Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

xix
thesis, I have consistently tried to analyse these texts for what they are: films that are
designed to entertain. This position is significant to a formalist approach, as it helps
to preclude dismissiveness towards these texts that can be, and has been drawn from
an approach based on cultural, political, and industrial contexts.
The Friday the 13 th Franchise
Friday the 13 th and its related franchise films centre on the killings that occur
around a summer camp, Camp Crystal Lake, primarily executed by a seemingly
invincible man in a hockey mask, named Jason Voorhees. The decision to analyse
the Friday the 13 th series to determine the aesthetic creation of perspective within
slasher films was chosen because the series provides a unique opportunity to observe
the development of Slasher film aesthetics, which I will here describe. This
particular franchise retains qualities that few others, if any, can equal.
Firstly, the release dates for the Friday the 13 th films range from 1980 to
2009. During this time, eight of the films were released by Paramount Pictures
between 1980 and 1989. The franchise was then sold to New Line Cinema, resulting
in the release of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday 4 (1993; dir. Marcus) and Jason
X (2001; dir. Isaac). New Line then released a franchise crossover of the Jason films
and another New Line property: A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 . This resulted in the
film Freddy vs. Jason (2003; dir. Yu). Finally, in 2009, New Line and Paramount
co-produced a remake: Friday the 13 th (2009; dir. Nispel). In other words, there have
been eleven films in the Friday the 13 th series alone, with an additional franchise
crossover film, all within the span of just under thirty years. Although the space of
4 From this point, I will refer to this film as Jason Goes to Hell.
5 Original film: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984; dir. Craven)