Georgina Farmer A2 Media Blog: Representation of Women in Horror Films

Horror movies have always portrayed women as the weaker sex. They are usually the first to die in the most brutal ways by the villain (usually male). Horror movies almost always show a scene involving a woman (usually a college student/mid-twenties) running away from a deranged stalker/killer who is trying to murder her. Women are also usually portrayed as needy, and relying on a man to protect her from the villain. From the mid 1970’s, we see women becoming more powerful and able to defend & rescue themselves (and/or family/friends) from the villain. The ‘Slasher’ subgenre was the first to show this.

Carol J. Clover, a film theorist, developed a theory and coined the term ‘final girl’. The final girl character was usually well educated, didn’t involve herself in sexual acts and rarely (if ever) cursed. The final girl is the girl I described earlier, who saves herself and others and kills the villain. However, although the ‘final girl’ theory proves true, is it really breaking from the gender stereotypes from before? The female takes on masculine traits (such as the clothes they wear, the way they talk and the violence they use), which shows women establishing a distance from their female character. An example of a ‘final girl’ character is Laurie Strode from Halloween. Her name is unisex and she is seen wearing clothes such as jeans, hoodies, baggy shirts etc. These clothes defeminise her body, she also uses phallic weapons against the killer, such as knitting needles and knives, however she is saved by a male character named Dr. Sam Loomis at the end. This reinforces the ideology that females are always in need of males to protect them. However, the character Lynda Van Der Klok is Laurie’s best friend and is a stereotypical popular girl. She has a boyfriend, she is middle class, and she isn’t very clever. After having sex with her boyfriend, she is murdered by the killer. This character shows the sexualisation of females in horror movies and punishes them for it.

Laura Mulvey, a feminist film theorist, developed another theory called the ‘male gaze’. When the film industry began, men were still considered the greater gender. Because of this, the camera was gendered male to show the world through the male producer’s eyes. As women were able to work in the film industry they kept to this standard, and therefore, the camera is still male. The male gaze tends to focus on the female rather than the male. In horror movies, the death of an attractive young woman is filmed, however, an equally attractive male’s death may not be filmed, just his body afterwards. Females are, according to Mulvey, only included in films to visually please the males watching the film.

Films tend to show the hero or “final girl” as a victim at some point in the film. This point shows that stereotypes still exist, specifically portraying women as cowardly, weak, and dependent on a man. Therefore, even though on the surface the presentation seems to have improved, the deeper underlying meanings are still as conservative as before.

To conclude, I think that horror films have changed the way women appear in the films, but haven’t actually changed their need for a man to protect them from evil. If a man fails to protect her then she must take on a masculine role herself.