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The Dread of Difference
The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film | Barry Keith Grant
10 posts | 1 read | 2 to read
"The Dread of Difference is a classic. Few film studies texts have been so widely read and so influential. It's rarely on the shelf at my university library, so continuously does it circulate. Now this new edition expands the already comprehensive coverage of gender in the horror film with new essays on recent developments such as the Hostel series and torture porn. Informative and enlightening, this updated classic is an essential reference for fans and students of horror movies."Stephen Prince, editor of The Horror Film and author of Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality "An impressive array of distinguished scholars . . . gazes deeply into the darkness and then forms a Dionysian chorus reaffirming that sexuality and the monstrous are indeed mated in many horror films."Choice "An extremely useful introduction to recent thinking about gender issues within this genre."Film Theory
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Robotswithpersonality
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Next up in quarterly review faves: non-fiction and lit fic. Biggest surprise: all the nature non-fiction I've done in the last three months, none of it ended up sticking with me, and the reading experience/writing quality was really hit and miss. Might have to rethink sampling in that subgenre (no more picking it up because it has a tree on the cover! Literary fiction is never my primary genre, at least I read ONE I loved! 🤷🏼‍♂️

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Robotswithpersonality
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Pickpick

Fucking fascinating. Maybe a little too much Freud. Apologies for the dreadful cover showing in your feed.
Carol J. Clover's 'Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film' remains one of my faves of the collection, I realize that's my final girl bias showing through.
I think I honestly enjoyed Thomas Doherty's 'Genre, Gender and The Aliens Trilogy' (written back when it was just a trilogy) because those films made such an impression on me. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? The collection also expands several times on how the nuclear family (male patriarch) is threatened, essays individually containing stronger or weaker links back to gendered concerns via a mother who is somehow perverse; then stumbles into intersectional territory. There are a number of essays discussing queerness, seemingly more entries about gay men than lesbians, and some discussion of racism. Unfortunately, the inclusion of essays focusing on these topics felt more scattered than intentional and seemed to veer away from discussions of gender and, as the little ♀️symbol on the cover suggests, specifically depictions of women in horror. 2mo
Robotswithpersonality 3/4 I would love to see a third edition, (there was about ten years between the first and second edition, it's been nearly ten years since the second, so it's time!) with parts that expand upon the gender discussion beyond women as minority gender, into discussion of transgender, non-binary/agender spectrum, perhaps an interlude for new ways the masculine is treated or expanded upon as well, then a dedicated section that focuses more on how gender in family in horror works, with all the mother aspects situated there, and then a dedicated section for how intersecting queerness and bipoc rep into gender affects readings of certain films' texts. 2mo
Robotswithpersonality 4/4 In the meantime I'm definitely going to keep poking around for horror non-fiction with this kind of insight, especially centred on the final girl trope. Happy to take reccs if you got 'em!
⚠️ALL THE WARNINGS. If you're worried about it, there's probably at least a mention in this essay collection, and there are also black and white stills from the films in question. BEWARE.
2mo
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Robotswithpersonality
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The film being discussed is from Belgium in 1970.
It is 2024. WHY are there no feminist, lesbian vampire films I'm hearing about in present day North America?!
That would be so epic. 🙇🏼‍♂️

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Robotswithpersonality
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👀 Well THAT certainly sounds worth tracking down. 😉

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Robotswithpersonality
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I'm definitely getting 'not mad, just disappointed' in the contemporary consumer/movie goer, vibes from Sharrett.

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Robotswithpersonality
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Just another way to say apathetic cynicism isn't a useful attitude?

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Robotswithpersonality
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Today, in nifty things found in library books: 💀

julesG Cool!!! 2mo
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Robotswithpersonality
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Queer = Awesome
Aka inclusively challenging the status quo.
Sorry for any outdated terms on display; I gather from this second edition's introduction, some of these essays are from the 90s or earlier.

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Robotswithpersonality
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Love the idea that as early as the 1980s, slasher films were part of the conversation around distinguishing sex from gender and maybe even opening the floor to gender fluidity, even while the author is careful to acknowledge the non-progressive aspects of how women were traditionally treated in them.
Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film by Carol J. Clover is my favourite essay so far in this collection.

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Robotswithpersonality
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"...gender is theater." YES. ??

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