Men, Women, & Chain Saws – Gender in the Modern Horror Film: Gender in Modern Horror Film

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The analysis and criticism itself is also a mixed bag. There are several good points that I had never considered, but there are probably just as many Bad Takes. And a lot of times, even the Good Takes become Bad Takes by sliding down a subconscious slippery slope. Do the pleasures of horror movies really begin and end in sadism? So the public discussion of film assumes, and so film theory claims. According to that view, the power of films like Halloween and Texas Chain Saw Massacre lies in their ability to yoke us in the killer's perspective and to make us party to his atrocities. In this book Carol Clover argues that sadism is actually the lesser part of the horror experience and that the movies work mainly to engage the viewer in the plight of the victim-hero - the figure who suffers pain and fright but eventually rises to vanquish the forces of oppression. A paradox is that, since the late 1970s, the victim-hero is usually female and the audience predominantly male. It is the fraught relation between the "tough girl" of horror and her male fan that Clover explores. Horror movies, she concludes, use female bodies not only for the male spectator to feel at, but for him to feel through Carol Jeanne Clover (born July 31, 1940) is an American professor of Medieval Studies (Early Northern Europe) and American Film at the University of California, Berkeley. Clover has been widely published in her areas of expertise, and is the author of three books. [2] Clover's 1992 book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film achieved popularity beyond academe. [3] [4] Clover is credited with developing the " final girl" theory in the horror genre, which has changed both popular and academic conceptions of gender in horror films. The Politics of Scarcity: On the Sex Ratio in Early Scandinavia." Scandinavian Studies, 60 (1988), 147–88. Rpt. in New Readings on Women in Old English Literature. Ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen. Indiana Univ. Press. the “certain link” that puts killer and Final Girl on terms, at least briefly, is more than “sexual repression.” It is also a shared masculinity, materialized in “all those phallic symbols”- and it is also a shared femininity, materialized in what comes next (and what Carpenter, perhaps significantly , fails to mention): the castration, literal or symbolic, of the killer at her hands. The Final Girl has not just manned herself; she specifically unmans an oppressor whose masculinity was in question to begin with. By the time the drama has played itself out, darkness yields to light (typically as day breaks) and the close quarters of the barn (closet, elevator, attic, basement) give way to the open expanse of the yard (field, road, lake-scape, cliff). With the Final Girl’s appropriation of “all those phallic symbols” comes the dispelling of the “uterine” threat as well. (49)

Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Stephen Graham Jones | Goodreads Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Stephen Graham Jones | Goodreads

Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Princeton University Press, 1992 and the British Film Institute, 2004

In other words, gender is a result not of the body but of behavior. As explained in the next chapter, final girls survive because of their maleness. By the end of the film they are able to man themselves by taking on a phallic object and penetrating the killer with it, thereby unmanning him. It is through pain and trials that the final girl can become manned, she must pass from victim to hero. The world of horror is in any case one that knows very well that men and women are profoundly different (and that the former are vastly superior to the latter) but one that at the same time repeatedly contemplates mutations and sliding whereby women begin to look a lot like men (slasher films), men are pressured to become like women (possession films), and some people are impossible to tell apart…however, it (the one-gender model) is also echoed in its (the horror film) representation of gender as the definitive category from which sex proceeds as an effect- and in its deep interest in precisely such ‘proceedings.’ (15) Clover is a featured expert in the film S&Man, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006. [5] Biography [ edit ]

Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern - JSTOR

Judging Audiences: The Trial Movie." Film Studies, ed. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams. (London: Arnold, 1998). And yeah, the Freudian stuff is completely exhausting. Of course there’s a lot to be said about the sexual subtext of many horror films. But wow, I never knew there were so many ways to subconsciously symbolize genitalia. Penises and vaginas and metaphorical sex as far as the eye can see! And this focus on phalluses really brings the bio-essentialist perspective to the forefront, which makes it all even worse. urn:lcp:menwomenchainsaw0000clov:epub:f632b596-4b8a-4a76-8f20-76d2c54b2873 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier menwomenchainsaw0000clov Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2r33pj0vph Invoice 1652 Isbn 0851703313 I have no idea how harshly to judge a 28-year-old book when it comes to our modern understanding of gender. I’ll be generous and chalk most of these issues up to it just being dated. But regardless, most of it is from a bio-essentialist perspective, which severely tainted my experience and made me wish for a modern, more progressive version.Old Norse Icelandic Literature: a critical guide, University of Toronto Press, in association with the Medieval Academy of America, reprinted 2005 Fascinating, Clover has shown how the allegedly naïve makers of crude films have done something more schooled directors have difficulty doing - creating females with whom male veiwers are quite prepared to identify with on the most profound levels"— The Modern Review

Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol J. Clover - Ebook | Scribd Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol J. Clover - Ebook | Scribd

For what it's worth, I enjoyed this book for the most part. It certainly gave me a lot to think about and analyze, and while it did take me quite some time to read, I attribute that more to my own desire to take my time digesting the topics in this book. There was a lot to take in and think about, especially when accounting for the fact that this book is dated and it prompts a lot of questions about the understanding of gender, coming from a decades-older viewpoint. Our main character is Jenna, a woman who has had to deal with a fair amount of loss in her life, the most recent one being that of her boyfriend Victor, who went to work on oil rigs and sent her a break up letter. Earlier was the death of her bio parents in a tragedy involving a car. Jenna’s last happy moment with Victor was recreating a photoshoot at a local junkyard involving a junked out Camaro and Caroline Williams of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” fame, and when Jenna finds the Camaro later, the same night Victor comes home and her rejection is flaunted for everyone, things take a turn for the supernatural. It involves bloodletting, a rebuilt car, and a scorned lover’s revenge. But it’s also a story of a woman who has suffered some pretty terrible loss in her life, and how a bloodthirsty car not only can help her seek revenge but also closure. On the flipside, all those classic horror movies you do get to read about are to die for. Sorry...I know, but I had to say it. Speaking of cheese, comedic horror gets mostly left out. No Army of Darkness? Evil Dead does get a mention, but I would argue that movie wasn't really trying to be funny. It just was. The story is constructed with a lot of homages and references to classic horror, most notably the film Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the actress Caroline Williams, with a photo of her atop an old rusted Camaro figuring prominently into the story. Something I truly enjoyed was the way you can feel Jones’ excitement about all the references built into the story, which in turn makes you excited about them (even though I really know nothing about cars and have never seen the film, but it’s like how you get excited about things your friend likes because you are just happy to see them happy). Jones builds the story through Jenna’s narration, often having you witness events without much context for the motivations. Yet. That context comes, and the slow reveals create a really palpable tension.Cinefantastic horror, in short, succeeds in incorporating its spectators as “feminine” and then violating that body- which recoils, shudders, cries out collectively- in ways otherwise imaginable, for males, only in nightmare. (53) Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2022-01-25 04:09:50 Associated-names British Film Institute Bookplateleaf 0010 Boxid IA40834304 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier There are a lot of valid criticisms to be made of Ms. 45. It’s an imperfect and abrasive movie about one of the most sensitive subjects. But the conclusion reached above is absolutely bonkers and is completely at odds with the climax (and honestly, most) of the movie. I won’t spoil it for you, but getting a gun definitely does not protect the character or make her ending a happy one. There’s a lot about the movie that’s open to interpretation, but who should be blamed for a rape is not a question that it poses. Clover makes a convincing case for studying the pulp-pop excesses of ‘exploitation' horror as a reflection of our psychic times. ---Misha Berson, San Francisco Chronicle