A Silent Scream: An Approach to «King Kong» and the Evolution of the Contemporary American Imaginary

This book describes the main characteristics that define the emotion of fear , its dimensions, functions, types, and social and individual meanings. It also shows that fear represents a desire to eliminate the Other and that horror films have their origin precisely in crisis and fear, which gives it a fundamentally xenophobic nature. This is demonstrated in the book through the analysis of the four most important versions of the King Kong myth: 1933, 1976, 2005 and 2017. These versions are the result of the fear of the Other that was generated by particular crises in US society: the stock market crash of 1929, the 1970s energy crisis, 9/11 and the military intervention in Iraq in 2003 and its consequences. These conflicts also led to psychological and sociological effects that created a desire for escape that King Kong's films manifest.

Juan Antonio Roche Cárcel is Professor of Sociology of Culture and the Arts at the University of Alicante (Spain). He is currently President of the Committee for the Sociology of Emotions of the Spanish Federation of Sociology. His research focuses on culture, emotions, visual sociology, arts, cinema, theater and skyscraper architecture, creativity.