Slashers

Examining the Slasher genre! Specifically looking at audience reception and trying to debunk the myth that only horny teenage boys watch these. This show relies heavily on Carol J Clovers book  'Men, Women and Chainsaw's' (you can read the introduction here) and Linda Williams theory of 'jerk cinema' (which you can read in full here).

I mostly discuss Carol J Clover's theory of the bisexual spectator and the gender confusion that is implicit in 'male' viewers of slashers. She suggests the viewers are bisexual (outdated terminology which I have interpreted as meaning androgynous/gender neutral) as the slasher genre is narratively fixated on women's trauma and the women's perspective in this trauma. Clover suggests that the teen boy spectator is forced to identify with the 'final girl' due to them being the heroine of the film and there being an inability to identify with the villain due to use of masks/disfigurement and general dehumanisation. Therefore there is no choice but to identify with the 'final girl' of the film (who is usually pretty virginal and androgynous; Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween is the traditional example). Therefore these films suggests an ability to see outside of there gendered perspective and that these films have the potential to transgress the hegemonic male teen perspective and are more than just voyeurism n sadism. Also a fun note is that Clover came up with the term final girl so is well worth a read of this book!

One thing that was left out of this show was a discussion of 'final boys' which are unconventional but really very exciting when they do occur cause it's even more gender muddling. The only occurrences I've come across are in Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Final Destination and The Evil Dead; I think its something I'd like to come back too on a another show I reckon! It's also not a conversation I come across much aside from the documentary about the gay subtext of Nightmare on Elm Street 2 called Scream Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street and this article on the Final Destination series which is more about the existential factor of slashers. 

(if anyone has any suggestions on final boys please get in touch!).

This chart here is taken from Linda Williams essay Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess which I refer to throughout. It's not too dense and also examines pornography and melodrama so is a lot of fun if you're into any of those! She discusses the displacement of sex in horror and its relationship to what she calls the three 'body genres' which is what this chart is displaying. To summarise, she defines a body genre as being something that makes you physically 'jerk'; so to masturbate and be aroused with pornography, to convulse in fear and excitement in slashers/body horror films and finally the tears that are evoked by melodramas. She focuses on these three genres as they are usually deemed as low culture and are dismissed by the excess they portray. 

This theory nicely links up with contemporary critical reactions to slashers which often compared it to pornography due to the use of screaming in these films (wonderfully satirised in The Slumber Party Massacre when a bunch of boys utter the line 'women love to scream!'), the presence of excessive nudity and sex as well as the camera techniques used to make a lot of these films. 70's exploitation films such as Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left  and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre both use camera angles associated with early hardcore pornography such as handheld footage etc. As Linda Williams points out in the essay though, this 'pornographic' element of slashers is hardly unique to the genre; filmmaking is rooted in the sex industry and most peoples disgust at the genre is due to its focus on the 'excess' and 'grossness'.

Films referenced 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre dir. Tobe Hooper (1974) 

The Slumber Part Massacre dir. Amy Holden Jones (1982)

Midsommar dir. Ari Aster (2019)

Other films 2 watch in relation to slashers...

Halloween (1978) dir. John Carpenter 

Alien (1979) dir. Ridley Scott

The Evil Dead (1981) dir. Sam Raimi

Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) dir. Wes Craven

Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) dir. Wes Craven

Final Destination (2000) dir. James Wong

It Follows (2014) dir. David Robert Mitchell