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Kuzyk, Anika Dawn

University of British Columbia

For decades, Carol J. Clover’s Final Girl theory in Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film has been repeatedly highlighted in discourse surrounding classic American slasher films' female heroines and victim-survivors. As of late, contemporary Final Girl literature has transitioned to criticizing the limiting nature of the original theory, such as its association with “Western” ideals of middle-class whiteness, heterosexuality, and ability. However, many scholars have taken the Final Girl and applied the theory beyond the image of a fair-skinned, conventionally attractive, and unusually physically capable teenager by finding altered renditions of Final Girl(s) within global horror cinema. This thesis analyses the undiscussed representation of the Final Girl and the gendered representations in Japanese horror cinema. Through an analysis of Director Sono Sion’s Netflix original thriller, The Forest of Love (2019), this thesis locates the differences between this new Japanese Final Girl and Clover’s classic Final Girl, as well as the differences between this new Japanese Final Girl and those identified in scholarship post-Clover, to illuminate issues specific to Japanese gender systems and representational strategies in Japanese horror films. This analysis also reflects on the similarities between Clover’s Final Girl and her potential counterpart in Japanese horror, underscoring the continuing usefulness of Clover’s work as an analytical tool. Chapter One focuses on the definitions that make up the groundwork of this thesis, such as Clover’s Final Girl, contemporary scholarship’s use of the theory, and an introduction to the horror genre. Chapter Two then brings the discussion of the Final Girl to Japanese Studies by highlighting the traits of Japanese horror cinema, the J-horror genre, and Japanese analytical tools that will be used to analyse Sono’s film. Chapter Three moves on to an analysis and discussion of The Forest of Love and determines what analysing horror films from this perspective offers to discourse on Japanese sociocultural issues, especially as the genre forces viewers to feel said issues in a visceral way.

Text

2024-04-22

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/87923

Asian Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/