July 10, 2025 • 37 mins
Grab a makeshift weapon and say goodbye to your best friends, because today we're getting a broader understanding of the Final Girl trope- why we love them, why we root for them, how far they’ve grown & how far they still have to go. Plus, why it's lonely be to the last one left.
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Sources in show notes.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
But the media really loves maybe this is a sole survivor.
Locked him up for a long time, but he got out.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And he came home with me, but I got away,
but he killed a lot of my friends.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
It happened on Halloween.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Hello, neighbors, lovers, friends, and anyone who feels like they're
in a horror movie.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm Danielli.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Screama, grabs a popcorn, or maybe take a valve celibacy,
because today we're exploring the history of the Final Girl,
who she is, why we root for her, how she's changed,
and why it's sometimes better to be a Final Girl
with friends. Hello, Hi, how is everyone? It's been a while.
(01:03):
Happy Halloween. Happy end of October or beginning of November.
The election is days away. My anxiety is through the roof.
So I gave myself a little other horrifying distraction and
watched a bunch of horror movies and that really made
me want to do an episode about nyl Girls, one
of my favorite horror movie trope. Yet it kind of
(01:26):
infuriates me.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
So this isn't going to be a deep dive.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I do have an episode coming out soon on Good
for Her Horror, and I thought that this was kind
of a nice intro to that. I hope you're all
taking care of yourselves.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
And hanging in there.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I am sure a lot of people are as stressed
out as I am. I'm gonna be stressed no matter
what happens too. It's not like it's going to go
away in five days, but I like to pretend.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
And if you also have any lighter.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Podcast episodes suggestions, please message me on Instagram or email
Broad's next Door because everything I'm doing.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Is so dark.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Also, let me know if I miss any of your
favorite final girls. What exactly is a final girl?
Speaker 5 (02:12):
The term refers to the last.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Woman standing in a horror movie. She's usually the one
who confronts the killer and survives against all odds after
watching everyone she loves get massacred in the most horrible
way possible, but she's not just any survivor. The term
final girl was coined in the nineteen nineties by film.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Scholar Carol J.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Clover in her book Men, Women and Chainsaws. Gender in
the modern horror film. Clover's work was revolutionary and that
it not only defined the final girl, trope, but also
examined the implications and power dynamics within horror films in general.
Clover distinguishes between a survivor and a final girl in
these ways character development. A final girl often undergoes significant
(02:57):
character development, as one would after watching literally everyone die,
typically transguessing from an innocence and vulnerability to resourcefulness and strength. Survivors,
on the other hand, may not experience this transformation or
may lack depth in their character arcs. Moral standing, the
final girl usually adheres to societal norms regarding morality and behavior,
(03:20):
often representing purity. This moral standing contrasts with her peers,
who may engage in risky behavior, leading to their demise
confrontation with the killer. Final girls don't just hide. They
actively confront their attackers, often using their brains and strategy
to outsmart some superhuman strength monster, whereas survivors may just
(03:42):
hide or try and escape. And last emotional complexity, Final
girls often grapple with trauma.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
And psychological depth.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
Many final girls have a traumatizing backstory already going into
the film. Wilver argued that the final girl embodies both
vulnerability and strength, navigating a world dominated by male aggression.
She noted that these characters often possess traditionally feminine traits
like empathy and nurturing, yet they also exhibit resourcefulness and resilience,
(04:11):
enabling them to confront their male aggressors. So with this,
she said, it allowed audience to connect with Final Girl
on multiple levels. And just like there are rules to
being Final Girl, there are rules to a horror movie.
So let's hear those before we get into some of
the most iconic Final Girls.
Speaker 6 (04:30):
There are certain rules that one must abide by in
order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one,
you can never have sex big big Noday, okay. Number
two you can never drink or do drunks sin. It's
(04:56):
an extension of number one and.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Number three never ever.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
He under any circumstances say I'll be right back because
you won't be back.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I'm getting out of the berry one once. Yes, sure,
I'll be right.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Back, and I will be right back after this quick
commercial break, and then we won't take one for a
really long time.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Death is optional puns a flash. The main thing is
that she suffers that she did.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
What exactly is a final girl.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
The term refers to the last.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Woman standing in a horror movie. She's usually the one
who confronts the killer and survives against all odds after
watching everyone she loves get massacred in the most horrible
way possible. But she's not just any survivor. The term
final girl was coined in the nineteen nineties by film
scholar Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women and Chainsaws.
