Challenges In Carol Clover's 'Men Women And Chainsaws'

Horror has long been about tales of heroic men fighting monsters (whether it be human or inhuman) and saving damsels in distress. Women were mostly used as eye candy, victims of violence or only to further the plight of the leading man. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that women in horror movies started to have more power in horror movies. This was majorly due to the rise of feminism, the female protagonists were fighting back which lead to the rise of the ‘final-girl’ archetype – the ‘final-girl’ being the only one surviving at the end of the film having outsmarted the killer. The final girl not only promotes feminism but also a reflection of the values in our

The Siskel and Ebert Halloween Review from 1978 shows how they like how the movie shows how the female character is seen as intelligent, brave and smart. The way the two men spoke about how they felt about the film gave a feminist critic. They were able to put them self in her shoes and think about how they might of felt in that scenario. They see the film as up and positive and see the movie for the film qualities other than the depressing killing. The film focused on film qualities, where the mood, lighting, music and camera angle all played roll in creating the feeling where one can feel that the female actor out smart the bad masked man.

Contemporary horror film's heroines' power and independency keeps on growing when society it represents gets more liberal. For example in the Scream films (1996, 1997, 2000) female protagonist was highly independent and equal to challenge male monster. The heroine has grown from victim to almost masculine fighter. The heroine can be called masculine, but she still has the feminine touch, that got her in trouble in first place, in her. Even in her final fight she still struggles between strength and fears. The final girl can not loose her vulnerability, because it would take away the element of horror from the film. It can also be argued that masculine society can not handle the death of women. Women give birth so if they died it would be the end of society.

In the blog "Representation of Women in Horror Films" Deborah Howell discusses the traditional roles taken by women in horror films. Stereotypically women in horror films are attacked by killers for committing a sinful act, which is usually sexually orientated. According to Howell “Horror films, and the slasher subgenre, are famous for portraying women as hypersexual damsels in distress” and these women are killed within the first five minutes of the film. On the other side of the spectrum men are portrayed as either the villain or the heroine. If there are any women protagonist or antagonist they are portrayed as being masculine in some form. For example in the movie “Scream” when Gale saves Sidney she is positioned very dominantly while wearing

In the introduction to her book, Men, Women, and Chain Saws (1993), Clover delimits her inquiry to "[those subgenres] of [1970's and 80's] American cinematic horror . . . in which female figures and/or gender issues loom especially large: slasher films, occult or possession films, and rape-revenge films" (5). More specifically, Clover argues convincingly that these subgenres (especially the slasher film) make possible certain quasi-transgressive viewer identifications: she proves that the mostly male audience of the slasher film identifies less with the sadistic monster than with the monster's female victim-heroes. Clover ends her book by imagining a different kind of audience, this one for her own work: "at least some horror filmmakers read Freud . . . and film criticism" (232), she notes. Ultimately, she challenges these hypothetical, literate filmmakers: though the "slasher film proper has died down. . . . There may . . . be life in the amazingly durable and adaptable vampire movie" she claims.  And, she adds, contemporary horror films do not "take the kind of brazen tack into the psychosexual wilderness that made horror in the seventies and eighties such a marvelously transparent object of study. Unless and until the direction changes again, I suspect we will soon be back to the dominant fiction in its dominant forms, out of which we must dig meanings rather than have them displayed so obviously and so

Fears are developed by some of our darkest situations, and make us perceive danger. In the essay “Horror Movies are one of the few places women are told their fears are real”, by Gita Jackson, a claim is made that horror movies are crucial for women because they help confront fear. Jackson argues that horror movies help find the root of women’s fears such as: bad dates, chloroform attacks, and sexual relationships with men. But, these fears that Jackson addresses as relatable, are in fact not relatable, but are rare situations that apply to certain situations of certain women. These “fears” are stereotypes, and are what western society considers “fears of women”. These claims that Jackson makes are not relatable but are rather stereotyping women and creating views that are, unrealistic, sexist, biased, and superficial.

