The Portrayal Of Women In Horror Films

The act Of Wo men In plague FilmsThis dissertation will consider the aims of women in the curse exposure music genre and will deconstruct the focal point in which the conventions of the repugnance mental picture prescribe such occasions. Despite continued criticism for presenting women in a negative manner, to a greater extent of the frivol away(predicate)s explored here appear to suggest inexpugnable feminine meetation so it will possible to investigate the touch of the feminine from a number of different angles all in allowing a fluid advanceds and counter argument. The supine fe young-begetting(prenominal) positions will be studied from the survey of the manful gaze and abasement, whilst participating pistillate roles will be explored from the role of the fret and the outcome of The lowest Girl.As it would be impossible to talk everyplace the entire hi bill of the nuisance genre and charrs relationship to it indoors the lieu available, so three ch osen films will support the discussion. In all cases these films atomic number 18 regarded as classic abhorrence films and, importantly, landmark and water draw moments in the curse genre. psychotic (1960), The Exorcist (1973), and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) all represent meta statements in the history of the genre and provide indwelling examples of the arguments discussed here. It should also be noned that all three films contain also ambiguous fe young-begetting(prenominal) characters for example Mrs Bates in Psycho, the cross dressing Leatherface in The Texas Chain precept Massacre and the possessed Regan in The Exorcist who will all be debated.Signifi so-and-sotly the films were produced and released during periods of change for womens rights, including the beginnings of the womens liberation movement in the early sixties though to the publishing of The Fe anthropoid Eunuch by Germaine Greer, and Sp be costa magazine in the seventies. This help to fuel the debat e oftentimes signifi assholetly as the selected films span a time when women in the documentary orb (as opposed to the constructed origination of the picture show) had made great steps toward equality d champion the feminist movement. curse films argon told as stories of good versus evil. The drama of their narratives tends to educe from the clash in the midst of a monster and an innocent,So I trust to determine why so many gratuitous, un comelyified acts of violence towards charcleaning lady could be justified on screen. I will consider the hobby aspects masculine gaze, abasement, family social organisation, and the outcome of the final daughter in the circumstance of wickedness film genre. These are four super C tendencies embedded within the belles-lettres of women and hatred film and the background to these discussions will be framed within the context of the chosen films.This writing will deconstruct and examine the structure of those films, the motive s behind their structure, and will consider their target hearing. It will examine the symbolization that is utilize to express the plats and sub-plots and, most importantly, consider the roles of the young-bearing(prenominal) characters in those films.I will employ psychoanalytic and feminist theory to explore the fe phallic roles and will interpret commentary on Freudian and Lacanian theory, including castration worry and the role of the subconscious and apply them to abomination film. Semiotic and populist panorama will also be considered to set out this debate.Much has been written on the subject and over twenty confines puddle been researched to discuss this term of women and horror film in detail. Key texts include Ways of see (1972) by John Berger, Men, Women and Chain Saws Gender in the Modern mutual exclusiveness Film (1992) by Carol J. Clover, The Monstrous-Feminine Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993) by Barbara doctrine and Powers of repugnance (1982) by Julia Kristeva. The texts outline the intellectual context into which this dissertation enters.People call for that horror film exclusively represent women in a uttermost-right fashion, tho further analysis has suggested that female characters are non as weak and undefended as they first may appear. For example The Final Girls last moments defy been radically written and rewritten across the re piddle aways and sequels to give new meaning.Analytical and abstractive analysis has been in shited by the writing of Laura Mulvey and in particular her discussions of the male gaze. Mulvey argues in her polemic bear find Visual joyousness and Narrative Cinema that movie was primarily created for the male witness exploiting women as objects of desire. Julia Kristevas essay The Powers of detestation provides essential understanding on the position of debasement in the context of horror and mortality. All of the to a higher place writers discuss theoretical studies and theories of Dr Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan who are both indirectly summonsd byout this dissertation. Barbara Creeds The Monstrous-Feminine and Carol Clovers book Men, Women, and Chainsaws will in fashion model debate around the matriarchal figures in Psycho and the outcome of the final lady friend in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.CHAPTER 1 Gendered SpectatorshipThe male gaze is made explicit in the horror genre, and this is inscribed in both the aesthetics of the films and its exhibition context. ane of the most important essays nigh women in movie theatre is Laura Mulveys theory on the male gaze. As Mulvey statesThe celluloid offers a number of possible sports. One is scopophilia ( joyfulness in aspect). There are circumstances in which wagering itself is a source of pleasure (1989, p16).