(05:52):
Gender in the modern horror film. Clover's work was revolutionary
and that it not only defined the final girl trope,
but also examine and the implications and power dynamics within
horror films in general. Clover distinguishes between a survivor and
a final girl in these ways. Character development. A final
girl often undergoes significant character development, as one would after
(06:15):
watching literally everyone die, typically transguessing from an innocence and
vulnerability to resourcefulness and strength. Survivors, on the other hand,
may not experience this transformation or may lack depths in
their character arcs. Moral standing, the final girl usually adheres
to societal norms regarding morality and behavior, often representing purity.
(06:38):
This moral standing contrasts with her peers, who may engage
in risky behavior, leading to their demise. Confrontation with the killer.
Final girls don't just hide, They actively confront their attackers,
often using their brains and strategy to outsmart some superhuman
strength monster. Whereas survivors may just hide or try and
(06:58):
escape and lack emotional complexity, Final girls often grapple with
trauma and psychological depth. Many Final Girls have a traumatizing
backstory already going into the film. Wilver argued that the
Final Girl embodies both vulnerability and strength, navigating a world
dominated by male aggression. She noted that these characters often
(07:20):
possess traditionally feminine traits like empathy and nurturing, yet they
also exhibit resourcefulness and resilience, enabling them to confront their
male aggressors. So with this, she said, it allowed audience
to connect with Final Girl on multiple levels. And just
like there are rules to being Final Girl, there are
rules to a horror movie. So let's hear those before
(07:42):
we get into some of the most iconic Final Girls.
Speaker 7 (07:46):
This is a clip from the take the Final Girl
trope explained in the.
Speaker 8 (07:51):
Early days of horror, women were almost exclusively victims damsels
in distress who were destined to die unless they were
saved at the last minute a man. They were vulnerable
and helpless.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
In F. W.
Speaker 8 (08:05):
Murnow's Knows Feratu, the main female character Ellen is clever
and tenacious, using her own purity to lure the vampire
count Orlock to his doom. Still, Ellen dies, sacrificing herself
to save the world. It would be decades before women
fought back against these horrors and lived to tell their story.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Missus Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo.
Speaker 8 (08:30):
Signing off Carol Clover traces the true dawn of the
Final Girl to the slasher films of the nineteen seventies,
which gave us young women who stood up to there
would be killers, outwitting and sometimes even subduing them. In
nineteen seventy fours, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Sally manages to
evade the deadly leather Face, even escaping her bloody confines twice.
(08:52):
But Sally becomes a Final Girl largely through endurance, and
she's only rescued by chance Jess. In nineteen seventy four,
Black Christmas became another prototypical Final Girl for fighting back
against a murderer targeting her sorority house.
Speaker 7 (09:08):
Why are you doing this?
Speaker 1 (09:10):
She was the rare fully.
Speaker 8 (09:11):
Realized woman in a horror movie, one who provides the
film's narrative point of view. Yet Jess didn't totally fit
the final Girl mold either.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
For one thing, she's far from virginal.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I'm gonna have an emotion. You can't make a decision
like that. Even as great.
Speaker 8 (09:28):
It wasn't even an attend And although Jess survives at
the end, it's far from certain that she's won.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
It's me behind.
Speaker 8 (09:37):
Most of our ideas about the Final Girl were established
in nineteen seventy eight's Halloween. Laurie Strode, played by Jamie
Lee Curtis, ticks all the main boxes of the trope.
Laurie is the only one of her friends who's not
interested in sex or even dating.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Poor Laurie scared another one away. It's tragic you never
go into a man. All this hiding, all this preparation.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
It was for nothing.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It took priority over your family. It cost you your family.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
If the way I raised your mother.
