{"product_id":"9781682195147","title":"Send In the Clowns!","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eClown for President!\u003c\/em\u003e  reads Todd Phillips’ blockbuster movie \u003cem\u003eJoker \u003c\/em\u003e(2019) as an economic and political allegory of our times.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat could be more surprising than \u003cem\u003eJoker\u003c\/em\u003e  as a solution to our present economic and political predicament? But in twelve riveting chapters, \u003cem\u003eClown for President! \u003c\/em\u003eleads us precisely here. Grip this movie’s visual language, the book  insists, and we can also grasp a political grammar, available to everyone, to articulate a new solidarity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe predicament \u003cem\u003eClown for President! \u003c\/em\u003ediagnoses is urgent: how late capitalism ensures astonishing inequality by persistently depoliticizing the \u003cem\u003edemos\u003c\/em\u003e, only to unleash a backlash in conspiracy, violence, and authoritarianism. \u003cem\u003eClown for President!\u003c\/em\u003e maps this unravelling to Arthur Fleck’s own transformation into the 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. Neoliberal theory vilifies power formed in solidarity with others. It criminalizes poverty. It labels social justice, democratic regulation, and collective redress as both inefficient and evil. Slow-reading this film, what Kennedy and McNaughton call grip-reading, allows \u003cem\u003eClown for President! \u003c\/em\u003eto isolate and confront the effects.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBut \u003cem\u003eClown for President!\u003c\/em\u003e says that movies have still more to teach us. \u003cem\u003eJoker\u003c\/em\u003e challenges the superhero melodrama of Batman: that we will be saved by canny corporate accounting and trust babies, tech bros and saviors who work beyond the law. \u003cem\u003eClown for President! \u003c\/em\u003ereminds us instead how inheritance and trust law fashion capital to offload costs to others and to nature. What’s more, \u003cem\u003eClown for President! \u003c\/em\u003eshows melodrama itself has become late capitalism’s preferred and recurrent genre. It appears in neoliberal economic theory; in a media seduced by villainy; in state justifications for war. Melodrama even appears perverted and disfigured in conspiracy theory. Melodrama allows demagogues to describe themselves as saviors and decry political opponents as criminals, threatening the foundations of democracy itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhether addressing psychic outcomes in late capital–where mothercare inverts to smotherhood, where broculture slips to incel—or diagnosing the structural fissures within liberalism itself—where prioritizing economic freedoms leads to suppressing democracy—\u003cem\u003eClown for President! \u003c\/em\u003epresents a compelling, accessible account of our current moment. And in a final chapter, Kennedy and McNaughton succinctly offer some ways forward.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe myth of the lone superhero has let us down. If we don’t want jokers for president, we must empower the clowns!\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sean Kennedy (CA), James McNaughton","offers":[{"title":"OR Books |  Paperback \/ softback | Trade paperback (US) |  2024-09-13","offer_id":45663913509119,"sku":"9781682195147","price":27.5,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0329\/9075\/7001\/files\/BNCServices.png?v=1718225176","url":"https:\/\/riverbookshop.com\/products\/9781682195147","provider":"River Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}