Abstract
This chapter considers the ways childhood is produced as monstrous through the embodiment of killer clowns , killer dolls , and ventriloquist dummies in speculative horror , and how that construction strips children’s agency and makes them unequal partners in a dystopian symbiosis. Here, children become the playthings of killer dolls , and by extension, society’s ills. Deploying speculative realism , which counters a perception of the world that does not and cannot exist without human reason, along with a consideration of the occult —that which is both hidden and reveals something about the world-in-itself—the chapter looks at examples of the demontology of childhood toys in the popular imaginary from the films Poltergeist and Child’s Play , as well as an episode from Tales from the Crypt . Killer dolls and their ilk reflect the social construction of childhood as naive, agentless, and simultaneously monstrous, murderous, and Other while compelling us to reimagine the ethical engagement with childhood as complex and ultimately unknowable .
“And I saw my doll, Rosie, too. And I always treated her like a real person, you know what I mean? You ever have a doll and you treat her like a real person, you know, ‘cause you’re afraid if you don’t she’ll kill you?”
Sarah Silverman, An Evening at the Improv, 1992
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Kupferman, D.W. (2019). Toy Gory, or the Ontology of Chucky: Childhood and Killer Dolls. In: Kupferman, D., Gibbons, A. (eds) Childhood, Science Fiction, and Pedagogy. Children: Global Posthumanist Perspectives and Materialist Theories. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6210-1_4
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