The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film (Texas Film and Media Studies Series)

Pretty fun read, even though it was required for class.

Great well written with fantastic essays!

My only regret about reading this book is that I came to it too late, as it has some seminal works that I'd already read, most notably Carol Clover's "Her Body, Himself," which originally defined the idea of the Final Girl, and Shelley Stamp Lindsey's wonderful "Horror, Femininity and Carrie's Monstrous Puberty." There are other shining works in here, like Barbara Creed's "Horror and the Monstrous Feminine" and Thomas Doherty's piece on the Aliens trilogy (because yes, even stopping there is still overshooting by one), but I think if I'd come to this a few years ago, I'd have been bathed in buckets of criticism that would have knocked my friggin lights out. Still a lot to get from this tome even when already a little well read in horror criticism, with great perspectives on Cronenberg and Night of the Living Dead and horror's response to neoconservative culture, which may offer a template of how to work with today's real-life horror, so Dread of Difference bodes well for the newcomer to horror criticism and still has yummy, fleshy strips to nosh on for the well-versed as well.

The introduction mentions a film from the 90s, but you’ll find nothing studied in depth later than the late 70s in this book. The entire 80s decade gets one lonely essay, and there’s nothing later than that. I suspect the 80s essay was inserted purely for the second edition.I found the book very disappointing because it’s so incomplete. The last 40 to 50 years of horror cinema simply don’t exist for this book. That might have been ok in a cheap ebook, but this wasn’t a cheap ebook. I’m old enough to recall many of the 70s films the book examines- some I know very well, some not well at all and they’re only vague memories of horror movies borrowed on VHS decades ago. I certainly can’t imagine rewatching them now, or younger generations watching them for the first time and finding them anything but so dated as to be almost unwatchable.Hopefully one day someone will write an update or a whole new book, tackling the next half century of the gender and the Other representation in the horror genre of cinema.

Received my order in perfect condition!