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Psychoanalytic Revist Of The Killer And Final Girl

2728 Words11 Pages

Louis Ramirez
Professor Lack
CINE: 2615
10 May 2023
A Psychoanalytic Revist of The Killer and Final Girl
Slasher Movies from the horror genre of film are significant in that film theorists such as Carol J. Clover analyzed their potential as a psychoanalytical approach to feminist critique. Clover utilizes Laura Mulvey’s extraordinaire essay, “Visual Pleasure And Narrative Cinema,” as a framework to incorporate psychoanalysis to analyze the slasher film Final Girl and Killer. While slasher movies are frowned upon by the general public, as Clover puts it, “The slasher film, not despite but exactly of its crudity and compulsive repetitiveness, gives us a clearer picture of current sexual attitude….” (pp. 22-23). The premise of this essay will …show more content…

The sexual desires of Norman Bates in Psycho influenced the slasher genre. Clover states, “...the unprecedented success of Hitchcock’s particular formulation, above all the sexualization of motive and action, prompted a flood of imitations and variations.” (p 24). She then lists the two films, Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, that this essay will also include in the analysis. Again, the importance of Psycho explores the psyche of Norman Bates, played by the late Anthony Perkins, which exhibits the various concepts of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. The killer, Norman, is a mentally troubled case study with a strange relationship with his mother. The twist of Psycho reveals Norman Bates's Mother as a rotting corpse sitting on a recliner. It is then established that killers of the slasher genre, such as Leatherface and Michael Myers, have troubled past or current predicaments. Hitchcock’s contribution to the slasher genre influenced the directors of the 70s, such as John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper. As Clover reiterates, “Between 1974 and 1986, however, the formula evolved and flourished in ways of some interest to observers of popular culture, above all those concerned with the representation of women in film.” (p. 26). The transition from the 60s onto the 70s with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween credits the sexual liberation that the late 60s youth …show more content…

He runs the family’s gas station as an authoritarian figure that cooks human body parts like barbeque. The ostensible negative Oedipus complex affects Leatherface because the mentally deranged younger brother forces himself to do Drayton’s bidding. The only time Leatherface expresses himself is when he is dolling himself up. The absence of a motherly figure in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is distinguishable from Halloween and Psycho. Therefore, due to the nature of Leatherface, it would appear that he struggles with his identity as he wears a leather mask to hide his true identity. I make the case that Leatherface is a victim insofar that the repression of his identity intersects with the grueling acts he does to his victims. In a sense, he acts out his repression to skewer his victims with a meathook and transplants his victims’ faces onto his own. Seemingly, his attraction toward his victims is omnisexual insofar as he kills an equal number of men and women. However, Michael Myers clearly has an attachment towards women—specifically, High School

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