Representation of Women in Horror

Carol Clover, in men, women and chainsaws argues that horror’s representation of gender is very interesting because it frequently offers its core target audience of young males an identification with a female character, unlike any other mainstream genre. To what extent do you think horror’s representation of gender challenges dominant representations?

In the media, gender has been typically represented in a certain way for many years, only in recent years has this dominant ideology and conventional representations been challenged by progressive media products. Males and females are stereotyped; males often shown as dominant, strong and heroic as opposed to females who are often objectified and shown as a weaker sex in general.  

Jeremy Tunstall argues that female roles in the media are categorised into four main areas:

domestic              sexual                consumer                marital

He argues that any woman in the media will fit into one of these categories, usually shown through their relationship to men, (e.g. wife, mother), as a sex object, an eager consumer or a housewife, but a male is rarely shown in any of these forms.

                 

The visibility of women in the media is also limited in comparison to men, in a study conducted in 1992 a ratio of 2:1 males to females was found; showing that men are much more common in the media, there are also certain types of females that are rarely represented such as black women or homosexual women. 

               

Laura Mulvey suggests that commercial cinema puts its audience in the eyes of an appraising heterosexual male through the use of camera techniques creating something known as the ‘male gaze’. It uses ‘sadistic objectification’ to show women as objects rather than people, and allow males to become subjects who enjoy the view; it denies women’s rights to their own subjectivity. Camera techniques used include long shots of the female; tilting up the body and fragmenting it into different parts and also using close-ups and POV shots of the male in order for the audience to connect and be able to relate to him. Theorists including Mulvey argue that this is a sexist viewing and denies women their right to subjectivity by controlling them and showing them only as objects.

                 

However, if this male gaze is true in mainstream cinema would that not isolate particular audiences, such as women and homosexual males? Others also suggest that women look at themselves through a male gaze and see themselves as what a male would, the male gaze has become internalised and part of their self identity.

                In Carol Clovers book ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws’ she discusses many films, in particular one named ‘Carrie’ in which a shy high school student is bullied by her peers and when her period begins she gains a telekinetic power and enforces revenge on her bullies. Predominantly the target audience for horror movies are 17-24 year old males and so an interesting point arises about the film ‘Carrie’ which has a very feminine narrative. How can young males relate to a female character such as this one, who gains inner strength from her menstrual period and uses it as a revenge strategy against her bullies?

Stephen King, (author of the book) states that ‘Carrie’s revenge is something that any student who has ever had his gym shorts pulled down in Phys Ed or his glasses thumb-rubbed in study hall could approve of’ as an explanation of both the film and books success. Despite the use of ‘any student’ in this quote he continues to explain using the pronoun ‘his’ and describing having glasses ‘thumb-rubbed’ which is an unusual activity for any females to do to each other or in fact for males to do to females. But what he is trying to suggest is in fact that a boy can recognise himself in a girl, and that males are prepared to identify with a vulnerable female character in horror due to their own experiences in which they were also vulnerable. Quite contrasting in terms of action movies where males can identify with action heroes who are represented as strong, heterosexual and brave. This is one of the reasons that the horror genre is so different to most, the fact that males identify with vulnerable females, suggesting a more progressive nature in terms of the representation of women but also leading to many theorists wondering why this works so well.

Thus Carol Clover’s final girl theory exists, the idea that in most horror films a target audience of young males can identify with a vulnerable female who in the end defeats the killer and survives. The final girl is often virginal and androgynous, this seeming to be the reason behind her survival compared to other female characters in horror who are usually represented sexually. For example in the film Halloween (1978), the protagonist who survives is Laurie, an innocent, intelligent and sensible character as opposed to her friends Annie and Linda who are objectified and thus murdered early on.  Despite this representation director John Carpenter denies that this is true, jokingly saying that ‘I didn’t mean to put an end to the sexual revolution!” and pointing out that characters such as Linda and Annie died because they were distracted and not paying attention. Laurie and other ‘final girl’ characters are a masochistic identification, meaning that the audience identifies with them rather than just seeing them as objects they become the subjects.

