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toothpuulp · 5 months

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joe bob on men, women, and chain saws -- possibly my favorite book review ever. love his ass <33

transcript under the cut

"Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" for 12/18/92

cutline: Berkeley professor Carol Clover, author of "Men, Women and Chain Saws," may be the first person with a Ph.D. ever to watch 200 slasher flicks BY CHOICE.

By Joe Bob Briggs

Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas

For about ten years now, I've been getting flack from various organizations of feminists, fundamentalists, mad mamas and psycho college professors, claiming that the movies I write about--that is, the three B's, Blood, Breasts and Beasts--are sick and demeaning and twisted and perverted.

Of COURSE they are. Why do you think I watch em?

But there's other stuff they say that is NOT true. For example:

1. Slasher movies are demeaning because they celebrate violence against women.

I never understood this one, because I never noticed a single movie in which more women were killed than men, AND in 99 per cent of them, the ONLY person who survives is a woman.

2. Hard-core horror flicks cause crime.

If this is true, the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department should have a posse stationed outside my trailer house 24 hours a day, because NOBODY has watched more hard-core horror flicks than I have. Any day now I could go off the deep end and start flinging hatchets at old ladies.

3. Horror flicks are a way for rednecks (like me) to act out weird violent fantasies.

In other words, all of us out here in the boonies are like the cannibal family in "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." We really WOULD like to be munching on tourists. Otherwise, why would we laugh and hoot at the screen when Leatherface's family does it?

Anyhoo, I've talked till I'm blue in the face about this stuff. I've gone to seminars, challenged the president of the National Organization of Women to a nude mud-wrestling match, faced off against that shrewd fundamentalist, Dr. Thomas Radecki, head of the National Coalition Against TV Violence. But nobody ever listens, because it's "just Joe Bob."

In other words, I'm too pitiful.

So I wanna say something here, and I want you to listen REAL carefully. I'm about to tell you about a book written by a Berkeley professor. This is hard for me. Large parts of my identity depend on HATING everything that comes out of Berkeley. But I like this book so much that I almost don't even wanna review it, because what if everybody says "Oh, don't read THAT. JOE BOB LIKES IT!"

But it gets lonely out here. So here goes.

"Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film" is written by Carol J. Clover, Professor of Scandinavian and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

Whew! I'm already exhausted. Carol, next time, when you write a book, study titles like "Jaws" and "It." It's easier on all of us.

Anyhow, I'm not gonna try to analyze this whole book, because a lot of it, frankly, is over my head. (You scoff?) But it's basically about three kinds of flicks--slasher movies, possession films like "The Exorcist," and rape-revenge films like "I Spit On Your Grave." In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the first serious book in the history of the world to do a complete analysis of the PLOT of "I Spit On Your Grave."

But, from my selfish point of view, I want you to know a few things Professor Carol decided after watching about 200 of these movies:

1. Slasher movies are told FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE WOMAN! In fact, the "Final Girl"--or, as I call her, the Jamie Lee Curtis Girl--is so much a part of the slasher film that the writer doesn't have any choice. You've GOT to have a Final Girl, and the Final Girl HAS TO BE A GIRL.

2. Since 99 per cent of the audience at slasher movies is MALE, this means that all those men are IDENTIFYING WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF THE WOMAN! They're experiencing the movie THROUGH A WOMAN'S BODY! ... In other words, the OPPOSITE of what the feminist censors have been saying for umpteen jillion years now.

3. Jason and Leatherface are actually FEMALES DISGUISED AS MALES. Kind of a transvestite deal. Think about it. Aren't these guys always real screwed up sexually? Don't they always have trouble DECIDING what they are? It's a tradition that continues right up through Jame Crumb, the psycho killer in "Silence of the Lambs." So the original criticism of these movies--that the killers are always male, and the principal victims always female--is turned upside down.

3. The real villains in horror movies are MALE REDNECKS. "The rednecks have replaced the redskins," she says. In the old westerns, any Indian who came on screen was ASSUMED TO BE VIOLENT AND HATEFUL AND SAVAGE. Today, any redneck who comes on the screen is assumed to be violent and hateful and savage.

4. "I Spit On Your Grave," which has been called the most disgusting film ever made (by Eggbert and Siskel), and which has been banned from cable TV for 15 years, is actually told from a female point of view, so that the audience identifies with the ultimate triumph of the woman over the leering rapists. (As I've always said, what male could ever watch the bathtub scene and think the movie is in FAVOR of violence against women? When I see that scene, I can't walk straight for a week.)

5. "The Accused" and "Thelma & Louise" are both watered-down versions of "I Spit On Your Grave." And "Silence of the Lambs" is just another version of "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre."

You think I'm oversimplifying this deal?

Yeah, okay, sure. Probly. I'm probly gonna get a letter from the whole goldang Berkeley faculty, saying "You ignorant yahoo, that's NOT what it means."

But right now, today, after reading this book, I feel pretty good about it. Makes me think there's some hope. Makes me think some smart people will get their hands on it and become dumb like me.

Hundreds of dead bodies. No breasts. Academic Fu. "Men, Women and Chain Saws," published by--oh my God!--Princeton University Press.

Four stars.

Joe Bob says check it out.

#something about his very un-pretentious hick persona perfectly summarizing such a dense text rlly tickles me.#love u carol but some of ur sentences get real thesaurus-y #joe bob ur so much smarter than you’d like anyone to think <33 #joe bob briggs #carol clover #men women and chain saws #joe bob’s drive-in

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