In terms of movies like TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING, which as I pointed out, has no other mode than a heartless delight in suffering, yeah I agree. But it's only representative of this genre at its lowest.
In general, I don't think violence towards women is a major "entertainment" draw of the horror genre. Although there are sadists out there, and some pretty repulsive exceptions (a lot of them on 80s VHS cover art).
If there's a common propensity for female victims (and in fairness, even in the new TCM, the victims are 2 girls for 2 guys), I think it's more about manipulating audience sympathy. Because women are by nature seen as more sympathetic in movies than men, on an aesthetic level it's scarier for a killer to be chasing an average built girl than Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's movies like the Saw films, where it's all about anticipating the next gory demise (where we're siding with the killer), that this can be problematic. Some horror movies even deliberately engage gender politics (Dressed to Kill.) Afterall, isn't Leatherface a little emasculated to need to carry that big chainsaw?
I really like Marilyn Manson and was a total outcast in school, but I don't get how horror movies tell isolated teens they aren't alone.
That they aren't alone in what?
Since I was in elementary school, I've had an aversion to gore flicks. I can accept violence as part of a story, but as an end unto itself I find it generally deplorable.
I deplore sadistic films too. What's troubling to me about the new breed of horror (Hostel, etc.) is that they're no longer an outsider art. They've become the popular culture, yet are increasingly sadistic. They're more about the torment than the confrontation of fear, the uprise of counter-culture and oppressed imagination that made these movies matter to me and to some of my friends.
I wouldn't consider myself an outcast in school, but I've always held an outsider mentality. I actually only really became a M. Manson fan this past year, and my interest in the band comes largely from a teenage perspective. I think Holy Wood is in many ways the most extreme teen angst album I've heard, and to me that's really exciting. It has some of the therapeutic thrill to it that I found in culturally disfavoured horror movies in my adolescence. Btw, did you know that yesterday was the 10 year anniversary of Antichrist Superstar.
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If there's a common propensity for female victims (and in fairness, even in the new TCM, the victims are 2 girls for 2 guys), I think it's more about manipulating audience sympathy. Because women are by nature seen as more sympathetic in movies than men, on an aesthetic level it's scarier for a killer to be chasing an average built girl than Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's movies like the Saw films, where it's all about anticipating the next gory demise (where we're siding with the killer), that this can be problematic. Some horror movies even deliberately engage gender politics (Dressed to Kill.) Afterall, isn't Leatherface a little emasculated to need to carry that big chainsaw?
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That they aren't alone in what?
Since I was in elementary school, I've had an aversion to gore flicks. I can accept violence as part of a story, but as an end unto itself I find it generally deplorable.
I hate sadistic art.
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- Seven
- Heathers
- Art School Confidential
so it doesn't even gotta be violence
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I wouldn't consider myself an outcast in school, but I've always held an outsider mentality. I actually only really became a M. Manson fan this past year, and my interest in the band comes largely from a teenage perspective. I think Holy Wood is in many ways the most extreme teen angst album I've heard, and to me that's really exciting. It has some of the therapeutic thrill to it that I found in culturally disfavoured horror movies in my adolescence. Btw, did you know that yesterday was the 10 year anniversary of Antichrist Superstar.
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