relationship with poor and erring
children (a central motif of the Christmas imagery).23 Saint Nicholas is associated with the
moral upbringing of children. In many medieval churches it was the custom on the feast of
Saint Nicholas, on the sixth of December, to elect a choirboy as a mock bishop, as in the Feast
of Fools in continental Europe. During his tenure (which lasted until Holy Innocents’ Day,
December 28, which commemorated the children massacred by King Herod), he would wear
a bishop’s robes, go about in procession, take offerings, preach, and give his blessing.
Through the wearing of the Saint Nicholas dress, the ‘bishop’ ritually embodied the mythical
character and was endowed with his powers. This ritual is still found in many places in
Western Europe:

when evening comes on, people dress up as St. Nicholas, with mitre and pastoral staff, enquire about the
behaviour of the children, and if it has been good pronounce a benediction and promise them a reward
next morning. Before they go to bed the children put out their shoes, with hay, straw, or a carrot in them
for the saint’s white horse or ass. When they wake in the morning, if they have been “good” the fodder

23
In one of his most famous deeds, Saint Nicholas resuscitates three children murdered by an evil inkeeper. For
this and similar miracles, he became the patron saint of students and children. According to Jacques Heers,
Nicholas helps ‘defenseless souls. The children saved by the Saint […] are the weak, the victims, the martyrs,
the innocent’ (1983: 128-130).
 is gone and sweet things or toys are in its place; if they have misbehaved themselves the provender is
untouched and no gift but a rod is there (Miles 1976: 219).

In Christmas Evil, the costume of Santa Claus donned by Harry provides a direct link
with the carnivalesque prerogatives of its mythical model. Harry keeps a book of accounts on
the behavior of the children he observes. On Christmas night, he visits children in a hospital
to bring them home-made gifts. Leaving a family association, Harry says to the children: ‘I
want you to remember to stay good girls and boys. Respect your mothers and fathers, and do
what they tell you. Obey your teachers, and learn a whole lot. Now if you do this, I’ll make
sure you’ll get good presents from me every year. But if you’re bad boys and girls, your name
goes into the bad boys and girls book, and I’ll bring you something horrible’. Harry thus
incarnates a strong moralistic figure which contrasts with the rather depreciative presentation
of adults in the film (his bosses at the factory are presented a people only interested by gain;
his colleagues abuse his kindness to have him work their shifts, etc.).
In cultural representations and rituals, Saint Nicholas is often accompanied by a
monstrous helper/sidekick ‘whose duty was to mete out a traditional punishment to bad
children. This carrier of the rod is variously named as Hans Muff, Knecht Rpprecht, Butz,
Hans Tripp, Krampus, Klaubauf, Barter […]. The creature is often shaggily dressed in fur,
even with lighted eyes behind a mask; or blacked over, or given some other diabolic or
animalistic attribute’ (Sanson 1968: 82-83). This idea is also present in Christmas Evil as
Harry punishes immoral people such as Moss Garcia, a child who has ‘impure thoughts’ (he is
seen reading soft-core magazines at the beginning of the film). Harry goes stand in front of his
house, blackens his face and his hands with mud, and sticks them against the wall to leave a
black imprint as a form of warning. Then, the face still covered with mud, he scares the boy
by hiding behind a bush and by catching him when he passes in front of him. This make up
inscribes Harry’s punishment within the carnivalesque cultural frame of the Foolkiller myth.
One of Saint Nicholas’ helpers, Black Pete, has a face covered with black soot. Clerks
celebrating the Feast of Fools often blackened their face with soot or mud as masks (Perrot :
34). In France the entourage of the Abbey of Fools, ‘les Noircies,” paraded naked, blackfaced,
and covered with soot (Shaw 1981: 215). Harry also punishes his colleagues in a
carnivalesque fashion, turning objects related to childhood innocence into punitive weapons.
He thus rips one person’s throat with a Christmas star and kills someone who mocked him by
planting a toy soldier’s bayonet in his eye.24
Here we can see how, through the carnivalesque disguise of Santa Claus, the fool
(Harry) becomes a Foolkiller/‘moral’ executioner 25. Far from being a purely ‘decorative” or
aesthetic item, the costume helps Harry access a carnivalesque position from which he can
play a primordial political role: the upholding of a moral law disregarded by social institutions
(themselves depicted as severely dysfunctional). The symbolical enthroning of the fool as
(mock-) king becomes a solution to the political crisis. Faced with the
disintegration/unreliability of official state power, the dwarf becomes a symbolical substitute
to the king himself. This theory explains the ritual attributes (physical deformity, grotesque
costume, mask) associated to the killer.