Speaker 8 (10:11):
Means that she hates me, but that she's prepared for
the whoores this world.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Then I can live with that.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Say goodbye to Michael and get over it.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Let's start with our final girls of the nineteen seventies.
We have to give a shout out to Sally Hardsty
from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. She was played by Marilyn
Burns and that movie still.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
Really scares me.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
That in House of a Thousand Corpses, which does that
even have a final girl? That movie scared me so
much and it was very much like a homage in
Rob Zombie's World to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But Sally's character
is one where you can definitely feel just how horrified
(11:08):
she is. It's unimaginable horror. Also, the movie Black Christmas
is mentioned on a bunch of lists. I did not
have time to rewatch it. I know they remade it
and I saw the remake as well. But one of
the more iconic films we have Halloween with Jamie Lee
Curtis and Laurie Strode. Jamie Lee Curtis is definitely one
(11:35):
of the quintessential scream queens and Laurie is one of
the go to final girls. And speaking of scream queens,
I always forget this, but Jamie Lee Curtis's mother is
Janet Lee, who from Psycho also a scream queen, and
(11:55):
her character Jamie Lee Curtis's character Laurie. She's a shy
babysitter watching Kyle Richards and some boy, but she's also
super observant. From the beginning of the movie, she notices
Michael Myers slurking around while like all of her friends
can't see this seven foot tall man dressed in gray.
(12:17):
They're like, no, no, no, let's just get a little
bit high and have sex.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
So of course they all die. Some people argue that Lori.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Is not a final girl because she's rescued partially by
loom Miss in the end.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
But I absolutely am. I am including her long.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
After we're declared overdue. Can we expect to rescue seventeen day?
Speaker 6 (12:43):
Seventeen days?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Hey man, I don't want to rain on your parade.
We're not gonna last seventeen hours.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
Those things are gonna come in here just like they
did before, and they're gonna come in here, and they're
come in here, and they're gonna come in.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
This little girl survived longer than that with no weapons
and no training. Right, let you.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Put her charge.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I got to just start dealing with it, Hudson.
Speaker 8 (13:10):
Listen to me, Hudson, just deal with it, because we
need you and I'm sick of your bullshit.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Then at the very end of the nineteen seventies we
have Alien and with Sigourney Weaver and as she plays
Ellen Ripley. Some people also argue that she's not a
true survivor, but that's crazy because she escaped, she survives,
she confronts the alien, she gets her cat into a carrier.
(13:37):
Come one, can you imagine? And her character does change
the genre as well going into the eighties, when more
notable film would be A Nightmare on Elm Street with
Nancy Thompson, and she also has that traumatized backstory in there.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
There was a man.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
At the pre school.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
His name was Fred Krueger.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
This is the twenty time remade.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
He was a gardener.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
He lived in the basement of the pre school, and
you kids were his life.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
We didn't want to believe it at first.
Speaker 9 (14:43):
You all were so innocent, and you, Nancy.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
What are you drawing that is so good? You were
his favorite of all.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
You know what?
Speaker 6 (14:55):
I got some other drawings there were like really bad drawings.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Maybe you can't fiction.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
And then we started to notice things.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
Yeah, he has been acting a little strange. Lady.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
She took a secret key.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
It's okay, So.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
What did you say? What you call the police?
Speaker 3 (15:24):
He left town before we ever were able to confront him.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
He's gone. He can't hurt you anymore. So these dreams
that you're having there there are repressed memories from a terrible,
terrible time.
Speaker 7 (15:43):
That is not the kind of gaslighting that I would
expect from Coach Taylor's wife.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
A very simple formula.
Speaker 8 (15:51):
Horror is a genre built on formulas, and it wasn't
long before the Final Girl became one as well. With
nineteen ninety six's Scream, director Wes Craven offered a meta
commentary on the many slasher tropes he'd helped to create
through films like A Nightmare on Elm Street, including the
concept of the Final Girl. Scream sets Sydney Prescott up
to be a typical final girl.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
She's sweet and chased.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
To settle for a Pt.
