{"product_id":"clown-for-president-james-mcnaughton-9781682195147","title":"Clown for President!","description":"Published to coincide with the release of Joker: Folie à Deux, the sequel to Todd Phillips’ iconic blockbuster, this imaginative reading sees Joker as an economic and political allegory, presenting unexpected and dazzling insights into contemporary capitalism.\nWhat could be more surprising than the cinematic presentation of the Joker as a key to solving our present economic and political predicament? Send In the Clowns! leads us precisely there. Grip this movie’s visual language, its authors insist, and we can also grasp a political grammar, available to all, that articulates a new, world-changing solidarity.\nThe predicament Send In the Clowns! diagnoses is urgent: the way late capitalism ensures astonishing inequality, unleashing a backlash in conspiracy, violence, and authoritarianism. These pages map this unraveling onto the narrative of Joker. When the movie begins in 1981, neoliberal tides are shifting the sands: the rise of insecure work; the destabilizing of welfare; the explosion of racialized incarceration. A close reading of the film allows Kennedy and McNaughton to isolate and confront these phenomena.\nSend In the Clowns! shows how melodrama has become late capitalism’s preferred genre. It appears in neoliberal economic theory; in a media seduced by caricatured villainy; in state justifications for war. Melodrama allows demagogues to depict themselves as saviors and decry political opponents as criminals, threatening the foundations of democracy itself.\nThe myth of the lone superhero has brought us to the brink of disaster. If we don’t want jokers for president, we must empower the clowns!","brand":"OR Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50058949493024,"sku":"9781682195147","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0753\/2812\/7264\/files\/9781682195147.jpg?v=1780847106","url":"https:\/\/bookcorner.com\/products\/clown-for-president-james-mcnaughton-9781682195147","provider":"The Book Corner","version":"1.0","type":"link"}