Feminist Criticism Of The Siskel And Ebert Halloween Review

The role of the female throughout the horror genre has generally reflected the roles of women in society within the social context of the movie. In the early days of movie, women were no more than the weak and defenceless victim. They are ‘the object of the creature’s desire’ , a beautiful yet two-dimensional character who is there for no other reason than to become the victim. As feminism and the role of women in society has developed, so too has the role of the female in the horror genre. This is recognisable in both Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978).

They are made to be more masculine and seem stronger than the average “woman” and how society tells us we, as women, should be. Even in real life, women are always seen with their best female friend. They never go anywhere alone, and the characters in horror movies are no different. They go through the whole plot of the story with their best friend, and their best friend most of the time is more of the fragile and girly character. They are more like society tells us women should be. There seems to be an imbalance with the presentation of women, because they show the lead woman as strong with masculine qualities, while the others are weak and fragile. “Double standards occur when the expectations meted out for members of various groups differ, and they often privilege one group at the expense of another.” (Lauzen, M. M., & Dozier, D. M. (2005)). These women can be sexualized or the complete opposite, depending on the

Feminists that approach analyzing popular culture proceed from a variety of theoretical positions that carry with them a deeper social analysis and political agenda. Popular culture has been a critical part of feminist analysis. “Cultural politics are crucially important to feminism because they involve struggles over meaning” (Storey, Intro 136). Analyzing a piece of pop culture through a feminist viewpoint, whether it be a music video or any sort of media, opens up a broader discussion about the structure of our patriarchal society and the ways in which politics are constantly portrayed and

Correspondingly, Barbra’s character shrieks the stereotype of a hysterical housewife, a helpless, naïve blonde woman. She is weak and reliant on the others, incompetent and oblivious to the concerns at hand. Her lack of prowess when the ghouls infiltrated the farmhouse consequently led to her death. While others were pitching in to devise a plan to combat the slew of ghouls drawing near the farmhouse, Barbra was in a state of bewilderment due to Johnny’s death and was unmindful of the plan to defeat the ghouls; therefore, she became a hindrance to the others. Robert Hass’s film criticism of Carol J. Clover’s work in Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, declares, “Women are usually helpless victims in the horror genre” (Haas 67). This essentially summarized Barbra’s character in such a manner that the viewer would infer that Barbra enacts the stereotypical female role of a horror film.

In conclusion, the film She’s the Man shows the audience how gender gets represented in films. It shows the traditional femininity as well as the traditional masculinity. This illustrates that gender has impacts on power and gender relations to contribute gender inequality. Gender norms are enforced in films which maintain the power inequality difference between both genders. These issues confine the way modern films represent gender and gives a direct effect to the

Whilst we see here that Whedon's intention is to subvert the conventional horror movie/slasher genre, I'm not sure that he is successful. He is running the considerable risk of merely replacing the fetishised female victim with a fetishised female hero; she is still a pretty blond girl, she is still fun, she is still sexual, she is still "Barbie with

This critique then develops into a standpoint with the emergence of the Final Girl trope, where a female character is shown to take characteristics which are typically masculine and makes them her own, becoming then a figure of empowerment. Just as society at large attempts to repress individuals into, as Wood explains it, “predetermined roles within that culture,” the horror film uses the killer to repress the final girl into a victimized, annihilated state. In Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it was with the subversion of classical family values with the male-dominated, cannibalistic household who tried to objectify Sally. In Carpenter’s Halloween, repression of sexuality and bisexual characteristics in Laurie Strode by Michael Myers led her to become the Final Girl as the film world knows today. Finally in Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling takes a step further into the role of the Final Girl by facing head on the “wound culture” state while inhabiting the male-dominated world of law enforcement. With the role of the final girl as the self-empowered figure of the hero who pushes back against her oppressors and by the film’s end, defeats her oppressors, the horror film takes on a more feminist

There has been a large variety of horror films produced throughout the last fifty years. People are always going to be frightened and scared by different types of horror films. But, what type of horror film scares more people, and were men or women more frightened by these horror films? Each one of the horror films had its own agenda to frighten its audience using several different methods of horror. Some of these methods were more so directed at the female audience than the male audience. Most horror movies show the female as being vulnerable, because in real life females are defenseless against monsters.

Horror has long been about tales of heroic men fighting monsters (whether it be human or inhuman) and saving damsels in distress. Women were mostly used as eye candy, victims of violence or only to further the plight of the leading man. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that women in horror movies started to have more power in horror movies. This was majorly due to the rise of feminism, the female protagonists were fighting back which lead to the rise of the ‘final-girl’ archetype – the ‘final-girl’ being the only one surviving at the end of the film having outsmarted the killer. The final girl not only promotes feminism but also a reflection of the values in our

The project this paper will be focusing on is the examining the media with an adolescent and adult focus. For this I decided to look at a movie and determine the extent to which the portrayals of women and men were stereotypical or progressive. Given the time of year it is, the movie being examined is the horror movie “Cabin in the Woods”. In this movie there are two female main characters and three males. There are also two male sub-characters.

Contemporary horror film's heroines' power and independency keeps on growing when society it represents gets more liberal. For example in the Scream films (1996, 1997, 2000) female protagonist was highly independent and equal to challenge male monster. The heroine has grown from victim to almost masculine fighter. The heroine can be called masculine, but she still has the feminine touch, that got her in trouble in first place, in her. Even in her final fight she still struggles between strength and fears. The final girl can not loose her vulnerability, because it would take away the element of horror from the film. It can also be argued that masculine society can not handle the death of women. Women give birth so if they died it would be the end of society.

Mainly that of what it means to not be a straight white male, in a dominantly male culture. Horror films became warning signs for what would happen if people diverted from the norm. This often meant dealing with sexuality and gender in films. Many horror films, especially durning 1930s would place women, or gay people as the villains or monsters. This subtly put into the mind of viewers, in a time where gayness was a perversion, that gay people should not be trusted. The same is true for women, who were either painted as a villain, or were punished for acting out of line. The idea being that there was a very narrow idea of how people should act, and if they stepped out of line they were either going to threaten society, or would simply be killed in punishment. The main goal was scare people into not doing an activity that society said was

Alfred Hitchcock is known as a controlling director, most especially when it comes to women. In his film, the female characters are reflected to have the same qualities, such that they are blond, icy, and remote (Ebert). Aside from that, these women are imprisoned in costumes which combined fashion and fetishism (Ebert). Hitchcock’s Vertigo is considered as the most confessional, as it deals directly with themes and arts that he controls (Ebert). This film is all about how Hitchcock used,

These films follow the generic conventions of horror films and in particular the stereotypes surrounding the portrayal of women. Doing this research now in 2016 allowed me to have the benefit of hindsight and I can see how far horror films these days have come. All three films portray women in some sort of danger and as the victims. Despite this we can also see the characteristics that also show women to be strong and powerful. Despite majorly portraying women in a negative light, Psycho, allows us to see that women can be independent, but is foreshadowed that Marion had to steal to do this.

The first research entitled “The representation of gender roles in the media - An analysis of gender discourse in Sex and the City movies ” was constructed by Therese Ottosson and Xin Cheng in 2012.