Speaker 8 (16:16):
Thirteen relationship, and she even sees herself as the opposite
of a horror film's usual victims. They're all the same,
some stupid killer stocking, some big breasted girl who can
Acto's alway running up the stairs when she should be going.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Out the front door.
Speaker 8 (16:28):
But Scream also shows us Sydney isn't quite as demure
as she appears. She may not be totally innocent either.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
During the trial, you did all those stories about me.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
You call me a liar.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
I think you falsely identified him.
Speaker 8 (16:40):
Yes, and my film even takes away her purity by
allowing Sydney to have sex with her boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Now you no longer virtue.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Now you gotta die.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Those are the rules.
Speaker 8 (16:53):
Sydney proves to be a different kind of Final Girl.
She exerts total control over what happens to her, knowing
the rule.
Speaker 7 (17:02):
Knowing the rules allows her to bend them. Why do
I hate the virginity trope so much? Because I would
have died starting in the year two thousand. I'm fine
in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Allows her to bend them.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
This is the moment when the supposedly dead kill her
comes back to life for one last scare.
Speaker 7 (17:24):
That's a great thing about Scream is the survival friendship part.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
In the nineteen nineties, we have so many Final Girls,
so I'm mainly going to talk about Scream and I
know what you did last summer. So Scream is interesting
because we get two Final girls out of it, not
only the already traumatized Sidney Prescott, but also the person
(18:25):
who's partially responsible for traumatizing.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
Her, Gail Weathers.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
And I think that that's something we start to see
more with the final Girl of the nineties, is that
she can't survive without a little bit of help from
her friends. I often see Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the
movie listed as Buffy Summer's movie version, listed as a
final Girl, but as far as the show, I never
(18:51):
see Buffy listed as a final Girl because the ending
is so different. I don't want to spoil it if
anyone hasn't seen this show that came out twenty years ago.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
But Buffy wouldn't.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Make it to the end without help from her friends.
I know What You Did Last Summer is not one
of my favorites, even though I do like it, and
I think one of the reasons is because Buffy Summers
makes an appearance in this one, but she is not
a Final Girl, and my twelve year old brain could
truly was not accepting of that. I was just like, Okay,
(19:26):
he's cornered, you just beat him up. I actually still
feel that way. Poor Sarah Michelle Geller anytime she's in
a movie. But we do get Final girls out of
that other than Jennifer love Hewitt, also Brandy and I
still know what you did last summer, and there are
(19:46):
still This is changing, but very disproportionately. The final girls
are white girls. That starts to change once we get
into the two thousands. And I'm going to play another
clip from the Take for you about that.
Speaker 8 (20:02):
The modern final girl is empowered by her sexuality. It's
a feminist update to a trope that has long been
mired in subjugation.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
I am that very rich. When I sleep, my spirit
slips away from my body and dances naked with the devil.
Speaker 8 (20:22):
Even as the modern final girl may have more agency
than those girls of the seventies and eighties, she remains
confined by at least one outdated trapping.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
The final girl is still usually white.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
A black final girl sweetheartly kill both Top of My Complexion.
Speaker 8 (20:39):
First director Alfred Hitchcock once mused, blondes make the best victims.
They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.
And this attitude has prevailed even in modern, more enlightened
horror films, which still depend on the empathy for female
victims whose purity is conflated with whiteness. In many ways,
this reflects real world attitudes. PBS angor Gwen Eifel coined
(21:02):
the term missing white woman syndrome to describe the disproportionate
panic that surrounds imperiled white women, and we see this
reflected in horror films that repeatedly foreground white women in
danger while treating minority characters as disposable. The flip side
to the final girl, after all, is the black guy
dies first trope.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
I've seen this movie, the black dude dies first.
Speaker 8 (21:23):
While audiences are expected to be terrified for the white girl,
the deaths of black characters are regarded as just part
of the show. As nerdists, Ty Gooden has pointed out
black women and girls weren't perceived as vulnerable people whom
an audience could identify with as victims of violence because
we were barely seen as people at all, much less
valuable ones.