In my research I looked at many factors in horror movies such as visibility, roles, gaze and narrative in order to address these arguments and to help determine whether horror is a progressive genre or not. The films I looked at were Halloween (1978), The Shining (1982) and Eden Lake (2008). In terms of visibility I found that two of the films I watched included more males than females, Halloween however contained a ratio of 6:7 females to males, roughly equal numbers and going against the 1992 research which found more males than females represented in the media. This could suggest that Horror is a progressive genre, however Halloween is the oldest film in my sample and the other two contained ratios of 4:8 and 6:11 of females to males, suggesting that in fact horror is not progressive, especially as the 6:11 ratio belonged to the most recent film in my sample; Eden Lake.

When it came to roles represented in horror, I discovered that interestingly although all three films contained the roles specified by Tunstall they also contained female protagonists that did not fit into these roles as such. I found it hard therefore to argue whether horror was indeed progressive or not in relation to roles, as my results did not substantially support or disprove this idea. In Halloween, both domestic and sexual objects were represented by the characters but the fact that Laurie was the final girl I thought balanced the argument although Laurie did obtain a slightly domestic role whilst babysitting, I thought that the fact she stopped the killer outweighed this. In The Shining the female roles represented included domestic, sexual, (the bath tub woman), and familial. However Wendy, whose roles included both domestic and familial became the final girl and even takes over her husband’s job when he becomes ill, which in fact shows her in a progressive light.  In Eden Lake the roles shown were mainly domestic and familial, although a female gang member also seemed to have a rather passive role in the gang which supports Tunstall’s theories. Even Jenny, the final girl and female protagonist has a domestic role associated to her in relation to her career. But she does become increasingly monstrous in the film to combat her enemies which does support the idea that horror is progressive.

When it comes to the ‘male gaze’ I did find some evidence of this in the films that I watched, for example in Eden Lake the gang looked at Jenny, (the protagonist) through a male gaze, but this gaze is undermined through the use of close ups of Jenny which makes her the subject and allows us the audience to identify with her and feel her disgust at the gang. This goes against theories put forward by Mulvey. In The Shining, the naked bath tub woman is objectified, but this gaze is also undermined by her transformation to an old woman. It almost punishes the audience for looking at this character in that way by changing her into something that they would not like to see. When it comes to Halloween the male gaze is used frequently through Michael’s point of view; characters Annie, Linda and Judith are looked at objectively. However, Laurie is not objectified and later on becomes the subject of the film; we are increasingly put into her perspective. In terms of the male gaze I would say that horror is progressive, with exceptions to the film Halloween the others did display the male gaze but in both cases was undermined through the ability to identify with the female protagonists. Even with Halloween the fact that Laurie was not objectified could arguably be enough to say that it is indeed progressive too.

And finally narrative, to investigate this I decided to count how many deaths there were in each film and compare the number of males compared to females to see if females were punished particularly more than males. Mostly in horror films the idea is that females get punished for transgressing male rules involving sexuality and how men should be in control. Generally I found that in fact females were not significantly punished more than males were, in some cases the death counts were equal such as in The Shining. In Halloween the female deaths were slightly higher, a 60% female and 40% male ratio existed but this percentage isn’t overly higher than the males and was probably due to the fact that there were more female than male characters anyway. Eden Lake also showed roughly equal death counts and therefore suggests that horror is a progressive genre.

Overall, horror shows progressive qualities such as the narrative and male gaze but it does also contain aspects of traditional representations of gender. Each film did support the idea of a final girl character, showing masochistic identification but it did also show typical representations of female roles such as domestic and sexual roles. The male gaze in horror appears to be something that undermines its effectiveness and almost punishes those who participate in it. In conclusion I personally think that horror is a progressive genre, although it may contain aspects of typical female roles it also allows the audience to identify with a female protagonist and does not represent her in any stereotypical way, and isn’t the main character and her story the part the audience focus on and become involved in anyway?