Representation of Women in Horror films

I am going to be looking at the representation of women in Horror films to find out how audiences view the subject. I will do this by looking at horror theorists such as Carol Clover and Laura Mulvey and comparing them against four particular horror movies I have watched. I watched two films from the last five years; ‘The Crazies’ (Eisner, 2010) and ‘The Strangers’ (Bertino, 2008), and the other films I will be looking at are ‘Halloween’ (Carpenter, 1978), ‘Scream’ (Craven, 1996) and also ‘Nosferatu’ (Murnau, 1922).

 

First I will be comparing my chosen films to Carol Clover’s ‘Final Girl Theory’. ‘Halloween’ introduces us to character ‘Laurie’, a name that’s not traditionally feminine, an innocent, smart, bookworm; Which is what society expects a good role model to girls to be. The audience automatically identify with her through the film, as being ‘the final girl’; the audience want her to survive. Laurie’s friends aren’t virginal and pure, and so are killed. Clover argues that women who stray out of the bounds of conservatism are punished, such as engaging in sex, drugs and alcohol. Laurie participates in none of these acts, and so is saved. Her friend Annie drives to her boyfriends, to have sex, in her underwear and is soon slaughter. The same happens to Laurie’s other friends.

Another example of this in ‘Halloween’ is through the way Meyers appears to kill his sister in response to the fact she has sex with her boyfriend. We could say he is almost punishing her, and uses the knife as a phallic symbol of his repressed sexuality. John Carpenter apparently later stated that the reason Laurie wasn’t killed was simply because she was the only one to pay attention, unlike everyone else. This is seen at the beginning of the film where she notices him parked outside the school, and no one else does. This ultimately goes against Clover’s theory.

In ‘The Crazies’, the character Judy could also fit into the role of the final girl. Clover also states how women become empowered in Horror Films, rather than being shown as Damsels in distress. Judy begins as a damsel in distress, as it is her husband David who rescues her after she is captured from a psycho murderer in the hospital wing. Eventually she has to learn to fend for herself, and shoots a man in order to save herself and her husband. She doesn’t fit the conventions of the final girl as she is still quite feminine; however, she’s a Doctor, thus smart. She’s also pregnant, so we could say she is a protector. She doesn’t step out of the bounds of conservatism as she is happily married, successful and is dedicated to getting a family together.

In relation to Clover’s final girl theory, where she states that rather than men enjoying seeing the female killed and stalked, they actually identify with the fright of being attacked. So we could say that in ‘The Strangers’, while Kristen is being stalked around the house, the audience identifies with her. Ultimately, in the end it is Kristen who survives whilst her partner James is killed. They are both tortured whilst tied to chairs and stabbed, and where she normally should be dead, luckily she survives. She doesn’t fight back during the entire film; it is James who does, treating her like his Damsel in distress. Kristen doesn’t seem to fit the role of the final girl however, as we don’t find out her occupation or if she even has one. It doesn’t appear that she’s innocent as she lets James undress her. And instead of going along with the conservative idea of getting married, she turns down James’ marriage proposal.

Laura Mulvey argues that horror movies objectify women for the male audience, who are literally put into the eyes of the male in the ‘Male Gaze’ theory. We can see this in Halloween when the use of a point of view shot from Myers follows him as he watches his sister with her boyfriend, and then kills her. The audience only view his sister as a sexual object here as she is making out with her boyfriend and then leads him upstairs to have sex. We see how the killer takes a knife from the drawer then goes upstairs and stabs her repeatedly while she is naked. We see all this through Myers eyes, which puts the audience in the position of identifying with the murderer.

This goes against Clover’s theory that the audience identify only with the final girl, as they also appear to identify with the murderers. ‘The Strangers’ also feature techniques which objectify Kristen; such as tilts of the camera to show her figure as she stands in the kitchen, a close up of her back as James undoes her back and a shot of her as she sits in the bath. At the beginning of the film we see how James sits admiring her; he only notices her in the room. Because of this, the only people the audience can hear and see is Kristen, as despite her being in a conversation, everyone else is edited out, causing the audience to admire her just as James is. (Clip is here to show this... look from 7:30 onwards...)

Jeremy Tunstall argues that onscreen, women stick to four roles and are depicted as busy house wives contented mothers, eager consumers and sex objects and simply nothing else. I would say that in ‘The Crazies’ and ‘Nosferatu’ the women are indeed shown as housewives, more so in ‘Nosferatu’. In ‘The Crazies’ at least Judy has a successful job of being a Doctor, but I believe it’s like she’s a ‘wannabe’ homemaker but she doesn’t match it financially. This can be seen after they arrive home after escaping being quarantined and the first thing she does to restore normality is getting the laundry. (The link is to the whole movie, but from 53:26 to 54:48, you can clearly see Judy trying to restore normality...)

‘The media depicts males as the stronger sex and this is shown through the way men outnumber women on screen by 2:1, because of this, men are shown in their stereotypical role of having an occupation whilst the women stay at home. This can be seen in ‘Nosferatu’. It is the man who travels all the way to Count Orlok’s castle, whilst his wife is left to stay at home. Nowadays though, the media are more careful about the ratio of men to women on screen and try to make it more even, this can be seen during Advertisements, which still to the generic stereotypes. ’Nosferatu’, ‘The Strangers’ and ‘Scream’ all show women being stalked and tormented before eventually the villain (In Nosferatu and Scream’s case a male) has their way and kills them. This depicts women as weak and conforms to the stereotypical view of women that Tunstall argues.

In Scream, we could argue that Drew Barrymore’s character flirts with whoever is on the phone, and even lies about having a boyfriend, and so deserves to be punished. However, she seems like a fairly innocent girl, and the audience identify strongly with her. We begin by enjoying her witty conversation with the man on the phone, but eventually, when she realises she is in danger, we too fear for her life, and as she hides, there is high tension as the audience worries for her. This relates to Clover’s theory that the audience identifies with her.

I agree with Carol Clover’s theory of ‘The final girl’ as we can relate most horror movies to it. I also don’t agree with the idea that the only reason people watch horror movies is to see women in ‘their rightful place’ according to what Tunstall’s theory shows, or to just be appreciated by a male audience. As it turns out, girls are just as likely to go and see Horror Movies as groups of girls and boys go to see them as a social thing. A lot of couples can be seen at horror movies, young and old, and so it shows that ‘men don’t just go to see women be objectified’ which goes against Mulvey’s theory. Admittedly there are horror films out there purely made for the audience to admire the killings, such as the Saw movies. Even with todays ‘Gornography’ movies, where plots are just to get as much gore and murders in as possible, I don’t believe people get a kick out of watching women get killed, as there are actually just as many men killed on screen. I like how with the final girl theory it gives women power, whereas Mulvey and Tunstall’s suggest they are weak and that the ‘male gaze’ means they are only there to be looked at. This may be true in some cases, but I feel that in the majority of cases, the strength of the women is important to the plot.