BOO!
Halloween is tomorrow!
With it being spooky season, horror movie binge-watching is one of my favorite spooky activities. Horror movies give me an adrenaline rush that no other movies can replicate, but one thing that has caught my attention is how women are portrayed within many of them.
Throughout the history of filmmaking, we’ve all seen the recurring themes of women being portrayed as weak and ‘in need of rescuing,’ usually by a man. But what about in horror movies specifically? Although the themes I just mentioned are included in many of them, women’s suffering and agony have repeatedly been used in horror films as a form of entertainment.
This makes me wonder: Why is women’s suffering seen as so entertaining to filmmakers and audiences?
Horror films have very often consisted of abuse, murder, extreme violence, and many other torments towards women. Not only does this reinforce the stereotype that women are weak and vulnerable, but it also slowly begins to normalize the disparities women face in real life.
Even back in 1960, when the horror movie Psycho was released, a girl named Marion is brutally murdered by the man who owns the motel she is staying at. Marion meets him at check-in and shares a brief dinner with him before retiring to her room. After this minimal interaction, he takes it upon himself to enter the room while she is showering and brutally murders her by stabbing her repeatedly. This scene is used to shock and scare the audience, and it became one of the most ‘iconic scenes’ in horror movie history.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that this scene, of an innocent woman being murdered, is consistently referenced as ‘iconic’ and not ‘disturbing,’ ‘horrible,’ or ‘hard-to-watch.’ I personally believe this is potentially because it is so heavily normalized within horror films to see violence against women that it then desensitizes individuals’ interpretation of it.
I have heard people say that using women as the recipients of violence is more effective and brings a bigger ‘shock value’ to horror films, but is this because many of the violent acts that occur are the realities some women face in real life? Why are they not using men to create this so-desired ‘shock value’ when they could just as easily experience the situations?
Short answer: Society has become far too comfortable watching women suffer. Since the beginning of time, it is easy to argue that the success of men has relied on the suffering of women. It doesn’t matter if it is filmmakers, bosses, comedians, or policymakers; women have been used as the brunt of jokes, heavily stereotyped to the point of discrimination, and have always been regarded as lesser than. With this in mind, it starts making sense as to why filmmakers often heavily focus on violence against women and use it as a way to gain traction for their films.
Over time, horror films began integrating the final girl trope, where one girl survives until the end of the film and ultimately confronts or escapes the killer. I thought this trope was amazing, giving women the opportunity to be seen as strong and brave; but when I looked more closely, although it was designed to challenge gender stereotypes, it often ends up reinforcing them.
The girl within the film experiences extreme suffering, fear, and torture before she ‘breaks through’ and is seen as strong enough to stand up against the perpetrator. The final girl trope gives the impression that women have to prove their strength through suffering instead of being seen as strong from the beginning.
Ultimately, horror movies are an amazing way for individuals to get into the Halloween spirit, but we should not overlook the way that many of them use women’s suffering as a way to build their own plot and storylines to entertain their audiences.