Marcin's A2 Media Blog

How women are represented in the horror genre?

In the horror genre the majority of women are stereotyped into being a helpless, scantily clad victim running away from a monster. Horror plays on the fact that women are some what inferior to men with them being helpless and hardly able to prevent anything. Also the protagonist is a female character who seems to always survive the night. But the female who is cast as the protagonist has some male like qualities which distinguishes her from the rest of the women.

If the main protagonist is a female she ends up being the so called 'final girl' (a term coined by Carol Clover) who survives the event. She is normally a virgin who differs from the rest of the group and has to struggle and fight the monster off. As a horror flick slowly progresses characters are killed off until it reaches the final girl. The final girl struggles to stop the monster and succeeds but the monster is not killed. Even though the women helped stop the monster she did'nt kill it which relates back to women being inefective at getting the job done. This is representing women in a negative light.

In slasher movies teens are normally the target for the monster and among these teens are women. Normally in a slasher movie the women who are murdered have negative connotations and were promiscuous and/or are interupted duing sex. It's normally the virgin who survives the night. In other horror films the women is always put through the most pain as she watches loved ones die around her. It could be in the middle of a wedding that gets interuppted and the female is forced to sit and watch as her world gets teared apart. So normally the women who is the protagonist has to go through the most pain in horrors and are represented as the most vunerable.

Normally in horror the most horrific things happen in places that are considered safe. In slasher movies it is normally set in a household which is considered safe. A stereotypical women belongs to the household where she does her chores. So this makes the women a victim to the monster as they are attacked in there own homes where they spend most of there time. The men are normally shown away from the home or are an early victim to the monster. Whenever a male is shown in a horror movie he has power over the women which they may or may not abuse. If the male is shown abusing the power he normally ends up dead by the end of the movie. In fact normally characters who break laws, abuse power or break sacred vows are normally the target for the monster and the innocent ones survive and the majority of the innocent characters are women.

The 'Final Girl' in most horror movies are quite often a tomboy. Laurie in Halloween (1978) is presented as a tomboy and she differs from the rest of the women. In the film you see the story from both perspectives and as the film progresses you start to like Laurie (which is unusual for a horror movie) and you hope for her to survival. When characters like this are cast women are normally more commonly found as the hero and is remember for their actions.

Even when the women becomes the hero she has to show signs of masculinity as she slowly becomes a monster in an attempt to stop the antagonist. When a women holds a knife or a gun she is holding a phallic object which connotes masculinity.

The film Carrie is a feminist story about a young girl who is abused at her school during her menstruation. During the film she is bullied by her class mates and mother who appear to be the monsters if the movie. Towards the end of the movie Carrie herself becomes the monster as she burns down the school. Carrie is a different take on the horror genre as it shows the hero slowly becoming monsterious this narration has been used several times in recent films. In this film instead of showing men what they want from a women they see their greatest fear of women.

Women are presented in some postive ways but they still have their flaws in the horror genre. The horror genre places the stereotypical women in a situation where showing masculinity will help them survive and escape the nightmare that they are in. It appears that the women who don't show masculinity end up dead in horror and plays on the fact that women should act like women.