Dying for a Laugh: Disaster Movies and the Camp Imagination

By Ken Feil

First study of disaster movies through reception theory and queer theory. Dying for a Laugh looks at the evolution of the contemporary disaster film from the 1970s to the present. Ken Feil argues that contemporary camp culture has influenced and reformed the conventions of the 1970s disaster film, in both its production and reception. This book chronicles how the genre rose to prominence, sank into critical and popular disrepute, and became unintentionally campy. Through close readings of films including The Swarm, Ghostbusters, Independence Day, and Mars Attacks along withfilm reviews, entertainment reports and publicity materials as evidence, Feil shows that the renewal of the disaster genre in the 1990s hingedon self-parody, ironic self-consciousness, and state-of-the-art effects.Feil also looks at the impact of 9/11 on the genre's campy, sadisticpleasures through movies such as The Sum of All Fears, The Core, and The Day After Tomorr

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0819567914
• ISBN13: 9780819567918
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 6.3"