![]() ![]() In fact, as Clover clarifies at some point, the Final Girl is not even a girl, but an “agreed-upon-fiction” (214) she merely stands-in for male desires, a subject for a man to identify with, to use “as a vehicle for his own sadomasochistic fantasies,” “an act of perhaps timeless dishonesty” (214). Her smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual reluctance set her apart from the other girls” (204). One of the central arguments in “Her Body, Himself”-and one that has led to many misconceptions that continue to surround Clover’s theory today-is that the Final Girl is gender non-normative or, in Clover’s words, “boyish” (204): “Just as the killer is not fully masculine, she is not fully feminine…. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Clover’s formulation has been the characterization of the Final Girl as a “male in drag” (216), which refers to her presumed masculine aggression and phallic agency. Despite its unquestionable influence on horror studies and on the directions often taken in this field in the intervening years, Clover’s model has been widely critiqued in academia. ![]() ![]() ![]() The remarkably mobile and infinitely interpretable figure of the Final Girl has evolved into an important concept for theoretical work on film, gender, and sexuality by scholars including Jack Halberstam, Isabel Pinedo, and Kathleen Rowe Karlyn. ![]()
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