Anti-Feminist Representation Of Women In Horror Films

The role of the female throughout the horror genre has generally reflected the roles of women in society within the social context of the movie. In the early days of movie, women were no more than the weak and defenceless victim. They are ‘the object of the creature’s desire’ , a beautiful yet two-dimensional character who is there for no other reason than to become the victim. As feminism and the role of women in society has developed, so too has the role of the female in the horror genre. This is recognisable in both Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978).

The natural being of monsters is supposed to instill fear in humans. Their original purpose of creation was to scare children into doing what they were told and to scare people away from places. They instill fear because they possess supernatural powers. Each society that has monsters worked into their culture, reflects that society’s values. In the majority of societies across the globe, men are seen as the stronger, more dominant gender. So, when monsters have more power than men, and that monster happens to be female, men feel vulnerable to allure and emasculated to their domination.

Where once she was a female, now she is both girl and boy, though most often and most conspicuously girl” (Clover 135). The main analysis with the victim is that the victim is going to be killed whether it’s male or female, beautiful or not, and sexually active or not. Postcoital death is the most common of slasher films and is usually a pivotal point of the climax. According to Clover’s piece, “the death of a male is nearly always swift; even if the victim grasps what is happening to him, he has no time to react or register terror” (136). With that being said, I think it is worth noting that there’s a reason female deaths are filmed at closer range and in more detail. I feel that it’s easier for viewers to watch a female be stripped and abused and killed, because of what the audience is seeing; her naked body and her being taken advantage of. The director of the film highlights two important aspects of the situation: tits and the screams. If mostly males are watching these types of films, they aren’t going to want to see naked men and how they are getting groped or abused because that is not appealing to the male

Correspondingly, Barbra’s character shrieks the stereotype of a hysterical housewife, a helpless, naïve blonde woman. She is weak and reliant on the others, incompetent and oblivious to the concerns at hand. Her lack of prowess when the ghouls infiltrated the farmhouse consequently led to her death. While others were pitching in to devise a plan to combat the slew of ghouls drawing near the farmhouse, Barbra was in a state of bewilderment due to Johnny’s death and was unmindful of the plan to defeat the ghouls; therefore, she became a hindrance to the others. Robert Hass’s film criticism of Carol J. Clover’s work in Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, declares, “Women are usually helpless victims in the horror genre” (Haas 67). This essentially summarized Barbra’s character in such a manner that the viewer would infer that Barbra enacts the stereotypical female role of a horror film.

The Siskel and Ebert Halloween Review from 1978 shows how they like how the movie shows how the female character is seen as intelligent, brave and smart. The way the two men spoke about how they felt about the film gave a feminist critic. They were able to put them self in her shoes and think about how they might of felt in that scenario. They see the film as up and positive and see the movie for the film qualities other than the depressing killing. The film focused on film qualities, where the mood, lighting, music and camera angle all played roll in creating the feeling where one can feel that the female actor out smart the bad masked man.

Media portrays femininity on a daily, in our lives. Femininity are the qualities that traditionally associate with females. In movies femininity are strongly showed. People of all ages are exposed to the expectations of femininity which affects our views on female. In the media such as movies like “Cinderella” the portrayal reinforces gender stereotypes to their audience.

Women are deemed as a “minority” yet make up 51% of the world population and in 2014 made up only 12% of protagonists in films. And that is just on-screen, the percentage decreases as you go farther and farther into behind-the-scenes positions such as directors, cinematographers, and writers. Add race and ethnicity and those characters' percentages decline even more (Lauzen, 2015.) Women in film and television are often portrayed with emphasis based on their body type and in advertisement are largely objectified. The large objectification and misrepresentation of women in the media has led to an offset psychological view of women from growing up to adulthood.

Femme Fatale women of the film noir movies of the 1940’s were the start of normal and demented personalities. The decade of the 1940’s saw the rise of the independence of women. Film Noir demonstrated the lives of women, the challenges, and emotions these women portrayed while men were away for World War II. However after the return of men, by 1945 many of these women no longer saw themselves as temporary replacement of men work roles these women now wanted to continue their lives and continue working. These women now had a sense of them and were no longer limited to seeing themselves solely in relation to men as they had done when men were away at war (Goldin 1991). In this era film noir exposes the power attained by women that disrupts the

I’m using this source as it relates to my research question regarding history, myths, and exploitation of women in horror films. In Part 2 of the book “Audiences, Fans, and Consumption’, the article ‘Trashing the Academy’ by Jefferey Scone offers a detailed analysis of emerging politics in the genre of horror

It has been the age-old belief that it is a man’s job to protect women from all harm. The final girl defeats this standard by showing a smart, independent woman capable of fighting back the aggressor. I cannot dispute the sub-categories of horror movies that portray women in misogynistic manner such as borderline pornos like Zombie Strippers, but these movies rarely get any theatrical releases and almost no recognition, for a good

Upon further probing, there is perhaps a deeper terror rooted in Frankenstein, which subtly appears to stem his hesitancy at creating not just another monster, but specifically a female monster. Because Victor Frankenstein fears the existence of a female free of restrictions that he cannot impose, he destroys her, thus eliminating the female’s options of becoming either completely feminine through becoming a mother and mate, or totally unfeminine by opting to leave her partner and face the world alone.

The media represents only 22-30 year old women as sexually appealing, this notion brain washes women all around the world into thinking youth equals beauty, and if you’re not young, then you’re not beautiful. Movie producers are trying to increase the amount of female protagonists they include in their films, they think they’re doing something unique and are benefitting the problem that is the small amount of women that are the main characters in films. But when they are the main character in films, they still are sexualised. In “chick flicks” they may be the main character, but their main purpose is to find love, but how does this benefit the cause when producers are basically saying the only use for women protagonists is to have the man they desire.. Another prime example of how much producers fail to strengthen the role of women in movies, is when they’re a boss or entrepreneur, they’re always bitchy and sacrifice all love and kindness to be successful.

Today’s filmmakers have three areas to focus on: the event or theme of the film, the audience who will be watching the film, and lastly, the individual characters and the roles they play and how they are portrayed and interpreted. Many of these films bottom line objectives are to focus on the “erotic needs of the male ego.” The focus on fetishistic scopophilia tend to slant the view such that we see the world as being dominated by men and that woman are

Horror movies throughout history have been known to have their cheesy storylines or continuous bad acting. Especially horror movies. People nowadays could easily spot the flaws in a film and judge them drastically in reviews. Yet, little do people notice the ongoing discrimination between genders. Horror films tend to portray males and females substantially differently because of stereotypical views. There seems to be a pattern in which each gender takes a certain role in a movie continuously. Females are shown to be “objects” such as sex and emotional symbols, while males are shown as strong or powerful and moreover as the main bad guy. Although some of the newer edition films of the horror genre are displaying each gender more and more equal throughout the ongoing years, the gender discrimination dilemma still exists and can be seen by the statistics in the movie industry in general.

Most concerns are with the important positioning called the final character that happens to be a girl, with relationship to spectator. There are theories that are used to analyze the movie as a male character. There is where popular culture evolves in that every last or final person in a horror movie is always a woman or girl. The serial attacker or the killer usually turns out to be a male. Ironical how women are viewed as weak and fearful people they are always the ones that end up being the last people. The final girl is structurally meant to make an interesting impact to the audience so that it can be watched by almost