Speaker 7 (21:43):
All I'm saying is that the horror of generals historical
co excluding the African American.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
Animis Horror films also reflect this in their settings, taking
place in the familiar confines of high schools and safe
suburban neighborhoods, showing terror invading an idyllic, often lily white
community that leaves.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
It's not supposed to happen here, doctor, do you know
what happy feel is? Families, children all lined up in rows,
up and down these streets.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
You're telling me they're lined up for a slaughterhouse.
Speaker 8 (22:10):
Films have long treated violence against black people as commonplace
and not especially terrifying. The black woman is therefore almost
never the final girl. She is at best the close
to final girl, there to offer her support and common sense.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Truly stupid people go back. Okay, smart people run Wh's
we people?
Speaker 8 (22:27):
So we just get before she is inevitably dispatched to
teach the final girl a lesson. But the recent rise
of social horror has begun to challenge this aspect of
the trope as well. Jordan peels Us subverts horror's predominantly
white perspective through Lupita Neango's adelaide. She's the rare black
final girl, one who's been assimilated into those safe confines
(22:49):
of white society through her wealth.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Anyways, we should go back to our place. Sure, I
think it's vada claw.
Speaker 8 (22:55):
When that comfort is threatened by a mysterious other, a
group of murderous doppelgangers known as the Tethered. It highlights
just how much Adelaide has participated in creating the horror
she now faces.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
If it weren't for you.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
I never would have danced at all.
Speaker 8 (23:14):
But the film's twist that Adelaide is a member of
the tether while her doppelganger is the one who really
belongs challenges us to ask who we side with?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Hi, people, we're Americans.
Speaker 8 (23:27):
Adelaide is both villain and victim, monster and final girl,
and by making us both empathize with her and feel
terrified of her, the film forces us to confront the
social constructs that are the film's true source of horror.
A similar social commentary underpins twenty eighteen's Assassination Nation.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Such a group of diverse.
Speaker 8 (23:47):
High schoolters, transgender and black singer Abra become a collective
of Final Girls who find themselves under attack by local
men over their supposedly loose morals.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So here's the second really bothers me? Who sees a
naked photo of a girl and their first thighs, ye
I gotta kill this pitch.
Speaker 8 (24:08):
They not only survive, they violently turn the tables on
their attackers.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Calling on all the.
Speaker 8 (24:13):
Other girls to join them in overthrowing the patriarchal terrors
they make, and in Sophiata Calls Loose, twenty nineteen remake
of Black Christmas, one of the original sources of The
Final Girl, fully enters the twenty first century as the
film's protagonist, Riley, bends off zombie like fraternity brothers who
seek to keep women in their place and who targeted
(24:34):
her for refusing to keep silent about her own sexual assault.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Women who are willing to be obedient, like your friend here,
will be spared.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Those of you who refuse to be compliant squestion readily.
Speaker 8 (24:47):
In the film's climax, Riley is joined by an army
of multi racial, multi gender survivors.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
No longer alone.
Speaker 8 (24:54):
The terrors in these films are systemic, affecting more than
just one kind of girl, and they take more than
one Final Girl to defeat them. Even as The Final
Girl has evolved, she's remained rooted in ideas about women
as inherently innocent, a waiting vessel for the violence the
world cruelly inflicts. The Final Girl still feels sadly relevant
(25:16):
because violence against women is still rampant in our world.
But whereas former Final Girls were defined by their victimization,
today's Final Girl is a far stronger, far more complex character.
She's a more intersectional representation of not just gender and sexuality,
but of race and class and the many ways in
(25:37):
which we are made to live in fear Today.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
I feel like they do try and make it seem
like the whole purity aspect ended with Scream, but I
really don't feel like that part has gone away.
Speaker 8 (25:52):
In Halloween, Laurie's friends are killed because they're distracted by sex.
Laurie only survives because she's far more conservative and largely sexless.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Guys think I'm too smart.
Speaker 8 (26:03):
The Final Girl is usually the only one who doesn't
give in.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
To her body's desires.
Speaker 8 (26:08):
Glenn not now, and as critics have noted, there's obvious
symbolism the fact that slasher films usually find men trying
very hard to penetrate them with phallic objects. When Laurie
strikes back at Michael with knitting needles wirehangers, he is
what becoming masculine and erasing her. The Final Girl did
(26:33):
represent some progress from those early horror heroines. In the eighties,
women became fighters, not just victims.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And in the wake of.
