I can remember seeing my first slasher film when I was about five years old. I was at my babysitters house and her older teenage son would sit in his room all day watching Friday the 13th films. I can remember sneaking up to his room and peaking my head in his room just as Jason's machete decapitated his next female camping victim. Of course back then this scared the ever living shit out of me and it gave me a serious case of nightmare fuel, but now I watch slasher films and there is no more nightmare fuel. There are just laughs. I find this very interesting how something so traumatic as a child is reduced to a joke when you hit a certain age, and I think it all has to do with this standard formula to these types of films. If you've seen one you have seen them all.
Don't get me wrong I appreciate what slasher films have added to horror cinema, but come on Hollywood, can't we try something new and original? The answer to that is usually no because these films are making huge sums of money even after 7 sequels. People are still cramming into the theater to see the newest Nightmare on Elm Street film, sequel, prequel, remake even though they without a doubt know how the film will begin and end each time. This baffles me to no end. Everyone of these slasher films are the exact same, but people are still shelling out hard earned money to see them. I mean I guess I see the appeal, like my dad always says, "It's not a horror film until a girl is running around in her underwear." I noticed a few people in class had a problem with the sexual imagery in these types of films, but guess what folks this is Hollywood, where the rules are made up and celebrity sex tapes get more coverage on the news than a natural disaster. Sex sells in this industry so of course there's going to be attractive topless girls running around because that's what gets teenage boys into the theater. At the end of the day Hollywood is a business and when you have a good thing going that's raking in the money you don't change it.
Where topless girls running around helpless for a big ol' scary man may be seen as anti-feminist these films, at least the way I see it, are still pretty empowering to woman. Like the article says, some movie goers tend to walk out as the "misogynous misfit" kill the helpless females and male audience members are cheering that on. "What they don't realize is that these same men cheer on the heroines, who (end up being) as strong, sexy, and independent as the earlier victims, as they blow away the killer with a shotgun or get him between the eyes with a machete." (237) It's such a strange role reversal to go from cheering on the serial slasher to rooting for the repressed book worm to kick his ass back to the Hell he came from. Isn't it a good thing to see a strong female character stand up to the wrongs that are plaguing her to win in the end. To overcome pain and suffering and sexual advances only to destroy her would be tormentor in the end? I think it is.
In the end all of these films are the same. They have the same tropes, the same characters, dialogue, and gallons of blood. In a film where bloody sexual violence may be seen is the only premise to the film, it is good to see a redeeming factor like showing an empowered female character in the end that everyone is rooting for because in today's Hollywood those types of films aren't seen very often. Thanks Freddy!
I also agree that horror movies are all the same. There really is only so much variety that you can find in these movies. All of them relate to sex. All of them end with the "pure" Final Girl. It baffles me why people consistently pay to see them when they are so predictable.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I love your animations and I wish the pictures I put on my blog would move like that! Secondly, I agree with once you've seen one horror film you have seen them all. They all follow the same story line basically, where kids are home alone or get stranded in the woods without cell phone reception (THE MOST COMMONLY USED: Cabin In the Woods, Cabin Fever, Friday the 13th, the one about the cannibals in the forest with Jennifer Love Hewitt because I can't remember the name, etc, etc). It is hard to find a truly original horror film these days, but I did enjoy watching a female as the main role, and watching her outsmart all the male characters (the dumb cop outside her house who does nothing while she's screaming), and in the end come out on top, or at least we thought she did?
ReplyDeleteDespite all horror films being the same, Freddy will always be one of my favorites
I'm not sure who you're arguing against when you're arguing that the anti-feminism is mostly entertaining. I didn't hear anybody in class objecting to the levels of clearly sexual violence against young women, just pointing it out (and also being largely amused by it). The whole point of Clover's article is to make a more complex case for slasher films and cross-identification. Which you touch on when you discuss the interesting shift from rooting for the killer to rooting for the bookworm--which I wish you would have discussed more, because that's the interesting point of analysis, how slasher films mess with our habits of identification, and with ways that's gendered. You seem to be sidestepping the most interesting aspect of slasher movies, and Clover's analysis, in favor of a giant eyeroll. So yeah, slasher movies are big business and perennially popular. But why? What do people, especially young people, see in them? And what do they ask of male and female viewers, and what do teens know that adults who disapprove of them don't?
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