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

Product Information

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) Angry displays of force may belong to the male, but crying, cowering, screaming, fainting, trembling, begging for mercy belong to the female. Abject terror, in short, is gendered feminine, and the more concerned a given film is with that condition- and it is the essence of modern horror- the more likely the femaleness of the victim. It is no accident that male victims in slasher films are killed swiftly or offscreen, and that prolonged struggles, in which the victim has time to contemplate her imminent destruction, inevitably figure females. Only when one encounters the rare expression of abject terror on the part of a male… does one apprehend the full extent of the cinematic double standard in such matters. (51) One criticism, perhaps unfair, is that the content is a bit dated, since this was published in 1992. For that reason, many excellent recent horror films are not covered. Time for an updated edition maybe?? Her 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.

Men, Women and Chainsaws by Carol J. Clover | Goodreads Men, Women and Chainsaws by Carol J. Clover | Goodreads

Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000530 Openlibrary_edition 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. She describes the slasher film a a pre-technological genre because of its attachment to weapons like chainsaws, daggers, and knives, the absence of guns, as well as the consistent failing of technologies like elevators, phones, cars, etc. She also notes how these sorts of weapons satiate audience’s taboo curiosity to see the inside of the human body. 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 Telling Evidence in Njáls saga", in Emotion, Violence, Vengeance and Law in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of William Ian Miller, ed. by Kate Gilbert and Stephen D. White, Medieval Law and Its Practice, 24 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp.175–88 doi: 10.1163/9789004366374_011.

Introduction: Carrie and the Boys

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. 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 Clover is a featured expert in the film S&Man, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006. [5] Biography [ edit ] 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. Hildigunnr's Lament: Women in Bloodfeud." In Structure and Meaning. Ed. Gerd Wolfgang Weber, et al. Odense Univ. Press, 1987.

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

not to mention that she establishes young, heterosexual men as the primary audience for low-brow horror through anecdotal evidence from movie-theatre employees and video store clerks, which is weirdly weak evidence on which to support such an academic book. but we'll keep it pushing.) urn:lcp:menwomenchainsaw0000clov:epub:f632b596-4b8a-4a76-8f20-76d2c54b2873 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier menwomenchainsaw0000clov Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2r33pj0vph Invoice 1652 Isbn 0851703313 This book struggles in part (I think) because the author has trouble truly embracing horror. She seems to feel the need to authenticate the horror films she discusses by aligning them with mainstream Hollywood movies. This wouldn't be as distracting if she did not go into such detail about these non-horror films. Unfortunately, she winds up making them the focus at many points, losing her readers. For example, she spends the better part of the third essay talking about Deliverance in explicit detail, while name-dropping other actual horror films with nary a description. She also has a bad habit of relying on the same few films throughout all four essays. Her heavy, heavy, heavy reliance on Freud is quite tiring & irritating by the end. The worst part, though, is when she tries to force a terrible connection between "Indians" [sic] and rapists/evil-doers. That moment was just atrocious. 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 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 one thing that majorly bothered me was the essay-chapter "The Eye of Horror." I felt like Clover got rather repetitive and beat her points in that chapter over and over again. Additionally, I took issue with a lot of her analysis of Carrie and Firestarter. My issues with her approach to Carrie started in chapter two, but she grossly misunderstood and skewed the knowledge of Firestarter to the point I felt like she was really reaching for an excuse to include it and force it like a square peg into a round hole for the "Eye of Horror" chapter. Even knowing she didn't read any of the books any of these films she watched were based on, with the exception of The Exorcist, I still don't understand how it is she so horribly misunderstood Firestarter and tried to force it to fit the point of her essay. 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 Various genres are covered (slasher, possession, haunting, revenge-I Spit On Your Grave gets a lot of attention), as well as films that influenced horror, like the Alien movies, Deliverance, and even The Accused. 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 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.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 The thing for me is, I’m just not into cars at all. That’s probably why there was a bit of a disconnect with me in that aspect but there were some good horror elements and relatability to this as I kept reading. No doubt, if I loved cars, this would have been given a higher rating in my book.