1) Author: Mandy Ross
Year: 2002
Title: the Changing Role Of Women
Publisher: Heinemann Library
Place: Great Britain

2) Author: Rubin, Martin
Year: 1999
Title: Thrillers.
Place: Cambridge, UK
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

3)Author: Joanne Hollows
TitleFemminism, Femininity and Popular Culture"
Year: 2000
Place: USA

4)Smelik, Anneke,
(2001):
And The Mirror Cracked, Feminist Cinema and Film Theory.
Palgrave:
New York

sElE-dIrEcTeD rEaSeArCh !!!
Feminist horror film theory: the 1970's -1980's
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1775840
Male Gaze !
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze09.html
Change of women's roles in the media !!!
://www.bfi.org.uk/filmtvinfo/library/publications/16+/strongwomen.html
How genre's have changed !!!
://www.bfi.org.uk/filmtvinfo/library/publications/16+/pdf/censorship.pdf
Further reasearch to how genres have changed !!!
tp://www.bfi.org.uk/filmtvinfo/library/publications/16+/horror.html
Horror films and most frequently asked questions !!!
http://www.xmission.com/~tyranist/horror/
Film review !!!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435625/
Final girl theory (Carol Clover) !!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl
Horror films !!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_films
The Descent (2005)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Descent_2

10 key words from the "essential word dictionary” that I will find useful
1) Male gaze: This is the term that is used by Laura Mulvey making reference to "visual pleasures and narrative cinema" (1975). She uses this theory to describe what she saw as the male point of view adopted by the camera for the benefit of an assumed male audience.
Influenced feminism.
How I will find it useful- the film goes against the theory therefore I can debate that society has changed now and doesn’t follow the typical conventions of a slasher film as well as typical representations of women in a slasher film.

2) Laura Mulvey: 1941- feminist academic and media and film critic responsible of theory male gaze.
How I will find it useful- research more on her theory and apple how the film does not follow her theory

3) Post modernism- doesn’t follow traditional narratives, or genre expectations. Include ambivalent endings that challenge the relationship between the text and the audience.
How I will find it useful- this can be applied as the film has a distorting beginning and ending. There is also a complex narrative as there are stories within stories (an affair between both friends with one of the husbands, whilst both trying to escape from the cave).

4) Representation- provides models of how we see people (gender, social groups, individuals and aspects of the world we all inhabit. They are ideological which means that they are constructed within a framework of values and beliefs. They are therefore meditated and reflect the value systems on their sources. No representation is real only a version of the real.
Representation is the key to many media debated and is usually described as being positive or negative depending on how they are presented in the media.
How I will find this useful- this is my main focus of my independent study as I found it unusual in the film that only females were being represented. And also I found it interesting that a male passed away in the beginning of the film.

5) resolution- This is the conclusion of a narrative usually where all the problems and questions and uncertainties are solved, answering and or clarifying to that satisfaction of the audience
How I would find this useful- it didn’t follow the generic conventions of a slasher film as there was no resolution at the end that was solved by a final woman.

6) Zombie movie- a horror subgenre where the living are plagued by armies of the living dead who usually survive by devouring the living.

7) censorship- controlling the media context by removing, surprising or classifying elements seems offensive or subversive for moral, political, economic, social or religious reasons
How I will find this useful- I can refer back to how things have changed and how the Descent does not sensor gory shots

Textual analysis

The scene that I have chosen to analyse is the last scene. This scene mainly focuses on the two main protagonists. One who plays the masculine role thought the film and the other who we are introduced to strait into the film with the introduction of a bit of her background, being the loss of her husband and daughter. In the scene there is also an indication of the final protagonist being left there to die going against carol clovers theory of the final girl.

The descent follows the generic conventions of a typical horror movie. The scene is set in a cave and low key lighting has been used to portray that they are trapped in a dark, wet, cost phobic cave.

There is a close up of the first girl that we are introduced to at the beginning of the film, whereby she is under light creating a distorting look whilst her face being covered in blood which signifies danger and murder.

There is then an over the shoulder shot with the same girl but with a phallic object (rock climbing equipment in the shape of a sword) whilst this shot remains there is mysterious but yet tense full music being played in the background (non-dietetic) which creates and enigma of what is going to happen. The first girl is planning to murder the main protagonist who played the masculine role I the film due to an affair she had with the 1st girls husband.

Close up shots of the women with blood on their hair and face to show facial expressions. There is non-digitise sounds of the predators that are after them, reminding the audience that the film of about them being trapped into a cave with predators and drags the attention away from their personal issues that are arise.

There is a slow motion shot of her stabbing the masculinised woman, and this shot shows how horror movies have changed throughout the years and have become more explicit and ‘gorrey’ as they show the phallic object going through her leg.