(do I reference?) If scopophilia can be pay backd as love of looking or deriving pleasure from looking, then this can be a definition of the cinema hold out. Cinema is, after(prenominal) all, a pull in of optic entertainment. It involves the individual singularly engaging with the screen and its projections as a fig of escapism and even relaxation, and can be comfortably achieved alone as it involves very few social skills, since the viewing sense of hearing hardly commitment to the wait on is to look. However, once we question how the film is viewed and who views the film, the relationship becomes more complex.The purpose of this essay is to question how the female is viewed from the military position of the spectator to question how women are portray in horror films, and how they are looked at. It will explore the argument that cinematic looking comes from a male perspective and will question what descriptor of pleasure is obtained from looking at horror films from this perspective. As Mulvey explains The cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking (1989, p17).It allows the spectator the fortune to notice in an entirely passive role while th e action takes post. The experience of cinema is a one-sided arrangement between the film itself and its viewer. However, as Mulvey discusses regarding Dr Sigmund Freud, it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect (1989, p17).Scopophilia can also suggest that sexual pleasure can be derived from looking at objects that how they are interpolated can ground them tickling, and while they are not erotic in their own right through their relationship with the spectator they can become sexually objectified. The famous psychologist Dr Sigmund Freud isolated scopophilia as one of the broker instincts of sexuality which exist as drives independently of the erotogenic zones. At this point he associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and suspicious gaze (Mulvey,1989, p16).The history of art emphasises this aspect of scopophilia. Throughout art history, painters have been commissioned to paint female models as objects of desire that have been and tranquillise are masquerading as works of art more closely colligate with pornography than with the great masterpieces.Moving forward, Clover debates that the cinematic gaze, we are told, is male, and just as that gaze k nows how to fetishize the female form in pornography it also, she suggests (going on to relate this to cinematography), knows how to follow a female character as she moves through a forbidding dwelling house, and scrutinise her face for signs of idolise in a way that it does not do with male characters, sincea set of conventions we now take for parcel outed barely sees males and females differently. (1992 p50-51).This suggests that the ownership in the context of cinema is the cause of the effect that the viewer, by objectifying the figure on screen, gives it new meaning, a new social protrude. By simply being viewed, new rules apply. To place this into the context of women within horror, the male can now view the adul t female and the conditions and events around her in a newly detached manner and freely let the actions against her take place on the screen.In psychoanalytic terms, the female figure poses a deeper problem. She also connotes something that the look continually circles around plainly disavows, claims Mulvey (1989, p21). This could be suggesting that as the spectator is clutchd to be male, the appearance of a female (ie non-male) form creates an anxiety around the potential for castration and an un-penised em frame hence unpleasure.Mulvey argues in Lacan and Post feminism by Elizabeth Wright (2000, p45-46) that the look is link up to the discovery of sexual difference, and that the lack of a penis must be filled by multiple images of glamourised women as a substitute for the conceptional phallus.Mulvey writes that cinema, and in particular horror cinema, is inclined to focus fear on the kind-hearted form (1989, p17). The charitable form and the benevolent condition are key a spects in the horror genre, especially the female body. Horror displays nonrational and exaggerated versions of our basic desires and a strong and aggressive version of body lust. The horror film in particular relies on the physical human race form and ill will towards the body to carry its plots and storylines in the most original sense. This is clearly not a pictorial state of being to be seated in a darkened room, with a huge extraneous screen in view and surround sound at advanced volume. provided this is the environment of the cinema, where the viewer is asked to focus on exaggerated and primitive events far beyond the realms of real life in the name of entertainment. Here, not