Women of Horror
Whilst going through the most celebrated cult classics of horror throughout “Spooky Season,” I happened to come across a copious amount of unsettling scenes featuring blatantly sexist violence – may it be verbal, symbolic or literal – against women. Some of the most celebrated films of the genre such as Brian de Palma’s Dressed to Kill, Dario Argento’s Tenebre and even Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho feature the ever-present portrait of women as hypersexual beings who are usually murdered as punishment for their indiscretions.
From the earliest horror films to this day, women have been sexualized, cut into body parts (both literally and metaphorically), silenced and punished for their gender, and a number of films can be pointed out in order to bolster this idea.
One of the most obvious and wide-spread ways in which horror presents female characters as less than the men is by making them the victim of a male killer or monster and subject to the heroic behavior of a male protagonist, leaving them as passive characters whose sole role is to scream in fear.
That brings in another characteristic of horror movies: women set into stereotypical versions of themselves. As said by Emily Perkins’ character in Ginger Snaps (2000), “a girl can only be a slut, a bitch, a tease or the virgin next door’’, all of which usually become the victims of violence because of their hegemonic character trait, something mocked by Scream (1996), which is aware of its usage of stock horror characters (such as Drew Barrimore’s character, who dies within the first minutes or Tatum Riley’s who dies in a laughable way) as metalanguage.
Whilst all of these characteristics can be seen in movies of other genres and styles, one thing that is inherent to horror, and the most problematic of representations, is highly sexualized violence. Slasher and giallo, two of the main subgenres of horror, repeatedly convey scenes where the rape and torture of women is fetishized, something which is very clearly not seen in the scenes with male victims. This sort of representation echoes a harmful coexistence of sex and violence, perpetuating violent misogyny as a neutral act.
Throughout the last decade, however, society has gone through changes which were echoed within the genre: more and more women have started to succeed as horror filmmakers. Films such as Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body or Julia Ducournau’s Raw and Titane represent depictions of women as actual characters of importance within the plot of the movies, strong women who have their own forces of thought and action, may they be heroes or villains.
And sex scenes are not the problem either, both women and many more who have come into the industry to make a shift of views within horror movies and present eroticism as an important part of their films. The point is that, as said by Beth Younger within “Women in Horror: Victims no more’’, “the genre has moved from taking pleasure in victimizing women to focusing on women as survivors and protagonists. It has veered away from slashers and torture porn to more substantive, nuanced films”.
These movies and others made by men throughout history have been successful as some of the best films of the genre, such as Abel Ferrara’s Ms 45, David Cronemberg’s Videodrome and Crash and Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, because they place women within the center of their narratives and make use of sexual imagery in a way that’s not detrimental to women whilst appealing to men.
The one thing that can actually change the images of women we see within horror movies is placing more and more of them behind the scenes, writing the dialogues, directing the pieces and controlling what we see through the camera. To name a few, aside from the aforementioned Julia Ducournau and Karyn Kusama, Anna Biller, Cecelia Condit and Mary Haron are more directors to keep an eye out whilst looking for your next horror watch.