Cross-Dressing and the Perversity of the American Family Unit in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Clover's analysis of the role of gender within the slasher film has been a very influential piece of academic writing to me. In fact, the book she later developed this essay into (Men, Women, and Chainsaws) was one of the primary sources for my film studies capstone. However, in her writing on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, there is one thing that I feel should have been addressed more: Leatherface's gender and cross-dressing.

It seems to me that many people who watch this film may not even notice this somewhat minor detail, yet it is one of the first things about the film that springs to mind whenever I think of it. The cross-dressing itself is somewhat subtle I suppose, but it is by no means unnoticeable. During Leatherface’s first onscreen appearance, he dressed in very masculine attire, slacks, a button-down shirt, a tie, and a butcher’s apron… and he also is wearing a sewn together human face as a kind of mask. Then, later on in the film, Leatherface appears in a slightly altered outfit, now instead of the butcher’s apron he appears wearing a feminine blue cooking apron with white polka dots and a new human mask with exaggeratedly feminine make-up and a feminine bob hairstyle. These two outfits can be seen below:

Clover somehow makes no mention of this and instead writes that "neither brother [referring to Leatherface and Nubbins] shows overt signs of gender confusion" (195). However, as these images clearly show, there is indeed some gender-confusion at work within the Sawyer family household.

Of further interest is the different roles that Leatherface takes on while he is wearing these different wardrobes. For instance, when Leatherface is wearing his masculine garb, he is performing the role of a hunter/butcher, killing the teenagers he comes across, hanging them on meat hooks, chopping them up, and storing them in the freezer. Yet, when he is wearing the feminine garb, he is performing the role of a cook/homemaker, now preparing the cannibalistic feast and setting the table for his family members. One can even note Leatherface’s different posture in the above stills from the film. When presenting more masculine, Leatherface is much more dominant/aggressive, as represented by the scene wherein he chases down Pam, lifting her off the ground and carrying her back into the house in what might be the film’s most iconic shot. However, when presenting more feminine, Leatherface is much more timid, as represented by the scene that still 2 is taken from, wherein the head of the household, Drayton (who we should note is clearly physically weaker than Leatherface and who also claims to have no taste for killing) reprimands Leatherface for cutting down the door to the house with his chainsaw. Here Leatherface shies away Drayton, acting like a submissive housewife rather than the brutal murderer he was just established as.

I think these points only strengthen Clover's immensely complex reading of the film and of the slasher genre as a whole. Even in this, the subgenre's ur-text (besides Psycho) the importance of the gender of the killer is established as murky and nebulous. Yet, many people still seem unaware of these complicated gender-dynamics within these films and simply smear them as mere misogyny. If anything, I think Leatherface's gender-trouble is actually revealing of the perversity of the American family-unit. As Robin Wood notes in book American Nightmares: Essays on the Horror Film, "the all-male family also derives from a long American tradition with notable antecedents in Ford's westerns. the absence of Woman deprives the family of its social meaning while leaving its strength of primitive loyalties largely untouched. In Massacre, Woman becomes the ultimate object of the characters' animus" (20). This could potentially explain Leatherface's cross-dressing, with no woman to fill the role of housewife in the American family, a man must take on the role of a woman in order to keep the balance of the nuclear household amid its meltdown.