Resurrecting and Updating the Teen Slasher: The Case of "Scream"

In December 1996, Dimension Films,a subsidiary of Miramax Films, released Scream, a slasher film that actively plays with the established conventions of the familiar genre. Scream and its sequels went on to resurrect the dormant slasher flick,1 spearhead the media industry's interest in the teen market, and reshape the teen movie for a new generation of paying moviegoers.

While the Scream trilogy has received its share of scholarly attention, many of the existing examinations focus primarily on its postmodern elements, with numerous discussions centering on the heightened self-reflexivity and intertextuality that characterize the three films in the series.2 Less attention has been paid to the ways in which the films have updated the defining conventions of the slasher-film genre-in particular, how the series has revised the treatment of the monster-villain and the final female survivor, two of the key narrative elements central to the slasher-film genre. This article focuses on these two elements and considers how they have been reshaped to reflect the contemporary issues and concerns relevant to the teen generation that came of age during the final years of the twentieth century.

Of the existing studies that have focused on these two issues, the general trend has been to dismiss the Scream films for failing to sustain the established elements of indestructible villains and self-reliant female survivors. The films have also been criticized for their seemingly conformist stance with regard to mainstream ideologies. Sarah Trecansky, for instance, notes that the Scream trilogy's villains are distinct deviations from their predecessors; unlike the indestructible Freddy Kruger (A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984) and Michael Myers (Halloween, 1978), Scream's various villains are less-than-formidable adversaries who are comparatively more easily defeated. Trecansky has similarly argued that Scream's female survivors represent a regression from the capable, self-determined, more politically progressive Final Girls (35) of earlier, classic slashers such as Friday the 13th...