At first it seems strange, preposterous even, to imagine that horror of all genres presents a progressive representation of women. When we think of horror, we think of Fay Wray screaming in the grip of King Kong, and of Dracula sinking his fangs into Mina Harker. You can open a newspaper and find the critics and moral guardians frothing at the mouth about the latest “torture porn” flick, calling it “degrading” and “juvenile” in its treatment of women. What could be progressive about that?
However, look beyond the obvious and you will find hidden depths to horror, and this is all down to perspective. Consider: in other genres, women are either damsels in need of rescuing, eye-candy to be ogled, or a murder to be investigated by the manly male protagonist. This was the case for many early horror films as well, but as the genre evolved the monsters changed from giant mutants and aliens to more human threats. Horror moved from the outside into the home, thus putting women, in their child-rearing, domestic roles, directly into the line of fire. We were forced into the perspectives of these women, shared their terror and felt their pain. This is the crux of Clover’s theories: that rather than a sexualised, objectifying sadism that one might expect, horror films have come to offer a masochistic identification with a female protagonist who is a subject. This female protagonist is known as the final girl.
Clover expands on this in her book, using the film Carrie as an example. Carrie is about a shy girl who is bullied at school and dominated by her mother. However, she possesses powerful psychic abilities, which she uses to exact terrible revenge on her tormentors. Clover says that young men can engage with Carrie as a protagonist because they too have suffered bullying at the hands of their peers. With that said there are many films where a female protagonist triumphs over social hurdles and defeats the bullies; why is Carrie so identifiable with male audiences? Because of the way she takes revenge. Rather than overcoming her weakness, becoming a better person and leaving the bullies speechless, Carrie takes the simpler option of burning them all alive in a horrendous temper tantrum. The destruction of adversaries (preferably in a stylish way) is something any man would nod at approvingly, and it’s also one of the defining traits of the final girl as a whole. She alone has the courage, cunning and skill to stop running and confront the killer or at least to defend herself until the cavalry arrives.
Tying into this is another key concept of Clover’s: that in destroying the monster, some of its qualities rubs off onto the heroine and she herself gains monstrous qualities. This idea fits well with Carrie, covered in blood and slaughtering people with hellfire, and with the genre of horror as a whole. That the adversaries the heroes are facing are terrible enough that we can cheer at the heroes committing equally terrible acts is a horrifying thought indeed. It is the nature of horror to create monstrous beings from our primal fears; in Carrie this takes the form of man’s fear of woman’s sexuality.
Before we jump to conclusions about horror’s status as a pro-feminist genre, we must consider that Carrie is only one film, and an atypical one at that compared to the standard Hollywood formula. We must analyse other horror films to see whether they offer the same attitudes towards women.
First up is Halloween, John Carpenter’s seminal slasher film that is often credited with kick-starting the slasher subgenre as a whole. Halloween thus has all the classic ingredients for horror: an implacable serial killer, a bunch of dumb teenagers and a smart final girl who makes it to the end of the movie. Can a film that invented concepts that went on to be clichés be called clichéd itself? In terms of its representation of gender, Halloween certainly appears slanted. All of the female characters who die do so in various states of undress. The male characters, Doctor Loomis and the town Sherriff are the ones taking steps to stop Myers, while the girls (except for our final girl, Laurie) are oblivious to the presence of the homicidal Michael Myers. Laurie is your typical virginal hero: she dresses conservatively, doesn’t have a boyfriend and gets along fine with the boy she is babysitting. She doesn’t even sully her purity by killing the monster, as Doctor Loomis shows up and blast Myers with a revolver. John Carpenter was accused of having a “reactionary sexual agenda” when he made this film, of being against teens having too much sex. However, Carpenter went on record saying that the characters do not die because they are sexually active; they die because they are stupid and careless. And looking back on the film, we can justify this carelessness; it’s all down to the setting. If the characters were undressing and doing the nasty in a haunted house or mental asylum, we would think them stupid for doing it, we’d think them stupid for going inside in the first place. But Halloween is set in the quiet American suburbs, a safe place, a boring place even. A place where it’s safe to wander around in just your underwear, or have casual sex with your boyfriend. No one would expect a murderous serial killer in a place like this, surely. The characters of Halloween aren’t stupid; they’re just normal people completely oblivious to the horror stalking them. In conclusion, while Halloween does not have a particularly positive attitude to women, it doesn’t discriminate against them like its many imitators did.
Second on our list is The Shining. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, is a considerably more psychological film than Halloween. It stars Jack Nicholson as a struggling writer slowly being driven mad by the malevolent apparitions of a haunted hotel. This is bad news for his wife Wendy and son Danny, because after he snaps Jack decides to carve them up with an axe. The Shining is particularly interesting in regards to gender because it deals with the relationship between husband and wife. Wendy is your typical American housewife, her duties divided between cooking for Jack and looking after Danny. However, despite this, she is not portrayed as particularly weak or reliant on Jack. When he goes crazy, she is able to fend him off twice, and she is able to keep both herself and Danny safe. Even before Jack loses his marbles she is highly independent, concerned about Danny’s mental trauma and taking care of jobs that Jack is supposed to be doing, while Jack himself sits in a state of apathy at his typewriter. It could also be argued that Jack and the previous caretaker, Delbert Grady, represents man’s violent reaction to the emergence of headstrong, independent women like Wendy. This can be seen best in Jack’s conversation with Grady, who suggests that Wendy is influencing Danny and should therefore be “corrected”, like her “corrected” his wife. The ghosts of the twins and the woman in the bathroom are implied to be Grady’s daughters and wife after he killed them. Both are practically devoid of personality Is this what Grady meant by a “corrected” woman? Someone without any voice or will, someone who should be seen and not heard? The Shining demonstrates that a traditional woman can be a strong, independent character, and that the male desire to repress this independence can be a powerful and monstrous force.
Our third and final film is Eden Lake, a British horror film reminiscent of Deliverance. Instead of killer hillbillies, the main characters Steve and Jenny are menaced by a gang of chavs led by a psychopath called Brett. Although primarily about class rather than gender (the horror in this film is derived from the loathing the middle class feels for the lower class), the film still has a number of interesting things to say about the genre, particularly on the subject of the final girl. Jenny emerges as final girl half-way through the film when Steve is captured by Brett’s gang. Pursued by the gang through the forests, Jenny becomes a far more physical heroine than in the previous two films, eventually emerging as the monstrous final girl alluded to by Clover. Covered in blood and sludge, she could almost be a double for Carrie. And while she lacks Carrie’s powers, she still becomes a killer. First by accident with a shard of glass, then on purpose with a speeding van, Jenny’s body count almost equals that of Brett. Speaking of Brett, the seemingly total monster appears to show a (very slightly) less evil side when dealing with Paige, the only female member of his gang. When the boys are torturing Steve, he doesn’t force Paige to take part, having her film the act instead. Later, he beats one of his friends to a pulp for suggesting that they turn themselves in, but when Paige runs off to do just that, he lets her go. So it could be said that in Eden Lake that gender makes the hero a monster and the monster more human.
Comparing classic horrors Halloween and The Shining with the 2008 release of Eden Lake, it appears that the portrayal of women over time has become more positive. Jenny is far more physically independent than Laurie and Wendy put together, and actually succeeds in killing two of her aggressors. However, we must remember that the two gang members that Jenny kills were the most sympathetic, and that her escape attempt fails anyway, while Laurie and Wendy manage to escape with their lives. In exercising her independence and power, Jenny becomes a monster that must be put down. Judging from these three films, horror seems to be willing to show women in an progressive and non-sexist fashion, not as heroes, but as monsters.
