Women in Horror

Within the film industry, it wasn’t until the early days of the twentieth century that the horror genre began receiving attention and respect as a genre worth scholarly attention and critical acclaim. The horror genre is an incredible medium to reflect societal fears and anxieties of their time, this can be seen when focusing on specific decades and the tropes and narratives prevalent in the genre at that time. 

Laura Mulvey the British film studies theorist was extremely influential in the field of feminist film studies and in her work ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ she puts emphasis on the importance of the inherently patriarchal viewpoint in cinema, arguing that scopophilia is a male pleasure, and ‘the look’ in cinema is controlled by the male and directed at the female, this notion has been coined by Mulvey as ‘the male gaze.’ In the past few decades, there has been a shift toward a cultural studies approach to film studies, which argues that semiotic and psychoanalytic approaches to film studies isolate the viewer from the text. Cultural studies are more concerned with how cultural systems produce meaning and how ideology is replicated through cultural institutions, texts, and practices, like films and other media. Ideology is defined as the means by which we interpret and make sense of our daily lives. In capitalist societies, ideology needs to be constantly re-established and is carried out by what Marxist philosopher Gramsci describes as hegemony. Hegemony is how the ruling classes maintain unconscious control of the subordinate class, by instilling certain beliefs, practices, and attitudes as the socially acceptable standard. This notion reflects how films are extremely influential in not only illustrating societal fears of their time but also how films re-establish gender and social norms.

In her work Film Bodies, Gender, Genre and Excess (1991) Linda Williams talks about three ‘body genres’ that produce a strong physical reaction in their audience, these genres are horror, porn, and “weepies” (melodramas). Historically, Williams points out, these types of films are cast off as trash or fluff, and often women are the target audience or primary subjects. “There is thus a real need to be clearer than we have been about what is in masochism for women…how power and pleasure operate in fantasies of domination which appeal to women.” Williams also talks about how it has been a cliche that women make the best victims, and the feminist critics agree by saying that "... the image of the sexually ecstatic woman so important to the genre is a celebration of female victimization”  The author refers to Carol Clover, a Berkley film studies professor and prominent figure in feminist film theory coining the term ‘Final Girl,” who emphasizes the importance of the oscillation between masochism and sadism in the horror genre. Carol Clover claims that “the ‘final girl’, the usual last surviving female heroine in slasher films, is on the surface a vision of female empowerment and determination.” The final girl is a virtuous character who distinguishes herself from the rest of the cast because she avoids sexual activity, her watchful paranoia which allows her to be proactive when the killer attacks, and her masculine nature (i.e. not girlish and weak). Additionally, Clover identifies three other elements that contribute to the slasher genre important to this study. Firstly the villain is a slasher and is often a masculine killer, with a specific interest in how the killers in slasher films project a hypermasculine front to compensate for their own ‘gender distress’ and the fear they will be exposed as ‘feminine males.’ These killers' perspective is often from a POV shot allowing the audience to see through their eyes. The second element of the slasher film is what Clover coined the ‘terrible place’ which is where the unwitting victims wander in, unaware of the danger that lies ahead, similar to the final girl and masculine killer there are gendered implications of the ‘terrible place’, usually described as dark and damp giving it a kind of feminine quality. The third and final element pointed out by Clover is the weaponry used by the killer and eventually the final girl. The final girl within slasher films moves from “abject terror gendered feminine” to the powerful and androgynous heroine that defeats a gender-confused monster.  Despite her claims that the ‘final girl’ is on the surface an embodiment of female empowerment and determination, Clover makes it clear that “the ‘final girl’ is ‘wholly masculine’ and applauding the ‘final girl’ as a feminist development is a particularly grotesque expression of wishful thinking.” Similarly, films from the body genre often move from powerlessness to power. This move demonstrates how the body genre is in fact plural when it comes to the portrayal of gender. The presence of either power or pleasure of the female victim is also said to be consistent in the body genre. The bisexuality of viewer identification is another common attribute of the genre. The fluidity of gender and identification is both revealing and consistently challenges gender classification. "The deployment of sex, violence, and emotion would thus seem to have very precise functions in these body genres. Like all popular genres, they address persistent problems in our culture, in our sexualities, and in our very identities. The deployment of sexualities, violence, and emotion is thus in no way gratuitous and in no way strictly limited to each of these genres; it is instead a cultural form of problem-solvin,” writes Linda Williams in Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess (2013). Through the masculine and feminine symbolism and connotations of people, places, and things in slasher films it is clear that masculinity is privileged whereas femininity is condemned and weak. Reiterating Laura Mulvey's point, recognizing the importance of noting the inherent patriarchal viewpoint in cinema, or ‘the male gaze.’ the “final girl” has become more self-aware in meta-horror films like Cabin in the Woods (2012), The Final Girls (2015) and even earlier, Scream (1996). 

There is still a way to go for female characters in horror films to be viewed as more than tortured, brutalized, hysterical women. The teen slasher genre throughout its history has reflected societal attitudes and beliefs about gender roles and expectations of their time. The tropes that once confined female characters to roles of victims or sexual objects are being challenged in modern horror films like Jennifer’s Body and Bodies Bodies Bodies. Female protagonists now have the opportunity to challenge their attackers, flip the script, and emerge as powerful forces in their own right. The evolution of gender roles in teen slasher films reflects broader societal changes and a growing recognition of the importance of diverse representation in media. Today’s audience demands more authentic and inclusive portrayals, and filmmakers are responding to this demand by reimagining the genre and challenging long-held conventions.