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A review by junibjones
Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol J. Clover
3.0
As someone who delights in horror movies I loved delving into the inner workings of one of my favorite genres through Men, Women and Chainsaws. While I could do without the copious references to Freud (the book was originally published in 1992 so I’ll give it a pass) Carol Clover brings to light several points I’d never really considered while watching horror movies. I’m definitely going to look into a couple of the films she references because I’ve never seen them, or I haven’t seen them all the way through. The discussion of the feminine in terms of revenge films was so interesting to me, and I’d never considered country/city revenge as a sub genre even those are a bunch of the movies I’ve seen. It ties in with classism and guilt. The City in horror is innately feminine while the Country is unequivocally male. “The city not only has money but it uses it to humiliate country people” is an incredible line that tied it all together for me.
I’ve always been really intrigued by the final girl trope and why most horror seemed to exhibit violence against women. Everything comes down to the patriarchy because of course it does. Final girls are arguably the most victimized within the film, but as the audience, we too are in the position as victim, forced (by our own choices obviously) to witness the terror the final girl goes through. Clover posits that slasher films are done in the male gaze and while audiences cheer when something violent happens to the hapless victims, they switch gears and root for the final girl in the end and the explanation behind why that may be is really well done. Though the original publishing date was in 1992 I couldn’t help but apply what I’d been essentially learning to more modern movies I’d seen and how, if you change an aspect or two, they easily go from horror movies to action epics or crime dramas. 3/5 for, personally, an overuse of Freud and the several uses of the word ‘r*traded’ I don’t care that it was the like 80s, early 90s that doesn’t make it okay.
I’ve always been really intrigued by the final girl trope and why most horror seemed to exhibit violence against women. Everything comes down to the patriarchy because of course it does. Final girls are arguably the most victimized within the film, but as the audience, we too are in the position as victim, forced (by our own choices obviously) to witness the terror the final girl goes through. Clover posits that slasher films are done in the male gaze and while audiences cheer when something violent happens to the hapless victims, they switch gears and root for the final girl in the end and the explanation behind why that may be is really well done. Though the original publishing date was in 1992 I couldn’t help but apply what I’d been essentially learning to more modern movies I’d seen and how, if you change an aspect or two, they easily go from horror movies to action epics or crime dramas. 3/5 for, personally, an overuse of Freud and the several uses of the word ‘r*traded’ I don’t care that it was the like 80s, early 90s that doesn’t make it okay.