VLVL2 (2) Friday the 13th's 'Final Girl'

[Tim Strzechowski]

I've retained Paul's original post (in full) below.  I've done so because I
wonder if it's possible to view _Vineland_ in terms of how it's stucture (or
at the least elements of the novel) parallels that of the slasher films of
the 1980's.

Paul's post mentions common motifs found within the film genre --
cross-dressing, institutionalized repression, the "Final Girl" figure, the
monster that "has essentially become a superego figure, avenging itself on
liberated female sexuality or the sexual freedom of the young,"
monster/victim juxtapositions, etc.

Do these elements exist in _Vineland_ and, if so, toward what end?



From: "Paul Nightingale" <isread at btopenworld.com>

> The Friday the 13th series of films, throughout the 1980s, are examples
> of the so-called 'slasher movie'. Benefiting from the success of
> Halloween in the late-70s, they are linked to Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).
> DePalma's Dressed to Kill (1980) was an obvious parody of Hitchcock's
> film; and Psycho II, a sequel to the original, appeared in 1983. These
> three films all featured a male serial killer dressed as a woman. In
> Friday the 13th the killer is revealed as Jason's mother; Jason himself
> is thought to have died years before the action of the film, but is then
> resurrected for subsequent films.
>
> From Andrew Britton's account of "[t]he Reaganite horror movie":
>
> "The Gothic has always depended on the fear that the repressed cannot be
> contained because it is in fact produced by the culture which seeks to
> contain it. The modern horror film (from Halloween and Friday the 13th
> onwards) abandons the identification of the monster with the return of
> the repressed while institutionalising the monster's indestructibility,
> thus inoculating the Gothic at a stroke."
>
> The return of the repressed: for example in dreams. The horror film can
> be loosely equated to what Freud termed 'anxiety dreams' (or
> nightmares).
>
> From Carol J Clover's description of the Final Girl, she who survives:
>
> "With the introduction of the Final Girl ... the Psycho formula is
> radically altered ... Psycho's detective plot, revolving around a
> revelation, yields in the modern slasher film to a hero plot, revolving
> around the main character's struggle with and eventual triumph over
> evil."
>
> At the end of Friday the 13th, Alice the Final Girl has defeated Jason's
> mother. She then wakes from a dream to find Jason standing over her.
>
> See also Andrew Tudor:
>
> "The threat articulated here ... is that of an omnipotent human
> predator, seen at its most intense (though not exclusively) in
> situations of male-upon-female pursuit."
>
> Robin Wood shares Britton's view that the 1980s horror film is
> reactionary:
>
> In films like Halloween or Friday the 13th, the monster "has essentially
> become a superego figure, avenging itself on liberated female sexuality
> or the sexual freedom of the young ... Where the traditional horror film
> invited, however ambiguously, an identification with the return of the
> repressed, the contemporary horror film invites an identification
> (either sadistic or masochistic or both simultaneously) with
> punishment."
>
> Ideologically, then, insofar as the films present the punishment of
> teen/extra-marital sex, we might see a relation to New Right concerns
> with 'traditional family values'.
>
> However, Mark Jancovich offers an alternative reading (one supported by
> both Clover and Tudor). In these films traditional authority (be it the
> patriarchal family or the police) has largely disappeared:
>
> "The main characters are now the monsters and their victims, and the
> latter's chance of survival depends on their own capabilities, rather
> than the intervention of an authority figure: male lover, father,
> priest, scientist, police or military."
>
> See:
>
> Andrew Britton (1986) "Blissing Out: The Politics of Reaganite
> Entertainment" in Movie 31/21
> Carol J Clover (1996; first published, 1987) "Her Body Himself: Gender
> and the Slasher Movie" in Barry Keith Grant ed, The Dread of Difference:
> Gender and the Horror Film
> Mark Jancovich (1992) Horror
> Andrew Tudor (1989) Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of
> the Horror Movie
> Robin Wood (2003; first ed, 1986) Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan ...
> And Beyond
>
> The critical works cited here are all products of the cultural debates
> of the 1980s. In VL Pynchon presents such debates as debates, without
> offering resolution, without making this or that character a mouthpiece
> for a given POV.
>
> Which begs the obvious question ... how far do the first two chapters
> corroborate or deny this view?
>
>
>