Gender Fluid Chainsaw Wielding Monster

Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Directed by Tobe Hooper. 1974.

I remember becoming aware of the Texas Chainsaw movie franchise when my dad took me to see a remake of the film, it was called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006). I honestly don't remember the film indepthly, just my dad's hand over my face ever time anything graphic happened (not sure why he took me there to watch it). So, basically I barely saw the film. But what I remember from watching that film was the man with the mask, a chainsaw, and a lot of horny people. I think this was the first movie I "watched" that had sex that intermingled with violence.

Later on I realized there was other movies that came before that one. I remember watching the original from 1974 in glimpses. I specially remember the end scene vividly. Actually re-watching this film I was surprised to see so many things that went over. One element especially was when the Chainsaw Wielding Monster's mask was covered in makeup. I was like huh? It's interesting how this element of the Monster didn't carry on to the next movies (or at least the ones made in the 21st century), though what did carry on was the sex and violence which intensified even more so.

I always wondered why exactly we as viewers were so fascinated with horror films, who is it we identified with on screen. In the essay "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film" by Carol Clover, Clover brings up an interesting point about the perspective the viewer takes up within the horror film. She writes, "the Other is also finally another part of ourself, the projection of our repressed infantile rage and desire (our blind drive to annihilate those toward whom we feel anger, to force satisfaction from those who stimulate us, to wrench food for ourselves if only by actually devouring those who feed us) that we have had in the name of civilization to repudiate. We are both Red Riding Hood and the Wolf; the force of the experience, the horror, comes from "knowing" both sides of the story" (191) If our identification goes between both the victim and the Other then that means our gaze is one that is fluid. I find this fluidity most fascinating, this can be seen in both the spectators and the Other on screen.

What struck me about TCM was the gender fluidity the monster takes up, which translates into our own identification. The monster takes up both genders, male and female. Though the mask itself also breaks this binary because it makes the monster androgynous in a way because this face covers their identity. The monster then fluctuates in this grey area that leaves the audience to identify with them through a sort of anxiety. Clover claims that, " Leatherface are permanently locked in childhood" (195). This line expresses how the monster is seeking their own identification, using a mask to try and understand who they are. Though what makes the monster perpetuate an identification with the "male" is the phallic power of the chainsaw. This is transformed when the monster "puts on" makeup and becomes a "castrating female." But all of this is also put into question by the androgyny the monster embodies through the mask, which then turns the chainsaw into a phallic symbol not "traditional" connected to the"male".

If only younger me had a hand on these readings. I wonder how it would have changed my perspective then.