Gender and Character Identification In The Slasher

Kevin Winslow 

Gender and Character Identification In The Slasher

Blog Post #3

 

". . . Women in peril work better in the suspense genre. It
all goes back to the Perils of Pauline. . . . If you have a haunted house and you have a woman
walking around with a candelabrum, you fear more for her than you would for a husky man"

- Dario Argento

It is known that a viewer of a film will always attempt to identify with a character or some entity that is present within the film. The Italian director Dario Argento was known to be someone who would frequently turn gender roles within the horror genre on its head. Often his killers would appear gender neutral, featuring things such as disembodied hands or be non-human in nature. Due to the type of perspective the camera gives, the audience will identify with either the killer or the victim from scene to scene.  

The issue that the slasher sub-genre of horror usually needs to address is how could the viewer possibly fear for or identify with a character before they have any meaningful character development. According to Dario Argento the solution is simply to often fill these roles with young attractive women. Although he mentions essentially that if someone is going to be killed and they are irrelevant to the plot he'd rather be sexually attracted to the individual, he also makes a claim that there is an alternate reason for the frequent use of the female victim. This claim is that as a viewer you'd fear more for an innocent female victim than you would for a burly male character in a scenario where both characters are undeveloped. One could also then make the claim that the sex of the victim is not necessarily important but that the feminine characteristics of the victim along with their innocence would create the same internal reaction among viewers. 

One common trend is the use of the final girl in horror films. The final girl is a change against the trend of exclusive brutality towards females in horror that was commonplace decades prior. The final girl is in a sense the only good alive character that will actually have any meaningful character development by the end of the film. Often the final girl is the individual that first realizes that something isn't quite right about the situation they're experiencing. The final girl is the killer of the killer, even when she doesn't physically defeat the killer she'll either escape or destroy the killers plans. The final girl also represents a character that viewers identify with of the opposite sex, showing that male and female viewers can both identify with the killers and their victims regardless of their sex or gender.  

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), a film by Tobe Hooper, is a perfect example of an early horror slasher film that tackles the challenges of creating a compelling narrative in the sub-genre. One critique one could have of the slasher sub-genre is that the films are frequently more terror than horror. Often slasher films lack a solid atmosphere or have character development that would be impacted by the psychological effects of the horror. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre tackles this by transitioning the type of movie from a generic slasher into a psychological rollercoaster that would unnerve even the most stoic viewer. The way the film was shot almost gives it a home video sort of aesthetic, which makes it too real for comfort.

The film begins with a handful of potential victim characters that as a viewer you wouldn't identify with since they have zero character development. Early in the film the viewer is left to only identify with only two of the characters. One of the characters is a handicapped man; the audience would truly feel sorry for this man and as a result they end up identifying with him quite easily. The treatment he received from other characters makes the viewers subconsciously root against the rest of the characters when they confront Leatherface (the monster/killer figure). The only other character that the viewer would identify with early in the film is the killer itself (Leatherface). It may seem hard to imagine that anyone could identify with a grotesque genderless monster blob, but due to how scenes are shot, the viewer receives a sort of sadistic pleasure in seeing the initial killings take place. Identification with the killer by the use of the assaultive gaze is a common element in the horror genre. The audience is often essentially forced to identify with the killer due to the use of point-of-view shots. Typically there is a competing character that as they're being developed the viewer's connection with the killer dissipates until the point where the viewer who once rooted for the monster is rooting for its demise. The change occurs in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when the survivor character is identified and that character starts receiving serious character development. 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre features a final girl, which is a bit of a surprise due to the fact that the final girl was sort of uncharacterized compared to the individual in the wheelchair, at least initially. After the shock of the murder of the wheelchair individual the audience would cling onto the next closest character they could identify with, this character happens to be the individual who ends up being the final girl. The film follows this character until the its conclusion, greatly developing her character along the way. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the earliest slasher films and one of the first to include the final girl. Films such as John Carpenter's Halloween and Ridley Scott's Alien greatly borrowed techniques from prior horror films including this film. When the final girl was tied up in the killers' house, the audience truly shares the trauma that the character is experiencing, the audience is able to identify with that character regardless of their sex. This sort of reaction is an example of the change of the roles females play-out within the horror genre. 

