Area man scared of roommate due to local news

Carrboro, NC--An area man became momentarily frightened of his roommate this afternoon when he heard the ABC 11 news report of the eBay habits of Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-Hui. Authorities searched Mr. Cho's computer and found that he frequented the online auction site eBay.com and used it to buy the ammunition clips and to sell books including Men, Women, and Chain Saws, a book that the area man's roommate was in the middle of reading.

ABC 11 was not the only source to single out Men, Women, and Chain Saws among the books sold on the account, but they did fail to provide the desensationalizing discussion of Carol J. Clover's 1992 book, which is ensubtitled "Gender in the Modern Horror Film" and was required reading for the Contemporary Horror class taken by Mr. Cho, an English major.

The local roommate is reading Ms. Clover's book after hearing filmmaker Quentin Tarantino refer to it in an interview on the podcast of the NPR show The Treatment, hosted by Elvis Mitchell. Mr. Tarantino said that the book, which examines the identification of adolescent male audence members with the female victim of horror films in the late 1970s and '80s, had influenced Death Proof, his half of the double feature Grindhouse, which too few people are seeing.