Lady and the Vamp: Roles, Sexualization, and Brutalization of Women in Slasher Films

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashley Wellman ◽  
Michele Bisaccia Meitl ◽  
Patrick Kinkade
Keyword(s):  
Slasher Films

Parenthood, Adolescence and Childhood Under the Knife

Halloween ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 71-82
Author(s):  
Murray Leeder ◽  
Murray Leeder
Keyword(s):  
Horror Film ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Lost Generation ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Slasher Films

This chapter examines adolescence as a central theme in Halloween (1978) in a slightly different way, as invoking (and attempting to resolve) the rootlessness of adolescence in the Lost Generation. The character of Laurie Strode is divided between the realms of adults and children, but this capacity for category mobility ultimately proves valuable. Cast in the roles both of virgin and mother, her ability to properly navigate, embrace adult responsibilities and retrain a child's intuition is ultimately what allows Laurie to save herself. The 1950s and John Carpenter's childhood saw the birth of the teen horror film, which followed swiftly on the heels of the ‘invention’ of the American teenager as a discrete segment of the population. In a sense, Halloween is an inheritor to the ‘horror teenpics’ or the ‘weirdies’ of the 1950s, and similarly owed much of its success to its ability to knowingly target the large teenage demographic. The slasher films that followed Halloween would do the same, and it seems no major exaggeration to say that, if slasher films collectively are ‘about’ anything, they are about adolescence.

You can't escape: inside and outside the ‘slasher’ movie

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catriona Miller
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
Women's Experience ◽  
Slasher Films

Since the 1970s, the ‘slasher’ movie, with its violence towards women and the surviving ‘final girl’, has been a constant presence in the horror genre to the delight of some and the perplexed dismay of others. Traditional academic approaches to the genre have tended to make assumptions about who is watching these films and why. This article uses a Jungian-inflected approach to reconsider the potential meaning of the genre, suggesting that the violence in the films is less an exhortation to violence against women, but rather a representation of women's experience of patriarchy, with the ‘final girl’ as a figure of resistance. The article also considers the meaning of the more contemporary ‘final girl as perpetrator’ slasher films.

Sex and Violence in Slasher Films: Re-examining the Assumptions

2003 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burry S. Sapolsky ◽  
Fred Molitor ◽  
Sarah Luque
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Female Victims ◽  
Film Violence ◽  
Victims Of Violence ◽  
Slasher Films

A content analysis of popular 1990s slasher films found more acts of violence than similar films from the 1980s. Recent slasher films rarely mix scenes of sex and violence. This finding calls into question claims that slasher films portray eroticized violence that may blunt males' emotional reactions to film violence. Slasher films feature males more often as victims of violence. However, the ratio of female victims is higher in slasher films than in commercially successful action-adventure films of the 1990s. Finally, females are shown in fear for longer periods of time.

Dialogue: Sex and violence in slasher films: A reinterpretation

1994 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Linz ◽  
Edward Donnerstein
Keyword(s):  
Slasher Films

scholarly journals Slasher films

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Σωτήριος Πετρίδης
Keyword(s):  
Box Office ◽  
Slasher Films

Αυτή η διατριβή διατυπώνει ένα θεωρητικό πλαίσιο που αποτελεί τη βάση μιας στοχοποιημένης αφηγηματικής ανάλυσης των ταινιών slasher. Έχοντας ως βάση μια σημασιολογική και συντακτική προσέγγιση, η διατριβή διαχωρίζει και ταυτοποιεί τα τέσσερα βασικά σημασιολογικά στοιχεία αυτών των αφηγήσεων που υπάρχουν καθόλη τη διάρκεια της ύπαρξης του υποείδους (Κανονικότητα, Άλλος, Τελικός Επιζώντας και Θύματα), ενώ γίνεται και μια μελέτη των αλλαγών του συντακτικού των αφηγήσεων, που βασίζονται σε τρεις κύριες κατηγορίες (η προϊστορία του Άλλου, η σύνδεση του Άλλου και του Τελικού Επιζώντα και η σχέση της Κανονικότητας με τα υπόλοιπα τρία σημασιολογικά στοιχεία). Μέσω αυτής της ανάλυσης, η διατριβή αποδεικνύει ότι το υποείδος έχει εξελιχθεί σημαντικά και μπορεί να χωριστεί σε τρεις κύκλους ταινιών: τον κλασσικό (1974-1993), τον αυτοαναφορικό (1994-2000) και τον neoslasher κύκλο (2000-2013). Η έρευνα αυτή βασίζεται σε ένα σώμα ταινιών από ολόκληρη τη διάρκεια ζωής του υποείδους. Το ερευνητικό δείγμα αποτελείται από τις ταινίες που κατάφεραν να μπουν στις πρώτες 100 θέσεις του ετήσιου box office των ΗΠΑ μεταξύ 1974 και 2016.

SEE! HEAR! CUT! KILL!

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wickham Clayton
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Slasher Films ◽  
The Way

SEE! HEAR! CUT! KILL!: Experiencing Friday the 13th, is the first book entirely devoted to the analysis of the Friday the 13 th franchise. The story a film tells is usually filtered through a particular perspective, or point of view. This book argues that slasher films, and the Friday the 13th movies particularly, use all the stylistic tools at their disposal to create a complex and emotionally intense approach to perspective, which develops and shifts across the decades. Chapter one discusses the history of perspective in horror, and the different critical conversations around this. Chapter two looks at the use of camerawork, specifically point-of-view camerawork in the way these films visually communicate perspective. The fourth chapter talks about the way sound and editing work together to communicate perspective and experience in the death sequences these movies capitalize upon. The fourth chapter considers the perspective of viewers, and how each movie speaks to viewers who are either familiar or unfamiliar with the ongoing story in the series. The final chapter first explains how these trends look across a chronological timeline, and what this tells us about the historical development of perspective before looking at the influence these stylistic approaches have had on ‘serious’ film, particularly those recognized by the Hollywood critical establishment.

Monsters Everywhere

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Clasen
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Horror Films ◽  
Human Biology ◽  
Stephen King ◽  
History Of ◽  
Possibility Space ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Slasher Films ◽  
Over Time

The chapter gives an outline of the history of American horror across media, from prehistoric roots to postmodern slasher films and horror videogames. A specifically American literary horror tradition crystallizes in the mid-1800s, with authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, and is developed in the twentieth century by writers including H. P. Lovecraft. In that century, horror films—beginning with Universal’s monster films of the 1930s—became the dominant medium for the genre. Horror became a mainstream genre during the 1970s and 1980s, with the emergence of popular writers like Stephen King and many lucrative film releases. Slasher films dominated the 1980s and were reinvented in a postmodern version in the 1990s. Horror videogames became increasingly popular, offering high levels of immersion and engagement. The chapter shows that horror changes over time, in response to cultural change, but changes within a possibility space constrained by human biology.

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