Gender in horror films


The representation of gender in horror films, particularly depictions of women, has been the subject of critical commentary.
Critics and researchers have argued that horror films depict graphically detailed violence, contain erotically or sexually charged situations which verge on becoming pornographic, and focus more on injuring or killing female as opposed to male characters. Many also perceive recurring themes of misfortune for male characters who exhibit overt masculinity or sexuality. Audience reception is suggested by researchers to be affected by the respective gender representation depicted in these movies.

Subgenres

Psycho-biddy

Psycho-biddy is a film subgenre which combines elements of the horror, thriller and woman's film genres. It has also been referred to as Grande Dame Guignol, hagsploitation, and hag horror. Per Peter Shelley, the subgenre combines the concepts of the grande-dame and "Grand Guignol". Films in this genre conventionally feature a formerly glamorous older woman who has become mentally unbalanced and terrorizes those around her.
The genre is considered by scholars such as Shelley and Tomasz Fisiak to have been launched with the 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Films in this vein continued to be released through the mid-1970s and, per Fisiak, have influenced multiple areas, including music videos. Renata Adler, in her New York Times review for the 1968 film The Anniversary, referred to the genre as "the Terrifying Older Actress Filicidal Mummy genre."
Per Shelley, for a film to fall within the subgenre the movie must use grande guignol effects and have an actress who portrays the lead character as one "with the airs and graces of a grande dame". He further stated that common hallmarks of actresses in the subgenre included those who were "no longer considered leading lady material" or had "previously specialized in supporting roles", and "had not worked for some time".
The term and genre have received criticism, particularly in regard to claims that psycho-biddy films exploit actresses who have experienced or are vulnerable to ageism. Timothy Shary and Nancy McVittie noted the genre in their book Fade to Gray: Aging in American Cinema, stating that the "cycle of films renders the aging women at their core as monstrously 'othered' objects." Bustle writer Caitlin Gallagher criticized the term "hagsploitation", as she felt that it "shows a certain lack of respect for the actresses who starred in these types of movies", further noting that together with the term "psycho-biddy" the terms "use disparaging terms for older women — 'hag' and 'biddy' — to not only indicate how unattractive the female characters are in these types of films, but to also show that these characters are psychotic."
BFI's Justin Johnson commented on the genre, saying that "If Crawford and Davis didn't carve out this niche with Baby Jane and all the films that followed, then a lot of legendary actresses would not have had third career acts". Peter Shelley has argued that criticism of the psycho-biddy subgenre is inaccurate, as it implies that the actress is lowering her standards by acting in a horror film by also suggesting that her earlier work is superior. Shelley opined it also means the actress only portrays a character out of her usual range out of desperation.

Slasher

s are a subgenre of horror films featuring acts of violence portrayed in graphic detail. In his book entitled Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film, 1978-1986, author Adam Rockoff states, "The slasher film typically involves a killer who stalks and graphically murders a series of victims in a typically random, unprovoked fashion. The victims are usually teenagers or young adults who are separated from mainstream civilization or unable to access help easily. These films typically begin with the murder of a young woman and end with one female survivor who manages to subdue the killer, only to discover that the problem has not been completely solved". Carol Clover's Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film is generally thought of to be the cornerstone work of studying gender in slasher films.
Slasher films can include "scenes of explicit violence primarily directed toward women, often occurring during or juxtaposed to mildly erotic scenes". Although there are more male slasher film victims than female ones, a study of slasher films from the 1990s found that women were shown in fear for more time than men and that there were relatively more female victims compared to action films from the same period.

Torture films

Some critics suggest that the torture represented in the torture horror genre reflects contemporary modern western society. The methods of torture in these films are adapted from the discussion of terrorism. During the "war on terror", the film industry had trouble distinguishing between the characters of "torturer, victim, villain, and hero." Writers and directors of horror films had difficulty allowing their torturers and villains to survive after doing such heinous acts. Mashia Wester sees films such as The Descent, Saw, and High Tension as depicting "average Americans both as tortured victim and torturing hero." The heroes within these torture films do not actively torture but contribute to their own and others' suffering.
Eli Roth, the creator of the Hostel films, taps into an "undercurrent of anxiety about the place of gendered bodies in relation to torture as well as the connection between gender equality, torture, global capitalist venture, and the passive American consumer." Maisha Wester states in her article, "Torture Porn And Uneasy Feminisms: Re-Thinking Men in Eli Roth's Hostel Films", that the popularity of the Hostel films makes the questioning of gendered dominance "both elusive and inescapable in the face of capitalism since, within such a system, we are all commodifiable and consuming bodies."

Female roles in horror films

The treatment of women in horror films can be associated with the fear of the abject. Julia Kristeva explains the abject as "something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object. Imaginary uncanniness and real threat, it beckons to us and ends up engulfing us." Kristeva asserts that many are horrified by the abject because "it is something that disgusts us, yet comes from us or from which we come."

Women and the female body as monsters

Horror films use the female body as a form of an object. Aviva Briefel states in her article, "Monster Pains: Masochism, Menstruation, and Identification in the Horror Film," that menstruation is the start of monstrosity. Once a girl has reached puberty, she could be seen as filling the role of a monster within popular horror conventions. Horror films feed into the female monstrous identity through the monster's menstruation, since this is a point of contrast from male anatomy and physiology, making it uniquely feminine. Motherhood and menstruation become things which society is taught to find disgusting.
Additionally, Briefel separates the suffering of gendered monsters in horror films into two types: masochism and menstruation. Masochism is central to the identification of male monsters "who initiate their sadistic rampages with acts of self-mutilation." By contrast, female monsters do not commit acts of self-mutilation out of pleasure but instead "commit acts of violence out of revenge for earlier abuse by parents, partners, rapists, and other offenders." Female monsters will engage in masochistic acts when coerced or attempting to terminate her monstrosity. Briefel provides examples of such masochistic acts by female monsters with films like Carrie, The Exorcist, Stigmata, The Hunger, and Alien 3.
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 White 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 the character demonstrates what happens when women gain power and are no longer repressed. Carrie could portray the message to its audience that they must live in a patriarchal world, and if they fail to successfully integrate then this is what will come of it.

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."
Clover concludes that the final girl is "an agreed upon fiction male-viewers' use of her as a vehicle for his own sadomasochistic fantasies."
The final girl is one of the most commonly seen tropes in slasher films. The final girl is always female, usually a virgin, and according to Carol J. Clover, who coined the term, is the lone survivor of the slasher villain.

The Virgin

Female virgins are standard tropes of horror films. The genre frequently plays on the idea that threats can arise metaphysically or from inside the body, and virginity fits into this framework being an alleged, intangible construct within a person. Scholars like Tamar Jeffers McDonald argue that virginity is used as a "bridge" between ambiguity and reality to make sense of mysticism through ordinary means. Virgins are commonly depicted as "plucky heroines and sacrificial offerings, repressed psychos, and misunderstood monsters" as McDonald says.

Male roles in horror films

Repressive patriarch

In many horror films, 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 traumatized 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 incompetence, 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 exemplify 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, The Fly, Hellraiser series, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. All these horror films show examples of masochistic monsters that take pleasure in the pain they inflict on themselves; it is something they must endure to be monstrous.