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Leatherface is right behind the door makes our bodies scream wanting to let Pam know not to go too far. This constant push and pull of relenting action vs. inaction is a catalyst for our bodies to become susceptible to a visceral response to slasher films. Williams talks about how the fantasy of horror is the “setting for desire,” where any possibility can exist in conjunction with its opposite. We as the audience are able to “oscillate between self and other occupying no fixed place in the scenario” because of the physical boundary between our body and the bodies on camera (Williams, 10). However, I do think there is a desire to go beyond our physical bodies and experience what it’s like to be someone else but only if we know we can return to our own, non-excessive, reality. Excess is demonstrated in Massacre through the repetition of killings as well as the brutality of Leatherface and the Hitchhiker, the nauseating house filled with carcasses, and the unrelenting scream produced by Sally. While we are physically affected by watching the film, we know we are still at a safe distance – the excess allows us to feel safe because we have an understanding that it can’t be a reality that we live in. Both the safety inside excess and the physical toll on our bodies enables the visceral response from an audience to then engage beyond the boundaries of the physical body. 

We are then able to confront taboo subjects in a safe environment our curiosity of what happens next our what it feels like to place ourselves in the mind of the characters (specifically the killer and the final girl) we can at the same time satisfy our curiosity of our own taboos. One thing that Carol talks about (although not quite enough) is gender expression in the slasher film. Is an exploration of deviating from accepted gender expression outside the boundary of the viewers body? I guess when watching a film that is making you think about the characters gender identities and then therefore your own, it is a bit outside of your body because it’s being mapped on to the act of watching the film. Clover explains this through how male viewers first associate with the killer (i-camera makes this happen, although we don’t get this in Massacre) and then with the final girl. The final girl becomes ‘one of the boys’ through her power, physically and mentally, over the monster. Yet she is still sexually desirable, depicted wearing more revealing clothes to more she gets cut up by the monster and because of the power becomes more desirable. She oscillates between uber hot, sexual awakening and super strong and powerful (between feminine and masculine) which in turn makes the male viewer oscillate between desire and identification. Although these paths can cross which becomes the exploration of the taboo or queer. Of course, this brings up the question that Carol talks about at the end, how do female viewers watch slasher films? In Massacre Sally did hold a lot of responsibility for the progression of the film, bringing her friends to her grandparent’s old house despite Franklins wishes, deciding to go look for her boyfriend (she’s sexual!) and friends again despite his wishes (and I wonder if he’s there as the negative voice to ensure that audiences map onto Sally instead and maybe because of his physical disability as well?), and she leads us to the killers house and to her victory. Is this active power a way for female viewers to experience a taboo identity by aligning with masculine traits? I think this does change at the end of slasher films when the final girl does win, and the monster is not only evaded but stabbed or slashed in some way. This post-penetration pleasure enacted by the final girl allows for a female empowerment triumph. The androgynous nature of the final girl is suitable for both female and male viewers to explore sexual and gender identities. The state of pleasure then in a way becomes androgynous itself.

Here are some other thoughts and questions that I had while watching and reading that I wasn’t sure how to flush out just yet. I was thinking about the killer being permanently locked in childhood being associated with innocence, yet he does monstrous things usually because of the absence of a mother. This multi-faceted idea of innocence also made me think about commentary on religion and the idea of abstinence as preserving innocence and how that effects the final girl. 

I was also thinking a lot about the anxiety of progress that is evident a lot in Massacre, the hitchhiker and his dad are especially upset about the industrial progression that leads to the loss of their jobs. Which comes from the anxiety that progress always has to be occurring upward which materializes itself as progression of technology to be more efficient for a lower cost which leads to them losing their jobs. And there’s also the anxiety of rural areas as regressive because they’re ‘stuck in the past’ which in Massacre is shown by the archaic family and their attachment to their grandfather, a great butcher. Is this movie then perpetrating this anxiety about rural workers as being primitive? Which in a way is also a bit ironic because we think of progressing away from normal sexual identities as progressive so then Leatherface is both regressing because of his childlike behavior and a need to fill the role of mother to create a nuclear family but also as progressive because he is demonstrating a deviation from a gender norm. I’ve been thinking a lot about the anxiety of progression and obviously my thoughts are very scattered about it. 

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