Carol J Clover - Her Body, Himself

Final Girl Theory by Carol J Clover summary

Throughout Carol J Clover’s extract on ‘The Final Girl’ she explores many different horror films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho and Alien. Lots of the extract is discussing the role women have in horrors and how they are viewed sexually and how their appearance is put across. The death of women in horrors is discussed as well mainly focusing on Psycho. Clovers extract is about slasher films and how women are perceived and the roles in which they are given to play by directors.
Clover then goes on to talk about ‘The Male Gaze’ which is basically the audience watching a horror film through a males eyes. The extract explores a glimpse of ‘the gender-identity game’ which is not just in horror it is also in films such as Tootsie (1982) and Switch (1975). The idea of this is that in most horrors we do not know whether a specific character are who they say they are e.g. in psycho we think Norman is a nice young man trying to be helpful however we didn’t know that he dresses up as his mother and murders someone and then become ‘nice Norman’ again. It’s about playing with your mind and making you believe they’re a complete different character to what they actually are. The extract also explains the differences between the deaths of both males and females in slasher films.
Male deaths are not common in slasher films as females are often the targets mostly depending on their sexual status. However the extract explains that when males are killed in slashers they are often killed swiftly or off screen. I think this might be so that males can still maintain the dominant role throughout the rest of the film. Overall the extract explores death, purity and roles played in horror films and it explores different horror films to explain the points that have been said.