distant in other places in the media, the female form is popular, to be exhibited again for entertainment and it is the female characters in the horror film genre that appear to command most of the attention on the cinema screen. Mulvey suggests that, since the world displays such disparities between the genders, with the masculine nearly continuously holding the reins of provide Do I reference here as well?pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly (1989, p19).So since society isnt equal in terms of who holds the power, either sexually or otherwise, women act a certain way because they are aware of how men attend them to be that is, passive and sexualised. Mulvey states this as a symbolic equation, woman = sexuality. (1989, p35).John Berger differentiates men from women as he describes a mans presence as being defined by what he is capable of doing to you or for you tho the pretence is always towards a power which he exercises on others. (1972, p39-40) dilateMulveys view is that narrative cinema positions its spectators as male, catering moreover for male fantasies and pleasures (p39 Feminist Film Theorists). This suggests that women are objectified in film in popular (and for the purposes of this argument, substantially in horror films). Mulvey also claims that the spectator/viewer/audience is said to be a man cinema well-nigh expects its viewers to be male and therefore creates characters and plots to fulfil a mans gaze. So prevalent is this intuitive feeling that Mulvey claims narrative cinema does not offer a place for female spectators(p40 Feminist Film Theorists) that cinema essentially isolates the female as a serious viewerAs the spectator identifies with the main male protagonist, he projects his look onto that of his like, his screen surrogate, so that the power of the male protagonist as he controls events coincides with the active power of the erotic look, both magnanimous a satisfying sense of omnipotence. (Mulvey, 1989, p20). Shorten intelligibly men can easily identify with the male protagonist but the female audiences have to distance themselves from their femininity in rules of order to par ticipate in the cinematic experience critics refer to this as gender confusion. Freud would argue that to share these experiences, woman would have to revert back to her pre-Oedipal phallic phase.It might now be relevant to explore the male gaze particular(prenominal)ally functions in the context of the horror genre.Looking back at the history and evolution of the horror film, the cinemas flourished at a time when there was less available to the globe and strong moral codes and rules to the highest degree relationships were in place. The clichd idea of horror films was being scripted and edited to fulfil the role of the dating fit on a Saturday night. (pg 61 Horror The Film Reader edit by place Jancovich (different authors per chapter)The cinema was a place where young couples could get off family life for the few hours of a date. It allowed them space to be alone unneurotic at a time, before the sexual revolution, when men were expected to be chivalrous and protect and pro vide support for their female companion, as Mark Jancovich explains Women cover their eyes or hide behind the shoulders of their dates. (pg 61 Horror The Film Reader Edited by Mark Jancovich (different authors per chapter). This then created an opportunity for the male viewer to comfort his date as she squirmed and shrieked at the on-screen horror. He could become closer and more intimate as she was lured into pic by the action projected in front of her. Mulvey full(prenominal)lights this dominant orderAs an advanced representation system, the cinema poses questions nigh the ways the unconscious mind (formed by the dominant order) structures ways of seeing and pleasure in looking. (1989, p15) quote or include in text.Given this climate, the notion of the girl as victim was allowed to evolve. A connection could then be made between the female viewer and her on-screen female counterpart, in that the spectator cannot bear to look on helplessly as her cinematic alter ego that is, a close representation of herself suffers the horrors of rape, mutilation and death penalty.Mulvey argues that women have had two different functions within cinema as erotic objects for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic objects for the spectator within the auditorium. (1989, p19)There is clear evidence of this in Tobe Hoopers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It follows the story of a group of young Americans as they venture into the countryside and meet their helping in the shape of a disturbed and hostile cannibalistic family whose weapons of option are butchers tools and chainsaws.The three young men meet their deaths quickly, paving the way for the females more drawn-out and gratuitous torture. While one of the women meets her slow, lingering pot via a meat hook and deep freezer, the other is chased and hag-ridden repeatedly across the final third of the film.Female characters in horror films are generally young and attractive. They maintain a key role in t he film examples of this would be Laurie in Halloween and Marion in Alfred Hitchcocks infamous Psycho. When Michael Myers pretty sister