Blog Post #3 - Deep Red and Gender Roles

"Deep Red and Gender Roles" by Ashley Olafsson

CCS 202 Blog Post #3

Dario Argento’s Deep Red displays the important relationship between the monster, the protagonist, and the status group through the use of gender and family roles. As Adam Knee states in “Gender, Genre, and Argento,” Argento’s work “confounds many of the generalizations about relations of gender, power, and spectatorship in the horror genre” (Knee 213). The fact that gender is kept ambiguous practically the whole movie shows Argento’s key use of gender roles and moreover, when gender is revealed, it shows the connection between the three aspects even more clearly. The gender roles in the movie threaten the norms of not only the protagonist and monster relationship, but also patriarchal society and because of this, the status quo is still unsettled at the end of the movie.

The protagonist, Marcus Daly, is a physically masculine, white, heterosexual man. His gender is revealed to the viewer, however, Marcus’ masculinity is threatened by the presence of the reporter helping him, Gianna Brezzi. Being a strong, female character, he ends up needing to rely on her in figuring out the murders. Through the necessity of having to rely on this woman, the viewer sees Marcus become more dependent and lose some of his patriarchy. Knee comments on the fact that Marcus and Gianna are “engaged in a debate throughout the whole film about the veracity of such assumptions while themselves hardly matching traditional paradigms of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’” (Knee 225) and he says this in regards to gender norms and assumptions. Patriarchy is additionally threatened by the father who takes care of the house from where the folktale was involved and his daughter. The father tries to be stern with the daughter and she rebels against him. Having little control and feeling like his patriarchy and masculine gender is threatened, he hits her in hopes of reasserting his patriarch standpoint in the relationship.

As previously stated, gender is kept ambiguous a majority of the movie and mostly in regards to the killer. The fact the monster’s gender is ambiguous is a threat to the norms of gender and sexuality. Knee states that “the individuals involved in murder are themselves often presented as ambiguous in both their gendered characteristics and their sexual preferences” (Knee 215). Throughout the whole movie, all we see of the killer is their eye or shoe and those images are even hard to see or read into, often leading the viewer in a misinterpretation of who the killer really is. The killer is not revealed until the very end of the movie, and when it gets revealed that it was Marta, it shows that she threatened gender norms by being a female killer. Marta took on these masculine qualities as she committed all these murders. Knee also states that Argento’s murder scenarios question “the nature of the generic gendered positionalities” (Knee 217) and it through Marta being the killer that this is clear.

Carlo also is a crucial part of gender roles throughout Deep Red. His gender is additionally kept ambiguous and when it gets revealed that he is homosexual, the viewer notices that he displays qualities of psychological discomfort. In the scene where Marcus finds Carlo at what is assumed to be his gay lover’s house, he is crying and drunk. From what occurred to him as a child, he is psychologically disturbed and therefore, not only his gender and sexuality, but his life is somewhat ambiguous. Argento continuously throws various norms into question and he “constructs a context of sexual ambiguity” (Knee 224). Carlo tries to cover up for Marta because due to not growing up with a father, he feels a need to protect is mother and be a man, even though he does not have those stereotypical patriarch qualities.

At the end of the movie when Marta’s gender is revealed, the status quo is still unsettled. The protagonist, Marcus, survived and the killer, Marta, did not, but is Marcus’ masculinity actually reestablished? We shall never know for the ending just has Marcus standing there, in a pile of the killer’s blood. It is clear by watching Deep Red that there is a very important relationship between the protagonist, the monster, and the status quo and in this sense, many societal norms especially in regards to gender, sexuality, and family were threatened, leaving the status quo in an unresolved state.

Works Cited

Knee, Adam. "Gender, Genre, Argento." (1996): 213-30. Print.