Destiny Bonilla
As new technological innovations are introduced to everyday living, quality of life improves but generational differences become more apparent–especially with the pervasiveness of the term “millennials” across media. Adam Cesare’s 2020 novel, Clown in a Cornfield, is a slasher novel that critiques the generational divide and presents the shrinking empathy between the older and younger generations. Cesare uses his Final Girl as an outlier in a secluded setting to frame conflict between the generations, highlighting technology as the focal point of of that conflict; he also incorporates key components of Vera Dika and Carol Clover’s slasher conventions in order to demonstrate how the generational divide pervades both everyday interactions and the bloody climax of the novel.
Quinn Maybrook–a newcomer to the rural town of Kettle Springs, Missouri–serves as the main character and Final Girl in Clown in a Cornfield. More importantly, she is the lens through which the audience witnesses the interaction between the generations. Dika characterizes the Final Girl as “a capable character, with potential for awareness and for action,” distinguishing her “from the rest of the young community, who are less aware and whose display of sexual activity is less circumscribed” (91). Quinn is able to use violence as the Final Girl and is not characterized by any sexual activity or relationships, unlike her two new friends, Janet and Ronnie, who are defined by both their relationships and sexuality throughout the novel.
Displaced from city life, Quinn exists on the outskirts of both the ingroup and the outgroup in Kettle Springs. As a teacher yells at her on her first day, “‘Your new friends are an impediment to learning at this school and that’s just in class. In the real world, on the internet, they are a… a…’ Blight. She filled in, when he couldn’t find the word” (51). In Mr. Vern’s outburst, in which the tension between the older and younger generation is exposed by his view of his students as “an impediment,” he lumps Quinn into the group of disruptors; she is classified as part of the ingroup by the older generation. Mr. Vern also pinpoints the internet as a crucial point of difference between the younger group and the older generation. Even as Mr. Vern groups all of them together as “friends,” Quinn tries “to remain an observer” (55). When she accidentally engages with the group, Ronnie rudely asks, “I’m sorry, was I talking to you?” (56). Thus, the Final Girl walks a fine line between both groups, not accepted by either, but mostly (and reluctantly on her part) lumped in with the troublemakers because of her age.
Through Quinn’s uniquely liminal position as the Final Girl, the audience is able to see the tensions between the generations in everyday interactions. In chapter four, Quinn witnesses a tense moment between Sheriff Dunne and Ronnie, Janet, and an unidentified teen boy. The two sides experience a stalemate, “wordlessly communicating” (76). It appears to be a repetitive conversation between the two groups that ends in the same way: the younger generation retreating from the authority of the older generation. This scene not only demonstrates the power struggle between the ingroup and the outgroup, but also the aggressive hostility of the older generation. “Was it Quinn’s imagination, or did the sheriff’s right hand subtly drift toward his gun as he peered out at the teenagers?” (77). The sheriff’s action, whether meant as an intimidation strategy or a genuine preparation to unleash his weapon, serves as an extremely aggressive reaction towards the teens. Dika has pointed out that in typical slashers, older folks and authority figures, while almost always ineffectual, are nonetheless “usually friendly and concerned about the welfare of the young community” (91). The deviation from this concept of older folks as protective, caring figures reflects the point Cesare is making about the generational divide in 2020. Rather than raising and caring for their younger counterparts, older characters like the teacher Mr. Vern and Sheriff Dunne react violently and aggressively towards the mere presence of teens.
This characterization of the hostile relationship between the two groups becomes apparent during the climax of the book as well. Sheriff Dunne distinguishes himself and his cohorts in the plan to slaughter the town’s teens while dressed in Frendo the Clown costumes as having “empathy” (281). Later in the chapter, Mr. Murray appears in a Frendo costume to help Sheriff Dunne deal with Cole. Aptly, Cole wonders, “It was Janet’s stepdad. God. How could he? Did Janet’s mom know? Where was she tonight? Without her husband and daughter, that was certain” (288). It is revealed that Mr. Murray came into Janet’s life at a young age, and while he is a stepfather, it seems reasonable to assume he would have formed some kind of attachment to his stepdaughter. Instead, he partakes in the Frendo cult and attacks the teenagers, including Janet, likely knowing the hostility Mr. Vern had towards his stepdaughter. He allowed her to be killed, demonstrating apathy–even resentful aggression–towards towards his family that is completely inconsistent with the empathy that Sheriff Dunne claims the older generation have for the teens of their town.