-Works Cited-

Clover, Carol. "Her Body, Himself - Gender in the Slasher Film." Horror: The Film Reader In Focus Routledge Film Readers. 77-86. Print.

Knee, Adam. "Gender, Genre, Argento." 213-30. Print.

Blog #3 Distruction of The Status Quo

In horror films the relationship between the monster, protagonist, and status quo, play a huge role in making the movie what it is. The films Texas chainsaw Massacre and The Shining are both perfect examples of horror films that personify how gender and the family play a huge role in the monster-protagonist-status quo relationship.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre shows how a family can still represent the traditional nuclear family, even though they butcher people and eat them. The fact that they’re all men does not change things either.  There are still the family aspects that come into play. During the movie the viewer can see that Leather Face is obviously the mother of the family, as he walks around with makeup and an apron on. All he wants to do is fulfill his motherly duties and protect his family from outsiders.  The father, grandfather and son are all represented by different men as well. They all have a very strong bond together, no matter how perverted it is. Another aspect of the movie is how the final girl plays into the female gender role. Through out the whole movie the stereotypical dumb blond main character is running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Her whole persona is a generalization of what men thought women would be like in these situations. Women were weaker, irrational and got into dumb situations, as seen in the movie.  “Women in peril work better in the suspense genre. It all goes back to the Perils of Pauline… If you have a haunted house and you have a women walking around with a candelabrum, you fear more for her than you would for a husky man.” (De Palma qtd Clover 77) This explains how gender is a large part of what makes certain scary movies actually frightening. It’s more believable to see a woman, scared and vulnerable, get attacked by a monster then for a man to.  The final girl also plays a part in how the move correlates the Monster, protagonist and the status quo. By having a woman out smart the male monster the status quo of male superiority is destroyed. By giving the women the power, it plays on the male views primal fear of their masculinity being taken away. Another horror film that dissolves a patriarchy with an empowered woman is The Shining

In The Shining the viewer watches in horror as a seemingly peaceful family is torn apart by the dwindling insanity of a father. Jack Torrance, that father, struggles to cope with the ever building stress that his guilt, work and his families downright isolation is causing him. As he looses his mind his rational thoughts all go out the window. From the beginning of the movie each move Jack makes to keep his patriarchal nuclear family only brings it closer and closer to destruction. Wendy, Jacks wife, takes on the role as the protagonist, fighting jack throughout the whole movie. This powers struggle is very similar to what occurs in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Jacks loss of power to Wendy causes her to gain masculinity.  She is seen at many times to be holding many phallic weapons. From bats to knives she is ready to assert herself has the dominant figure.  

The relationship between the monster, protagonist and status quo are demonstrated in both The Shining and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  The films show how the final girl can have such a large impact on the monster and the status quo.

Work sited

Clover,  Carol. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Horror, the Film

Reader. Ed. Mark Jancovich. Psychology Press, 2002. 77.

Gender Role Reversal in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

           In contemporary society, masculinity is defined by economic independence, physical strength, and boldness, while femininity is defined as the adaptation to male power. However, in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film “Psycho” he does not conform to the idea of masculinity and femininity as societal euphemisms for male dominance and female subordination. In fact, he expresses a role reversal where both sexes have acted outside of their gender assignment by adopting each other’s attributes. Nevertheless, to explain this more Hitchcock illustrates the men in this film of having a passive character while women have become aggressive.

            The audience is aware of the gender role reversal in Psycho notably in the scene where Marion’s sister Lila goes to explore the house and find Mrs. Bates, while Sam attempts to divert Norman’s attention. First, it should be noted that before Lila begins her search, the two find a paper with Marion’s handwriting on it by the toilet. Sam in return fills the norm of what is expected from a man by saying, “I don’t like you going into that house alone”. Hitchcock shows that Sam’s makes an effort to live up to the societal norm of a man being the protector of a woman; yet Sam sounds complacent when he says he will go and find Bates to keep him occupied. Sam’s gender performance in this scene shows that he is weak. He rathers Lila to do the searching which is identified as the masculine role, and he takes the easier submissive role of just interrogating. A question arises; why not use Lila as the decoy instead? She is a woman that could have used her feminine wiles in a heterosexual world to have Norman answer her questions. Furthermore, Hitchcock is conveying women in a different light where they shed their passiveness by assuming the aggressor role.