Speaker 8 (26:40):
Halloween they only became more proactive, cunning, and deadly. Yet
in many respects, these women were still being used symbolically.
Like Ellen and knows Ferratu, they were visions of purity,
and their femininity was conflated.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
With abject terror.
Speaker 8 (26:56):
As Carol Clover wrote, angry displays of force may belong
to the male, but crying, cowering, screaming, fainting, trembling, begging
for mercy belonged to the female.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
What about.
Speaker 7 (27:13):
Movies like Hostile saw those guys cry?
Speaker 2 (27:21):
After anything?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
The Final Girl was a tool.
Speaker 8 (27:25):
She was used because audiences presumably wouldn't identify with male
characters in similar danger. The Final Girl could fight back,
and she lived to tell the story, but it would
be a while before she controlled it.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
I was just going to really disagree with that and
be like, no, male's survival stories are just as interesting.
But I've watched almost every episode if I survived, and
there's a handful of dudes I've skipped. But that's because
their stories are like I was climbing on a glacier
and I fell into that glacier, and it's just that's
(28:02):
also just what I would expect to happen to me
if I went near a glacier and we are going
to take one final break. Other than the casting of
Final Girls and the lack of diversity there, the thing
(28:22):
that bothers me about the trope in general, no matter
who it's happening to, is when the sequels happen and
you have these characters who have had so much trauma.
So best case scenario they have they're like armed to
the gills, they have all this militia training, but oftentimes
they're really paranoid. They're not integrating well back into society
(28:44):
anymore because they've had this huge traumatizing experience that other
people play down. I feel like this would happen less
in real life, and there would be like a lot
more if I was a Final Girl, like, Okay, here's
my lifetime movie. In horror, though, there's kind of an
(29:05):
absence of that. You do have the paparazzi media presence,
but there's just this loneliness of the Final Girl, especially
when you have two movies, three movies, six movies where
she has to face the same monster or concept again
and again and again and again.
Speaker 7 (29:26):
This is for a YouTube essay on Final Girl studios.
The obsession with female rage and media.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
What on Earth is a female rage character?
Speaker 10 (29:38):
Female rage characters are women in film, television, and other
media who exhibit characteristics or emotions that may be more
rare to see from female characters on screen, such as violence, anger,
and rage. Common female rage characters you'll see the girls
worshiping online are perl from per Lisa from Girl Interrupted,
(30:02):
Nina from Black.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Swan, a female Jennifer from Jennifer's.
Speaker 10 (30:08):
Body, Tommy from the Tomy manga series, amongst others.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Though this online phenomenon of.
Speaker 10 (30:14):
Female rage is surprisingly not exclusive to female characters, as
discussed in my previous essay Why Women Love. American psycho
Patrick Bateman has also been claimed by the female rage
FuMB cells of the Internet. Real women can also be
attributed to the female Whilst scrolling the female rage tag
(30:37):
on Tumblr, you would be apt to find photos of
Fiona Apple, Mitski and Ethel Caine, alongside Sylvia Plath.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Excerpts, Where's Courtney Love? And are we all going to
start using Tumblr again?
Speaker 10 (30:51):
The obsession with female rage stems from a woman's programming
to perform for the male gaze. Since the day when
men are born we are taught and programmed to behave
in ways that are the most appealing to men, to
be delicate.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Sweet.
Speaker 10 (31:11):
Cinemas has been largely a field dominated by men. We
have throughout history almost exclusively watched women being portrayed through
the perspective of the male gaze, and therefore we have
internalized this way of seeing women, and as women, we
have internalized this way of seeing ourselves. It has been
(31:32):
suggested that women operate with an internalized man inside of
our heads, judging our every move, and therefore we perform
for him. When we are alone in our rooms, sprawled
out on our bed, we fix our.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Posture to lay more seductively.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
For whom the camera.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
The narrator for the invisible audience.
