Horror Movies : The Fear Of Women And Feminist Fears

The horror genre is synonymous with images of terror, violence and human carnage; the mere mention of horror movies evokes physical and psychological torture. As remarked by noted author Stephen King “the mythic horror movie…has a dirty job to do. It deliberately appeals to all that is worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, our most base instincts let free, our nastiest fantasies realized.” (King, 786). At manageable intervals, we choose to live these horrific events vicariously through the characters in horror movies and books as a means of safely experiencing the “what if”. The horror genre allows us to explore our fears, be it spiders, vampires, loss of our identity, or death of a loved, under the most fantastic and horrible

Horror has long been about tales of heroic men fighting monsters (whether it be human or inhuman) and saving damsels in distress. Women were mostly used as eye candy, victims of violence or only to further the plight of the leading man. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that women in horror movies started to have more power in horror movies. This was majorly due to the rise of feminism, the female protagonists were fighting back which lead to the rise of the ‘final-girl’ archetype – the ‘final-girl’ being the only one surviving at the end of the film having outsmarted the killer. The final girl not only promotes feminism but also a reflection of the values in our

“What if contemporary people are less interested in seeing depictions of their unconscious fears and more attracted to allegories of how their day-to-day existence feels?” (Klosterman 1).

King begins this article with the attention grabbing statement, “I think that we’re all mentally ill: those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better—and maybe not all that much better, after all.” (King, 2013, p 641) Even if his readers immediately disagree, he has accomplished capturing their attention. Next he describes a few crazy behaviors that are common to most people: talking to oneself; making faces when no one is looking; and giving in to irrational fears of snakes, the dark, tight places, and things lurking where we cannot see them. Most people can relate to these behaviors and can reason this is true. He then moves on to explain how we face these fears and give our emotions a break by watching a horror movie. He likens this to a roller coaster that is a mixture of fun and delicious terror as it takes its participants by surprise with a 360-degree loop or, “plows through a lake at the bottom of the drop.” (King, 2013, p 641) The next example pulls on the emotion inside his readers to measure up to the perfect standard of beauty. He says horror films tend to make people feel more normal because the comparison is so grotesque that the readers know, “we are still light-years away from true ugliness.” (King, 2013, p

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.

There has been a large variety of horror films produced throughout the last fifty years. People are always going to be frightened and scared by different types of horror films. But, what type of horror film scares more people, and were men or women more frightened by these horror films? Each one of the horror films had its own agenda to frighten its audience using several different methods of horror. Some of these methods were more so directed at the female audience than the male audience. Most horror movies show the female as being vulnerable, because in real life females are defenseless against monsters.

American horror films have often played on our societal fears, and in Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992), the film directly deals with race, reminding us that it is still very much a problem in society today, and that ‘our traumatic racial past still haunts us’ (Vern, 2015). The film ‘marks the introduction of an African-American monster to the horror mainstream’ (Donaldson, 2011) and it ‘succeeds in asking some very pointed questions about race and class’ (Elizabeth, 1992). Ultimately this is done by investigating ‘the obscure fears we harbour about the unknown’ – or the racial ‘other’ (Blackwell, 2015). Andrew Tudor says that ‘typically, a horror movie will exploit the tensions implicit in a particular contrast, confronting known with the

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.

“I’m a free spirit who never had the balls to be free,” says Cheyl Strayed from the film Wild. Both the films, Wild and Thelma & Louise present women pushing themselves and going out of their norm to find themselves. Cheryl from the Wild challenges herself by hiking a 1,100 mile trail from the border of Mexico all the way up to the border of Canada. Thelma and Louise from the film Thelma & Louise are on the run after shooting a man who tried to assault and rape one of them. Thelma and Louise decided to live and enjoy every moment they can with each other while they can. Both films are strong feminist films who break the societal boundaries and stereotypical roles of women.

She argues that although audiences crave the feeling of being afraid, they crave being safe while watching scary movies. It means that they know that they can safely be scared while the event is not actually real. An article cites multiple studies to prove her point as to why people crave and enjoy horror films while others do not. She hypothesize that this need for excitement accounts for why this genre is popular among teenagers and younger generations, since the desire for watching horror movies predicted to be decreased with

Clank, clank, clank. The wind whips the flag onto the flagpole, creating the most monotonous yet annoying sounds. The bunker below ground is a place the investigators would never think to look, not to mention it is camouflaged by all the debris scattered around the abandoned trailer house. The abducted girl struggles to escape the wrath of the restraints that pin to to the chair the way a binder clip would hold papers together. She attempts to scream for help, but not many sounds are audible; the duct tape covering her mouth, preventing her from creating a call for help. The mangy old man approaches her from behind with a newly sharpened set of knives. Though she does not know why he chose her, he knows exactly why; the blonde hair that cascades over her shoulders resemble his late sister's hair way too much. He needs something physical to touch so he does not forget about her, so he is going to scalp the poor young girl and leave her for dead, all without anyone figuring out.

"We can understand society more by what it fears. " Skal deliberates how changed cultural fears and hang ups-such as nuclear war and the battle for reproductive rights, can be imitated in horror films. It was insightful for how it related the horror genre to cultural trends in America. The book is very characteristic; you can tell Skal has written works on Dracula and Tod Browning, and that he does not care at all about 1960's European horror. The book is not complete; there are many things missing, and Skal's argument of the films never gets much deeper than an insincere Freudian analysis.

Fears and Desires: the Repressed in Cat People and It Follows Horror films have always featured repression in one way or another. In Robin Wood’s essay "An Introduction to the American Horror Film,” he analyzes the role of the repressed and the “Other” in horror films. Both Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942) and It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014) are exemplary of repressed emotions surrounding female sexuality. In Cat People, the surplus repression of sexuality and xenophobia is clearly displayed through the main “Femme Fatale” character, Irena (played by Simone Simon). In It Follows, the surplus repression of female sexuality is also demonstrated, though in a more blatant way through the protagonist Jay (played by Maika Monroe) and

Creed, B. 1999. Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine: An Imaginary Abjection. Feminist Film Theory, a Reader, edited by. Sue Thornham. New York: New York U P.

Since the inventions of television and film, media influences have become extremely important in modern society with people constantly being inundated by images and messages that come from film, television, magazines, internet and advertising. Researchers and theorists such as Carol J. Clover and Jean Kilborne believe that the fact that people are going to be affected by the media is absolutely unavoidable. Films can act as guides to how people, particularly women, should act and look. Women in horror are typically shown as the ‘damsel in distress’ and are usually attacked by the killer after committing a sinful act like having sex or misusing drugs or alcohol. The females are