Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton Classics): Gender in the Modern Horror Film - Updated Edition: 15 (Princeton Classics, 15)

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During one scene, the teenaged son character played masterfully by Alex Wolff is terrified, panics and cries, begging his mom to stop her meddling with the undead by crying out “mommy, stop, mommy, mommy…” There were definitely a few uncomfortable giggles in the audience, and I saw some negative reactions to this moment online. This took me a fair while to read, not through any fault of the book, but it’s been so long since I read anything academic I admit I struggled a bit. Carol Clover's compelling [book] challenges simplistic assumptions about the relationship between gender and culture. What she meant by real was that they were the only ones she’d ever known, her bio-parents having died in a wreck before she was even one. But it’s weighed down by dated views on gender, some truly baffling takes, and just way too much Freud.

Jenna’s last happy moment with Victor was recreating a photoshoot at a local junkyard involving a junked out Camaro and Caroline Williams of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” fame, and when Jenna finds the Camaro later, the same night Victor comes home and her rejection is flaunted for everyone, things take a turn for the supernatural. I'd be interested to see takes dealing with genders outside men and women and the role transgender and other queer readings play into films. I’m glad to have read it — as it’s an iconic book — but I’m definitely more happy to be finished with it. Unlike Stephen King's Christine, which any horror story featuring a car will ultimately be compared to, there is actually a sweet (though still twisted) side to the story too.With the Final Girl’s appropriation of “all those phallic symbols” comes the dispelling of the “uterine” threat as well. It is through pain and trials that the final girl can become manned, she must pass from victim to hero. Okay, so at the moment, I'm actually halfway through it, but I'm enjoying it immensely, not least because it combines my love of horror movies with my love of analyzing the crap out of everything for its feminist implications. Misha Berson, San Francisco Chronicle "Clover actually bothers (as few have done before) to go into the theaters, to sit with the horror fans, and to watch how they respond to what appears on screen.

Even since I started getting into horror as a teenager, trends have emerged that reflect the trends from the 70s and 80s. In this book Carol Clover argues that sadism is actually the lesser part of the horror experience and that the movies work mainly to engage the viewer in the plight of the victim-hero - the figure who suffers pain and fright but eventually rises to vanquish the forces of oppression.And this focus on phalluses really brings the bio-essentialist perspective to the forefront, which makes it all even worse. Men, Women, and Chainsaws" follows Jenna, who has been abandoned by both her adopted parents and her man-ho fiancé. One criticism, perhaps unfair, is that the content is a bit dated, since this was published in 1992. Jenna closed her eyes, kept them closed, her mom’s voice from California consoling but also far, far too loud for right now.

Cray-Cray said, already redoing her makeup in the vanity mirror, for whatever this night was going to hold. Not only was she one of the more well known actors in the film, but the marketing of the film made it appear that she could have been the final girl (admittedly, Neve Campbell does show up quite a bit in the trailer as well). 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. But there’s so much more here about women and men and elevating the experience and study of the horror film. It certainly gave me a lot to think about and analyze, and while it did take me quite some time to read, I attribute that more to my own desire to take my time digesting the topics in this book.The reason is that I have been picking away at some of the short stories by Stephen Graham Jones, one of my favorite authors, and I found one that is so accessible and such a quick read that I want to spread the word of this awesome author. So when I found out he had put out a new story this year, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, I HAD to read it as soon as possible (you can read the whole thing here).