The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

In the film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, directed by Tobe Hooper there are many connections that can be made between the film and Tony Williams’ article “Chain Saw Massacre: The Apocalyptic Dimension”. Throughout the film, the audience witnesses a terrifying version of an apocalyptic family. This type of horror associates fear with the audience’s psyche. “The films emphasize excessive violence to the detriment of social meaning by sadistically immersing the audience in a masochistic barrage of special effects”.

Williams’ article provides the audience with an insight into an apocalyptic family horror. “Apocalyptic dimensions have histroical connections determining particular cinematic treatments of the family that revealed American horror film as a fundamental component of the national cultural tradition”. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is the perfect example of Richard Slotkin’s violence theory. “Puritan ancestral fears finally prove themselves more powerful than Enlightenment concepts within the Declaration of Independence. Contrast emerge between western civilization’s repressive structures and demonize others in a cultural Gothic imagery”.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre represents Puritans worst fears. The Sawyer family resides in a slaughterhouse and practices “cannibalistic activities”. The family is seen to the outside world as worthless because their family business was made obsolete by new technology. This sense of worthlessness makes family important to the Sawyers because that’s all they have left in this world. The Sawyers take pride in the fact that as a family they practice cannibalism. They prey upon outsiders who they perceived wronged them in some way. ”Evil lies within American society and the family”.

Reading Summary:

“Trying to Survive on the Darker Side: 1980s Family Horror” by Tony Williams, talks about how the emergence of horror films containing “gory bloodbaths of promiscuous teenagers” during the 1970s led to horror films being more “complex and contradictory” during the 1980s. Williams mentions Carol Clover, using her notes to say how this new genre creates “a visible adjustment in the terms of gender representation”. Clover believes these adjustments “reveal an uncertain sense of sexual identity”. Leading to Clover arguing how contemporary horror films have an obsession with feminism, displaying masculinized female power. Clover believes that masochism is the dominant feature in horror films not sadism.