meets her fate in the opening scene of Halloween, she is pursued by (and through the eyes of) her killer indeed, throughout Halloween the story is often seen/told through the eyes of the killer, a technique referred to as the POV (point-of-view) shot. entirely before the murder takes place, the audience are offered a completely superfluous view of her slashting body, seen through the male gaze as she brushes her hair.It could be argued that the female characters study many on-screen hours and appear to dominate the films, yet on closer control the real lead role is rescue for the star psychopath, who is almost always male. It could be debated that male spectators are therefore being asked to identify with the killer. With esteem to Halloween there are a number of shots explicitly from Myers physical point-of-view with an acoustic close-up of his monstrous heavy breathing (Isabel Pinedo 1997, p52). It cannot be turn up that the whole audience identifies with him but they are forced to see through his murderous gaze, which almost compels a form of affinity.Horror genre is traditionally thought of as low culture. It has a casual tone and audiences have grown to expect violence, nudity and cheap thrills. This position in low culture appears to grant a licence to horror films to get away with more than high art cinema, and horror is rarely studied for meaning or fiction to the same extent. But because of these lower expectations, the reality can be stretched (not unlike in cartoons), leading to irrational storylines with horror far more total than could be expected in real life. Therefore, it could be argued that horror films make explicit the assumption of a male spectator which is, according to Mulvey, only implicit in all popular cinema. Other films, under the extort of higher expectation, have to keep such a miso gynist perspective more contained, but horror can afford to make it overt.Clearly all normal rules do not apply. So, once reality is dropped in favour of visual pleasure, why do we ask audiences to witness hostility and brutality against women? Brian De Palma assesses the motives behind this argument. It is, he suggests, not that women are presented for male pleasure but that they provide a greater capacity for terror in the audienceIf you have a haunted house and you have a woman walking around with a candelabra, you fear more for her than you would for a husky man. (Clover, 1992, p42).This provides a greater margin for a violent death. But why is this? Why would a woman be more vulnerable than a man in this age of equality? The answer to this lies far deeper than in the relatively trivial world of the slasher movie or psychological thriller.This genre is simply a form of entertainment and perhaps not the place for intellectual analysis, as John Carpenter hinted when he was challen ged with the notion that he is responsible for the tasteless bargainacre of sexually active women. He claimed that, although the victims in his (and so many other) horror films are indeed the more sexually active characters, to insist that this is why they die is to miss the essential pointThey get killed because they are not paying attention. How do I reference Carpenter?And it could be argued that academics were reading a little too much into Halloween, since a male character is also murdered straight after sex with his girlfriend. One could even claim that this balances the plot and clears the director of the care that he is somehow guilty of misogyny. However argues that His death is usually only a device to remove protection from the now vulnerable female. (pg one hundred sixty-five Bitches, Bimbos). This suggests that the male character is now secondary and his death is insignificant by comparison to the murder of the female.It could also be argued that Carpenter and other celebrated film makers just want to make entertaining horror and dont show to make hateful statements against women, or objectify them for the male gaze, but that this is simply what people find exciting and why they fill up cinemas. disregarding of Carpenters intentions, the standards of what is considered entertainment tell us a great deal about our views towards women in horror cinema and perhaps in society as a whole.CHAPTER 2 The Abject FeminineThe ultimate figure of abjection is the corpse. As the horror genre is ultimately obsessed with death one could suggest that horror fetishizes the abject. It has been suggested that the horror film attempts to bring about opposite with the abject. (p4 Horror Film and Psychoanalysis Freuds Worst Nightmare.)Creed refers to Kristevas notion of the knock againstWhen we say such-and-such a horror film made me sick or scared the shit out of me we are actually foregrounding that specific horror film as a work of abjection or abjection at work almost in a unfeigned sense. (1993, p10)By the presentation of repulsion one knows what is not repulsive to understand abjection one must understand boundaries. As we grow up we stop playing in dirt and become more dignified this is something we learn from society as well as from our mothers teaching us how to be clean and proper. This notion references Lacans concept of the mirror stage, Kristeva supportsIt is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not