SLASHER GENRE: Audience

"Kids with loose change are what summer movies are all about."

- Frank Mancuso, Friday the 13th (1980) marketer

After reading the book "Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle" by Richard Nowell, I have complied a further understanding of the slasher audience. 

Age: 

The primary audience of the teen slasher genre is teenagers aged 15-24+. At the time of the beginning of the first slasher cycle in 1979, MPAA research showed that 12-20 year olds made up 49% of cinema attendance, making them the largest attending demographic. This means that the target audience for my film would also be 15-24+, as it is of the teen slasher genre.

In 1980, the journalist Patrick Goldstein reinforced this, saying: "the majority of the current victims are school kids - by clever coincidence the same age as most horror movie goers." Producer Don Borchers also said: "if you get the audience to identify with young teens in trouble and you do a knife movie, it's always going to work." These quotes reflect the concept of personal identification, part of Katz and Blumler's UGT, showing that on-screen representation attracts an audience that can identify with the characters and situations. I think that the reason slasher films are so popular within a teenage demographic is due to the relatability of the characters, as well as the situations included in the narratives; school, parties, relationships... I think that the use of substances, nudity, sex, and violence also attracts teenagers, as these are stereotypical activities that they participate in. 

A practice in 1980s America was "date movies", where films were targeted towards young males and females that they would be equally interested in seeing while on a date. This was a turning point in the film industry, as films, specifically horror were primarily targeted towards males as they believed them to be a more profitable demographic. 

Gender: 

Although horror is believed to be a stereotypically male dominated genre, I believe it is equally split. This graph reflects this, and shows women as the larger demographic. In 1978, the production executive Marilyn Tenser said: "women influence our box office, they're the ones that decide what movie a couple is going to see."

However, the slasher genre "has been presented as deeply conservative, particularly in its attitudes toward women." (Jancovich) I believe this is due to the archetypes of the scream queen and the final girl, which are binary opposites and are simplified representations of women. There is also frequent nudity in the genre, and the female characters are objectified for male pleasure. According to Mulvey's male gaze, this attracts male audiences to see a slasher film.

The archetype of Clover's final girl is a strong female representation, as she outsmarts the killer, but is represented as virginal, innocent, and weak, through most of the film, leaving the conventionally male killer in power for the majority of the film. The male killer and male archetypes are also used to attract a male audience, as they can personally identify with them. 

I am targeting a primarily female audience with my film, but the inclusion of male characters targets the secondary audience of males. 

Class: 

I think that slasher films are targeted toward teenagers of all classes, and as it is not a social realist film class wouldn't be a strong deterrent or attractor for audiences. However, if a film is aiming for commercial success, I think a BC1C2 group would be represented, as middle class or wealthy characters are easily marketed internationally. 

Ethnicity: 

I don't think that slasher films target a specific race, but past representations were euro-centric and there was little diversity. Often ethnically diverse representations were negative, and resulted in the "murdered minority" trope, where minority characters would be killed first. This is also known as the "black guy dies first" trope. This is why I chose not to include any ethnic representation in my opening, as I didn't want to have a negative representation, as well as satirising the conventional slasher archetypes. I would have included ethnic diversity in a full length feature. 

Sexuality: 

I don't think that slasher films target a specific sexuality, but past representations were heteronormative, and that is still often a convention. In the 1960 film Psycho, the killer Norman Bates is a cross-dresser, which is a negative representation for the LGBTQ+ community. LGBTQ+ characters also fall under the "murdered minority" trope, and I similarly did not want to include any negative representations in my opening, but would have if it was a full length feature. 

The knife is usually the weapon of choice in slasher, hence where the name comes from. The knife is seen as a phallic symbol, and is part of Freud's theory of psychosexual stages. This is a symbol of assault, especially from a male killer awards a female victim. I did not include any slashing in my opening as the shots didn't achieve verisimilitude, but slashing sounds are heard during the main title.