Women In Horror

   Misogyny in horror films is the degrading view of women who fight to survive in a male world within the horror genre. Specifically in slasher films, misogyny is apparent. There is no doubt that there is a sign of gendered specific violence towards women as well as; "the proportion of time spent watching young women cower, scream, or run in terror" compared to male roles. Males are pretty much never seen running away from the attacker, but they are killed quickly with no chase involved or scene of struggle.

Final girl

   The slasher film was the first genre that allowed gender norms to take a different path. The role of the final girl confused audiences with the portrayal of a female being a violent hero. However, there was finally a possibility that the heroine who defeats the monster is a female and is categorised as the final girl. The final girl is the “first character to sense something amiss and the only one to deduce from the accumulating evidence the pattern and extent of threat; the only one, in other words, whose perspective approaches our own privileged understanding of the situation.” The only way the final girl is able to kill or escape the monster is by taking on male characteristics. However, Clover cautions audiences against seeing "final girls" as products of feminism. Final girls are still seen like the other women who have been killed after taking part in sexual activities by being a part of "the chase". Clover concludes that the final girl is “an agreed upon fiction [for] male-viewers’ use of her as a vehicle for his own sadomasochistic fantasies.”

The female monster

   Shelley Stamp Lindsey states “Carrie is not about liberation from sexual repression, but about the failure of repression to contain the monstrous feminine”. Audiences are not supposed to identify with Carrie whilst she becomes the monster, instead they are supposed to be scared of her ability and destructive potential. Carrie is purposely portrayed in this manner because she demonstrates what happens when women gain power and are no longer repressed. Carrie ultimately tells its audience that they must live as a patriarchal world and if they do not then this is what will come of it.

   Aviva Briefel states that menstruation is the start of monstrosity. Once a girl has reached her puberty she is seen to be monstrous. Horror films feed into the female monsters identity through her menstruation. This then states that having your period makes you weaker. The overall objective in Briefel’s article, Monster Pains: Masochism, Menstruation, and Identification in the Horror Film, is that the female monster is unable to control their emotions when pain occurs whereas male monsters are unable to feel pain.

The repressive patriarch

   In every horror film the repressive patriarchal form of a monster is either “symbolically castrated, pathetically lacking…or he is overly endowed and potent.” The real sexual interest that occurs in horror films comes from the monster. “The monster’s power is one of sexual difference from the normal male. In this difference he is remarkably like the woman in the eyes of the traumatised male: a biological freak with impossible and threatening appetites that suggest a frightening potency precisely where the normal male would perceive a lack.”

   Men only stay on the screen long enough to show their inability, unless they are seen to be a true form of patriarchy. The repressive patriarch is often dressed as a female and because he does not represent patriarchy at its finest, the final girl is his “homoerotic stand-in”.

   The “masochistic monster” revels in acts of self-mutilation before the audience sees the harming of others being done. Briefel looks at films like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), The Fly (1986), Hellraiser series, Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991). All these horror films show examples of masochistic monster’s that take pleasure in the pain they inflict on themselves. It is something they must endure to be monstrous.