“The women’s movement has given many things
to popular culture, some more savory than others. One of it’s main donations to
horror, I think, is the image of an angry woman-a woman so angry that she can
be imagined as a credible perpetrator (I stress “credible”) of the kind of
violence which, in the low-mythic universe, the status of full protagonist
rests.” – Carol J Clover Pg. 17
Feminists have fought, angrily,
for their rights and gender equality, as Carol J. Clover states here, feminists
have shown us the image of angry women, fighting for what they believe in. This
is mirrored in the Genre as women fighting to save their lives, which at the
time of which this book was written and the time of the movie releases
mentioned, there would have been the women’s movement broadcasted and
documented a lot. I am going to do some research on the women’s liberation and
see if any of the dates or key moments correlate with the changes in horror
films, as we know the horror genre before the 70’s were very sexist.
“The notion of a killer propelled by
psychosexual fury, more particularly a male in gender distress, has proved a
durable one, and the progeny of Norman Bates stalk the genre up to the present
day. Just as Norman wears his mothers clothes during his acts of violence and
is thought, by the screen characters and also, by the film’s spectators, to be
his mother, so the murderer in Psycho-imitation Dresses to Kill (Brian De
Palma, 1980), a transvestite psychiatrist, seems until his unveiling to be a
woman; like Norman, he must kill women who arouse him sexually.” Carol J.
Clover Pg. 27
Although my research started
primarily looking towards the female roles within horror films, I have also
started to notice that it has issues with males as well. It doesn’t outwardly
criticize the male gender in any way, but it bring up issues that the gender
has and somewhat de-masculinizes them. For instance, Norman Bates, Buffalo
Bill, the killer from Dressed to kill, they all wear female clothing (or skin
in some cases) to be able to kill their victims or that’s their motive. Either
way the horror genre is very open to using issues that others might not. There
are also other things that I have read that have suggested that men don’t have
it as easy as we would think in this genre; in a lot of the films that are
mentioned in this book and others that I have watched, the male characters do
not seem to do that well. The ‘final girl’, as Carol J. Clover likes to call
it, is normally the only person left standing in the horror formula of film,
the other girls, normally more sexually active and less intelligent are killed,
along with the male friends, but the father figure, school teachers and police
are normally hopeless in helping the ‘final girl’ at all. This is something I
have noticed but never really thought about, but these are all authoritive
figures, which the last girl standing has to overcome and save herself.
So in a way, although women are
victimized a lot in the horror genre, other than when the male characters are
the villain/monster, they seem to be quite defenseless, just as much so as the
women. And when males are the villains, quite often they have some sort of
sexual issue, deriving from their mother, sister, grandmother etc. Which I am
yet to figure out whether this could be seen as empowering to women or not, the
fact that these villains are centering themselves on a women figure.
“In Halloween the killer is a child, at
least in the first instance: Michael, who at the age of six is so enraged at
his sister (evidently for her sexual relations with her boyfriend, enacted on
the parental bed) that he stabs her to death with a kitchen knife.” – Carol J.
Clover Pg.28
“Even Killers whose childhood is not
immediately at issue and who display no overt gender confusion are often
sexually disturbed” Clover Pg. 28
-
A Nightmare on Elm
Street – undead child molester
-
Slumber Party Massacre
– he says to a young woman he wants to assault her with a power drill.
-
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
II – Leatherface’s famous chainsaw, crotch scene where he assaults Stretch and
after ejaculation, seems less interested in killing.
Just a few examples mentioned in
the book but this would be interesting to see how many more disturbing sexual
issues the men have in the genre.
“Female killers are few and their reasons
for killing significantly different from men’s. With the possible exception of
the murderous mother in Friday the Thirteenth I, they show no gender confusion.
Nor is their motive overtly psychosexual; their anger derives in most cases not
from childhood experiences but more from specific moments in their adult lives
in which they have been abandoned or cheated on by men (Straight Jacket, Play Misty for Me, Attack of the 50-Foot Women).
I’m starting to wonder there are
any patterns within real life to suggest why women and men killers in the films
kill for different reasons. Men seem to suffer with childhood issues deriving
from family members, whereby women seem to suffer from issues with men, as they
have gotten older. The whole “mummy’s boy” comes in to mind a lot with me at
the moment. Plus could this have anything to do with Freud’s example of children’s
attachment with their parents and the opposite sex. Either way, is it worse for
a women to be known as a killer because of a man’s actions? I.e. through
jealousy etc. that is a stereotypical trait of a woman; or is it worse from the
point that a male can’t get over issues from his childhood?
Schoell – “other filmmakers figured that
the only thing better than one beautiful woman being gruesomely murdered was a
whole series of beautiful women being gruesomely murdered.” Pg.32 --- Stay Out
Of The Shower pg. 35
Clover goes on to say how women
and men are killed differently within the films; males are often killed very
quickly, with very short camera time, from a distance and sometimes dimly lit,
whereas women are often killed close up in more detail and at greater length.
This is interesting as the director is choosing to focus in on the women dying
more so than the men, but Clover goes on to say how “tits and scream” are all
that’s needed when auditioning for a part, so maybe that’s the focus because of
the target audience, or we could go back to Laura Mulveys cinematic gaze
theory.
The Final Girl
Throughout the book Clover
mentions the final girl within the horror genre. This girl is normally not
sexually active, at least not as much as her friends or the other female
characters within the films. She dresses more masculine and has a masculine name
and she is also more aware of her surroundings, being suspicious of things that
her friends would disregard. She is also the girl that is different compared to
the others, she might be more intelligent, a nerd, an outsider or have
different hobbies and interests etc.
Although I like that the main
character is normally a woman, it seems quite sexist at how she is depicted,
not at her but towards the other girls within the film. The genre almost ‘slut
shames’ the others, by basically punishing them for their sexual promiscuity
through death. Needing a more innocent, tom-boy-like girl to save the day, as
she almost ‘deserves it’. I feel like this is definitely not empowering to
women, only restrictive.
I am going to do my own research
on this topic, I will either research online or watch more horror films and
take note of key things I am looking for although I feel this could be pretty
time consuming.
The Victim
Clover goes in to state that the
victims are mostly women, usually sexually free and beautiful.
Edgar Alan Poe – famous formula, the death
of a beautiful woman is the “most poetical topic in the world.” – The
Philosophy of Composition p.55
Dario Argento – “I like women, especially
beautiful ones. If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch
them die than an ugly girl or man.” – Quoted in Schoell, Stay Out Of The Shower
p.54
Brian De Palma – “Women in peril work
better in the suspense genre. It all goes back to the Perils Of Pauline…. If you have a haunted house and you have a
woman walking around with a candelabrum, you fear more for her than you would
for a husky man.” Quoted in ibid p.41
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