[ecrea] CFP - Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema - Edited collection

Please find below a cfp for a proposed collection of original scholarly 
essays I am putting together under the provisional title of /Merchants 
of Menace: The Buciness of Horror Cinema/.

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*Call for Papers*

*/Merchants of Menace: The Business of Horror Cinema/*

* *

Despite scary movies having occupied prominent locations on the rosters 
of film producers, distributors, exhibitors, and other creative industry 
professionals around the world for about a century, the economic 
dimensions of horror cinema remain largely unexplored; the theoretical 
terrain remains loosely sketched and it has been supported by a quite 
limited number of specific case studies. Instead, scholars have tended 
over the years to approach horror films as organically occurring – even 
inevitable – by-products of myriad psychological, social, and political 
demons said to haunt the psyches of individual filmmakers, the 
populations of the nation states they call home, or chiefly a 
combination thereof (see for example Wood & Lippel; Creed; Clover; 
Benshoff; Lowenstein; Middleton). Such approaches have led to horror 
movies routinely being framed as mouthpieces for misogynistic sadists 
operating from the shadows of the exploitation sector, as subversive 
expressions of resistance enacted by noble progressives of various 
stripes, or as platforms for reactionary politics invariably supported 
by the biggest, scariest monster of all: Hollywood. As a consequence of 
these tendencies, the specific forms of commercial logic, strategy, and 
conduct that contribute to bringing individual horror films and specific 
horror trends to the screen have more often than not been side-stepped 
altogether or have been reduced gnomically and unhelpfully to the 
profit-making imperative underwriting all capitalist endeavours. A 
recent – albeit marginal – shift among historians of the culture 
industries towards centralizing considerations of the business side of 
fright flicks has, however, begun to suggest a range of sources, 
methods, approaches, frameworks, and models capable of illuminating the 
complex character of this largely unexplained aspect of media history 
(see for example Heffernan; Spadoni; Ryan; Nowell; Laboto & Ryan). Given 
that horror’s status as an industrial category cuts across budgetary 
categories, across industry sectors, across national film cultures, and 
across media, the possibility of revealing new information about the 
commercial objectives and strategies that have underwritten horror 
cinema also promises to shed new light on the economics of global cinema 
more generally. It is therefore/ /the aim of /Merchants of Menace: The 
Business of Horror Cinema/ timely to fill a sizable and significant void 
in film history through a focused, sustained, and far-reaching effort to 
illuminate the multifaceted commercial logic that has shaped the 
production, distribution, and exhibition of one of the world’s most 
enduring audiovisual forms.

Accordingly, proposals are sought for original essays that focus on the 
business of bankrolling, making, marketing, disseminating, and 
exhibiting chillers, shockers, and other forms of horror cinema in a 
variety of national contexts and at different historical junctures. 
Suggested topics for this proposed collection include but are by no 
means restricted to:

· Models of financing horror films

· The logic of micro-budget horror

· The economics of art-horror cinema

· Nationally specific models of horror film financing

· The economics of early horror cinema

· Child- and “tween”-friendly horror

· Horror and race demographics

· Making and marketing horror to “mature” audiences

· Horror and the commodification of nostalgia

· Horror and appealing to specific sub-cultural taste formations

· The economics of horror date movies

· The economics of horror blockbusters

· Merchandizing horror cinema

· Publicizing horror

· Strategies in the marketing of horror

· Industrial histories of historically specific trends and cycles

· The economics of stardom in horror cinema

· The economics of brand name horror filmmakers, studios, and labels

· Music and horror

· Relationships between film horror and other creative industries

· Horror and the commodification of prestige

· The impact of economics on the portrayal of violence and gore

· The business of horror film exhibition

· The economics of exporting horror film

Please send by 31 October 2011 your 200–400 word abstract and a 50–100 
word academic biography to (richard_nowell /at/ hotmail.com). All notifications 
of acceptance will be emailed no later than 30 November 2011. If an 
abstract is accepted, essays can be expected to be between 7,500 and 
8,000 words in length (including references).

Yours Sincerely,

Dr. Richard Nowell, Editor.

Richard Nowell teaches American Cinema at Charles University in Prague. 
He is the author of /Blood Money a History of the First Teen Slasher 
Film /Cycle, has served as a guest editor of /Iluminace: The Journal of 
Film Theory, History, and Aesthetics/, and his articles have been 
published or are forthcoming in, among others, /Cinema Journal/, 
/Journal of Film and Video/, /Post Script/, and /The New Review of Film 
and Television Studies/

*_Works Cited_*

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Benshoff, Harry./ Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror 
Movie/. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.

Clover, Carol. J. /Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern 
Film/. London: BFI 1992.

Creed, Barbara. /The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, and 
Pyschoanalysis/. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Heffernan, Kevin./ Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold: Horror Films and the 
American Movie/

/Business, 1953–1968/. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.

Laboto, Rabon, and, Mark David Ryan. “Rethinking Genre Studies through 
Distribution Analysis: Issues in International Horror Movie Circuits”, 
/New Review of Film and Television Studies /(Forthcoming)

/ /

Lowenstein, Adam. /Shocking Representation: Historical Cinema, National 
Trauma, and the Modern Horror Film/. New York: Columbia University 
Press, 2005.

Jason Middleton, “The Subject of Torture: Regarding the Pain of 
Americans in/Hostel/”, /Cinema Journal/, vol. 49, no. 4 (Summer 2010), 
pp. 1–24

Nowell, Richard. /Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher 
Film/. New York: Continuum, 2011.

Ryan, Mark David. “Australian Cinema’s Dark Sun: The Boom in Australian 
Horror

Film Production”, /Studies in Australian Cinema/, vol. 4 no. 1, pp. 23–41.

Spadoni, Robert. /Uncanny Bodies: The Coming of Sound and the Origins of 
the Horror Genre/. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Wood, Robin, and Richard Lippel (eds.). The /American Nightmare: Essays 
on the Horror Film/. Toronto: Festival of Festivals, 1979.

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