genre knowledge as part of their interpretive framework . 13 The implied player therefore identifies with the first-person camera , not the characters , in an operation that is fundamentally interactive yet necessarily assaultive .
Assaultive gazing , a position in which the audience is invited to collude with the camera and to experience sadistic pleasure in a character ’ s physical or emotional torment , has been tellingly contrasted with reactive gazing that witnesses , and empathizes with , the pain of the onscreen victims seeing itself as the target of cinematic horror . These categories , also known as the projective gaze and introjected gaze , have been shown by Carol J . Clover to be resolutely gendered – with the assaultive gaze figured as masculine / sadistic and the reactive gaze figured as feminine / masochistic . 14 Clover further observes that , in slasher films , assaultive gazing is by and large the minority position and that the real investment comes from the audience ’ s reactive or introjected position , figured as both painful and feminine . 15 This argument suggests that pleasure , for a masculine-identified viewer , oscillates between identifying with the initial passive powerlessness of the terrorized victim and their later empowerment . Clover ’ s theoretical elaborations , though they do not take into full account means by which these positions are reversed once audiences are no longer passive observers but active participants , nevertheless assist with defining the degree to which interactive artistic representations of violence imply a double assault , first for the characters 13
Ken Hyland , ‘ Genre-based Pedagogies : A Social Response to Process ’, Journal of
Second Language Writing , 12 ( 2003 ), 17-29 ( p . 21 ). 14 Maria Tatar , Lustmord : Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany ( Princeton , NJ : Princeton
University Press , 1997 ), p . 37 . 15 Rikke Schubart , Super Bitches and Action Babes : The Female Hero in Popular
Cinema , 1970-2006 ( Jefferson , NC : McFarland & Company , 2007 ), p . 113 .
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