Speaker 10 (31:58):
Presentation of women through the male gaze, and thus the
representation of their emotions through the male gaze and their
fear of female anger is far from modern and is
evident within folklore and female archetypes as well. American novelist
Leslie Jamison states in I used to insist I didn't
(32:19):
get angry, not anymore. The phenomenon of female anger has
often been turned against itself. The figure of the angry
woman reframed as a threat. She conjures a lineage of
threatening archetypes, the harpy and her talents, the witch and
her spells, the Medusa and her writhing locks. The notion
(32:40):
that female anger is unnatural or destructive is learned. Young
children report perceiving displays of anger as more acceptable from
boys than from girls. Because films have largely been written
by men for men, female archetypes can fall into a
trap of leaning heaby on gender roles. They sulk beautifully
(33:03):
in their bedroom instead of raising their.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Voice until someone comes along and massacres everyone.
Speaker 7 (33:11):
They know. That's a quick way to tap into that
feminine rage.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
So I guess that's a plus side.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
And I don't want to get too far into good
for her horror, but that's definitely touching on it. And
then on the other side of that, what I love
the most about The Final Girl is it always made
me feel like I too could kind of do anything.
I never had the purity on my side or the
clear head, but I was like, you know, it's good enough.
(33:41):
It's good enough if we're doing a full good and evil.
And I think that's an important takeaway lesson for viewers
regardless of gender and definitely good for younger viewers, as
long as we're not doing too much of the crazy
all sex leads to your her imminent death. And next time,
(34:02):
I want to talk about good for Her horror, which
is a reason that some of your favorite Final Girls
may have not been included here because in the real
revenge kind of stories, I'm saving that for good for
Her horror. A film that I really like that's a
horror comedy came out in twenty fifteen. It's called The
(34:23):
Final Girls, and I want to play a little clip
from that because I highly recommend it. Also not delightful,
but a pretty scary read the book Final.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
Girls by Riley Sager.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
There's also a book that I keep hearing about called
The Final Girls Support Group, but I haven't read that yet.
Maybe i'll download that. I have a bunch of audible credits.
It's another thing i'd love is some good creepy book recommendations.
Speaker 5 (34:50):
Going back into fiction.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
I've done a ton of nonfiction this year and it's
been so depressing, So at least give me the pretend
depressing stories.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
Camp Bloodbath is the granddaddy of all campsite slasherphones.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Mass's mom plays Nancy this.
Speaker 6 (35:11):
Shy girl next door on her slegs?
Speaker 1 (35:14):
What time they open?
Speaker 9 (35:15):
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
You get to remember your mom this way.
Speaker 9 (35:17):
At least they get to see her on the anniversary
of her death, even if she is being choosed by
a psycho.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Guys, somebody's coming. Okay, do you guys know the way?
They can't blue vance too, so we're in the movie.
Speaker 7 (35:48):
Oh hi, they get stucked into the movie and she
gets to be with her deceased mom.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Anyone want to help you get some strawberries?
Speaker 9 (35:58):
Nope, but I'll give you a hand with those talking
about her.
Speaker 8 (36:01):
Booze writing is so bad.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
He's coming. Everyone who has sex in this movie dies.
It's awesome. No sex.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
What wait?
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Wait, wait, Sophie time, How do we.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Get out of here?
Speaker 6 (36:20):
Movies like this end when the final girl kills the
bad guy and the credits for that's.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
The final girl.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
We just have to stay with her till the end
of the movie.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
Here, I like, I want highly recommend. It's streaming on
peacock right now. All right, thank you for listening to
another episode of Broad's next Door. I know this was
(36:49):
a short one, but there are some really long ones
coming up, and I have readded some old.
Speaker 5 (36:54):
Spooky season episodes again.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
I hope everyone is hanging in there. You can find
me online, can Yella Screamlaw or Broad's next Door at Everything.
You can always send me a DM. I right back
to everyone. I even check the junk messages folder.
Speaker 7 (37:12):
Sometimes it takes me a while, but I do get
there and I love hearing from you. If you enjoy
this episode, please leave a short review. Also check out
our merch store broadsnextdoor dot com.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
Love you very much, I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Bye.
