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.