Our main character is Jenna, a woman who has had to deal with a fair amount of loss in her life, the most recent one being that of her boyfriend Victor, who went to work on oil rigs and sent her a break up letter. Earlier was the death of her bio parents in a tragedy involving a car. 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. It involves bloodletting, a rebuilt car, and a scorned lover’s revenge. But it’s also a story of a woman who has suffered some pretty terrible loss in her life, and how a bloodthirsty car not only can help her seek revenge but also closure.

Men Women and Chainsaws | PPT - SlideShare Men Women and Chainsaws | PPT - SlideShare

And yeah, the Freudian stuff is completely exhausting. Of course there’s a lot to be said about the sexual subtext of many horror films. But wow, I never knew there were so many ways to subconsciously symbolize genitalia. Penises and vaginas and metaphorical sex as far as the eye can see! And this focus on phalluses really brings the bio-essentialist perspective to the forefront, which makes it all even worse. Clover makes a convincing case for studying the pulp-pop excesses of ‘exploitation' horror as a reflection of our psychic times."—Misha Berson, San Francisco Chronicle Past Stoker Award Nominees & Winners". Horror Writers Association. Archived from the original on January 13, 2008 . Retrieved January 22, 2011.There are a lot of valid criticisms to be made of Ms. 45. It’s an imperfect and abrasive movie about one of the most sensitive subjects. But the conclusion reached above is absolutely bonkers and is completely at odds with the climax (and honestly, most) of the movie. I won’t spoil it for you, but getting a gun definitely does not protect the character or make her ending a happy one. There’s a lot about the movie that’s open to interpretation, but who should be blamed for a rape is not a question that it poses. Cinefantastic horror, in short, succeeds in incorporating its spectators as “feminine” and then violating that body- which recoils, shudders, cries out collectively- in ways otherwise imaginable, for males, only in nightmare. (53) This book struggles in part (I think) because the author has trouble truly embracing horror. She seems to feel the need to authenticate the horror films she discusses by aligning them with mainstream Hollywood movies. This wouldn't be as distracting if she did not go into such detail about these non-horror films. Unfortunately, she winds up making them the focus at many points, losing her readers. For example, she spends the better part of the third essay talking about Deliverance in explicit detail, while name-dropping other actual horror films with nary a description. She also has a bad habit of relying on the same few films throughout all four essays. Her heavy, heavy, heavy reliance on Freud is quite tiring & irritating by the end. The worst part, though, is when she tries to force a terrible connection between "Indians" [sic] and rapists/evil-doers. That moment was just atrocious. Do the pleasures of horror movies really begin and end in sadism? So the public discussion of film assumes, and so film theory claims. According to that view, the power of films like Halloween and Texas Chain Saw Massacre lies in their ability to yoke us in the killer's perspective and to make us party to his atrocities. 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. A paradox is that, since the late 1970s, the victim-hero is usually female and the audience predominantly male. It is the fraught relation between the "tough girl" of horror and her male fan that Clover explores. Horror movies, she concludes, use female bodies not only for the male spectator to feel at, but for him to feel through According to Clover, one common trait amongst all victims in slasher films (male and women) is that they are sexual transgressors. I think this is no longer the case… just considering Scream, for example, Jamie Kennedy’s character dies in the sequel yet never is represented as sexually transgressive (although maybe his lust for Sidney counts?) Also, from the 90’s onward, the stoner character has been included in the list of slasher killer victims. Although he (usually its a guy) is not typically sexual, he still is killed (I guess he transgresses in other ways through his drug use).

