urn:lcp:menwomenchainsaw0000clov:epub:f632b596-4b8a-4a76-8f20-76d2c54b2873 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier menwomenchainsaw0000clov Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2r33pj0vph Invoice 1652 Isbn 0851703313 Under the rust she’d touched, there was that distinctive midnight blue that so many of these Z/28s had been painted with. Ideally, she’d figure some way to project The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 onto the old screen, but, even if she could figure how to do that, it would only draw eyes from the highway. 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)

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. A] brilliant analysis of gender and its disturbances in modern horror films. . . . Bubbling away beneath Clover's multi-faceted readings of slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films is the question of what the viewer gets out of them. . . . [She] argues that most horror films are obsessed with feminism, playing out plots which climax with an image of (masculinized) female power and offering visual pleasures which are organized not around a mastering gaze, but around a more radical "victim-identified" look." —-Linda Ruth Williams, Sight and Sound

Table of Contents

Victor’s parking lights dimmed down and he killed the engine, coasted in, his tires crunching through the dirt into the old gravel, the dry grass hissing against his undercarriage. I mean, they’re not your real parents anyway, are they?” Took had said early on, when they were still decorating the trailer, making it not look so thirdhand. In her reading of both particular horror films and of film and gender theory, Clover does what every cultural critic hopes to: she calls into question our habits of seeing." —-Ramona Naddaff, Artforum It could, she told herself, and walked out farther to test it, riding the humps up and down, and . . . that was when she saw it.

Had she done something wrong? She had really seen them sitting in the front seats, hadn’t she? That hadn’t just been wishful thinking, had it? A] brilliant analysis of gender and its disturbances in modern horror films. . . . Bubbling away beneath Clover's multi-faceted readings of slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films is the question of what the viewer gets out of them. . . . [She] argues that most horror films are obsessed with feminism, playing out plots which climax with an image of (masculinized) female power and offering visual pleasures which are organized not around a mastering gaze, but around a more radical "victim-identified' look."—Linda Ruth Williams, Sight and Sound The party hadn’t even dialed its volume down from the glass breaking, meaning either nobody cared or she was too far away for anyone to have heard. Meaning? She laughed: anything could happen out here now, couldn’t it? With nobody watching?The letters that used to be up on that sign. They’d shrunk or something in the sun, across all the years, and who knew how many storms had whipped them out of place, scattered them down here. A] brilliant analysis of gender and its disturbances in modern horror films. . . . Bubbling away beneath Clover's multi-faceted readings of slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films is the question of what the viewer gets out of them. . . . [She] argues that most horror films are obsessed with feminism, playing out plots which climax with an image of (masculinized) female power and offering visual pleasures which are organized not around a mastering gaze, but around a more radical "victim-identified' look. ---Linda Ruth Williams, Sight and Sound All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. She gulped the spit in her mouth down, eased in, and touched the driver’s side fender, telling herself there was no chance the metal was going to be hot, or, if it was, that was just the day’s heat, collected there—not an engine.

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 ReviewTo be one hundred percent certain this would work, though, Jenna went to the pawn shop up in Longview—she didn’t want to get mired down in Houston traffic—and walked out with one of those TV/VCR jobs that plug into a cigarette lighter. 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 Do the pleasures of horror movies really begin and end in sadism? So the public discussion of film assumes, and so film theory claims. Carol Clover argues, however, that these films work mainly to engage the viewer in the plight of the victim-hero, who suffers fright but rises to vanquish the forces of oppression. Do the pleasures of horror movies really begin and end in s Do the pleasures of horror movies really begin and end in sadism? So the public discussion of film assumes, and so film theory claims. Carol Clover argues, however, that these films work mainly to engage the viewer in the plight of the victim-hero, who suffers fright but rises to vanquish the forces of oppression. Do the pleasures of horror movies really begin and end in sadism? So the public discussion of film assumes, and so film theory claims. Carol Clover argues, however, that these films work mainly to engage the viewer in the plight of the victim-hero, who suffers fright but rises to vanquish the forces of oppression. [120]…more Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film – Updated Edition by Carol J. Clover – eBook Details When he finally died—it took at least ten delicious minutes—his face was right up to the glass, framed by his hands, his fingers open and pleading.

But then she just stood there, the heavy head of that sledgehammer by her right boot, the handle easy in her hand. Jenna shook her head no again, though she was pretty sure she could have stopped at that if she really wanted—iron deficiency, something like that. Jenna pushed harder with them, faster, and when the time was right she jumped down into the driver’s seat, popped the clutch, and— What?” Cray-Cray said, already redoing her makeup in the vanity mirror, for whatever this night was going to hold.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) Old Norse Icelandic Literature: a critical guide, University of Toronto Press, in association with the Medieval Academy of America, reprinted 2005 What she wanted to do was pull the brights on, drop it into low, and jam that grill guard right into the side of this pretty Camaro, and keep her foot in it until the projection booth or the fireworks stand stopped her.