Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing

Challenges the conventional wisdom that violent horror films can only degrade women and incite violence.

In Recreational Terror, Isabel Cristina Pinedo analyzes how the contemporary horror film produces recreational terror as a pleasurable encounter with violence and danger for female spectators. She challenges the conventional wisdom that violent horror films can only degrade women and incite violence, and contends instead that the contemporary horror film speaks to the cultural need to express rage and terror in the midst of social upheaval.

Isabel Cristina Pinedo is Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communications at Hunter College of the City University of New York.