Essay.

D

‘Carol Clover, in ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws’, argues that many horror films are interesting in their representation of gender because they provide a female point of identification for a male core target audience. To what extent do you think horror represents gender progressively?’

Horror as a genre typically has a core audience of men between the age of fifteen to twenty four. This is unusual for a mainstream genre, as a common horror convention is that a man is made to identify with a female protagonist. Carol Clover in ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws,’ has many theories based around horror. One of much importance to us is that she says that the main core male audience is made to identify with a female, who is normally made to be a final girl. The reason I feel that the audience of horror is mainly male, is that stereotypically people would say that males are thought to be the stronger of the genders, which is definitely not progressive. Even though I do not typically agree with this opinion, I feel that it could be the reason for it. From Carol Clovers theory we could conclude that we think horror is progressive, as we see the stereotypical role of women being ignored. Where their domestic role is not shown, and they are seen to be the dominant, strong and independent, in order to survive. People might just stop there are say that women are represented progressively, because let’s face it, it has never normally been the man who has been discriminated against, or used as a weak or inferior victim, but this is not the case. Women might be seen in horror as the final girl or the main protagonist, like Carol Clover says, but I feel women’s sexuality is obviously apparent in horror films, and they can sometimes be objectified women to further attract the core male audience. I think this, as you tend to find that women are seen in horror films to be quite sexual in general, and are shot wearing short clothing or not a lot of clothing. This then contradicts the progressive final girl statement, as it shows them as a sex object, which falls into the 3 stereotypically categories of women, which are domestic, sex object, and shopper.

In the 1978 horror film ‘Halloween,’ I feel the film matches the description Carol Clover tries to express, where we see Laurie a well behaved and conventional ‘good girl’ is shown to be the main protagonist, who grows in the narrative and survives to be the final girl. Laurie is not the only girl in the film, we also see other female characters such as Linda, Annie, Judith and other characters who play small and less important roles. Out of the four main women we see, who are named above, three are objectified, and are seen basically naked in the film. Laurie, who is shown to have more respect for herself, gives the impression she is rewarded for her more reserved behaviour, as she is the final girl. The other three girls are shown in a conservative way, as just sex objects, which I feel is a main reason for their death. In the film there are a total of five deaths, in which sixty per cent are women and forty per cent are men. This shows that this is a conservative representation, which makes the viewer insinuate that men are stronger than women, resulting in their lower death rate in the film. This sides with both sides of the argument, it shows a progressive side where Laurie survives as a final girl over everyone else, but then it shows that women have to be domestic to survive and shows women who die as objects with no clothes on. In the twentieth century women’s rights had become a big issue, and the film oddly doesn’t go along with the zeitgeist, and differs from the change in women’s roles. This makes me feel that the film is very much conservative, as despite the change in women’s roles, the film still wants to show women as domestic and objects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_rights_(other_than_voting)

If we look at a more recent film, ‘The Shinning,’ a 1982 horror, we get to see a totally different side to the representation of the sexes. Instead of seeing the film almost form a positive discrimination, which almost makes women feel they are only being represented progressively because they have to be, we get to see three main characters. Wendy is who we picture as the main protagonist and final girl along with her son, Danny and his imaginary friend Tony. Danny is seen as the sort for person in the film from Propp’s theory and Jack, who is the third main character, is seen as the villain or the antagonist. The ratio of male to female characters is 2:1 which could be considered as slightly sexist, but Danny at the end of the day is just a young boy. In some ways I feel that the narrative is slightly sexist, as in the plot it involves three children, the two twin girls and Danny. Out of these three younger characters, you see the twin girls subdued to mass amounts of violence resulting in death, and Danny surviving. We also see that Wendy is inferior, as she is almost certain to be killed by Jack when she locks herself in the bathroom, but Halloran comes along and distracts Jack, which saves Wendy’s life. In the whole story, we need to take into consideration the amount of characters from the genders, there are nine male characters and five female characters, this comes across as very conservative, as the amount of screen time each character gets, then it is quite a significant different, fair enough Wendy gets a lot of screen time, but out of all the female characters, she is basically the only one.