A Cultural Aberration

24
Mikhaïl Bakhtin, probably the most important theoretician of the carnival, writes about the relationship
between everyday objects and burlesque weapons ( ).
25
In one of the few critical attempts to associate the trope of the costume with a larger cultural function, Ian
Conrich develops an interesting comparison between Jason’s hockey mask and the executioner mandated by the
State to kill legal transgressors (Conrich 2010: 180).
 Due to various socio-political factors (the influence of Puritanism among others), the
archaic, carnivalesque association between the fool’s body and juridical activities (ritualized
vengeance, charivari, burlesque tribunals, etc.), gradually censored or sublimated in Europe,
was radically and durably short-circuited in North America. In her groundbreaking study on
disability, R. G. Thompson (1997) has underlined how, because of a strong social Darwinism
culturally sustained by the Frontier myth, American culture valued masculine physical
strength and genetically “perfect” white heroes and devalued and stigmatized ‘other’ people,
races, or people deemed to be physically weak, ‘too’ feminine, etc. With his freakish body,
the fool constitutes a threat to the ideal body constructed by the Frontier myth. In the freak
show, an extremely popular institution in until the 20 th century, deviancy could be checked
and normalcy could be enforced. Nowadays, the fool is more likely to be found within generic
sites which exploit him as a source of laughter (burlesque movies), pathos (melodrama) or
fear (monsters or killer clowns in horror films), that is, genres in which he can no longer exert
any political power or threat to ruling agencies and in which his function is to serve as an
Other to be ritually sacrificed to reaffirm the prevailing aesthetical, social and moral norm
(Norden 1994). Carnivalesque rituals were banned and replaced by festivities focusing on
family life and the celebration of childhood (Nissenbaum 1997) 26.
In the Foolkiller myth, the bullied fool turns into a murderous avenger/vigilante,
thereby re-activating the archaic carnivalesque connection between “Folly” and ‘rough’ or
popular justice. In many ways, the Foolkiller, a mythical character whose grotesque body
functions as a gateway to the cultural, moral and political powers of the carnival, is therefore
an aberration within American culture. Unsurprisingly, his ‘reign’ was short-lived. The
mythos (plot formula) of the fool avenging his persecution starts being inverted with the
release of A Nightmare on Elm Street (Wes Craven, 1984), the first film of an extremely
popular series which numbers seven episodes (as well as a heavily mediatised crossover,
Freddy vs. Jason, in 2003). The film’s villain, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a bogeyman
with a steel-bladed glove as a weapon. He is a child killer lynched by angry parents turned
vigilantes after the failure of institutional justice to bring him to jail. Freddy comes back from
the grave to avenge himself by murdering the children of his executioners through the dreams
of his victims. Like Carrie, Cropsy (The Burning), or Eric (Fade to Black), Freddy is the
victim of collective violence. Like them, he is physically grotesque (he is extremely thin and
his face is totally burnt). However, unlike them, Freddy’s criminality precedes his lynching.
Freddy is not an innocent scapegoat but a sociopath ‘deserving’ of his punishment. With his
practical jokes and Rabelaisian brand of humor, he plays the function of prankster played by
the bullies in the ‘Hop-Frog’ movies.
If the slasher film can be understood as an extension and a reconfiguration of the
‘Hop-Frog movie’ genre told from the view point of the ‘practical jokers’ characters, the
Freddy series signals a new cultural paradigm and the end of the ‘HFM’ genre as a
commercially successful venture.27 A film cycle (still going on today) featuring scary killer
clowns (It [1984], Blood Harvest [1987], Out of Order (Michael Shroeder, 1988),
Clownhouse [1989]), exploits thematic and aesthetic tropes from the ‘HFM’ movie (the
26
The charivari re-appeared in North America where, legitimated by the concept of Popular Sovereignty and the
American Revolution, it took many radical shapes (vigilante movements, Whitecapping, southern lynchings,
etc.), but it was no longer the realm of youth (Maxwell Brown, 1975, Slotkin (1973)).
27
Since the mid-1990s, this plot has resurfaced in movies such as The Craft (Andrew Fleming, 1996), Valentine
(Jamie Blanks, 2001), Tamara (Jeremy Haft, 2005), Drive Thru (Brendan Cowles, 2007), Truth or die (Robert
Heath, 2007), Stitches (Conor McMahon, 2012), The Final (Joey Stewart, 2010), as well as the Masters of
Horror episode, We All Scream for Ice Cream (Tom Holland, 2007). I believe that this resurgence can be
productively discussed in the light of heavily mediated school shootings, especially the Columbine massacre
(April 1999) in which two bullied outcasts took revenge on their tormentors, thereby proposing a real, modern-
day take on the Foolkiller mythos.
element of physical deformity, the jester/clown costume worn by the killer, etc.) but associate
them exclusively with idea of moral and sexual depravity and evil. These movies invert the
genre’s ethical philosophy by turning the freak/fool into an immoral murderer threatening
children and innocent people instead of protecting them. Deprived of political role, the fool
was once again a figure generating laughter or fear, a ‘good’ scapegoat helping to define the
aesthetical and social norm, like Hop-Frog at the beginning of Poe’s tale.
Now, we have provided a new way to envision the slasher film genre and the costume
and mask worn by the killer. We have suggested that, far from being a purely aesthetical item
serving to increase the killer’s frightening potential (although it is also that), the costume was
was the sign of a cultural myth whose main protagonist was a ‘fool’ punishing moral and
social transgressions. At this stage, many questions can be raised. Why did this figure become
popular in the 1970s? Why did it lost its popular appeal by the mid-1980s? These are
questions that cannot be answered here.