Carol J. Clover - Wikipedia Carol J. Clover - Wikipedia

One criticism, perhaps unfair, is that the content is a bit dated, since this was published in 1992. For that reason, many excellent recent horror films are not covered. Time for an updated edition maybe?? The one thing that majorly bothered me was the essay-chapter "The Eye of Horror." I felt like Clover got rather repetitive and beat her points in that chapter over and over again. Additionally, I took issue with a lot of her analysis of Carrie and Firestarter. My issues with her approach to Carrie started in chapter two, but she grossly misunderstood and skewed the knowledge of Firestarter to the point I felt like she was really reaching for an excuse to include it and force it like a square peg into a round hole for the "Eye of Horror" chapter. Even knowing she didn't read any of the books any of these films she watched were based on, with the exception of The Exorcist, I still don't understand how it is she so horribly misunderstood Firestarter and tried to force it to fit the point of her essay.For what it's worth, I enjoyed this book for the most part. 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. There was a lot to take in and think about, especially when accounting for the fact that this book is dated and it prompts a lot of questions about the understanding of gender, coming from a decades-older viewpoint. Judging Audiences: The Trial Movie." Film Studies, ed. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams. (London: Arnold, 1998). Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Princeton University Press, 1992 and the British Film Institute, 2004 stars rounded down, primarily because I've only seen a handful of the films examined in the text (of note, Carrie and the original I Spit On Your Grave), so it was a bit difficult to really get into it. I also generally disagree with the author's takeaways, but found her analysis to be interesting/worthy of consideration. Though they will be familiar to the experienced horror audience by now, the author takes us through the tropes and traditions of horror films and from the commonalities of a broad survey we emerge with three separate subgenres that will be relevant to her treatment of gender: the slasher film, the possession film, and the rape-revenge film. Whilst Clover’s treatment of possession films is thoughtful and of rape-revenge films daring and refreshing, it’s her rescuing of the slasher film from the jaws of critics that is the heroic act here -or rather how she throws the film into the predicament of its own “final girl” and allows it to fend for itself. The devoted horror buff will probably enjoy Clover’s initial analysis of horror films for its own sake, but reaching past this there is something more significant on offer.

Men, Women, and Chain Saws - Google Books

Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000530 Openlibrary_edition Fascinating, 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 levels"— The Modern Review the new prominence of women is the structural effect of a greater investment in the victim function… modern horror seems especially interested in the trials of everyperson, and everyperson is on his or her own in facing the menace, without help from the authorities…it is not only in their capacity as victims that these women appear in these films. They are, in fact, protagonists in the full sense: they combine the functions of suffering victim and avenging hero. (17) This was such a fun, odd little story full of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 references and a spurned lover's revenge. It wasn't my top favorite story of all time from SGJ, but I definitely enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who likes this fantastic author as much as I do! Angry displays of force may belong to the male, but crying, cowering, screaming, fainting, trembling, begging for mercy belong to the female. Abject terror, in short, is gendered feminine, and the more concerned a given film is with that condition- and it is the essence of modern horror- the more likely the femaleness of the victim. It is no accident that male victims in slasher films are killed swiftly or offscreen, and that prolonged struggles, in which the victim has time to contemplate her imminent destruction, inevitably figure females. Only when one encounters the rare expression of abject terror on the part of a male… does one apprehend the full extent of the cinematic double standard in such matters. (51)

This story reminded me a lot of Christine and seemed like it would go that way...but it doesn't. It's like a tight version of a bizarro Christine. Different, but adjacent...and that's what makes it cool. You're just so unsettled by about 80% through and that makes it so satisfying...similar to SGJ's "Night of the Mannequins" or his short story "Father, Son, and Holy Rabbit." That feeling of, "Well, it's not going where I thought but I'm hanging on for the ride." The story is constructed with a lot of homages and references to classic horror, most notably the film Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the actress Caroline Williams, with a photo of her atop an old rusted Camaro figuring prominently into the story. Something I truly enjoyed was the way you can feel Jones’ excitement about all the references built into the story, which in turn makes you excited about them (even though I really know nothing about cars and have never seen the film, but it’s like how you get excited about things your friend likes because you are just happy to see them happy). Jones builds the story through Jenna’s narration, often having you witness events without much context for the motivations. Yet. That context comes, and the slow reveals create a really palpable tension. She describes the slasher film a a pre-technological genre because of its attachment to weapons like chainsaws, daggers, and knives, the absence of guns, as well as the consistent failing of technologies like elevators, phones, cars, etc. She also notes how these sorts of weapons satiate audience’s taboo curiosity to see the inside of the human body. not to mention that she establishes young, heterosexual men as the primary audience for low-brow horror through anecdotal evidence from movie-theatre employees and video store clerks, which is weirdly weak evidence on which to support such an academic book. but we'll keep it pushing.)

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

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."—Wendy Lesser, Washington PostVarious genres are covered (slasher, possession, haunting, revenge-I Spit On Your Grave gets a lot of attention), as well as films that influenced horror, like the Alien movies, Deliverance, and even The Accused.