Page "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" Paragraph 33

Robin Wood characterizes Leatherface and his family as victims of industrial capitalism, their jobs as slaughterhouse workers having been rendered obsolete by technological advances.

He states that the picture " brings to focus a spirit of negativity ... that seems to lie not far below the surface of the modern collective consciousness ".

Naomi Merritt explores the film's representation of " cannibalistic capitalism " in relation to Georges Bataille's theory of taboo and transgression.

She elaborates on Wood's analysis, stating that the Sawyer family's values " reflect, or correspond to, established and interdependent American institutions ... but their embodiment of these social units is perverted and transgressive.