The Dread of Difference
Edited by Barry Grant
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Gender in the Slasher Film
by Carol J. Clover
. . .Cinema, it is claimed, owes its particular success in the sensation genres
(witness the early and swift rise of vampire films) to its unprecedented ability to manipulate
point of view. What written narrative must announce, film can accomplish silently and instantaneously
through cutting. Within the space of seconds, the vampire's first-person perspective is displaced by
third-person or documentary observation. To these simple shifts can be added the variables of
distance (from the panorama of the battlefield to the close-up of an eyeball), angle, frame tilt,
lighting effects, unsteadiness of image, and so on - again, all subject to sudden and unannounced
manipulation. Friday the 13th (1980) locates the I-camera with the killer in pursuit of a
victim; the camera is hand-held, producing a jerky image, and the frame includes in-and-out-of-focus
foreground objects (trees, bushes, window frames) behind which the killer (I-camera), is lurking -
all accompanied by the sound of heartbeats and heavy breathing. "The camera moves in on the screaming,
pleading victim, 'looks down' at the knife, and then plunges into the chest, ear, or eyeball.
Now that's sick.". . . (p. 69)
Bringing It All Back Home by Vivian Sobchack
. . .Over a ten year period, the horror film has obliquely moved from the representation
of children as terrors to children terrorized. Unnatural natural infants or demonically possessed
children become sympathetic victims whose special powers are justifiably provoked or venally abused.
And, where once teenagers threatened an entire populace and its social regulation with their burgeoning
sexuality and presumption to adulthood, in recent years they have been solipsistically annihilating
each other in a quarantined and culturally negligible space. (Indeed, a subgenre solely devoted to
teenagers watching and awaiting their own senseless annihilation emerged with Halloween in
1978 and Friday the 13th in 1980. These slasher movies seem to appeal to adolescent feelings
of rage and helplessness - feelings always present but specifically articulated in apocalyptic
terms in an age marked by generalized nuclear fear and the particularly brutal events of the 1960s
youth and antiwar movements. These films abstract and ritualize adolescent isolation, rage, and
helplessness, and its particularly interesting to note how they rigorously repress the presence
of parents and families, the latter's impotence and failure an absence that necessitates and
structures the violence of the narratives.). . . (p. 150)
Trying to Survive on the Darker Side: 1980s Family Horror
by Tony Williams
. . .The 1980s decade was extremely disappointing for critics
impressed by the horror genre's brief 1970s renaissance. While the 1970s saw the emergence of radical
works by directors such as Larry Cohen, Was Craven, and George Romero, the following decade appeared
to feature reductive exploitation films such as the Friday the 13th, Halloween and Nightmare
on Elm Street series - all highly dependent on spectacular special effects and gory bloodbaths
of promiscuous (mostly female) teenagers. . . Patriarchal avengers such as Michael Myers, Mrs. Voorhees,
Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger slaughtered the youthful children of the 1960s generation,
especially when they engaged in illicit activities involving sex and drugs. The whole decade appeared
a cinematic wasteland. . .(p.164)
. . .[Carol] Clover's supposedly
progressive Final Girls are never entirely victorious at the end of certain films nor are they devoid
of the recuperation into a male order of things that they are supposedly free of. . . Alice (Adrienne
King) survives at the end of Friday the 13th to fall victim to Jason in the sequel's prologue
after suffering traumatic nightmares, Carrie-style. Although Friday the 13th's unseen
assailant turns out to be a she rather than a he, Mrs. Voorhees does not act independently. The final
battle reveals her as a split subject. She speaks in Jason's voice ("Kill her, Mummy. Kill her") and
replies in her own, "I will! I will." Although eighties heroines may appear more masculinized than
their predecessors, the conservative ideological dimensions of this gender change needs thorough
investigation before we may safely regard it as progressive. The heroines of Friday the 13 Part 2
(1981) and Friday the 13th Part III (1982) are alive at the end of the films but catatonic.
In the former, Ginny temporarily adopts Mrs. Voorhees's authoritarian role to survive. Although circumstances
necessitate this, she clearly uses the enemy's strategy to become a phallic mother herself. This posture
really questions the positive image of the Final Girl. As the final image shows, the mother's decapitated
(but still powerful) head survives as an enshrined totem. Indeed, the latter film's Final Girl is
actually carried away on a stretcher calling in vain for her boyfriend in a definitely non-independent
manner, certainly not victorious! There is no Final Girl in Friday the 13th - The Final Chapter (1984).
Young Tommy masquerades as Jason's mirror image, using a similar strategy to Ginny in the second film,
before killing him. The film ends with Tommy's becoming Jason. In Friday the 13th - A New Beginning (1985),
guilty parent Roy follows Mrs. Voorhees's vengeful trajectory in a film revealing the series' gradual changeover
from dwelling excessively on teenage slaughter toward tentatively critiquing parental irresponsibility. Since
Roy attempts displacing his guilt for neglecting his son onto violent revenge against teenagers, this also
suggests an alternative reason for Mrs. Voorhees's original activities. Did she not, originally, neglect
Jason and leave him to drown? Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) indirectly
suggests this, but this tantalizingly
anti-hegemonic motif never receives full development. Although Megan actually saves Tommy at the end of
Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives (1986), this act occurs in a film that develops anti-family
motifs absent from the earlier series.
. . .Both Friday the 13th, Part VII - The New Blood (1988) and
Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan develop these themes in different ways, a potential lost in
Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday (1993), which celebrates family values in reuniting a Final
Father and Mother! The Friday the 13th films are not entirely identical; despite the repetitive
elements, there are also some significant differences. Clover's analysis elevates the Final Girl into
a rigid model. Her work does not closely examine relevant specific instances within each particular
film that often question the validity of her thesis. . . It is only after 1986 that heroines really
survive, due to historical factors that Clover ignores. This era saw a growing revelation of cases
of child abuse and dysfunctional families, giving the lie to the Reagan family dream. At the same
time, the developing Iran and Contragate revelations showed not only the Father did not know
best but that, like a doddering grandfather, he was not even aware of what was going on in the White
House. Later versions of the Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Nightmare on Elm Street films
emphasized the role of dysfunctional families, showing the necessity of constant vigilance against
supernatural patriarchal avatars and their real-life dysfunctional counterparts. It is the latter
factor that distinguishes the real survival of the Final Girl in Friday the 13th, Part VI, Friday
the 13th, Part VII, and Jason Takes Manhattan, all three films involving the survival of
both male and female teenagers. These Final Girls differ in every film as a result of relevant
historical, not discursively theoretical, factors. . .(p.170)
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