Slasher Movies: Female Victims or Survivors? Essay

With the development of our society, the ideas and concepts of lots of things have been changed. Feminist’s act is an important hallmark on our path to improve our society. But stereotypes against the role of female could still be found in many literatures. Looking back into our history, the appearance of women has been always weak and helpless in different time period, compare to man. Although, people’s attitude towards women has been advancing, but there is still a space for improvements and developments. Therefore, individuals must challenge their own false impression regarding the role of female, if our society were to truly abridge the gap between genders. For example, there are some literatures demonstrating sexism perfectly. In Christine, Stephen King illustrates a car that processes the personality of a woman, which often turns violent, driven by envy and wrath; The Exorcist creates the character of Regan, which satisfy the public’s expectation of the weak and helpless; and Dracula is a classic vampire story, where the author emphatically deprecates the woman’s status in the common society. Overall, by comparing with these three novels, the authors have used some specific opinions to enhance the issue of feminism. The authors of Christine, The exorcist and Dracula are considered as sexist writers from the portrayal of Leigh Cabot, Regan and Lucy Westenra’s characterization. They often portray the figure of female in a discriminative way, debase and objectify women in

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

Men and women have played gender specific roles, from the earliest sign of civilization to modern society. In the cult classic “Night of the Living Dead”, stereotypical gender role were on display. George A. Romero’s film hinted at subtle references to the responsibilities of men and women and depicted the stereotypes America held during the 1960s. Men played the protectors and enforcers, while the women represented the submissive homemakers and caretakers. Romero’s film portrays the sexes, men and women, in their respective stereotypical behaviors. Stereotypes that sets the undertone for the duration of the film.

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.

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

This critique then develops into a standpoint with the emergence of the Final Girl trope, where a female character is shown to take characteristics which are typically masculine and makes them her own, becoming then a figure of empowerment. Just as society at large attempts to repress individuals into, as Wood explains it, “predetermined roles within that culture,” the horror film uses the killer to repress the final girl into a victimized, annihilated state. In Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was with the subversion of classical family values with the male-dominated, cannibalistic household who tried to objectify Sally. In Carpenter’s Halloween, repression of sexuality and bisexual characteristics in Laurie Strode by Michael Myers led her to become the Final Girl as the film world knows today. Finally in Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling takes a step further into the role of the Final Girl by facing head on the “wound culture” state while inhabiting the male-dominated world of law enforcement. With the role of the final girl as the self-empowered figure of the hero who pushes back against her oppressors and by the film’s end, defeats her oppressors, the horror film takes on a more feminist

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.

Monstrous feminine is the female monster that is dangerous in her role as a wife, mother, or lover. She is powerful as a member of the ’other’ that she can attack the establishment both in the wilderness and civilization. She can often use tools or symbols of the establishment against the establishment. In Muschietti’s Mama, Mama attacks Lucas through the wall putting him in a coma. Moreover Mama possesses Jean and drives the children back to the woods where she eventually kills Jean. Also in The Women in Black by Susan Hill, Jennet is powerful enough to make the three girls jump out the window to their deaths from the bedroom. Author Kipps sees The Women In black goading Jerome’s daughter into setting herself on fire with a lantern as she burns to death and destroying the house. Female monsters successfully attack the establishment mainly playing the role of a grieving mother crying over their dead children.

Following this encounter, the monster-hunting gentlemen are put in a more precarious position, perhaps because the threat of virtuous woman becoming monstrous is more terrifying than facing a woman who was monstrous from the onset. I have previously alluded to the unholy trio of female vampires as fatal figures of the unfeminine: they are insensitive, aggressive, and, most

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 1940’s, movies have predominately portrayed women as sex symbols. Beginning in the 1940’s and continuing though the 1980’s, women did not have major roles in movies. When they did have a leading role the women was either pretreated as unintelligent and beautiful, or as conniving and beautiful: But she was always beautiful. Before the 1990’s, men alone, wrote and directed all the movies, and the movies were written for men. In comparison, movies of the 90’s are not only written and directed by women, but leading roles are also held by older and unattractive women. In this paper I will show the variations and growth of women’s roles in movies from the 1940’s though the 1990’s.

His heroine "wanders into a dark alley, takes care of herself, and deploys her power to kill the monster" . She never claims to be "just a girl" and in fact, her femininity is the very source of her strength. She is proficient at martial arts, paying homage to women's self-defense collectives of the 70s and date rape awareness training of the 90s, fulfilling the female dream of walking anywhere at any time, knowing you can take care of yourself against the monsters . The critical feminist cultural perspective on television and film, specifically on the genres of action-adventure and horror, provide a dynamic framework for analyzing some of the symbols and metaphors within Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This paper is not exhaustive in its evaluation.

Horror films have always had an interesting way of portraying women, adhering to the cliche’ of the abstinence “good” girl, which transmits the subliminal message to the audience that if the female character engage in any sexual behavior she will be brutally murdered by the slayer due to her “promiscuous’’ nature. An example of this character is seen in the movie Scream, which is directed by Wes Craven. Scream follows the story of highschool teenagers trying to escape a crazed masked maniacs. Scream failed to pose a challenge to the “virgin’’ Mary cliche’ because in the scene when Sidney,the main character, loses her virginity to her boyfriend, immediately after, she is seen being chased by the slasher because she is no longer represents the

Throughout motion picture history, women have experienced more transition in their roles, as a result of changing societal norms, than any other class. At first, both society and the movie industry preached that women should be dependent on men and remain in the home, in order to guarantee stability in the community and the family. As time passed and attitudes changed, women were beginning to be depicted as strong willed, independent minded characters, who were eager to break away from convention. The genre of the crime film represents such a change in the roles handed to women. Two films that can be contrasted, in order to support this view, are: The Public Enemy by William Wellman (1931) and Bonnie

“For the concept of the monstrous feminine, as constructed within/by a patriarchal and phallocentric ideology, is related intimately to the problem of sexual differences and castration.” (Creed, 1993, p.2) Creed takes an interesting approach to Kristeva theory of abjection and Freud’s theory of castration and applies it to horror film. Taking Kristeva’s theory of the abject and the archaic mother, she constructs monstrous representations of the abject woman. The monstrous womb which is the representation of mans fear of woman’s maternal functions. “Fear of the archaic mother turns out to be essentially fear of her generative power. It is this power, a dreaded one, that patrilineal filiation has the burden of subduing.” (Kristeva, 1982, p.77) Freud argued that woman terrifies because she is castrated. “Castration fear plays on a collapse of gender boundaries” (Creed, 1993, p.54) She suggests, that Freud misread Han’s fear in the Little Hans and that Han’s viewed his mothers as the castrator not his father, that his mother’s lack of phallus is seen not as a castrated organ but that of a castrating organ. The mother-child border is entangled in the complex and multi-faceted image of the castrating mother. According to Freud, man fears that of the mother as castrated and as that of the cannibalistic all devouring mother. “Construction of a patriarchal ideology unable to deal with the threat of sexual differences as it is embodied in the images of the feminine as archaic mother and is seen as the castrated mother.” (Creed, 1993, p.22) Kristeva suggests that the notion of the castrated women is to ease mans fear of woman, who has the power to psychologically and physically castrate him. The archaic mother as the monstrous womb and the castrating mother can be used as a way of understanding the work of Mona Hatoum and AIne Phillips, both