Many feminists believe horror films such as Scream, which feature scenes of the blonde, promiscuous girl being killed off first, are derogatory and stereotypical. Horrors are notorious for placing the women within the role of the damsel in distress, too weak and feeble to defend themselves from the male aggressor. This depiction of women in cinema is exactly what Laura Mulvey was commenting on when discussing ‘The Male Gaze’. She believed that as an audience we are encouraged to view the female characters in films in a sexualised manner, as viewers we are meant to identify and sympathise with the protagonist who in the past, tended to be male. Film posters such as Amy Jones’s 1982 horror “The Slumber Party Massacre” feature a group of women in little clothing playing up to male fantasy, the phallic symbols within the image also emphasise the sexual connotations of the poster, many argue that Jone’s is therefore using sexuality to sell the film. However many believe that as a woman, she was emphasising the stereotypes in an attempt to subvert the feminist theory through highlighting how sexualised and at times derogatory cinema can be. Mulvey believes that during the 50’s and 60’s female characters were coded with ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ for example in Jacques Tourneur’s “Cat People” of 1942 where women only appear in provocative poses and tight clothing. However recently there have been more films which have adopted a feminist approach, classic films such as “Carrie” (dir. Brian De Palma, 1976), where there is a female protagonist, and although she is the killer the audience sympathise with her as she is depicted as the victim. The idea of revenge creating a strong female protagonist was developed recently in Mitchell Lichenstein’s “Teeth” (2007), where the female protagonist uses her sexuality to hurt the men who previously raped her, and again in “Jennifer’s Body”, where although the protagonist is shown as promiscuous and through the male-gaze focuses on the females sexuality eg lesbian’s kissing, Jennifer is seen punishing men and the audience are meant to relate to the smart girl who is essentially a heroin. This representation of female characters within cinema, lead to the creation of Carol Clover’s theory ‘The Final Girl.’
As an audience we are structurally ‘forced’ into identifying, not with the killer, but with the resourceful surviving female. Instead of identifying with the sadistic voyeur, Clover suggests our identification has switched to the victim (a masochistic voyeur). This theory is displayed in “Halloween” where the main protagonist is seen to be defending herself against the villain. She is seen falling down stairs, but she proceeds to act rationally and look for help whilst running from the killer. This is in contrast to previous films, where the women would have given up at the first hurdle, and admitted defeat against the killer. The final girl theory displays how cinema has categorised women, which reflect whether they’ll survive against the killer. The flirtatious, promiscuous blonde is the first to be killed, for example in Scream where Drew Barrymore’s character is killed almost instantly in the first scene. The virginal brunette in contrast to the promiscuous blonde is often ‘The final girl’ the person who rises to the challenge and against all odds survives. This is displayed in Halloween through the character of Laurie, who is essentially ‘the final girl’, grabbing the knife that the killer was using. This act connotes her gaining power and symbolises her strength through defending herself, and goes against the conventions of a woman’s role within a structuralist horror film.
Despite Halloween for the most part being a structuralist horror, made up of the conventional paradigms such as the masked killer, knifes, chase scenes and isolated areas, the character of Laurie as a representation of Clover’s final girl theory, puts a post-modern twist of the now classic 1978 horror film.
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