A student’s question:
Hi Alin,
I was just creating the study notes for the upcoming test and I just had to ask a couple questions to clarify:
- what would be a good example for genre iconography? I have the definition I’m just confused at a good example that would get me full marks on the test
- my last question is in
regards to the “final girl”. I was at the lecture and I did the required
readings for last week which is where this was, but the notes that I had don’t
explain it according to Isabel C. Pinedo and Carol Clover.
Thanks for taking the time to read this email,
X. X.
-------------------------------------------------
TA Alin’s answer:
Hello,
Answer 1:
Genre iconography, as I know, refers to the pictures, symbols, and signs by which a genre may be distinguished from other genres. For example, iconography of Horror genre involves blood, dead bodies, screaming females or children, knives, monsters, low-key lighting etc. Or Romantic Comedy involves homes, beds, kissings, high-key lighting, nature, etc.
Answer 2:
Here is what I found about Clover and Final Girl:
Answer 1:
Genre iconography, as I know, refers to the pictures, symbols, and signs by which a genre may be distinguished from other genres. For example, iconography of Horror genre involves blood, dead bodies, screaming females or children, knives, monsters, low-key lighting etc. Or Romantic Comedy involves homes, beds, kissings, high-key lighting, nature, etc.
Answer 2:
Here is what I found about Clover and Final Girl:
5Sanchez, José, ed. Introduction to Film Studies Readings.
3nd Custom Edition.
P. 75:
“But to reduce the mechanics of the genre to this gender polarized formulation is to ignore the female character, whom Clover aptly names the “Final Girl,” who survives the onslaught to which most of the other characters, male and female, succumb. The surviving female is distinguished from the victims by being allotted more close-ups, screen time, and reverse shots from her perspective. Her character is more fully developed, and she is less likely to be the object of sexual scrutiny, less subject to the controlling gaze (Dika 89, 91). Like the killer, she is able to see, hear, and speak authoritatively. Like the viewer, she directs an active investigative gaze at the events surrounding her and so comes to understand the magnitude of the violence that threatens her (Clover 48, 35). Like the viewer, the surviving female adopts paranoia as a valid position from which to know. She trusts her misgivings and keeps her eyes open; she exercises what Judith Halberstam calls “productive fear (1995, 126—27). Because the surviving female is conscious of being watched, she becomes watchful. Her ability to look is crucial because it enables her to subject the killer to her controlling gaze, and thus to transform him into an object of aggression and herself into an agent of violence.”
P. 78:
“In a male-dominated social order only men do the violent things the surviving female does; therefore, within the terms of hegemonic discourse she is not really female. This is what compels Clover to read the Final Girl as a male in drag. Writing about the popular press’s reception of Thelma and Louise (1991), a mainstream film about women who kill, Hart summarized it thus: “This representation is not really about women; it is about men. Now you see women, now you don’t” (74). But her words could just as easily apply to Clover’s analysis of the surviving female. Hart continues: What is it that we are seeing when we see women who are not really women but are perhaps ‘really men’? One answer,” Clover’s answer, “would be the projection of male fantasies,” but another answer is that women who are “really men” are lesbians (74).”
Best regards,
Alin
P. 75:
“But to reduce the mechanics of the genre to this gender polarized formulation is to ignore the female character, whom Clover aptly names the “Final Girl,” who survives the onslaught to which most of the other characters, male and female, succumb. The surviving female is distinguished from the victims by being allotted more close-ups, screen time, and reverse shots from her perspective. Her character is more fully developed, and she is less likely to be the object of sexual scrutiny, less subject to the controlling gaze (Dika 89, 91). Like the killer, she is able to see, hear, and speak authoritatively. Like the viewer, she directs an active investigative gaze at the events surrounding her and so comes to understand the magnitude of the violence that threatens her (Clover 48, 35). Like the viewer, the surviving female adopts paranoia as a valid position from which to know. She trusts her misgivings and keeps her eyes open; she exercises what Judith Halberstam calls “productive fear (1995, 126—27). Because the surviving female is conscious of being watched, she becomes watchful. Her ability to look is crucial because it enables her to subject the killer to her controlling gaze, and thus to transform him into an object of aggression and herself into an agent of violence.”
P. 78:
“In a male-dominated social order only men do the violent things the surviving female does; therefore, within the terms of hegemonic discourse she is not really female. This is what compels Clover to read the Final Girl as a male in drag. Writing about the popular press’s reception of Thelma and Louise (1991), a mainstream film about women who kill, Hart summarized it thus: “This representation is not really about women; it is about men. Now you see women, now you don’t” (74). But her words could just as easily apply to Clover’s analysis of the surviving female. Hart continues: What is it that we are seeing when we see women who are not really women but are perhaps ‘really men’? One answer,” Clover’s answer, “would be the projection of male fantasies,” but another answer is that women who are “really men” are lesbians (74).”
Best regards,
Alin
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