Gender in the Horror Film

Gender in the Horror Film

In "Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film," author Carol J. Clover illustrates something that seems very obvious in many horror films, and might make them so popular to young male viewers. Often, the premise of the horror film is to victimize young women. In fact, she equates some slasher films with pornography, which seems to be going a bit too far toward stereotyping and gender issues. However, the income figures for these slasher-type films were staggering. I did not realize these films took is so much income, which indicates how popular they really are, despite what critics say about them. Obviously, they are pleasing someone to have so much success and so many sequels. The numbers were more than I imagined, and opened up my eyes to the profits to be made in these types of films.

It was interesting to see how many films are considered to be of the slasher genre, from "Psycho" to "Alien," which seem older than the current crop of films, but when the author shows the elements that make up the slasher genre, they make sense. It also shows how women are victims, but then are victorious against the villains, so in the end, women are stronger than the men who victimize them. It is not surprising that these films appeal the most to young men. However, they seem to appeal to young women as well, perhaps because of this vision of power that comes at the end of the films.

The analysis of each of the types of horror films is very detailed, and helps make some of the films make more sense. The series of films with religious and Satanist overtones are handled quite well by this author, who shows in more detail how sex and Satan go hand in hand. I did not really see some of the symbolism the author discusses (such as the snake in the bathtub scene), but when the author discusses it the images make more sense. I did not think of some of these films as sexual, or as victimizing women, so this section made things clearer and made me think about some of the films I have viewed before but not really analyzed. There seems to be a lot more stereotyping in these films than I was aware of, and it will help me look at films with more depth in the future.

There is a chapter entitled "Getting Even" which talks about many films that have rape as a story line and the victim gets even. This chapter was the most obscure to me, because many of the films the author mentioned did not seem to fit into the horror genre, or were pretty much unknown films (at least to me). I understand the problem with rape-related horror films, and how they often make the victim appear as if she subconsciously wanted to be raped, but I do not think the examples the author uses are the most effective. I did not relate to this chapter as much because I did not know the films, and I think that weakened the book for me. It would have helped if the films were more well-known, or there were other examples that proved the point. The other point of this chapter, that women have to arm themselves to survive, does seem to come up in many other films, so that point made more sense and I could see that element in many horror films where the woman is victorious against the villain or monster.