This theory explains the ritual attributes (physical deformity, grotesque costume,
mask) associated to the killer. For reasons that remain to be answered, it seems that the fool
-the king’s double- temporarily became a Carnival mock-king to supplement the dysfunction
of the ‘real’ king (the American government and, more generally, authority figures). The
primitive enthronement of a ‘fool’ as ‘mock-king’ to be used as a substitute victim for the
king in the ritual assassination of the king is probably the matrix for subsequent carnivalesque
rituals in which a ‘marginal’ person was given royal prerogatives to violate taboos and
cultural categories, thereby gaining “magical” powers, ‘rule’ over the society for a few days,
then be collectively executed.

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Kinnes, I. (1988), ‘The Cattleship Potemkin: Reflections on the First Neolithic in Britain’, in J.
Barrett and I. Kinnes (eds), The Archaeology of Context, 308–11, Sheffield: University of
Sheffield.
Roese, H. (1982), ‘Some Aspects of Topographical Locations of Neolithic and Bronze Age
Monuments in Wales’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 29 (1): 763–5.
Schieffelin, E., ed. (1976), The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers, New York: St
Martin's Press.
15
Where there are several works cited for one author, cite single-authored works first in chronological
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Kinnes, I. (1988), ‘The Cattleship Potemkin: Reflections on the First Neolithic in Britain’, in J.
Barrett and I. Kinnes (eds), The Archaeology of Context, 308–11, Sheffield: University of
Sheffield.
Roese, H. (1982), ‘Some Aspects of Topographical Locations of Neolithic and Bronze Age
Monuments in Wales’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 29 (1): 763–5.
Schieffelin, E., ed. (1976), The Sorrow of the Lonely and the Burning of the Dancers, New York: St
Martin's Press.
15
Where there are several works cited for one author, cite single-authored works first in chronological
order
by date of publication.
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Carr, J. L. (1965), Teachers in the Classroom, London: Taylor.
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allowed in a References section, as it causes problems for XML tagging and eBook editions.

Altman, Rick. (1999), Film/Genre, London : Bfi Publishing.

