No Go, the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock

In this work on the age old images and stories about frightening men the author goes beyond the terrain she covered in her previous book From the Beast to the Blonde. She explores the darker, wilder realm where ogres and giants devour children, where bogeymen haunt the night and each of us must face our bugaboos. The book considers the enduring presence and popularity of figures of male terror, establishing their origins in mythology and their current relation to ideas about sexuality and power, youth and age. Songs, stories, images, and films about frightening monsters have always been invented to allay the very terrors that our dreams of reason conjure up. The author shows how these images and stories, while they may unfold along different lines, scaring, lulling, or making mock, always have the strategic, simultaneous purpose of both arousing and controlling the underlying fear. In an analysis of material long overlooked by cultural critics, historians, and even psychologists, she revises our understanding of storytelling in contemporary culture, of masculine identity, racial stereotyping, and the dangerous, unthinking ways we perpetuate the bogeyman.