Essay on Representation of women in horror films
In the horror genre the majority of women are
stereotyped into being a helpless, scantily clad victim running away from a
monster. Horror plays on the fact that women are somewhat inferior to men with
them being helpless and hardly able to prevent anything. Also the protagonist
is a female character who seems to always survive the night. But the female who
is cast as the protagonist has some male like qualities which distinguishes her
from the rest of the women.
If the main protagonist is a female she ends up being the so called 'final girl' (a term coined by Carol Clover) who survives the event. She is normally a virgin who differs from the rest of the group and has to struggle and fight the monster off. As a horror flick slowly progresses characters are killed off until it reaches the final girl. The final girl struggles to stop the monster and succeeds but the monster is not killed. Even though the women helped stop the monster she didn’t kill it which relates back to women being ineffective at getting the job done. This is representing women in a negative light.
In slasher movies teens are normally the target for the monster and among these teens are women. Normally in a slasher movie the women who are murdered have negative connotations and were promiscuous and/or are interrupted during sex. It's normally the virgin who survives the night. In other horror films the women is always put through the most pain as she watches loved ones die around her. It could be in the middle of a wedding that gets interrupted and the female is forced to sit and watch as her world gets torn apart. So normally the woman who is the protagonist has to go through the most pain in horrors and is represented as the most vulnerable.
Normally
in horror the most horrific things happen in places that are considered safe.
In slasher movies it is normally set in a household which is considered safe. A
stereotypical woman belongs to the household where she does her chores. So this
makes the women a victim to the monster as they are attacked in their own homes
where they spend most of their time. The men are normally shown away from the
home or are an early victim to the monster. Whenever a male is shown in a horror
movie he has power over the women which they may or may not abuse. If the male
is shown abusing the power he normally ends up dead by the end of the movie. In
fact normally characters who break laws, abuse power or break sacred vows are
normally the target for the monster and the innocent ones survive and the
majority of the innocent characters are women.
The 'Final Girl' in most horror movies is
quite often a tomboy. Laurie in Halloween (1978) is presented as a tomboy and
she differs from the rest of the women. In the film you see the story from both
perspectives and as the film progresses you start to like Laurie (which is
unusual for a horror movie) and you hope for her to survival. When characters
like this are cast women are normally more commonly found as the hero and is
remember for their actions.
Even when the women become the hero she has
to show signs of masculinity as she slowly becomes a monster in an attempt to
stop the antagonist. When a woman holds a knife or a gun she is holding a
phallic object which connotes masculinity.
The film Carrie is a feminist story about a
young girl who is abused at her school during her menstruation. During the film
she is bullied by her class mates and mother who appear to be the monsters if
the movie. Towards the end of the movie Carrie herself becomes the monster as
she burns down the school. Carrie is a different take on the horror genre as it
shows the hero slowly becoming monstrous this narration has been used several
times in recent films. In this film instead of showing men what they want from
a women they see their greatest fear of women.
Women are presented in some positive ways but they still have their flaws in the horror genre. The horror genre places the stereotypical women in a situation where showing masculinity will help them survive and escape the nightmare that they are in. It appears that the women who don't show masculinity end up dead in horror and plays on the fact those women should act like women.
