Women In Science Fiction Horror Films

A researcher named Carol Clover demonstrates a unique research method in her book “Men Women and Chainsaws.” Clover relates gender research into various films, especially “slasher” films. Often times in “slasher” or scarier films females have a primary role. In many of those cinemas females are being tormented and faced with a challenge often by a male tormenter. Clover applies the new theory and selects a specific female character from various “slasher” films. She then digs deeper into the film with an eye on the challenge the female is facing and how she overcomes it. Clover came up with a few claims with a major one being that “slasher” films aren’t trying to insert male dominance but instead focus the viewer how powerful the female(s)

This open letter is directed at the directors of Horror films. This letter will discus the over used gimmicks and the lack of creativity on their part. It will be written in a conversational way with the use of pathos of how these movies are faulty with a touch of humor, and rhetorical questions to emphasize certain points of my discussion of this topic. I will also use ethos through my time as a film fanatic who is passionate on all that is film especially horror film which is my favorite film genre, and is the largest genre with so many subgenres within it that have the ability to use so much imagination. I have crafted this conversation to be directed towards the directors of horror films with the use of film lingo that is used for this genre, movie examples they should look at, and a deep analysis of what and how this problem cause movie of today to lack in appeal.

In Hollywood film women 's roles have varied quiet considerably between genres, geographical placement, and period settings. These factors contribute to the different representations of women 's roles in the film they are present in. The roles are diverse going from the traditional maternal role to that of manipulative murderer. Women 's roles in movies can be almost equal to the male roles, and the co-stars are not given the majority of the acclaims just because they are male. Society has set certain standards that women are supposed to follow. The most common image of women is that they are very passive and try to avoid conflict in any situation. More and more in society women are breaking down the social barriers that confine them to their specific roles. The films Rear Window and Resident Evil show women in roles that are untraditional for our society. These two movies help to show how women are rebelling against social norms and that they are taking more active and aggressive roles. In film noir’s we can see women represented as the femme fatale, a woman whose mysterious and seductive charms leads men into compromising or dangerous situations. In action movies we see the heroine who is strong both physically and mentally, and has the ability to use weapons. Women seem to be more trapped than men because they are supposed to live up to society’s standards dealing with beauty and size, which are more physical characteristics. These specific guidelines have been set by

James Cameron’s 1986 film Aliens can be considered a tweener being made up of many genres including a maternal melodrama, woman’s film, war film, body genre, horror, and a science fiction film. Aliens manages to successfully change the classic horror and sci-fi movie to create a story that explores the place of women in these genres and challenges the roles they normally play. This is done by structuring a horror film to play upon the male fears of female reproduction and sexuality as core themes in the film so as to unnerve its dominant men. As a result, a woman’s film is created by placing its female character as the leading role. Aliens takes its central character Ripley, and places her into a position as the gender monster. Ripley is neither totally feminine nor is she totally masculine resulting in a motherly figure that is a true warrior. Even from her first appearance she is in command and a force to be reckoned with. In Aliens the roles of gender are clearly reversed, as Ripley is the strong female character who makes active judgements and survives what is trying to kill her. The male characters are largely submissive, most die quickly, others wait for her command. Ripley stands out as being a well-developed female hero who avoids the standard portrayal of women in horror films as passive, secondary characters, creating a woman that is in charge and motherly at the same time, thus producing a woman’s film.

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.

Several film theorists have used a variety of tactics and view points to analyze feature films since their inception. One of the most prominent theorists of those that analyze films from a feminist perspective is Laura Mulvey. Mulvey is famous for her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which presents an array of theories involving the treatment of women in films. Arguably the most notable idea presented in Mulvey’s work is the existence of the “male gaze” in films. This essay will examine Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze in relation to Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Vertigo. Vertigo does not fit the criteria of a film that

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.

Because the characters are teenagers, the audience can better reflect their own sexual insecurities. As a quick note, however, not all characters are teenagers in other horror films because these roles do not necessarily need to be impressionable. The characters simply must be relatable in their gender issues. The transition from classic horror to the teenage-filled horror films shows that gender is an important issue amongst teenagers, so currently, gender is a crucial aspect in the modern horror film. As teenagers develop sexually, they question and repress sexual and gender ideas, so gender is an important topic in horror.

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.

In music theory and authenticity it is still authentic if a song generally and written as a part for the opposite sex is performed by the other sex. Now we have to define the fact that gender is a complete construct, to begin with, and there are more than the two genders in general. So, therefore, making the whole discussion in consideration invalid. But, I digress these and we can brush this with the fact most music has very heteronormative and gendered lyrics to make it more marketable to the general populace. Now if we look at the history of music often men were castrated so they would sing higher and thus this continued to push women out of jobs they were able to do.

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

“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

Filmmakers use traditional gender stereotypes to produce characters audiences can easily identify with by portraying conventional images of a person with identifiable characteristics. In previous years, the dominant representation of a women in film has been the passive, subjugated protagonist. However, through the development of female empowerment and added feminist representations of film, the female heroine transformed to become strong and independent women in her own right, as an individual character.