Representation of women in horror films

            Within the horror genre, there is a clear difference in the way that men and women are represented and even though women are all represented in a similar way. Every so often there will be a women character in a horror film that challenges this representation and also challenges the theories about women’s representation in horror films. The four theories that I will focus on when exploring the representation of women in horror films are The Final Girl theory and the Male Gaze theory.

Paris Hilton's character

            Laura Mulvey had a theory about the male gaze and this theory stated the male gaze occurs when the camera puts the audience into the perspective of a heterosexual man. It may longer over the curves of a woman’s body, for instance. The woman is usually displayed on two different levels: as an erotic object for both the characters within the film, as well as the spectator who is watching the film. The man emerges as the dominant power within the created film fantasy. The woman is passive to the active gaze from the man. This adds an element of ‘patriarchal’ order and it is often seen in illusionistic narrative movie. A good example of this is in the movie House of Wax, the character portrayed by Paris Hilton who in the film is mainly dressed in revealing clothes for example the pictures which show her dressed in her underwear and a letterman jacket. The reason for her being dressed in these types of outfits are because it is said men should be attracted to her and therefore this is a good selling point for the film however it doesn’t give a good representation of a woman. This is because it shows a woman as someone who doesn’t care for dignity and she dresses in similar ways to this for men and not for themselves. It has also been said that a lot of men like to watch women getting killed in horror movies rather than men and so Paris Hilton was a good actress to put in this film. Her character was killed off by Vincent (the murderer) who throws at pipe at her character which ultimately impales her through the head.

Drew Barrymore's character

            The next theory was one by Carol Clover who came up with The Final theory and in this theory she stated that the final girl in many of these works show similar characteristics: she is typically virginal and avoids the vices of other victims such as sex, illegal drug use and the hedonistic lifestyle. The character will sometimes have a unisex name such as teddy, Sidney or Billie and it may even be that the final girl has shared some history with the killer. In the film Scream there are two characters, one who conforms to the idea of Clover’s theory and another who challenges the theory. At the beginning of Scream there is a small scene where Drew Barrymore plays her character Casey Becker and this character comes across as someone who will fit the final girl theory. This is because she is dressed so everything is covered and comes across as a very plain looking student type girl, however the convention of the final girl is broken when she receives a phone call where she is asked to answer a question in order to save her life, refusing to answer her parents find her tied to a tree by her neck with slashes in her chest. By having a character who comes across as a final girl but isn’t a final girl is a good way of showing the audience that no matter how you dress or present yourself as a woman the same fate can happen to those who present themselves differently, and this represents women in a good light through horror because Barrymore’s character in particular is a positive way to show a teenage girl. 

Neve Campbell's character

            The final girl that conforms to this theory is also in the Scream movies and this character is Sidney Prescott - played by Neve Campbell. The first sign that this character could be a final girl is that she has a unisex name and this is a common trait with final girls. As Sidney’s character possessed other traits of the final girl theory it was easy for the audience to assume that she would be either the last one to survive and this is what happened even until the end of the franchise. It turned out in the third movie of the franchise that she was in fact half brother of Roman Bridger who was revealed to be the killer. By having the sole survivor for the movies as the half brother of the killer, it makes it more obvious that this character is meant to be the final girl as it is often realised that the final girl has some sort of connection with the killer themselves. The idea of having someone like Sidney Prescott as a final girl is a good way to represent women in horror films because her character is someone who is intelligent and vigilant, and this is what helps her survive as a character.

Sigourney Weaver's character

            Another example of the Final Girl theory is from the movie franchise Alien in which the character Ellen Ripley was identified as a final girl by Carol Clover herself. Ripley follows the traits of a final girl in that way that she looks with her masculine hair style and she is characterised by Clover who said that Ripley’s character had “smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual reluctance” and this was because her character worked as a ship’s mechanic and she would always reject sexual advances made by other male characters on the ship. The roles for women in society have changed slightly over the years and when Alien first come out it would have been different seeing a woman in the environment that Ripley’s character was in because typically the job that she was taking on is something that would have been done by a man because it was always seen as something that was masculine. Also through the way that her character dressed, it would have been seen as strange because she looked very masculine and as horror films and other films in general have advanced it is now more popular for the women in films to be dressed very differently to please the male eye rather than anything else. And so from all this, I think Ellen Ripley is the best representation of a final girl because of the time that her character came about, it would have been seen as a lot different and perhaps this is what has helped the movies advance in that way that there is a lot more final girls in movies now than there ever was.