Representation of Women in horror Films

Representation of Women in Horror Films Throughout modern history women have been represented as vulnerable objects of desire. Before film was invented, women were always viewed upon as the weaker sex. They were often seen in fairy tales as damsels in distress that had to be saved by hero. The general gender roles throughout history were men were active and looking and women were passive and looked at. Throughout the early films in the twenties and thirties, women were looked upon on still just the same stereotypical way. This is seen in films such as Dracula where the woman Mina is the damsel in distress and it takes a group of men, the heroes have to rescue her from the villain, Dracula. The theme of monsters and demons drew audiences in, each with the same ‘damsel in distress theme’. Boles stated in 2009 that ‘Women are always seen as needy, needing someone, usually a male to save them from the killer and if a male character does not intervene, then the female characters will be killed’. In early days women were always being the ones being chased by the monsters/ masked killers and were sometimes the eye-candy for the male members of the audience. If a male character did not intervene they would surely die. In short they were seen as glamorous objects that were sometimes provocative. In their traditional roles women were individually looked at or ‘displayed’ in ways that made them have strong visual impact on men. Initially they were sexually objectified. However there were also female villains sometimes in the original Friday the 13th the killer was Jason’s Mum as seen above. But it goes back further, even as far as the 1930s with films such as Bride of Frankenstein and Island of Lost souls. Cat people made in the 1940s however was one of the first films with a certain notion for feminism, which betrayed women as being the threats towards men. The cat is symbolic of women’s wild untamed sexual aura which is unconstrained by male dominance. Here the protagonist Irena is a threat to the gender normalities which were dominated by the males. She had to change or be killed. So she died. The regulations surrounding the film industry were extremely strict. The Hays code was started in 1930 by the government which set the boundaries which made a film suitable for public viewing: 1. No film should lower a person’s moral standards and make them sympathise with the antagonist. 2. The ‘correct’ standards of life had to be presented. 3. The law must not in any way be criticized or made fun of and no sympathy was to be shown in a case of a law being broken During World War II few films were made, as the directors were all busy making propaganda and spirit boosting films. However after the war ended, film makers started focusing on futuristic sub-genre of horror. Society was now terrified of the threat of nuclear war and communism. Film makers were exercising this fear, making horror films which often featured invasions from external threats, which represented the invasion of communism (this was mainly later on nearer the fifties), and the end of the world, which represented nuclear war. Women were still looked upon as the inferior gender who had to be protected by a male character. These women often died as a result of not being as strong as their hero. This is seen in invasion of the Body Snatchers where the heroine is taken by the aliens because she cannot stay awake, but her hero can and so doesn’t get taken. The fifties saw the rise of teenage audiences. ‘Horror Teenpics’ began to develop and the rules of the Hays codes were beginning to become more like guide-lines than actual rules, allowing for women to be looked upon more and more explicitly. They were seen more as a sex object than someone who had to be protected, often wearing revealing clothes. A prime example of the representation of women in that era is the film ‘Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman’. The poster says enough about the film and the era itself. The woman in it is scantily dressed making her provocative to the male eyes, in particular, the teenage audience. This is also was influenced by the rising of the Women’s Sexual Revolution which played a huge part in changing the status quo changing the attitudes towards women. During the sixties the sexual revolution was in the midst and women, although in many films were still repressed, were being exposed more and more in a more sexual way. ‘Psycho’ by Alfred Hitchcock was one of the great controversial turning points in the history of the horror genre. To start was the opening scene, which was one of the first scenes to show an unmarried man and woman in bed, and especially the woman in a bra. It also showed the highly controversial shower scene in which the naked woman is viciously stabbed to death. However that scene in its self witnessed the butcher of a sexually liberated woman by a man with a knife which could be said to be his ‘phallic’ weapon. It could be argued that this scene reinforces the traditional; women are the weaker gender, ideology. However women were seen in different way in the sixties as well. They were often the object of ‘male gaze’, stereotypically being pretty, young and white which were considered to be beautiful and sexually attractive in the sixties. Alfred Hitchcock took it a step further and only used blonde actresses. In time it came that the younger audience required that grotesque imagery were used and the sexual interest in the films increase. This came at a perfect time as at around the same time the Hay’s Code was becoming over-run and technological advances in the film making industry were increasing making it easier for film makers to quench the audience’s thirst. The seventies saw that the Hay’s Code had finally been over- turned leaving a wide gap for film makers to extend their talent to new lengths that the western world had never seen before in film. The seventies also saw the birth of the Slasher Genre which was defined as ‘graphic violence and sexual titillation to attract audiences.’ Critics were arguing that young girls in this film were being killed, but also how they were often over-sexualised and scantily dressed. Often these murder scenes were shot as close-up shots shot in the point of view of the killer which put the audience in the killer’s shoes. The killer was almost always male putting the shot in a male gaze point. This in itself was criticised heavily by horror film critics. However around 1974 things changed. It became customary for one woman to survive in the films. This woman was known as the ‘Final Girl’, which became a key component in slasher films particularly in the 70’s and 80’s. This final girl was often ‘well behaved’, not getting drunk, having sex or taking drugs. She is often a career woman, putting her career, education and her friends and family before anything else. They are generally masculine and do not partake in any supposedly immoral activities. Carol Clover described the term in her book ‘Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film’: “She is the one who encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent of the preceding horror and of her own peril; who is chased, cornered, wounded; whom we see scream, stagger, fall, rise and scream again. She is abject terror personified... She alone looks death in the face, but she alone also finds the strength either to stay the killer long enough to be rescued... or to kill him herself... But, in either case, from 1974 on, the survivor figure has been female.” The role of the Final Girl was often a more maternal role, which is shown in the film Halloween with the final girl babysitting a local boy. The role is completely different to that of a male, which is often more dominant. There are also a lot more female characters than there are males in the horror genre. These characters are often exposed in a way which makes them appealing to the male teenager audience. This is seen majorly in the film Alien in the character of Lt. Ellen Ripley. She is seen in the film in a feminine light as a maternal figure and object of male gaze, and in a masculine light, where she is almost portrayed as the female equivalent of Rambo: Even though there are often ore males killed in horror films they get little screen-time. However when females get killed in horror films it’s often slow and dragged out. The female is often chased, perused and tormented, often trying to escape, the antagonist, whilst dressed provocatively and when they are finally killed it is often in a cruel sadistic way. Their pain is exploited for the pleasure of young male audiences. A good example of this is the death of Paris Hilton’s character and her boyfriend’s death. Her boyfriend’s death happens mainly off screen but the girlfriend’s character is chassed through the town in her underwear, before having her heal sliced with a knife and a sharp length of pole rammed through her head like a spear. It could be argued that for the final girl to survive in horror films she must ‘become masculine’. This way both male and female members of the audience connect with her. What the final girl must do to survive a lot of the time is become masculinised over the period of peril. The reason shown for the final girls being masculine could suggest she only survives because she is masculine and thinks masculine. This interprets women as being inferior to men, which in itself is sexist. The second negative about the final girl having to be masculine is that it betrays negative views on women who are sexually active. In horror films women who have sex are killed, which betrays sexual activity in women as immoral. John Carpenter director of Halloween and others like him argue that although statistics show that there is a correlation between sex and death, this doesn’t prove that having sex means they will definitely die. It just means that them who have sex are too pre-occupied to defend themselves. Slasher films in general are restrictive towards women in general which suggests they do not have a problem with the individual women but their sexuality and their freedom in general. This supported the theory that males became exited by seeing women in extreme peril. The nineties saw a very bad era for horror films, with many bad remakes and sequels. The extreme brutality of women had been replaced for quick almost meaningless deaths. For example in ‘I Know What You Did Last Sumer’ where Rose McGowan is killed because she cannot fit her thighs through the cat flat to escape. Everything became cliché and it got to the point where none of them were taken seriously. The parodies which started to come out soon after were barely funnier than the originals themselves. Towards the end of the nineties horror film makers began to get rid of the whole gender roles theme completely and replace it with ghosts, apocalypses or possessed children. Towards recent times as well as parodies comical but serious films use the idea of the female body being dangerous to generate fear in a completely different way. Taking irrational fears of the female body and putting it in a movie. For example the film Teeth is a film about a female who defends herself from sexual attacks with shark-like teeth in her vagina. The idea of a demonic female isn’t always as extreme. For example films like ‘Hard Candy’ have also contributed to the theme of a woman scorned acting out physical revenge on men. For example in ‘Hard Candy’ the teenage girl draws in a paedophile to his death. Although Women are often looked upon for their position in power in these films they are still looked upon more for their looks. These women have to look sexy in order to capture the male gaze. An example of this is the film ‘Jennifer’s Body’ where the lead woman is played by Megan Fox who is well renowned for her beauty and sexiness. However with films like ‘Teeth’ there is soft-porn. This as well as recent horror films has put women back in the male gaze, which re-opened the gate for violence against women. In the end, audiences will always want more violent and so film makers will have t up the violent content, more and more in order to scare the audiences.