admire borders, positions, rules. (1982, p4).Woman and abjectionThe horror genre has a historical movement to represent the female form as abject. In Kristevas view, woman is specifically related to polluting objects, which fall into two categories excremental and menstrual. This in turn gives woman a special relationship to the abject. (1982, p10)What we are scared of is not the matter that we drop off but what it signifies loss of identity, loss of control, death and the unknown. Nor is it the end of a natural life that contributes to the tension of horror cinema, but an endless list of terrible deaths that we could possibly encounter.Paul Wells backs this notion with his comments on the forbidden facets of the human body its propensity to foul secretions and physical corrosion which are tie in to our relentless descent towards death, and which are reflected in images of abjection in the horror film (2000, p16).IS THIS 2ND PERSON? When we are children our parents encourage us to reckon boundaries about cleanliness and demeanour, and we reject the abject. But in the context of the horror film there is perverse pleasure that allows us to explore our curiosity about the abject. The abject confronts the repressed/un-civilized side of the ego and allows us to investigate the other. The horror film makes good use of the abject. Julia Kristeva uses her experience with draw as a child in an attempt to explain the idea of ab jection diet loathing is perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of abjection. When the eyes see or the lips touch that skin on the come to the fore of drawI experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly and all the organs shrivel up the body, have tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forehead and hands to perspire. Along with sight-clouding dizziness, nausea makes me balk at that milk cream, separates me from the mother and father who proffer it. (p23 Powers of Horror An Essay on Abjection by Julia Kristeva). Does this need to be cut?This could suggest that when a skin forms on top of milk, it is crossing over a border or breaking a rule regarding what is satisfactory as good food, and so the milk is no longer pure. The milk has perhaps split into two milk being the acceptable form and its solidified state being the abject. Hence it fulfils a analogous role in our imagination as a corpse does over a living, breathing b ody. We will no longer accept/drink the milk as it has turned bad and represents death, a state beyond living.The paternal body grows and delivers a living being but it is also the sister of the corpse so it can remind us of life but also death. If we confronted the abject in everyday life we would be eer aware of our own mortality.Milk described in the context above provides an effective example of abjection, as it suggests the differential between acceptable breastfeeding as a child and unacceptable breast-feeding as an adult.The Exorcist was the first of many ownership films. Its premise involves an innocent young girl named Regan McNeil who displays abnormal behaviour in the middle class American home she shares with her mother and house keeper. Throughout the film her father appears absent so it is her mother (Chris McNeil) who bears witness to the profound and hostile series of events and paranormal behaviour as the plot unfolds. Creed states thatThe possessed or invaded bei ng is a figure of abjection in that the boundary between self and other has been transgressed (1993, p32)by the reprimand himself, who appears to be the only male central figure in the film until the arrival of a psychiatrist and two Roman Catholic Priests. inside the plot of The Exorcist, Regans character is a vehicle that allows the portrayal of abjection to the mass audience. Had a young boy been cast in a similar role, the horror could have been undermined, but due to our own preconceptions of femininity and youth, the possession portrayed within this young girl only adds to the horrific events. Regan is the most passive of female victims, repeatedly switching from tearful little girl to demonic aggressor. She expels her corporal fluids, blood, vomit and urine she is a playground for bodily wastes (1993, p40). Creed goes on to point out that the female body is more abject because its maternal functions acknowledge its debt to nature 1993, p11). She also points out that, as Reg an cavorts and flaunts herself, we become all too aware of the forbidden fascination of the abject, as well as its horror, inherent in the fact that this young girl has overtly flouted her respectable feminine function, and hasput her unsocialized body on display. And to make matters worse, she has done all of this before the shocked eyes of two male clerics. (p 198 Post-Theory Reconstructing Film Studies. edited by Bordwell, D and Carrol, N)Creed (1993, p37) puts forwardIn Kristevas view the abject represents that which disturbs identity, system, order. Regans possessed soul projects this through levitation and deep communicate foul language. As the film continues, an exorcism takes place in the form of a battle between the Church and the Devil. If religion could be used to explore the abject, no film does it more tellingly than in The Exorcist. Creed puts