The Representation of Women in Horror Films

I am researching how women are represented in Horror Films. In horror films women are typically represented as a damsel in distress, someone who needs to be rescued and taken care of as they are incapable of looking after themselves. The women that we see in horror films tend to vary little in age and appearance, they all tend to be young women who are quite ‘pretty’ or attractive. Woman are also overly sexualised in horror films, as Laura Marley said that the camera uses sadistic objectification on women to give the audience a ‘Male Gaze’ to make them seem more like objects than people. Shots to make these ‘Male Gaze’ include long body shots, panning/looking up at the woman. It has always been conventional to horror films that the women are supposed to be portrayed as a figure of beauty and desire whilst the villain is portrayed as a gruesome heartless killer. The women who are attacked within horror films by the villain/murderer are often represented as ‘sluts’ and people who are involved in drugs or various sexual acts. Up until the 1970’s horror films were mainly half-dressed or nude woman running about screaming until they fall into their own death. This was the genres way of trying to justify the death of all these women, portraying them as bad or ‘slutty’ people to try to make it seem as if they were deserving of the death that was brought upon them. Usually these woman aren’t always seen as vulnerable, as they think they have their pick of anyone and can generally get what they want. It wasn’t until the mid 1970’s when women started to becoming more powerful in horror films, this was due to the rise in feminism, it appeared that women had begun to get sick of being represented as the hopeless, weak women who could not do anything for herself. Carol J Clover came up with the term ‘Final Girl’ in her book ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film’. The ‘Final Girl’ within horror films began to emerge – a girl who’s strength, intelligence and determination to live would develop throughout the entire film to ensure that she lived on until the very end. This ‘Final Girl’ would be able to outsmart and face up to the killer, but come close to her death several times – leaving the audience constantly on edge. Although this whole idea of female strength was appealing to many females, it is quite obvious that as the film develops this ‘Final Girl’ is actually slowly becoming more of a masculine figure than feminine, and the traits that they are giving her are typically male. They normally have quite a unisex name, such as Alex or Billie to emphasise the idea that they are not like a typical girl.

In the 1950’s the first appearance of women as the ‘monster’ appeared with the film ‘Attack of the 50FT Woman’. This film is about an abused wife who grows to a giant size after an alien encounter, who then uses this to her advantage and goes after her cheating husband, destructing anything in her path. The idea of women as monsters/killers was not very popular, as it was very different to the conventions of horror films. In films where women are seen as the killer there is always a reason for it, in many horror films where women are the killer it is due to them seeking revenge on someone who has either done wrong by them or done wrong by society. A more recent film called Hard Candy (2005) is about a teenage girl who lures a paedophile into his doom and kills him, in some kind of retribution for the people whom he has hurt and killed.