Reading Men, Women and Chainsaws

Men, Women and Chainsaws

·      Stephen King – Carrie

“If The Stepford wives concerns itself with what men want from women, then Carrie is largely about how women find their own channels of power, and what men fear about women and women’s sexuality… which is only to say that, writing the book in 1973 and only out of college three years, I was fully aware of what Women’s Liberation implied for me and others of my sex. The book is, in its more adult implications, an uneasy masculine shrinking from the future of female equality. For me, Carrie White is a sadly misused teenager, an example of the sort of person whose spirit is so often broken for good in that pit of man- and women-eaters that is your normal suburban high school. But she’s also a women, feeling her powers for the first time and, like Samson, pulling down the temple on everyone in sight at the end of the book.” – Stephen King

I like how King compares Carrie to Samson, he doesn’t hold gender restrictions, the basic points of his book can be mirrored with a male character, although within Carrie, the source of her power comes from her female anatomy, menstruation. The bases of the book can relate to anyone who has been bullied, whether boy or girl but he uses a common issue that she is picked on for, to empower her and make her stronger. This horror film, which is so popular within the genre, is one of the most feminist, or more gender equal.

“Feminism has given a language to her victimization and a new force to the anger that subsidizes her own act of horrific revenge.” – Carol J. Clover pg.4

This is a good point that Carol J. Clover makes, as stating that gender equality would give her a reason to why she would want to fight back against the people that torment her. Although I think feminism is a big part of this, if the story can be related to both sexes, the revenge would be related to any sex that is a victim, not just a women.

·      Gaze

Laura Mulvey – identified the cinematic gaze is not gender-free but is structured by male and or masculine perceptions, a fact revealed when the cameras object is a women.

The cinematic apparatus has two ways of looking at a women:

Sadistic-voyeuristic look – gazer salves his un-pleasure at female lack by seeing her being punished

Fetishistic-scopophilic look – gazer salves his un-pleasure by fetishizing the female body in whole or part.

·      In the book Carol J. Clover mentions how female monsters and heroes, when they do appear, are masculine in dress and behavior (often name), males are shown in feminine postures at the moment of their death, and that it would suggest that gender inheres in the function itself – that there is something about the victim function that wants manifestation in a female and something about the monster and hero functions that wants expression in a male. Pg.12

I agree with this statement, thinking about the horror films that I have watched, the female, if the hero, can be quite masculine in demeanor. Sigourney Weaver, the lead role of the Alien films, isn’t the typical horror damsel, she doesn’t have a so-called womanly job, she isn’t dolled up for the cameras and doesn’t show barely any of her body except one scene and her name is Ripley, quite a masculine name. She also has very chiseled features and in the later films, her hair gets shorter and shorter. You can’t relate this to every horror film around but the lead women in most horror films, aren’t the cheerleader, half-naked, dumb-blonde that usually walks right into their death helplessly. I like that most horror films have a girl that can fight for herself and save the day, but its astonishing how I’ve come to realize they have to be connected to males in some way.

·      Jurij Lotman has suggested that there are really only two “characters” in myth: a mobile, heroic being who crosses boundaries and “penetrates” closed spaces, and an immobile being who personifies the damp, dark space and constitutes that which is to be overcome. Because the latter is so obviously coded feminine, as Teresa de Lauretis notes, the former is perforce masculine. – Carol J. Clover pg.13

‘Penetrate’ is obviously the word used to describing a male character, although it seems to me that in a lot of horror films, especially slasher movies, the women seem to be the heroin of the film. It is however, sad that it is noted that it would obviously be a male to win the fight against evil.

·      Horror repeatedly contemplates mutations and slidings whereby women begin to look a lot like men (slasher films), men are pressured to become like women (possession films), and some people are impossible to tell apart (the figure in God Told Me To who is so genital ambiguous that the doctor didn’t know what sex to assign, the pubescent girl in Sleepaway Camp who turns out to be a boy, the rapist in The Incubus whose ejaculation consists of equal parts semen and menstrual blood, and so on). The one-sex model is echoed in horror’s bodily constructions, however; it is also echoed in its representation of gender as the definitive category from which sex proceeds as an effect – and in its deep interest in precisely such “proceedings”.

Carol J. Clover mentions one sex and two sex models quite a bit in the introduction of the book, mentioning how two sex models were taken more profoundly, leaving the one sex model to not be pushed further, which could be a instrumental reason for gender differences in character roles, and why females and males are treat differently. I think I should look in to these models in more depth to understand them more so I can use them within my research.

·      In the book she also states that there has been some remarkable developments in the sex gender system of horror since the mid-1970’s.

This is what I actually wanted to focus on within this topic when I started as I have already researched women’s roles in horror films, focusing on the feministic side of it, which I have always believed in, as they are somewhat portrayed as inadequate of killing the monster without the aid of a male. Although in the past few years, being a horror fan myself, I have noticed a changed within this common theme. The slasher movie trait has slowly disappeared since the Scream chronicles, disregarding one here and there. There are less typical helpless girls and instead stronger females, taking the lead from the beginning of the film, the male characters including the father, sheriff and friend roles, still hopelessly failing to help her out in anyway, resulting in them dying and her having to save herself.

I have wondered whether feminism has changed this or if times have just moved on from then. Horror films were mainly viewed my young males, so it would be intriguing to see whether the audience of these movies have changed at all and whether that has impacted the story line and characters within these films.

·      “It is true, of course, that female protagonists are more significant in the modern genre, and they are permitted more autonomy and resourcefulness than were the ‘heroines’ of earlier films. The sole survivor of Halloween’s rampaging psychotic, for example, or of Alien’s salivating monstrosity (both 1979 [sic]), forcefully played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver respectively, are afforded a degree of effective participation in the action all but unheard of prior to the seventies.” Tudor cautions against taking these strong girls to heart, however, “They and their sisters remain significant exceptions to the continuing pattern of male domination of the genre’s central situations. Women have always featured as horror-movie victims, and it is therefore to be expected that they should seem more prominent in a period of victim centrality. Whether that implies a new gender structure for the genre is another matter entirely.”

I think Tudor is correct in what he has said, they were one of the first to sport the leading role in horror movies, but I think this is a good thing, and as this book was written in the 80’s, you can now see that this has caught on within the industry more. But is this to do with it’s popularity? Feminism? Or is it just to change things up. The main audience to these films are males, so why is it, that females have taken such a prominent role within these films. Like Laura Mulvey stated, it could be the different way males look at the women when watching the movies.

Myself being a fan of the genre, I think that the scary part of the genre is when it is realistic, as if it could happen at home. It wouldn’t be realistic if a man was the main character or the hero in every film, and you would naturally fight back whether man or woman.

I think I need to do more in depth research on the statistics of horror films over the last few decades, take not of the changes within the genre, the audience and characters within them. Maybe start my own primary research task to find out what other people think about the roles within the horror film and see if more females like the genre now. If the audience has changed since the 70’s then so could the women’s roles.