forward, according to KristevaKristeva argues that, historically, it has been the function of religion to purify the abject. ( 1993, p14)As the film comes to an end, Regan is saved by the church and restored to purity. She turns to hug the one person who saved her a male Priest, or perhaps God himself?SpectatorIn the real world, when confronted with something genuinely repulsive, we reject that object of repulsion. But in the cinema it is not necessary to fully block what confronts us.The positioning of the spectator within the cinema experience must be recognized if abjection is going to be fully absorbed. The viewer happily sits as the spectacle of horror unfolds and is projected onto them. though the viewer has no control over the events projected before them, the blistering acts witnessed by the spectator can comfortably be dismissed when the impute roll and the film is over.Viewing the horror film signifies a desire not only for perverse pleasure where boundaries are crossed, both attracting and revolting (confronting sickening, horrific images/being filled with terror/desire for the undifferentiate d) but also a desire, once having been filled with perversity, taking pleasure in perversity, to mould up, throw out, eject the abject (from the safety of the spectators seat).CHAPTER 3 The Absent sufferRelationships in the maternal melodrama are almost always between mother and daughter it is to the horror film we must turn for an exploration of mother-son relationships. The last mentioned are usually represented in terms of repressed Oedipal desire, fear of the castrating mother and psychosis. Given the nature of the horror genre its preoccupation with monstrosity, abjection and horrific familial scenarios the issues surrounding the mother-child dyad are generally presented in a more extreme and terrifying manner. (Creed,1993, p139) Cut downOne area of female representation that is more ambiguous is the figure of the amaze in the horror film genre. No longer could the killer be simply defined by gender. At the beginning of the 1960s audiences were subjected to a new kind of cinematic terror, as explains in her essay The monster was no longer out there it was in here. The monster was the human mind. (Pg 160 Gary, J and Sheila, S (ed) Bitches, Bimbos and Virgins Women in the Horror Film)As Hitchcocks psychological thriller Psycho was released The early sixties audience would be led to regard that the approachable Norman Bates (played by Antony Perkins) was simply a victim of his over-zealous mothers bullying. But as the plot unravelled, the film presented a deeply obsessive human mind as the real monster, as Steven Jay Schneider further explains When used to shed light on horror cinema, psychoanalysis in its various forms has proven to be a frightful and provocative interpretive tool (Pg 187 Schneider, S. J. Horror Film and Psychoanalysis Freuds Worst Nightmare)The film follows its self-sufficient central female character, Marion Crane, jaded by her affair with a married man, as she embezzles a large amount of money from her male employer and leaves t own in hunting of a new life. On arrival at the infamous Bates Motel she meets the proprietor, the twitchy but approachable and, more importantly, passive Norman Bates, who is clearly attracted to Crane, something she comfortably takes in her stride, suggesting a non-passive female.However, on closer inspection, Marions actions throughout the first section of the film are defined by male characters she comes into affect with her lover Sam, her male employer and the male client, the highway patrol officer and Norman Bates who all define her destiny with their attitudes towards her.Robert Kolker supports this theory Psycho the mix of pleasure and pain common to all horror viewing, and aligned with a feminine subject position, is negotiated differently by men than by women. (p193 Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho A Casebook edited by Robert Kolker)Throughout the first part of the film Marion is portrayed as feminine, attractive and defying the typical representation of women in horror films h owever, from the perspective of the male gaze Bates watches Marion, unbeknown to her, through a hole in the surround as she undresses and prepares to shower.Normans eye is filmed in extreme close-up, drawing attention to the activity of the voyeurism. (1993, p145). As the camera lingers on her it is this scene that suggests that Hitchcock cannot break away fully from the traditions of the horror genre where the female becomes objectified and is observed from the gaze of the active male. Norman Bates mother is another female character significant to the plot, not seen but heard off-screen discouraging her son from having any social contact with the newly arrived female and, throughout most of the film, verbally abusing her son. Surrounded by stuffed birds, Bates even states a boys best friend is his mother. The viewer can assume that he is a loyal and reliable son. However, as Lacans theorys are refered The botch is bound to its image by words and names, by linguistic representatio ns. A mother who keeps telling her son What a bad boy you are may end up with either a villain or a saint. (2010, p43)Norman Bates appears to be gentle and sensitiv