Hitchcock’s expression of Sam usurping the subordinate role is compensated with his hypermasculinity in the conversation scene he has with Norman. Upon entering the room Sam is portrayed to the audience as nervous by the tension in his body language, and reluctance to approach Norman too close. After all, he is aware that Norman is potentially dangerous, but he does not know how. He attempts to badger the information out of him, and it is here, where it is suggested that Norman thinks Sam is cognizant to his secret, (though in actuality he is not), when he says, “ Buy a new one, in a new town, where you wont have to hide your mother”. Evidently, Norman thinks Sam is on to him and he begins to stutter in his speech, as well as tensing up in his own body language. In this scene, Sam at a glance seems to have regained his masculinity because he is emphatic in his reasoning with Norman, which ultimately renders Norman in the female position as he becomes bothered and effeminate by Sam’s approach. However, Sam is still considered a failure in his gender role because he obtains the passive job yet still does not possess enough wit to pry information out of Norman.

           In regards to Norman and femininity Hitchcock shows Norman having two personalities inside of him, his regular self, and his adoption of “mother’s” personality. It should be noted that Hitchcock’s presentation of Norman in the film is not merely a person who has two sides to him but it goes deeper to them as two beings sharing one body. Norman’s character is expressed a commonplace misogyny. For example, if one is to refer to his regular self as Norman then the audience is aware of his passiveness throughout the film. Yet his personality of mother is projected as the person responsible of murdering the other characters in the film. In this sense, mother conforms to Hitchcock’s expression of gender role reversal in the film. Mother has masculine attributes where she is the aggressor holding no remorse after she kills the people. The audience may question that the true nature of Norman having a dual personality is to sugarcoat the true motif that he has not gotten over his Oedipal complex. Author Vivian Sobchack in her article, ”Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange ” writes, “The repressed in the genre is no longer the double threat found in the traditional horror film: an excessive will to power and knowledge as well as unbridled sexual desire. Rather, the repressed is patriarchal hatred, fear, and self loathing” (152). This answers the question to Norman’s misplace misogyny. He is ashamed of his sexual desires and projects his self-loathing on to the women he murders. He blames mother, another woman, and this represents Hitchcock’s idea of gender role reversal with women ultimately being assertive and men as passive.

            In essence, Alfred Hitchcock’s film “Psycho” ultimately shows gender instability within the portrayal of female and male characters. Males such as Norman when he is not caught up with mother, and Sam demonstrates that they do not perform in the conventional sense of their assigned gender. Hitchcock allows women, who are commonly victimized in Horror as the victor of the screen. It is because of Lila the truth is unearthed and the audience learns that Norman has a dual personality. His second personality, mother, emphasizes that gender is socially constructed because everything that one would expect from male is performed through a female.

Works Cited

Psycho. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock. 1960.

Sobchack, Vivian. "Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange." 143-63.

Blog Post #3: Patriarchy in 28 Days Later

"28 Days Later..." Return to the Status Quo

Ryan Chau

28 Days Later is a film that tells of humans surviving in a post-apocalyptic, zombie-infested world. All survivors seek to encounter a larger group, hoping to reestablish civilization and live without fearing for their lives. But the threat of zombies seems to occupy the protagonists, distracting them from the true threat of other, untrustworthy, survivors. The first two groups of survivors we encounter are friendly and loving. They live symbiotically, striving for survival, earnestly. Slowly, and not without loss, a family of sorts is formed between the group of survivors. Although Frank never truly exerts himself as a leader, he naturally becomes an unconditional single father. Sobchack states that “If Dad must become as an innocent child to represent the hope and promise of an imaginable future for patriarchy (which, in these versions of a single-parent family, accepts paternity), he must also give up his patriarchal power, his authority, to his children, retaining only its illusion, its image (and that at their indulgence)” (Sobchack, 156). With the lack of a real patriarchy, this family comes together with equality. This family has been set against the zombies, who, at the time, seem to be the clear monster, the main antagonist of 28 Days Later. The family works together closely to survive and stay clear of the zombies, and at times it seems as though they enjoy themselves, and mainly, each others company.

