In this post I will be analysing some key quotes from Carol J Clovers research on ' Her body, himself'.
‘his fury is unmistakably sexual in both roots and expression; his victims are mostly women, often sexually free and always young and beautiful’
This sentence alone represents the dominance that men hold over women. Its is suggesting that a mans rage and fury is based on sexual intentions therefore making man appear animalistic in contrast to a woman as he is vicious and sexual. Carol has also picked up on the fact that most victims are female. This again links to an simple idea where women are less than man and always squander in their attempt to beat man. The idea that the woman is always young and beautiful links to physiognomy where the ‘good’ character is always presented as the most attractive and well kept one.
‘on the good side, the only viable candidates are the boyfriends or schoolmates of the girls. they are for the most part marginal, underdeveloped characters. more to the point, they tend to die early in the film. if the traditional horror plot gave the male spectator a last-minute hero whom to identify, thereby ‘indulging his vanity as protector of the helpless female’
This sentence in introducing a character lower in value to the narrative however still essential to the female character as they are seen as the ‘sacrifice’. Yet again the female character can not succeed without the presence of a man. This therefore links to Props’ theory as the male takes on the role of the hero. Though he may not survive he is remembered for his sacrifice allowing the woman to live and in some cases save the day.
'the one character of any stature who does live to tell the tale is in fact ‘the final girl’. She is introduced at the beginning and is the only character to be developed in any psychological detail.We understand immediately from the attention paid it that hers is the main story line. She is intelligent, watchful, levelheaded; the first character to sense something amiss and the only one to deduce from the accumulating evidence the pattern and extent of the treat; the only one, in other words, whose perspective approaches our own privileged understanding of the situation.'
This is introducing the idea of the ‘Final Girl’ which is the idea that the last character to survive is a female. This concept is used in many horror films such as Evil Dead, Cabin In The Woods and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. She is described as an attentive person which makes her all the more likely to be the one who survives. Making her appear intelligent as she slowly uncovers what we as an audience already know about the storyline and its intentions.
'the gender of the final girl is likewise compromised from the outset by her masculine interests, her inevitable sexual reluctance, her apartness from other girls, sometimes her name.'
The gender of this female is somewhat diverted due to her ‘unfeminineness’. Therefore challenging the whole idea of the ‘Final Girl’. This is due to the fact that she will be more masculine than the other girls in the film making her more focused on survival. We can therefore connote that women are described as distracted characters which is the caused to their end in horror films. Her ‘sexual reluctance’ means that where other girls may meet their death due to the ‘alluring male presence’ she will maintain her focus and determination for survival. A good example of this is Cabin In The Woods where Jules is represented in a sexual way and meets her death due to her night time adventure with her boyfriend Curt (no surprises that he survives the attack). Jules character is in contact to Dana who is our ‘final girl’ though she has a crush on Holden it is not an obsession and she is able to survive.
‘the cinematic gaze, we are told, and just at that gaze ‘knows’ how to fetishize a female form in pornography (in a way that does not ‘know’ how to fetishize the male form), so it ‘knows’, in horror, how to track a woman ascending a staircase in a scary house and how to study her face from an angle above as she first hears the killers footfall.’
This gaze that clover is referring to is the ‘Male Gaze’ (Mulvey)the theory that everything in narrative is presented through the gaze of a male. The directors therefore know how to position women in the scene to make them more appealing. Even the 'Final Girl' herself will be positioned in such as way to keep the ‘male gaze’ entertained and engaged. The idea that women have to be presented in such a way could in actual fact reflect poorly on the male gender. It portrays them as animalistic characters who need to gaze at things in a voyeuristic manner to keep hold their attention in the narrative. This makes them out to be, unfocused, easily distracted, animalistic and obsessed creatures.
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