The focus of my investigation was to analyse the representation of women in horror films. The films I had selected were Resident Evil Retribution (2012) and Halloween (1978). In the film, Resident Evil Retribution, the representation of women was stronger, whereas Halloween represented females as weak and vulnerable as they were from a different epoch. I have used codes and conventions and also subverted the representation of women in my opening sequence of the horror film.

Horror movies have been classified as the type of genre that heavily exploits the use of violence and grisly images to appeal to different audiences. In fact, one of the main reasons that horror movies are still celebrated is because of a term, discovered by behavioral researchers, called the “horror paradox”. Joanne Cantor, the director of the Center for Communication Research at University of Wisconsin, states that “Since it doesn’t require logic to appreciate, audiences watch them enjoy the experience of the feeling of being scared.” Therefore, it can obviously be stated that people genuinely love the feeling of getting scared from watching these types of movies. Not only does it generate many intense emotions

Horror Genre Films are unsettling films that are created to frighten and panic the audience. They are there to invoke our hidden worst fears yet entertaining the audience. They deal with our most undiscovered fears, our nightmares, and our vulnerability, our terror of the unknown, our fear of death or our loss of identity. Watching a horror film gives an opening into the scary world, into a passage for the essence of fear itself, but not really being in danger.

I am going to explore how females are represented in horror films. The representation of females and males has changed dramatically in society and this is reflected in horror films. However, traditionally women in general are characterised as the damsel in distress because stereotypically they are playing the weaker role and are in instantaneous danger and attacked by a stronger character, usually played by a male.

More specifically, audiences subject themselves into being voyeurs as they gain a type of pleasure, by looking at a screen (in a darkened room) into other people’s private life even if this life is fictional. This idea feeds into our sexual instincts and desire for looking that developed when we were young, upon first seeing a private image as stated by Freud (Mulvey 200). Films try to legitimize voyeurism, however, the act of voyeurism in films fails to distinguish from the act of peering into someone’s window and attempts to justify itself as a more consensual scopophilia. Instead, classical narrative films, as stated by Laura Mulvey, help to enforce patriarchal oppression by presenting the “woman as bearer of male gaze” and essentially force her to be an exhibitionist for the male’s fetishes. Most notably, horror films (particularly slasher films) play on the idea of voyeurism and physical violence towards women. Mainly, women are objects for the killer’s gaze as he inflicts torture on their bodies, usually with a phallic shaped

The focus of my investigation was to analyse the representation of women in horror films. The films I have selected were Resident Evil Retribution (2012) and Halloween (1978). In the film, Resident Evil Retribution, the representation of women was stronger whereas Halloween represented females as weak and vulnerable as they are from a different epoch. I have used codes and conventions and also subverted the representation of women, in my opening sequence of a horror film, which I will be discussing with further details.

The focus of my investigation was to analyse the representation of women in horror films. The films I have selected were Resident Evil Retribution (2012) and Halloween (1978). In the film, Resident Evil Retribution, the representation of women was stronger, whereas Halloween represented females as weak and vulnerable as they are from a different epoch. I have used codes and conventions and also subverted the representation of women, in my opening sequence of a horror film, which I will be discussing with further details.

Horror movies in general play on our fears, conscious or unconscious. They are often reflective of the fears of society at a given time, or of more simple and archetypical fears. Horror that is aimed towards or about women, however, almost always relates to the female body in some way, whether it be controlling it, in the case of possession; harming it through entrance, in the case of stabbings and rape; and fear of the female body itself, most often shown through menstruation, pregnancy, and birth horror.

Since the release of George Melies’s The Haunted Castle in 1896, over 90,000 horror films have been made. However, none have been more frightening and influential than that of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. Each a product of horror’s 1970’s and 80’s golden era, the films have a reputation of engulfing viewers in fear, without the use of masked killers, vampires, or other clichés. Instead, Kubrick and Spielberg take a different approach and scare audiences on a psychological level. The Shining and Jaws evoke fear through the use of three different film aspects: the use of a “danger” color, daunting soundtracks, and suspenseful cinematography.