As hope arises of a civilization established by a military encampment, the movie almost seems to begin to achieve closure in the very elementary return of the status quo. The sudden change from passive to sinister of a group of survivors takes the audience by surprise. The moment that Frank, the alpha, dies, the tables turn, and now that they are relatively safe from the infected, humans become their own enemies.  The entire dynamic of the film has changed. The militaristic survivors have become the monsters. Other humans have become the subject to fear, there is no unity over a common enemy. What the initial group of survivors had thought was a return to normality became just another trap. This is where gender becomes a dire issue. The true reason of the radio message was to lure women to the encampment for the sole purpose of repopulation in an attempt to reestablish the status quo through patriarchal means. The men of the military encampment fully intend to force themselves on any women that they find under the guise of repopulation. The men tell Selena and Hannah to “dress up nice”, returning them to their femininity and removing their gender-neutral clothing. In this scene where they are forced to change, Selena is forced to kiss one of the soldiers in order to get them to leave the room, forced to use sexual indulgences as leverage. In order for our protagonists to overcome these monstrous militarized survivors, it seems that the patriarchy and gender roles set by these survivors must be abolished. So says Sobchack: “There is no narrative resolution for patriarchy in the horror film—except the denial or death of the father, finally impotent and subject to the present power of his own horrific past” (Sobchack, 159). 

Gross.

Jim takes advantage of the mansion, roaming its grounds and using his surroundings to take the militants by surprise. “A man’s home in bourgeois patriarchal culture is no longer his castle” (Sobchack, 145). Jim becomes a ruthless invader in order to save his faux family, releasing zombies and killing anyone in his way. Once the patriarchy is demolished, the status quo is reestablished, and Jim, Selena, and Hannah are set to live and prosper on their own. 

 Work Cited

Sobchack, Vivian. “Bringing it All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange.” The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Barry Keith Grant, Ed. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.

Gender and Family in Texas Chainsaw Massacre

What is “status quo”? It is defined by Webster dictionary as the existing state of affairs. That means that it is nothing more than the way things are in a normal situation. Most people choose to think of the status quo as the norm. It is simply the way things are normally. Horror films take the status quo move away from it. The purpose of horror films are the take an audience member outside of his or her comfort zone and out of their status quo. There is a connection between the monster, protagonist and the status quo. This connection can be seen through looking at gender roles and the view of the family. Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a great example of gender roles and the nuclear family being stretched.

In the film, the role of gender is shown in two ways: conventional and unconventional. The conventional gender roles can be seen in the relationship between Kirk and Pam. The film was made in 1974 while there was a movement where teens were moving away from the ideas of the nuclear family and into ideas of free loving and free thinking.  Kirk and Pam are the perfect example of this. Kirk is the strong masculine man while Pam is a more complacent woman who relies on Kirk for protection and confidence. She is seen wearing a backless shirt which would show her connection to the new movement of free thinking teens.

 The counterpart to them are Franklin and Sally. They are siblings so obviously the relationship between the two of them is different. The relevance their relationship has pertains to the gender relationship between the two them. Franklin is confined to a wheelchair. He has an inability to do many things without the aid of someone, and in this movie, that someone is his sister. The gender role is switched, Sally is empowered over her brother because of a simple ability, the ability to walk. This ability is what actually gets her saved in the end over her brother. “The idea of a female who outsmarts, much less outfights—or outgazes—her assailant is unthinkable in the films of De Palma and Hitchcock. Although the slasher film’s victims may be sexual teases, they are not in addition simple-minded, scheming, physically incompetent, and morally deficient in the manner of these filmmakers’ female victims” (Clover 84). Clover says this talking about his idea of the Final Girl. In most horror films preceding this, the blonde haired girl would inevitable die. But in Texas Chainsaw Massacre the blonde girl beats out her aggressors and survives in a sure-death situation.

