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Women in film underrepresented essay
Representation of women in horror films
Representation of women in horror films
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Women love gore too. Since the beginning of time people have always been intrigued by storytelling especially ones that scare them. Stephen King the master of horror once said people love watching horror films simply because it keeps their sanity. “It may be that horror movies provide psychic relief on this level because this invitation to lapse into simplicity, irrationality and even outright madness is extended so rarely” (King). When people see a slasher film it gives them a chance to kill off “Annoying Bob” from the office in their heads. Horror films also tell the story about the culture watching them.“Horror films are to an observer of culture what frogs are to the medical student: dissecting them displays the anatomy of the culture behind them better than with any other genre” (Brashinsky). Horror film directors give great visuals for people to kill off people in their minds as well as tell the story of the culture watching them. Traditionally this genre has been dominated by male directors. The work of most women in film gets pushed aside. Women’s perspectives as well as their work often gets devalued. Women can and have created great horror films. In the horror genre women are depicted as the victims but in many movies women are the heroes or the villains as well the director. Very few female directors have gotten credit for their work on films, even on great films. Their work is discredited especially in the horror genre. The reason women have been shut out of horror is the same reason women been shut out of film: it’s a man’s field. Since the beginning of cinema women have been involved. They wrote, produced, and even directed. Unfortunately they were not given credit and written out of the history of cinema. The only... ... middle of paper ... ...Films In Review 47.1/2 (1996): 36. Academic Search Elite. Web. 25 Apr. 2014. Weaver, Matthew. "Kathryn Bigelow Makes History as First Woman to Win Best Director Oscar." Theguardian.com. Guardian News and Media, 08 Mar. 2010. Web. 28 April 2014. Bartyzel, Monika. "Girls on Film: 10 Horror Movies You Probably Didn't Know Were Directed by Women." The Week.com. The Week Publications, 25 Oct. 2013. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. Hall, R.D. Through a Dark Lens: Jackson's Lord of the Rings as Abject Horror. Through a Dark Lens: Jackson's Lord of the Rings as Abject Horror. 3-4 ed. Vol. 25. : Mythlore, 2007. 55. Print. (Spring-Summer 2007). Nightmares in Red, White, and Blue: The Evolution of American Horror Films. Dir. Joseph Maddrey. Lorber Films, 2009. DVD. Bartyzel, Monika. "Girls on Film: How Women Shaped Horror." AOL Moviefone.com. Aol, Web. 25 Oct. 2010. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
Horror genre conventions are evident in both films and the way they are directed has given me obvious indications on the effect the horror conventions can have on a film when used well, and the adverse effect when not used well. Both Japanese and American society are evident in these films, and the style of the films are similar to the nationality of the two directors. Horror conventions are used in both films, but the way they are used are quite different, and these contrasting styles are key in how effective the two films are to their audience.
Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton: Princeton Publishing, 1992.
Morgan, J. The biology of horror: gothic literature and film. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.
Among New American Ghost Cinema, one can witness the re-emergence of an interesting sub-genre: the Found Footage Cinema. We can observe this new fascination in many modern horror films such as 2008’s Cloverfield, 2009's Paranormal Activity, and 2011's Apollo 18. Digging below the surface of a literal reading of some of these movies, one finds a genre that can be far more intelligent than what meets the public eye. For example, within Cloverfield, the screams and images of smoke heaving through the city of Manhattan hint at post-September 11th. To understand the growing popularity of Found Footage Cinema and why we discover these political undertones, this paper will examine The Blair Witch Project (1999, Myrick and Sanchez) in the context of theorists Robin Wood and Jürgen Habermas’ discussion on humankind’s senses of truth and what our society represses or oppresses. Both Habermas’ essay “The Public Sphere” and Wood’s “Introduction to the American Horror Film” touch on the inner workings of the public’s mind. With these essays and an analysis of these films, I will be able to propose theories working towards a mode of critical engagement with the success of The Blair Witch Project. It is then that we will connect it to the wider social and political jungle surrounding America as it stood on the edge of the Twenty First Century.