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Notes
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Note markers in the text should be placed after all punctuation except dashes.
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The court would not be bound by the usual rules of evidence. 1
Daniels has argued that this is contentious; 2 nonetheless…
It was – as Smith points out3 – a travesty.
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Use of ibid., op. cit. and loc. cit.
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5. Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 56.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 67.
8. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, [1814] 2012), 40. Colonel
Brandon’s detached nature becomes clearer later on (ibid., 167).
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14
References
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1. Mary Hamer, Writing by Numbers: Trollope’s Serial Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987), 25.
2. Hamer, Writing by Numbers, 27.
3. Herbert Roese, ‘Some Aspects of Topographical Locations of Neolithic and Bronze Age
Monuments in Wales’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 29, no. 1 (1982): 764.
4. Ian Kinnes, ‘The Cattleship Potemkin: Reflections on the First Neolithic in Britain’, in The
Archaeology of Context, ed. John Barrett and Ian Kinnes (Sheffield: University of Sheffield,
1988), 308.
18
Note that the short title can be used again if another reference intervenes.
Example:
1. Mary Hamer, Writing by Numbers: Trollope’s Serial Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987), 25.
2. Herbert Roese, ‘Some Aspects of Topographical Locations of Neolithic and Bronze Age
Monuments in Wales’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 29, no. 1 (1982): 764.
3. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility (1814; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 23.
4. Hamer, Writing by Numbers, 250.
5. William Strunk, Jr and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th edn (New York: Allyn and Bacon,
2000), 90.
Bibliography
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Frank, Alan G. (1974), The Movie Treasury Horror Movies  : Tales of Terror in the Cinema,
Octopus Books,
Tony Williams, The Family in the American Horror Film, Fairleigh Dickinson University,
1996,
Slotkin, Richard (1992). Gunfighter Nation, The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century
America (Oklahoma, University of Oklahoma Press.
Newman, Kim. (1988). Nightmare Movies, A Critical History of the Horror Movie from 1969,
London, Bloomsbury.
One has to bear in mind the fact that the first people chosen as kings had to perform ritual
transgressions (incest, cannibalism…) in order to gain magical powers enabling them to turn
their bodies into beneficient or maleficient totems.28 The ritual sacrifice of the mock-king was
28
As shown elsewhere (Makarius and Makarius 1961 : 54), the fear that blood inspires leads to its categorization
as taboo. When that taboo is violated, the dangerous character of blood is communicated, as it were, to the
violator himself. It is as though the power that is inherent in the object under taboo (blood) and makes it
dangerous, is harnessed by the violatior and becomes a power in his hands, without ceasing to be dangerous to
him and to others (Makarius 1974: 31). This applies not only to the violation of the taboo on blood, but also, by
extension, to the violation of any taboo. On examination, it is found that many of the situations in which masks
are worn are related to, or develop out of, a violation of taboo.[…] The mask not only protects the executioner
directly from the consequences of his act, but also by concealing his identity allows him to disappear, as it were,
and cease to be the specific person he is. Laura makarius, ‘The Mask and the Violation of Taboo’, The Power of
Symbols, Masks and Masquerade in the Americas, ed. N. Ross Crumrine and Marjorie Halpin, U. of British
also a way to channel hostile anti-patriarchal energies originally directed toward the king; as
Peter Shaw observes ‘it is clear that the scapegoat king of the Saturnalia, when he was
punished or put to death, absorbed profoundly hostile impulses on behalf of the true king’
(1981: 222)29.

But the scapegoat mechanism enabling the deflection of social violence away from the king’s
body onto the body of a substitute victim is fragile. For a variety of reasons, the king or other
authority figures can easily appear as tyrannical or illegitimate. In this case, the sacrificial
violence normally deflected from its original target (the king’s body and its various
incarnations) by the scapegoat mechanism was used against it.

Aussi les fêtes où l’on s’attache à revivre le premier âge du monde, les Kronia grecques ou les saturnales
romaines aux noms significatifs, comportent-elles le renversement de l’ordre social. Les esclaves mangent à la
table des maitres, leur commandent, se moquent d’exu et ceux-ci les ervent, leur obéissent, subissent affronts et
réprimandes. Dans chaque maison, un Etat en miniature est constitué : les heutes fonctions, les rôles de prêteurs
et de consuls sont confiés aux esclaves qui exercent alors un pouvoir éphémère et parodique. A Babylone, les
rangs étaient également intervertis lors de la fête des Sacées : dans chaque famille, un esclave habillé en roi
avait, pour un temps limité, la haute main sur la maisonnée. Un phénomène analogue se passait à l’échelle de
l’Etat. A Rome, on élisait un monarque qui donnait à ses sujets d’un jours des ordres ridicules, comme de faire le
tour de l’habitation en portant sur les épaules une joueuse de flûte. Certaines données font conjecturer que le
faux roi avait plus anciennement un destin tragique : toutes les débauches, tous les excès lui étaient permis, mais
on le mettait à mort sur l’autel du dieu-souverain, Saturne, qu’il avait incarné pendant trente jours. Le roi du
Chaos étant mort, tout rentrait dans l’ordre et le gouvernement régulier dirigeait à nouveau un univers organisé,
un cosmos. A Rhodes, on sacrifiait à la fin des Cronia un prisonnier préalablement enivré. Aux Sacées
babyloniennes, on pendait ou on crucifiait un esclave qui, pendant le temps de la fête, avait rempli dans la ville le
rôle du roi, usant des concubines de celui-ci, donnant des ordres à sa place, montrant au peuple l’exemple de
l’orgie et de la luxure. […] (Caillois 162-163)