Another unconventional view in this film is the view of the nuclear family. The murderers are a strange group of people that make up a family. You have a grandfather, father, and two sons. Just looking at this there is no nuclear family there at all. When looked into deeper, you can make the argument that there is one. Leather Face, one of the sons, is shown as a woman. When they are at the dinner table, Leather Face is wearing an apron and is serving dinner. The father is just as he seems, the father. He is the man of the house and just as he would be in a normal patriarchal household. He is protecting the boys from the dangers that they are not aware of, like getting caught. The father is the most public person in the family as he owns a gas station. Then there is the son who in this movie is the hitchhiker. He is the most immature one of the group proving that he is the child in their nuclear family. Carol J. Clover said, “If the killer has over time been variously figured as shark, fog, gorilla, birds, and slime, the victim is eternally and prototypically the damsel. Cinema hardly invented the pattern” (Clover 79).  This oddball version of the nuclear family is a different choice for a monster. They show that in the times the nuclear family is under threat.

            In this movie, all is returned to normal and the audience gets a feeling of relief when Sally is riding away in the back of the pickup truck. Her connection to her monsters is broken and therefore the status quo is reached.

 

 

Work cited

Clover, Carol. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Horror, the Film Reader. Ed. Mark Jancovich. Psychology Press, 2002. 77-86.

Blog #3

Chelsea Bristow

Two films that address the role of the patriarch and gender roles are The Brood and The Shining. In The Brood, the father, Frank, is the protector of his child, Candice. However, in The Shining, the father, Jack, only serves as the provider of his family and fails to be the protector of his child, Danny. The gender roles in these two movies differ. The woman in The Brood turns out to be the monster, while in The Shining, the woman is victimized the entire film. The Brood challenges the status quo by making the female the monster instead of the male, while in The Shining, the male is the monster. The films send different messages about the future of the patriarch. The ending of The Brood implies that the patriarch will live on, while the ending of The Shining implies progression.

In the final scene of The Brood, Frank pretends to want to be with Nola in order for her to happy, making her brood of evil children happy as well so they will let Candice free. Through this act, he is proving to be the true protector of Candice. On the other hand, in The Shining, Jack does nothing but provide. He takes the job at The Overlook Hotel to be able to provide financially for his family. Once they are settled into The Overlook Hotel, Wendy does all the caretaking for the hotel and Danny, while Jack sits back and writes.

In The Brood, the status quo of gender roles is challenges. The father ends up being the caretaker of the child, which isn’t typically his role. The mother ends up being the monster, which usually doesn’t happen in horror films.  In contrast, the mother in The Shining is the typical housewife. She takes care of Danny and the hotel while Jack sits back and “writes.” For example, she prepares all the meals for Jack and even brings him breakfast in bed. The scene in which Jack is overlooking the maze where his wife and child are represents his authority and power over them. As well as being the typical housewife, Wendy is also victimized throughout the entire film. In the scene in which Jack and Wendy are talking about what should be done with Danny, Wendy helplessly holds a bat to defend her self against the crazed Jack. Later on in Jack’s rampage, when Wendy is trapped in the bathroom, she again is helpless, holding a knife that she could be using to protect herself, but instead she chooses to stand in the corner and scream while Jack breaks down the door with an axe.

The endings of these films say different things about the future of the patriarch. At the end of The Brood, the father kills the mother, expressing the idea that the patriarch will live on despite being challenged. However, at the end of The Shining, the father dies, symbolizing the death of the patriarchy. In Vivian Sobchack’s article, “Bringing It All Back Home: Family Economy and Generic Exchange,” it says we can see a “patriarchy maddened by a paradoxical desire for its own annihilation.” As a result of Jack’s constant need to be in control, he faces his demise.