This cruelty demonstrated by the older generation culminates in Cesare’s choice to represent the entire outgroup of older people as the killers of the novel. The killer, in Dika’s words, is “an archaic element, a relic from an earlier time that has now returned to disrupt the present stability of the young community” (93). Rather than taking on the role of the caring older group that attempts to save the younger generation, the older citizens of Kettle Springs are the “archaic” killers that aim to kill the teens for their transgressions. The older generation blames the teens for the failure of the town, tracing it consistently back to the death of Cole’s sister, Victoria Hill, which was captured on social media. As Dunne articulates it, “This new generation… they need to be brought in line” (87). Thus, as the older generation with different (“archaic”) principles, they hold the teens to a standard of behavior that is inconsistent with the principles the teens hold.
The adults, in particular, trace the cause of the teens’ transgressions back to the technology that divides the generations. “Whether you was born bad, or made bad by your phones, by the internet, by the music, by social media, I dunno” (282). The reasons that Sheriff Dunne gives here for the older folks’ need to eradicate the younger generation all conveniently relate to new technology, and thus they reflect the current hostility of many older people towards those technologies embraced by the younger generations, technologies such as Instagram or Tiktok. These technological advancements are seen as inherently bad, as having a profoundly negative effect on the younger generation. Cesare is thus showing how ideological differences between the younger and older generations end up getting pinned on technology.
Cesare goes on, though, to use technology to comment on how an inability to adapt is the ultimate downfall of the older generation–of the novel’s killers. Carol Clover has famously noted that killers in slashers use “pre-technological” weapons that are typically “personal extensions of the body that bring attacker and attacked into primitive, animalistic embrace” (31-2). The killer Frendos in the novel (all older people of the town) use several different weapons, including crossbows, chainsaws, a pitchfork, and an ax (Cesare 230). These are all traditional, pre-technological weapons that fall in line with the older generation’s anti-technology attitude. Clover’s point about pre-technological weapons and Dika’s characterization of killers as archaic combine to drive home Cesare’s point that technology is one of the root causes of the divide between the older and younger groups. Quinn survives because Rust provides her with a gun, a weapon typically absent in the slasher, and one that the older generation (the slasher “killer”) seems unable to wield. Even Sheriff Dunne fails to hit Rust with his own gun (325) and is instead bested by Quinn who is a novice shooter. Her quickly developed skill in shooting the gun is reflective of the younger generation’s ability to adapt to new technologies. Clown in a Cornfield thus offers a commentary on how the older generation’s rejection of technology represents a greater inability to adapt and will result in being left behind in time, eradicated.
Adam Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield incorporates slasher conventions to create a specific message about the generational divide. Technology is a consistently evolving feature of society and a hot topic of generational debate and even conflict. Clown in a Cornfield highlights the way in which the older generation perceives technology as dangerous, assigning it as the cause of teenagers’ transgressions. The novel also shows, though, that technology is a crucial part of life, and those who cannot adapt are incapable of surviving in society and will become relics.
Check out this interview with Adam Cesare – about his novel, the slasher, and horror film in general!
You can also check out Horror Homeroom’s podcast on Clown in a Cornfield.
Works Cited
Cesare, Adam. Clown in a Cornfield. HarperCollins, 2020.
Clover, Carol J. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Representations, vol. 20, 1987, pp. 187-228,
Dika, Vera. “The Stalker Film, 1978-81.” American Horrors: Essays on the modern American horror film, edited by Gregory Waller, University of Illinois Press, 1987, pp. 86-101.
