Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol J. Clover

Films such as the Halloween series, Hell Night, Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1 and 2, Slumber Party Massacre and The Friday the Thirteenth series are all broken down categorically and their prevalent qualities are Horror genre has changed how she perceives film.Ĭlover commences with a meticulous exploration of the common Issues of male homosexuality but concludes by saying that her research of the The author admits that she did notĮxpect the book to delve so deeply into the etiology of sadomasochism and Her down the rabbit hole of her research. Upon first encountering films such as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Carrie and Halloween Clover was unprepared for theĬomplexity and the many theoretical questions that these films raised which led This notion is crucial to Clover’s book and is frequently referred Penis envy, phallic womenĪnd slew of fantasies all our rooted in the “one-sex system” of gender and its Though this notion was dispelled by Freud, its impact is long standing on our psyche.

Of isomorphic analogues, the superior male set working as a visible map to the Here is not that there is no notion of sexual difference, but that theĭifference was conceived as less a set of absolute opposites than as a system It was thought that we hadĮxactly the same organs but in different places. This “one-sex system” posits that males and females are Thomas Laqueur contends that ancient Greek cultures had a “one-sex system' notion of gender. Gender and how feminist critics regard the genre as blatant sadistic misogyny. Theorists of the horror genre, such as Laura Mulvey's account of the male gaze and S.l: British Film Institute, 1993.Ĭlover opens her book with a brief introduction to important But whatever the particular fears exploited by particular horror films, they provide viewers with vicarious but controlled thrills, and thus offer a release, a catharsis, of our collective and individual fears.Clover, Carol J. The ideology of horror has shifted historically according to contemporaneous cultural anxieties, including the fear of repressed animal desires, sexual difference, nuclear warfare and mass annihilation, lurking madness and violence hiding underneath the quotidian, and bodily decay. To do so, horror addresses fears that are both universally taboo and that also respond to historically and culturally specific anxieties. Horror movies aim to rudely move us out of our complacency in the quotidian world, by way of negative emotions such as horror, fear, suspense, terror, and disgust. It has also been a staple category of multiple national cinemas, and benefits from a most extensive network of extra-cinematic institutions. The genre of horror has been an important part of film history from the beginning and has never fallen from public popularity. This paper offers a broad historical overview of the ideology and cultural roots of horror films.

Men, Women, and Chain Saws by Carol J. Clover