Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in Modern Horror Film
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.
Clover, a medievalist, had written extensively on the literature
and culture of early northern Europe, especially the Old Norse
sagas. From her expertise in formulaic narrative grew her interest
in contemporary cinema, which is, after all, yet another form of
oral storytelling. Men, Women, and Chain Saws investigated the
appeal of horror cinema, in particular the phenomenal popularity of
those "low" genres that feature female heroes and play to
male audiences: slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Such
genres seem to offer sadistic pleasure to their viewers, and not
much else. Clover, however, argued the reverse: that these films
are designed to align spectators not with the male tormentor, but
with the female tormented--with the suffering, pain, and anguish
that the "final girl," as Clover calls the victim-hero,
endures before rising, finally, to vanquish her oppressor.
The book has found an avid readership from students of film theory
to major Hollywood filmmakers, and the figure of the final girl has
been taken up by a wide range of artists, inspiring not just
filmmakers but also musicians and poets.
Review:
... [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)
... Carol Clover's compelling [book] challenges simplistic
assumptions about the relationship between gender and culture. . .
. She suggests that the "low tradition' in horror movies
possesses positive subversive potential, a space to explore gender
ambiguity and transgress traditional boundaries of masculinity and
femininity. Andrea Walsh(The Boston Globe)
... 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)
Ausstattung/Bilder: 276 pages - 19 halftones - 9.25 x 6.12 in
Seitenzahl: 276
Englisch
Abmessung: 231mm x 152mm x 18mm
Gewicht: 386g
ISBN-13: 9780691006208
ISBN-10: 0691006202
Best.Nr.: 22289698
[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 Carol Clover's compelling [book] challenges simplistic assumptions about the relationship between gender and culture... She suggests that the "low tradition' in horror movies possesses positive subversive potential, a space to explore gender ambiguity and transgress traditional boundaries of masculinity and femininity. -- Andrea Walsh The Boston Globe Fascinating, Clover has shown how the allegedly naive 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
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