men women and chainsaws gender in the modern horror film

Rod Lott, Flick Attack,įascinating, 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 levelsĬlover, takes the most extreme genre, horror flicks, seriously. It's easy to see why this book is considered such a landmark in film analysis. 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. Misha Berson, San Francisco ChronicleĬarol Clover's compelling challenges simplistic assumptions about the relationship between gender and culture. Ramona Naddaff, ArtforumĬlover makes a convincing case for studying the pulp-pop excesses of ‘exploitation' horror as a reflection of our psychic times.

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. Linda Williams, “When Women Look: A Sequel,” Senses of Cinema 15 (2001), accessed August 20, 2009. Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 125. Judith Halberstam, “F2M: The Making of Female Masculinity,” in Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), ix. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Preface to Monster Theory, ed. Michael Ryan and Douglas Kellner, Camera Politica: The Politics and Ideology of Contemporary Hollywood Film (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), 179.

Mark Jancovich (London: Routledge, 2002), 107. Benshoff, “The Monster and the Homosexual,” in Horror: The Film Reader, ed. Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 143.Īlexandre Aja, “Audio Commentary by Director,” Switchblade Romance, DVD (Lions Gate Films Home Entertainment, 2004). Steven Jay Schneider (London: BFI, 2007), 105. Peter Hutchings, “High Tension,” 100 European Horror Films, ed. 5 (March 1981): 54–56.ĭonato Totaro, “The Final Girl: A Few Thoughts on Feminism and Horror,” Offscreen, January 31, 2002, accessed August 20, 2009. Roger Ebert, “Why Movie Audiences Aren’t Safe Anymore,” American Film 6, no.

Clover, Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992). Roger Ebert, “High Tension,” June 9, 2005, Chicago Sun Times, accessed August 20, 2009,

Men women and chainsaws gender in the modern horror film