2024 March 04

While I’ve already extolled the feminist triumph of Carol L. Clover’s MEN, WOMEN, AND CHAIN SAWS, I couldn’t let it go without mentioning it this week.

I know horror is often written off as cultural garbage, as schlock, instead of the cultural barometer it actually is. I would dare say it’s the most relevant genre.

The subtext of horror works speaks to our insecurities, our fears, our dangers, our own worries about what we’re capable of and what terrors and malice others are capable of.

Clover scrutinizes all of that and clearly and succinctly details how imbalanced gender is in the world we live in and how these works — and horror in general — are more often than not treatises on living a life cautiously.

To say this is an groundbreaking work doesn’t even begin to do it justice. At a time when folks simply shrugged at genre work, she took it seriously and thoughtfully penned about horror in a way that resonates today.

Also, I just want to note that I love how she refers to chainsaws in the broken text of THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE. *chef kiss*