Fashioning Horror : Dressing to Kill on Screen and in Literature

"From Jack the Ripper to Frankenstein, Halloween customs to Alexander McQueen collections, Fashioning Horror examines how terror is fashioned visually, symbolically, and materially through fashion and costume, in literature, film, and real life. With a series of case studies that range from sensationalist cinema and Slasher films to true crime and nineteenth-century literature, the volume investigates the central importance of clothing to the horror genre, and broadens our understanding of both material and popular culture. Arguing that dress is fundamental to our understanding of character and setting within horror, the chapters also reveal how the grotesque and horrific is at the center of fashion itself, with its potential for instability, disguise, and carnivalesque subversion. Packed with original research, and bringing together a range of international scholars, the book is the first to thoroughly examine the aesthetics of terror and the role of fashion in the construction of horror"--Bloomsbury Publishing Cover Half-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Introduction: Fashion and Fear 1. “Death Dress You Anew”: Fashion as Transience and Limit of Human Life in Christian Literature and Iconographies between the Twelfth and Nineteenth Centuries 2. “Their Tattered Mortal Costumes Will Afford Them None of the Answers They Seek”: Clothing Immortals in the Work of Anne Rice, Tanith Lee, and Angela Carter 3. Fashioning Frankenstein in Film: Brides of Frankenstein 4. Wayward Wedding Dresses: Fabricating Horror in Dressing Rituals of Femininity 5. Fashioning Revenge: Costume, Crime, and Contamination in Barbey d’Aurevilly’s La Vengeance d’une femme 6. Fashions from Hell: The Enduring Influence of Jack the Ripper on Dress 7. Slasher Consciousness: Class, Killer Clothes, and Heterogeneity 8. Fashioning Frankenstein in Film: Monsters and Men 9. Horrific Transformations: Costume, Gender, and the Halloween Franchise 10. Faces of Rage: Masks, Murderers, and Motives in the Canadian Slasher Film 11. Massacres and Masquerades: The Costume in the American Slasher Film and the Cultural Myth of the “Foolkiller” Index From Jack the Ripper to Frankenstein, Halloween customs to Alexander McQueen collections, Fashioning Horror examines how terror is fashioned visually, symbolically, and materially through fashion and costume, in literature, film, and real life. With a series of case studies that range from sensationalist cinema and slasher films to true crime and nineteenth-century literature, the volume investigates the central importance of clothing to the horror genre, and broadens our understanding of both material and popular culture. Arguing that dress is fundamental to our understanding of character and setting within horror, the chapters also reveal how the grotesque and horrific is at the center of fashion itself, with its potential for instability, disguise, and carnivalesque subversion. Packed with original research, and bringing together a range of international scholars, the book is the first to thoroughly examine the aesthetics of terror and the role of fashion in the construction of horror--back cover