There has been a large variety of horror films produced throughout the last fifty years. People are always going to be frightened and scared by different types of horror films. But, what type of horror film scares more people, and were men or women more frightened by these horror films? Each one of the horror films had its own agenda to frighten its audience using several different methods of horror. Some of these methods were more so directed at the female audience than the male audience. Most horror movies show the female as being vulnerable, because in real life females are defenseless against monsters.
Film scholars around the world agree that all genres of film are part of the “genre cycle”. This cycle contains four different stages that a specific genre goes through. These stages are: primitive, classic, revisionist, and parody. Each stage that the genre goes through brings something different to that genre’s meaning and what the audience expects. I believe that looking at the horror genre will be the most beneficial since it has clearly gone through each stage.
A Brief History Of Horror Movies. Ezine Articles. Spark Net, 10 Aug 2010. Web. The Web.
Film scholar and gender theorist Linda Williams begins her article “Film Bodies: Genre, Gender and Excess,” with an anecdote about a dispute between herself and her son, regarding what is considered “gross,” (727) in films. It is this anecdote that invites her readers to understand the motivations and implications of films that fall under the category of “body” genre, namely, horror films, melodramas, (henceforth referred to as “weepies”) and pornography. Williams explains that, in regards to excess, the constant attempts at “determining where to draw the line,” (727) has inspired her and other theorists alike to question the inspirations, motivations, and implications of these “body genre” films. After her own research and consideration, Williams explains that she believes there is “value in thinking about the form, function, and system of seemingly gratuitous excesses in these three genres,” (728) and she will attempt to prove that these films are excessive on purpose, in order to inspire a collective physical effect on the audience that cannot be experienced when watching other genres.
When one thinks of the horror movies of the 1970s and 1980s, scenarios of obviously fake gore and campy female actresses usually spring to mind as normally stereotypical elements of the genre. In addition to this, there is usually the character of the “final girl,” the female character who survives by either escaping or defeating the antagonistic force at the end of the film, who differentiates in language use and body language to the other females of the films who ultimately become victims to the murderous villain. However, the film Friday the 13th not only shows the difference in the language of the final girl, Alice, to the other young women in the film, but it also shows a fluidity of gendered style in Bill, one of the young men in the
Horror movies have been part of mainstream cinema since the early 1930s when films such as Dracula and Frankenstein were created. As the horror genre evolved, so did the stories in the films. Friday the 13th (Marcus Nipsel, 2009) is a very good example of this evolution. Even though it is a remake, Friday the 13th changed the way horror movies were seen by the audience. The ideas and theory behind this slasher sub-genre of horror films can be summed up in a book. Carol Clover, an American professor of film studies, wrote a book in 1992 entitled Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film in which she described the horror film genre. In a chapter entitled “Her Body, Himself”, Clover describes how weapons play a very important role in horror movies as well as explaining her Final Girl theory. Her book’s ideas changed not only academic notions but also popular beliefs on horror films. The 2009 remake of Friday the 13th implies that Carol Clover’s ideas about 80s slasher films, including male tormentors, the importance of weapons, and the Final Girl, have stayed the same through the years.
These movies allowed female characters to embody all the contradictions that could make them a woman. They were portrayed as the “femme fatale” and also “mother,” the “seductress” and at the same time the “saint,” (Newsom, 2011). Female characters were multi-faceted during this time and had much more complexity and interesting qualities than in the movies we watch today. Today, only 16% of protagonists in movies are female, and the portrayal of these women is one of sexualization and dependence rather than complexity (Newsom, 2011).
The overall purpose of Carol Clover’s essay “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film” is to illustrate the repetitive, predictable aspect that Slasher
In Hollywood today, most films can be categorized according to the genre system. There are action films, horror flicks, Westerns, comedies and the likes. On a broader scope, films are often separated into two categories: Hollywood films, and independent or foreign ‘art house’ films. Yet, this outlook, albeit superficial, was how many viewed films. Celebrity-packed blockbusters filled with action and drama, with the use of seamless top-of-the-line digital editing and special effects were considered ‘Hollywood films’. Films where unconventional themes like existentialism or paranoia, often with excessive violence or sex or a combination of both, with obvious attempts to displace its audiences from the film were often attributed with the generic label of ‘foreign’ or ‘art house’ cinema.
A fine example of the separation of foreign and American horror can be found in a comparison between Dario Argento's Suspiria and Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980)...