Patrons of a slasher film or a rape-revenge film know more or less what to expect well before the film rolls, and at least one horror director (William Friedkin) has suggested that their emotional engagement with the movie begins while they are standing in line-a proposition that acknowledges the profoundly formulaic nature of the enterprise. It is because of horror’s massive popularity and factory-like production that it is a helpful means to explore cultural anxieties, opinions, and beliefs.

by Clover 9), because it further helps my ability to see horror as a mass-produced product. I like viewing horror as a “known quantity” (Andrew Britton, qtd. Therefore, the main female character is, at different times, both the hero (masculine) and the victim (feminine), she is what Clover calls the female victim-hero.Ĭlover spends part of the introduction explaining the horror fandom’s knowledge of the “horror formula” (since it is a genre based on repetition and stock characters) and how horror film’s predictability for fans actually helps the film’s sale. Thesis: Horror’s target audience, adolescent males, are able to identify with a female character (at least for most of the film) because horror operates partly through a one-sex system in which gender is determined by behavior rather than anatomy. In this book, Clover defines and explores the role of the surviving female character and labels her the “final girl.” For my oral exam, I am focusing on three major chapters. You can’t claim to study slasher films (or horror films more generally) without first reading Carol Clover’s field-defining text Men, Women, and Chainsaws (1992).

Clover men women and chainsaws