'Recently, structuralists and feminist theorists, among others, have focused on the way in which generically defined structures may operate to construct particular ideologies and values, and to encourage reassuring and conservative interpretations of a given text' - Bernadette Casey
Origins and conventions
- I already did a very in-depth post about this, linked below.
- As many slasher films came out in the 70s and 80s, it is important to look at the social and cultural backdrop in which the film was made
- At this time, society was becoming more liberal, women more empowered and the feminist movement was in full swing.
- Perhaps slasher films could be a response to that - hugely violent against women, often said to be misogynistic or so unnecessarily violent - if you look at the Final Girl theory
- Carol Clover wrote the book 'Men, Women and Chainsaws', which focused on the positioning of what she calls 'The Final Girl' in relation to the audience. Most theorists label horror films as a male-driven genre, Clover points out that in a lot of horrors (especially slasher), the audience is 'forced' to identify with the Final Girl. While the dominant killer's subjective point of view may be male within the narrative, the male viewer is still rotting for the Final Girl to overcome the killer. We can see this operating in Halloween, Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. In horror films, women are usually murdered because of their having ha sex, or their desire for sex.
From the book:
The image of the distressed female most likely to linger in memory is the image of the one who did not die: the survivor, or Final Girl. She is the one who encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent of the preceding horror and of her own peril; who is chased, cornered, wounded; whom we see scream, stagger, fall, rise, and scream again. She is abject terror personified. If her friends knew they were about to die only seconds before the event, the Final Girl lives with the knowledge for long minutes or hours. She alone looks death in the face; but she alone also finds the strength either to stay the killer long enough to be rescued (ending A) or to kill him herself (ending B). She is inevitably female. In Schoell's words: "The vast majority of contemporary shockers, whether in the sexist mold or not, feature climaxes in which the women fight back against their attackers—the wandering, humourless psychos who populate these films. They often show more courage and level headedness than their cringing male counterparts."
Popularity
- Popular at the time, in the 70s and 80s when Craven was creating slasher.
- Revival in 1996 when Scream was made
- Scream is very much aware that it is a movie, and has fun with this. The film features numerous in-jokes and references to other horror films. The victims in Scream are quite self-aware: they each make clear their familiarity with, and make fun of, teen slasher and horror films, which sets up their fairly ironic responses to the film's situations.
- Since this, there have been remakes of basically every successful slasher in the 70s and 80s:
- Halloween several times, Texas chainsaw several times, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday 13th several times, Black Christmas, Prom Night, I spit on your grave etc.
- Cabin in the woods 2012 attempted to do something similar to Scream, by revitalizing the slasher genre as a critical satire on torture porn
- Now, generally less popular, HOWEVER...
Current trends
- The slasher film has shifted over time more recently, to a more hardcore, violent, gore-filled 'torture porn'.
- Filmmaker Eli Roth's Hostel (2005), released in January 2006, was the first to be called "torture porn" by critic Edelstein, but the classification has since been applied to Saw and its sequels (though its creators disagree with the classification),The Devil's Rejects (2005), Wolf Creek(2005), and the earlier films Baise-moi (2000) and Ichi the Killer (2001).
- Violence, torture, nudity, sex, mutilation and sadism are all common themes in this genre
- Saw is the most profitable series of all time in horror box office
- Stephen King and zombie legend George A. Romero both celebrate torture porn as a genre
- Films like Antichrist by Lars Von Trier also influenced by this genre.
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