Date of Award

Summer 8-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Humanities

Program/Concentration

Humanities

Committee Director

Elizabeth Groeneveld

Committee Member

Amy Milligan

Committee Member

Tim Anderson

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate slasher films and how they use gendered tropes to respond to and perpetuate cultural anxieties. The methodology primarily uses textual analysis that includes close attention to content, context, and discourse. The study reveals structural patterns and problems that emerge within slasher films, specifically within the Final Girl trope and the behaviors that govern it. In surveilling the Final Girl’s gender performativity, it is apparent that abjection, or a gut reaction to something that exists between two distinct boundaries or categories, is provoked when the Final Girl crosses a socially established gender boundary. Her behaviors are closely monitored by herself and others. In reading the ways that these behaviors are exhibited through the body of the female lead, the thesis focuses on how panopticism, or bodily self-regulation in response to biopolitical power, is primarily expressed through these characters. Michel Foucault’s concept of internal surveillance proves to be a salient concept for examining the character development within slasher films, speaking to the power of self-regulation within gendered power relations. Cultural anxieties around gender are mobilized within American horror films, in ways that speak to both gender performativity and the desire to shore up gender categories as incontrovertible truths.

Rights

In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Copyright, 2022, by Jennifer Jacinda McLawhorn, All Rights Reserved.

DOI

10.25777/233n-ap58

ISBN

9798351481586

ORCID

0000-0002-6779-8788

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