9780691006208-0691006202-Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film

Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film

ISBN-13: 9780691006208
ISBN-10: 0691006202
Edition: 34791st
Author: Carol J. Clover
Publication date: 1993
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Format: Paperback 276 pages
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Book details

ISBN-13: 9780691006208
ISBN-10: 0691006202
Edition: 34791st
Author: Carol J. Clover
Publication date: 1993
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Format: Paperback 276 pages

Summary

Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (ISBN-13: 9780691006208 and ISBN-10: 0691006202), written by authors Carol J. Clover, was published by Princeton University Press in 1993. With an overall rating of 3.7 stars, it's a notable title among other books. You can easily purchase or rent Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Paperback, Used) from BooksRun, along with many other new and used books and textbooks. And, if you're looking to sell your copy, our current buyback offer is $1.18.

Description

Do the pleasures of horror movies really begin and end in sadism? So the public discussion of film assumes, and so film theory claims. Carol Clover argues, however, that these films work mainly to engage the viewer in the plight of the victim-hero, who suffers fright but rises to vanquish the forces of oppression.


Clover, a medievalist, had written extensively on the literature and culture of early northern Europe, especially the Old Norse sagas. From her expertise in formulaic narrative grew her interest in contemporary cinema, which is, after all, yet another form of oral storytelling. Men, Women, and Chain Saws investigated the appeal of horror cinema, in particular the phenomenal popularity of those "low" genres that feature female heroes and play to male audiences: slasher, occult, and rape-revenge films. Such genres seem to offer sadistic pleasure to their viewers, and not much else. Clover, however, argued the reverse: that these films are designed to align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the female tormented--with the suffering, pain, and anguish that the "final girl," as Clover calls the victim-hero, endures before rising, finally, to vanquish her oppressor.


The book has found an avid readership from students of film theory to major Hollywood filmmakers, and the figure of the final girl has been taken up by a wide range of artists, inspiring not just filmmakers but also musicians and poets.

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