FS- Reading Source One

 

 

1)      Women, since the beginning of the horror genre have been represented as, vulnerable and weak. However in the 1970s women were repositioned alongside multiple feminist movements, with directors such as George A. Romero, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper picking up on this and allowing women to not only protect themselves against antagonists but attempt to destroy this threat.

2)      ‘Stalk and slash’ films often conform to a very recognisable structure which is dominantly of American descent. The structure usually follows a group of teens, who are in a remote location i.e. woodland, often using drugs/alcohol they would be murdered gradually until one survived, leaving them to overcome the antagonist. Gory killings and vulnerable young adults would be conventional as they cannot protect themselves if intoxicated without adult supervision.

3)       The main target demographic is teenage boys and young men due to the explicit uses of female nudity, mixed with action, gore, and killings. This creates a range of visceral pleasures for the audience, with sexual attraction along with gore and occasional comic relief, this is important as it conforms to many of the psychographics of this target audience.

4)      Slasher films are very substantial due to the heavy influence they had for the beginnings of modern horror for example Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street and Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13^th (as seen above) the props that they used in these films are very conventional for modern day horrors, they are both very recognisable characters nowadays and are the roots of most horror antagonists now.

5)      The Final girl, is to do with the surviving girl in a typical slasher who sets herself apart from the rest of the victims within the film. This girl finds a way to escape and out smarten the antagonist.  She is often the person who takes the moral high ground when it comes into illegal activities such as drug taking and drinking. This from the outset makes her seem ‘boring’ so that makes her stand out and is often the one the group mock. This challenges the usual stereotype affiliated with females in horror films, as she overpowers the sinister characteristics of the antagonist. Final girls are used in slashers very often and given rather unsuggesting names, that would deem them rather harmless for example jess (black Christmas, bob clark 1974) Alana (terror train, roger spottiswood, 1980)