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

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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

Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film

the new prominence of women is the structural effect of a greater investment in the victim function… modern horror seems especially interested in the trials of everyperson, and everyperson is on his or her own in facing the menace, without help from the authorities…it is not only in their capacity as victims that these women appear in these films. They are, in fact, protagonists in the full sense: they combine the functions of suffering victim and avenging hero. (17) stars rounded down, primarily because I've only seen a handful of the films examined in the text (of note, Carrie and the original I Spit On Your Grave), so it was a bit difficult to really get into it. I also generally disagree with the author's takeaways, but found her analysis to be interesting/worthy of consideration.Clover is a featured expert in the film S&Man, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006. [5] Biography [ edit ] 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. There are some great subtle touches including all the - yes you guessed it - horror movie references, especially focusing on the clichés and how they hope they will work out for them.

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

Clover attended the University of California at Berkeley for both her undergraduate and graduate studies. In 1965, Clover was a Fulbright Fellow at Uppsala University in Sweden. From 1971 to 1977 Clover was an assistant professor at Harvard University before returning to Berkeley, where she became Class of 1936 Professor Emerita in the departments of rhetoric, film and Scandinavian. [6] Honors [ edit ]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? Published by Princeton University Press 2015 Men, Women, and Chain Saws Gender in the Modern Horror Film - Updated Edition

Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film

I love stories by Stephen Graham Jones; he's a horror fan, writing for horror fans, and he knows just when to lean into a trope - and when to use it to subvert your expectations. He's got a way of writing horror that brings such life into a story, too! Vǫlsunga saga and the Missing Lai of Marie de France’, in Sagnaskemmtun: Studies in Honour of Hermann Pálsson on his 65th Birthday, 26th May 1986, ed. by Rudolf Simek, Jónas Kristjánsson and Hans Bekker-Nielsen, Philologica Germanica, 8 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1986), pp.79–84. 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 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 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 ChronicleHer criticism culminates in a claim that the message of Ms. 45 is that if women would just arm themselves, they would no longer be victimized by men. Essentially letting the potential rapists in the audience off the hook by moving the blame from the rapist to the victim for not “manning up” and protecting herself. 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 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 Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, and Power in Early Northern Europe." Speculum: Journal of the Medieval Academy of Amnerica, 68 (1993). Rpt. in Studying Medieval Women: Sex, Gender, Feminism. Medieval Academy of America, 1993. Rpt. in Representations, 44 (1993). Comprised of four essays on horror films, this book is a window not so much into the films of the era but into the ways film critics and academics watched and talked about films at that time. Two of the essays particularly interested me: one on the 1980s slasher craze (Clover coined the term "final girl," by the way) and one on rape/murder/revenge films of that era, specifically two movies I have not seen - Ms. 45 and I Spit on Your Grave - and one I have - Last House on the Left (based on Bergman's The Virgin Spring, which I've also seen). Clover seems to be one of the few critical apologists for these films in an era when Siskel and Ebert, and other less visible critics, were bashing them at length. If you are interested in film criticism or horror movies, give this a try. Be warned, though, it is highly academic in tone, not a light read.