Gender Roles And Power Dynamics

Everyone loves to watch a good horror film. Whether the effects in the movie are really gory or extremely unsettling, these nail-biting experiences are what give the audience a thrill as they try to peel their eyes away from the screen. The concept of these movies is to give the viewers a good scare, one that will have them glancing over their shoulders or double checking if their doors are locked at night for the next week. This genre has been around since the late nineteenth century, but horror movies did not gain much popularity until the 1930s. Modern day horror films have evolved from its beginnings, but the elements in a horror movie are consistent regardless of time.

In this piece, Carol Clover portrays a new pattern in horror cinema where the “man in charge” is eliminated, such as by being killed, and the female is left to be on her own and fend for herself. When she makes her argument, she states that the audience generally associates themselves with their own gender. The man will support the man character, and the woman will support the woman character. It can also be said that genders can cross when supporting characters; the male can support the female character and vice versa. Clover’s purpose for writing Her Body, Himself was to better understand a social or cultural phenomena in slasher films.

Since it’s infancy at the beginning of the eighteenth century, horror has followed certain conventions that results in an awakening of the senses, evoking intense emotions of fear and terror in the audience. Horror feeds off triggering the primal fears embedded within all of humankind, creating a sense of menace that is the very substance of this genre. Furthermore, the central menace of a piece tends to enlighten the human mind to the world of the paranormal and the enigmatic, dark side of the unknown. The movie “Psycho” directed by Alfred Hitchcock is a perfect example. Infamous for its shower scene, but immortal for its contribution to the horror genre, “Psycho” was filmed with great tact, grace and art in regards to horror conventions.

Study on gender role stereotypes has shown that there are several negative effects of stereotyping. The study on how gender role stereotyping effects children is not as prevalent because most believe that it doesn’t matter, since children are just forming their stereotype so children do not care. However, some psychologists have done some research on it, and from their research found out that children used a mixture of moral and social conventional reasoning

Many horror films provide their audiences with scares and screams.  Not many viewers follow what kind of model the films follow to appease their viewers.  However, after reading film theorist Carol Clover’s essay, watching one of the films she associates in the novel “Halloween”, and also watching the movie “Nightmare on Elm Street” I say almost every “slasher” or horror film follows a model similar to Clover’s.  The model that is a female is featured as a primary character and that the female tends to always overcome a situation at some point throughout the film to become victorious.

Horror can be defined as a genre meant to psychologically trigger individual fear with the presence of certain supernatural or abstract characteristics. The genre is dependent on people’s fascination with unrealism and the sensation that comes from experiencing fear personified into tangible elements on a screen. Horror films have thrilled audiences for decades, revealing stories of the more sinister parts of life. The popular allure that stems from the genre comes from the tension moviegoers experience when aroused by specific stimuli uniquely present in these cinematic features (Walters). Over time, as the genre progressed, the standardized elements found in a typical horror movie began to shift in different directions primarily due to changing societal circumstances and increasing consumer demand for cinematic innovation. The expansive nature of the different codes and conventions within the horror genre, coupled with the evolution of society’s fascination with these characteristics, has led to the mutation of the genre itself in order to allow for unique approaches to a familiar style in response to both economic developments and taste shifts within the consumer industry.

In Stephen King’s somewhat subjective essay in the 1984 Playboy magazine, Why We Crave Horror Movies, King describes his reasoning behind why so many people are fond of watching movies residing in the horror genre. The content of his essay, though inserted in an unconventional area for

The 1970s represented a truly diverse time in the history of horror cinema. This was a reflection, perhaps, of how life was growing more complex in the 1970s, with competing problems pulling audiences towards different fears. Some horror films in the 1970s were revisionary, based on the fresh principles of a freer, more personal cinema. Other horrors were merely old resurrections and variations of monsters who had appeared on the silver screen, in one form or another, since the 1930s and 1940s. Nevertheless, following the path of Night of the Living Dead, most low-budget horror films of the early 1970s depicted the raw social and sexual conflicts. For example, films such Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972) shares the story of a

Throughout cinema, there has always been space in our hearts for the gore and intrigue that come from horror films. Though they come with different plots, there remains “the monster”, the character that brings along disgust, horror, suspense, and even sympathy. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), our monster is Norman Bates, the boy next door. This was one of the first times in American cinema that the killer was brought home, paving the way for the future of horror movies. According to Robin Wood in “An Introduction to the America Horror Film” (183-208), Bates follows the formula of the Monster being a human psychotic. This is conveyed through his normal façade portrayed with his introduction, the audience’s ambivalence, the use of

