ok is "don't have sex if you want to survive a horror movie" a real thing

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@SamKeeper10/15/2023, 9:21 PM

ok is "don't have sex if you want to survive a horror movie" a real thing

or is that just something they said in Scream that everyone decided to repeat? because like, it's, only sort of true at best of a lot of the slashers I've watched so far? and yet it's repeated as this absolute sociological insight about how "unfeminist" horror movies or at least slasher films were before a certain deconstructive period. people who have sex die in Friday 13th. so do a bunch of people who don't! being "pure" doesn't save you and doesn't even let you be the main character because those movies don't have a lot of ideas of their own so keep returning to the Psycho Main Character Switcheroo trick. it's... sort of true of Halloween I guess? Poltergeist is a bit of a different breed but the characters not only have a visible positive sex life they even smoke weed while they fuck, it's charming as hell. meanwhile Texas Chainsaw is more concerned with amassing layers and layers of Awful Vibes. I haven't seen many Nightmares on Elm Street and there's some stuff to unpack about the second one in particular (watch Scream, Queen!, it's a good documentary). but like... over the last few years I've watched a LOT of horror movies from a LOT of periods and I'm struggling to find anything that fits this dynamic that everyone seems to agree is just "how horror movies were".

if nothing else I feel like maybe some greater precision is called for here

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in reply to @SamKeeper's post:

Th Esteemed Deed Commemorator @spineflu10/15/2023, 9:24 PM

that was more specific to its era of 80s slasher horror that scream was commenting on, rather than horror dating back to its inception.

Vincent Kinian @Video-Game-King10/15/2023, 9:44 PM

It depends on what you mean by "inception." While the identification of this cliché dates back to Men, Women, and Chainsaws (published in 1992), the author details many more horror film clichés besides this, and the bones for all of them are definitely there in Psycho, which is where she begins her analysis anyway. Other clichés include the killer as a hypermasculinized manchild with a bad relationship with his mother (often with a shrine or hidden location detailing the roots of his trauma), and...actually, that's about all I can remember without getting overly broad.

One of the inevitable problems with this analysis is, being written in 1992, it can't account for any of the movies made after 1992, much less its impact on the horror genre as a whole, which had already become heavily commercialized at this point, and would go on to respond to the book's criticisms in that ironic, self-aware meta way. The Cabin in the Woods is especially bad about this, elevating genre to this kind of metaphysical truth. Another problem, though, is that most of the films Clover analyzes date from around the 70s and 80s, which is when the concept of the male gaze still held cache among film critics. Make of that what you will.

Th Esteemed Deed Commemorator @spineflu10/15/2023, 11:34 PM

ok.

@SamKeeper10/16/2023, 4:43 AM

thanks for the book rec.

I'd be curious to read this now as it kinda feels like the films that have actually survived that period as like, worth continuing to revisit more often than not buck these cliches... and a lot of criticism from this period has itself not aged particularly well, being very informed by some of the shakiest aspects of second wave feminist crit. it also feels weird because I've identified more of what I'd call open misogyny in hays code era films, but I suppose that violence and nudity is a lot more eye catching. from that perspective though it does feel significant that she takes up the argument with Psycho rather than a later slasher...

Vincent Kinian @Video-Game-King10/16/2023, 4:48 AM

Oh, no, she absolutely discusses later slasher movies - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in particular figures into her analysis. It's just that according to her, Psycho is where the basis for later slasher/horror movies begin.

Average Choster @IkomaTanomori10/15/2023, 10:30 PM

It's far more of a meme than it ever was a real rule.

@SamKeeper10/16/2023, 4:43 AM

it's a little frustrating that it's gone from meme to seemingly something taken as an account of the genre's actually existing history!

Average Choster @IkomaTanomori10/16/2023, 6:58 AM

Yeah, not by people who take it seriously, but definitely by people who only take a surface understanding. Which sadly includes, like, the people who get to decide what movies get made next.

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