The jester (or the clown) is often seen as the king’s grotesque double. Although he has some
symbolical power, he is mainly used as a mascot to divert evil forces from the king’s body
and as a scapegoat who can be ritually abused with impunity (Welsford 1961). This function
derives from his primitive role as a substitute victim in the ritual assassination of the Priest-
king which ancient civilizations practiced for a number of political and religious reasons
(among others, the belief in the ritual regeneration of the community by the collectivele
killing of a sacred/tabooed god-like character) 30. In more recent periods, the fool/dwarf/freak
was no longer killed or expelled from society but turned into a grotesque effigy (still
collectively sacrificed as the end of Carnival) and/or kept by the side of the king or noblemen
as a jester, where he played the same social function of institutionalized mock-king/scapegoat
who could be victimized with impunity31. The character and function of the jester played a key
political function in that the legitimacy of the king depended directly on the ‘illegitimacy’ of
Columbia, Vancouver, 1983.
29
The primitive enthronement of a ‘fool’ as ‘mock-king’ is probably the matrix for subsequent carnivalesque
rituals in which a ‘marginal’ person was given royal prerogatives to violate taboos and cultural categories,
thereby gaining “magical” powers, ‘rule’ over the society for a few days, then be collectively executed.
30
See Frazer, Makarius, and Freud. « Inversement, l’impureté procure de la force procure de la force mystique
ou, ce qui revient au même, la manifeste, la prouve chez l’être qui s’est exposé victorieusement aux dangers du
sacrilège. Quand Œdipe, chargé des abominations majeures du parricide et de l’inceste, met le pied sur le
territoire d’Athènes, il se présente comme sacré et s’annonce comme source de bénédictions pour la contrée.
(Caillois 61)
31
The primitive enthronement of a ‘fool’ as ‘mock-king’ is probably the matrix for subsequent carnivalesque
rituals in which a ‘marginal’ person was given royal prerogatives to violate taboos and cultural categories,
thereby gaining “magical” powers, ‘rule’ over the society for a few days, then be collectively executed. Because
he had originally been a mock-king, the jester retained kingly attributes, both aesthetically (costume, mock-
scepter) and ‘politically,’ through his capacity to provide satirical comments and overtly criticize the politics of
the king.
the jester. Indeed, the function of the fool is precisely — through his his taboo-breaking and
transgressive behavior — to ‘hide’ the ‘illegitimacy’ of the king himself (to put it another
way, the king is legitimate precisely in contrast with the institutionalized illegitimacy of the
jester/mock-king).
This political role of the Carnival can shed some light on the power politics in ‘Hop-
Frog.’ We have seen that the legitimacy of the king relies on the necessity for the fool to
appear as a monstrous transgressor or ridiculous clown. But this social construction is fragile:
according to Orrin Klapp, ‘by suffering or showing ‘human’ traits which arouse sympathy, a
person can escape from the fool role. Excessive persecution, i.e., ‘carrying a joke too far’,
tends to make a martyr out of the fool. Undue cruelty on the part of opponents, particularly if
it is at the same time revealed that he has been injured, that he is human, has feelings, etc. will
serve to evoke identification and shatter the definition of him as subhuman.’ (Klapp 1949:
157-162.) In ‘Hop-Frog’ the dwarf ‘escapes’ his role as fool as the narrator does not present
him as a monstrous figure or ridiculous character ‘deserving’ to be mocked: by insisting on
his suffering through a rhetoric of pathos, the narrator sides with the fool and turns him into a
martyr32.
When the sacrificial victims’ innocence is revealed, these victims cannot constitute
‘efficient’ scapegoats anymore. Their sacrifice loses its pacifying and structuring power. René
Girard calls this failure of the scapegoat mechanism a ‘sacrificial crisis’ (Girard 1988: 69). By
using violence against people who no longer appear as legitimate targets of abuse but as
innocent and defenseless people, the king loses his status of legitimate sovereign and becomes
a sort of disorderly and tyrannical mock-king imperiling the social structure. This is what
Tripetta et à Hop-Frog, deux êtres infirmes et innocents, le roi commet une
transgression morale typique de celles punies par le charivari.

Instead of being the sacrificial recipient of the king’s violence, the jester becomes the king’s
executioner. En l’absence d’institution sociale comme les Abbayes de Jeunesse pour
sanctionner le comportement du roi, le fool se trouve obligé de faire justice lui-même.

32
Paul Christian Jones (2001) studies the sylistic strategy of the narrator in Poe’s tale.