- Paperback: 276 pages
- Publisher: Princeton University Press (22 Mar 1993)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0691006202
- ISBN-13: 978-0691006208
- Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
422,755 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #94 in Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Television > TV Genres > Horror
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Product Description
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
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
Product Description
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.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
AT THE BOTTOM of the horror heap lies the slasher (or splatter or shocker or stalker) film: the immensely generative story of a psychokiller who slashes to death a string of mostly female victims, one by one, until he is subdued or killed, usually by the one girl who has survived. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
AT THE BOTTOM of the horror heap lies the slasher (or splatter or shocker or stalker) film: the immensely generative story of a psychokiller who slashes to death a string of mostly female victims, one by one, until he is subdued or killed, usually by the one girl who has survived. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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15 reviews
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Thank You Harris Ross and Chris Straughen
19 April 2000
Format:Paperback
I was lucky to have a film teacher recommend this book to me. It articulated a view that I have long held- that audience members identify with victims, not killers, in horror films. Although alot of the writing depends on existing psych and film theory, I found the book very accessible as she explained relevant past theories succinctly and in a way that even a novice like me could understand. This book is not just for academics and should be required reading for horror fans. "Andrew says check it out."
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Film criticism that's not just for film students
30 May 2000
Format:Paperback
Horror films have always been one of my guilty pleasures, but it's not until I read this book that I truly started to understand the inner workings of fright flicks-- and of film in general.
When people find out this is a "feminist critique", they immediately think "politically correct man bashing". Nothing is further from the truth. The author seems genuinely more interested in understanding horror and its audience tham in making any kind of political point. She even raises the stakes in the discussion when she, for example, equates the Oscar-winning "The Accused" with "I Spit On Your Grave", noting that they are high and low forms of the exact same story.
The lit-crit jargon can be daunting to those unfamiliar with film analysis, but stick with it. The insights in this book will color your appreciation for all movies.
19 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Take that, Andrea Dworkin...
25 July 2000
Format:Paperback
...and all other "feminists" who think a work of art/entertainment featuring violence and women is automatically violently anti-woman. This is the book you want in your corner when someone (sometimes male, too) starts gassing off about how those bad, bad horror films demean women. Um, I would say a schlockfest like "Hanging Up" or "You've Got Mail" demeans women a hell of a lot more than your average slasher film that doesn't star Meg Ryan.
Carol Clover makes the convincing point that most of the better-known slasher films are narratives of women empowering themselves over a (usually male) antagonist. In this respect, the much-reviled "I Spit on Your Grave" could be seen as the forerunner of "Thelma & Louise." I have to admit for the record that I'm not a fan of "I Spit on Your Grave," which I feel is ineptly made and contains far more grossness than it absolutely needs to make its point (rape = bad; violence = bad); Clover, however, devotes an entire appreciative chapter to it, which indicates she's seen it numerous times and thought about it at length, which at least is better than the usual knee-jerk hatred of it you tend to see. It's refreshing and fascinating to find a woman defending -- at length -- a film many of us had thought to be indefensibly misogynistic.
Not the only academic defense of drive-in cinema, but one of the best-known, and probably the best -- after eight years, it's still in print in an affordable mass-market paperback, which should tell you something. Namely, it should tell you to buy it if you're at all interested in horror movies and what makes them tick. Horror movies don't have to be GUILTY pleasures!
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