The main claim of An Introduction to the American Horror Film by Robin Wood, was to address the difference and similarity between repression and oppression, as seen in horror cinema. Before jumping into the difference between repression and oppression, the essay shows the difference between basic repression and surplus repression. “Basic repression is universal, necessary, and inescapable […] Surplus repression, on the other hand, is specific to a particular culture and is the process whereby people are conditioned from earliest infacy to take predetermined roles within that culture.” (Wood 197) This means that basic repression is needed in a society, but surplus repression is what makes us “into monogamous heterosexual bourgeois patriarchal capitalists.” (Wood 197) Further on, the essay mentions repression versus oppression. “What is repressed is not accessible to the conscious mind.” This states that what we repress is not available to us. We do not realize what we have repressed, while we do realize what has oppressed us.

The social issue relates to inequalities in men and women. To be specific, Men and women are not equal when it comes to many things, such as gender roles in households, gender bias in the workplace, and gender inequality in politics. The main article I will be addressing is Gender, Interpersonal Power, and Social Influence, By Linda L. Carli (Vol. 55, No. 1, 1999, pp. 81–99, 2001). The sociological question in this article is whether men possess higher level of power than women. The issue is that men and women are not equal, even if it comes to working the same job, doing the same exact thing, having earned the same degree. This topic is important because it is something that should be continuously addressed. That

“Kristeva is attempting to explore the different ways in which abjection works within human societies as means of separating out the human and non human.” (Creed, 1993, p.8) It will focus on Kristeva’s theory of the abject and the construction of the human subject in relation to the border, the mother-child relationship and the feminine body. It will also explore how the representation of woman as abject is almost always in relation to her mothering and reproductive functions. The representation of women in relation to Freud’s castration and the religious abject as discussed in Powers of Horror will also be examined. This chapter will also include a discussion on Kristeva’s abject through Barbara Creed’s The Monstrous Feminine. “All human societies have a conception of the monstrous feminine, of what it is about women that is shocking.” (Creed, 1993, p.1) Creed gives an interesting insight to Kristeva’s abject and Freud’s theory on castration in horror films. By looking at the construction of female monsters and what it is about them that is monstrous, in particular the archaic mother, the monstrous womb and the castrating mother as archetypes of the abject

Society today places many ideals when it comes to proper behaviours regarding gender roles. These are considered societal norms that are widely debated and controversial. Society has created a norm, which encompasses specific expectations and rules that change the daily lives of men and women, giving them specific tasks and behaviours to abide by. These standards are known as gender roles, which are defined as distinguishing actions, thoughts, and feelings of males and females. Gender roles are said to be a result of nature, which is a natural process, every male or female is to follow. On the other hand it can be a result of nurture, which changes ones way of thinking and adapting their lifestyle to fit their environment. Either way gender roles are a part of someone’s life from the moment of their birth, as they develop, and long after that, this proves that gender roles are influential to a person’s life and development. This essay examines how media such as music, family life, and different parenting styles encompass gender roles and teaches behaviours regarding them. Therefore, gender roles define males and females are a result of nurture and not nature.

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian, social theorist, philologist and literary critic whose work had a tremendous impact on several disciplines. He was not a sociologist by training, but he worked diligently on sociological issues and otherwise had significant influence on the work of other sociologists. One of his most famous works is the The History of Sexuality, in which he examines the emergence of "sexuality" as a discursive object and separate sphere of life. According to Foucault, the idea that everyone has a sexuality is relatively a recent development in the West. In Volume 1, Foucault discusses the relationship between sex and power in a historical context. He states that the ways in which humans think about sexuality is primarily shaped by the "repressive hypothesis," which claims that Western society had suppressed sexuality from the 17th to the mid-20th century, and this was due to the rise of capitalism and the bourgeois society. There are several key concepts in this book that will be discussed in this paper include repressive hypothesis, sexuality, power, and discourse. This paper will seek to show the ways in which sexuality is a discursive object, and how sexuality was linked to power throughout history.

This paper shares six articles chosen at random over studies made of gender roles and governmental elections. Although not every article provides the same idea or belief, most of them do. Therefore if there is an opposite argument, you are going to able to see why and at the end, we found ideas as to why they do not agree with us. And even when there is not an official response of gender being a problem, we can speculate that it’s true, gender roles are a big part in government.