Women And Stereotypes Of Horror Movies

Human craves horror to face our fears and experience an adrenaline.Not everyone enjoys being afraid, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that no one wants to experience a truly life-threatening situation,But there are those of us who really enjoy the experience.After all, anyone who has heard of Stephen King will automatically know that reading one of his stories may result in a thrill. Most of us spend our entire lives avoiding our “hysterical fear” of death, and allowing us to read such a description really is “daring [our] nightmares” everybody has different emotions and feels a different way when it comes to scary, or horror movies. Some people watch them to reveal their not scared or afraid no more. I feel like when people are able to watch the movies and read the stories , they define the realness of them, and are able to be themselves.

I have always loved horror movies. I remember when I was a kid my dad and I would watch them a lot. We would bond over bloody and gory movies, and I always thought it was the best thing ever. As I got older I began to realize the differences between the male and female roles in these types of movies. Unlike the romance movies, it seems that women are the strong and protective ones in the horror genre. Romance movies have a strong male lead most of the time, and the main male character would be the protector and the strong one, physically and emotionally. At the complete opposite end of the movie spectrum you have the scary movies, in which the male is usually the first one to die, and he is more than likely the one that got them into that horrible situation in the first place. Take the movies “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Sinister”

In the movie Halloween, John Carpenter (1978) depicts a horrifying tale of a young man who kills his own sister. Carpenter discloses how a monster murders an innocent in the most terrifying and raging act of lynching. He tries to reveal the film’s image of a woman who learn to fight for justice and life, and he also layers how a certain woman knows how fight back amidst tremors of her life. However, Carpenter’s Halloween offers more than scary scenes and women fighting for survival and fear. It simply suggests that how women in general learn to fight against the dominance of men in general perspectives.

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.

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.

Since the beginning of time, there has always been gender roles in society. Back then women are supposed to stay home and do housework, are not supposed to work and have power. Slasher films are sub-genre of horror films that involves someone who is psychotic that stalks and murders random victims (typically women or teens) a day. You never see the monster [the psychotic killer] use a gun or a blunt object to kill their victims. Deaths by a gunshot or any other objects such as a rock they do not like to use because they are too quick and the victim will have no opportunity to scream. Weapons such as a butcher knife, chainsaw, or any other sharp object are usually a choice of the villain in these movies. These tools are used by your average everyday worker that could go home after work with their tools and eventually hurt your family. Slasher films, like many other genres, inevitably have gender stereotypes. Through these movies, everyone has an idea of how the perfect man and women look like. Today you hear that men are getting paid more than a women, women are not strong as men, and many more. Through advertisements and the media, women are portrayed to look like what they see in these platforms. A lot of powerful women; Hillary Clinton, instead of focusing on how she can improve America, everyone is focused on how short her skirt was. Men and women are restricted to certain roles and responsibilities in the film, thus portraying them unequally.

The first reason that People crave horror is because we are trying to prove that we are not afraid that we can get through it. For example,When tourist visit amusement park they are scared at first but Then they slow down and have fun. We are good there are also sometimes through it you might get scared. Just like amusement parks horror movies there are some times that we get scared and we do not want to watch it, but towards the end you are like to let watching it again because it was not that scary. This is another reason They think that it will happen in real life so they let that go in their thoughts and then they don't want to watch it. People also scare others so then they do not want to watch it.

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

The liking for horror movies lies in the excitement and danger they pose. People enjoy being scared because it pushes a surge of adrenaline.

A girl runs frantically through the woods trying to escape an axe wielding villain. The defenseless victim suddenly trips and collapses to the ground. The villain laughs wickedly as he lifts the axe above his head. The girl releases a final scream as the weapon quickly ends her life, causing the audience to go silent as they watch the villain drag away the lifeless body. Death, blood, guts, suspense, screaming, and terror are all just a few things to expect when watching a modern day horror film. What is horror? Horror can be defined as an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust. (Wilson) The description of horror is not very pleasant, but for some reason horror films are extremely popular. Why is this so? People are addicted to the

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

Modern horror films are analogous to male-filled teenage parties otherwise known as “sausage fests.” In more analytical terms, the modern horror film overflows with symbols that represent the human male penis. While a penis may seem like a scatological device to include in films, the phallus actually reveals key traits about the characters. Specifically, in Halloween, American Horror Story, Psycho, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, phallic-shaped weapons help identify the females’ transition to a more masculine gender role.

are horror movies anti-feminists? There have been Discussions about gender representation in horror films for nearly 40 years now. when feminism became more popular during the 70s and early 80s, horror films also became more popular and began to appeal to a larger audience, including females. Feminists once saw a problem with the highly sexualized violence of women in the horror genre, mainly the “slasher” film and Horror was initially criticized for how they represented female characters, the Horror Genre has sparked a discussion between feminists and filmmakers, resulting in a more prominent voice for female characters.

Horror is designed to scare, cause alarm and dread, while also entertaining the audience at the same time in a cathartic experience (Dirk, 2016). Horror films are meant for a specific type of audience that enjoy scary films. Dirks (Tim, 2016) approach to genre horror, is that films went back as 100 years ago, from the earliest days our vivid imagination in seeing ghosts in the shadows to be connected emotionally of the unknown, and fear things that are improbable. You watch a horror film, it makes you aware of the scary surroundings, the essence of fear itself, without actually being in any sorts of danger. Dirks argues that there is a fun and thrill factor in being frightened, or watching something disturbing. It gives you that feeling of an adrenaline rush, as well as having that feeling someone is actually next to you lurking in the dark (Dirk, 2016).

Why is it that some people enjoy a scary movie and others think that they are too scary or gruesome? Horror movies have been around since the 1960s. Some of those movies actually come from a story that was made up to scare little kids. People would make up a scary story and the parent’s would tell their children the stories to keep them from doing something they didn’t want them to do, but not all of the stories are made up. Some of these stories actually are based off of a true story or something that happened in real life and the characters were changed so that they wouldn’t reveal identities of the people involved.