This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
But the media really loves maybe this is a sole survivor.
Locked him up for a long time, but he got out.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And he came home with me, but I got away,
but he killed a lot of my friends.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
It happened on Halloween.
Speaker 4 (00:30):
Hello, neighbors, lovers, friends, and anyone who feels like they're
in a horror movie.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm Danielli.
Speaker 4 (00:38):
Screama, grabs a popcorn, or maybe take a valve celibacy,
because today we're exploring the history of the Final Girl,
who she is, why we root for her, how she's changed,
and why it's sometimes better to be a Final Girl
with friends. Hello, Hi, how is everyone? It's been a while.
(01:03):
Happy Halloween. Happy end of October or beginning of November.
The election is days away. My anxiety is through the roof.
So I gave myself a little other horrifying distraction and
watched a bunch of horror movies and that really made
me want to do an episode about nyl Girls, one
of my favorite horror movie trope. Yet it kind of
(01:26):
infuriates me.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
So this isn't going to be a deep dive.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I do have an episode coming out soon on Good
for Her Horror, and I thought that this was kind
of a nice intro to that. I hope you're all
taking care of yourselves.
Speaker 5 (01:40):
And hanging in there.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I am sure a lot of people are as stressed
out as I am. I'm gonna be stressed no matter
what happens too. It's not like it's going to go
away in five days, but I like to pretend.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
And if you also have any lighter.
Speaker 4 (01:56):
Podcast episodes suggestions, please message me on Instagram or email
Broad's next Door because everything I'm doing.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Is so dark.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
Also, let me know if I miss any of your
favorite final girls. What exactly is a final girl?
Speaker 5 (02:12):
The term refers to the last.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Woman standing in a horror movie. She's usually the one
who confronts the killer and survives against all odds after
watching everyone she loves get massacred in the most horrible
way possible, but she's not just any survivor. The term
final girl was coined in the nineteen nineties by film.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Scholar Carol J.
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Clover in her book Men, Women and Chainsaws. Gender in
the modern horror film. Clover's work was revolutionary and that
it not only defined the final girl, trope, but also
examined the implications and power dynamics within horror films in general.
Clover distinguishes between a survivor and a final girl in
these ways character development. A final girl often undergoes significant
(02:57):
character development, as one would after watching literally everyone die,
typically transguessing from an innocence and vulnerability to resourcefulness and strength. Survivors,
on the other hand, may not experience this transformation or
may lack depth in their character arcs. Moral standing, the
final girl usually adheres to societal norms regarding morality and behavior,
(03:20):
often representing purity. This moral standing contrasts with her peers,
who may engage in risky behavior, leading to their demise
confrontation with the killer. Final girls don't just hide. They
actively confront their attackers, often using their brains and strategy
to outsmart some superhuman strength monster, whereas survivors may just
(03:42):
hide or try and escape. And last emotional complexity, Final
girls often grapple with trauma.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
And psychological depth.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
Many final girls have a traumatizing backstory already going into
the film. Wilver argued that the final girl embodies both
vulnerability and strength, navigating a world dominated by male aggression.
She noted that these characters often possess traditionally feminine traits
like empathy and nurturing, yet they also exhibit resourcefulness and resilience,
(04:11):
enabling them to confront their male aggressors. So with this,
she said, it allowed audience to connect with Final Girl
on multiple levels. And just like there are rules to
being Final Girl, there are rules to a horror movie.
So let's hear those before we get into some of
the most iconic Final Girls.
Speaker 6 (04:30):
There are certain rules that one must abide by in
order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one,
you can never have sex big big Noday, okay. Number
two you can never drink or do drunks sin. It's
(04:56):
an extension of number one and.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Number three never ever.
Speaker 6 (05:00):
He under any circumstances say I'll be right back because
you won't be back.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I'm getting out of the berry one once. Yes, sure,
I'll be right.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Back, and I will be right back after this quick
commercial break, and then we won't take one for a
really long time.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Death is optional puns a flash. The main thing is
that she suffers that she did.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
What exactly is a final girl.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
The term refers to the last.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Woman standing in a horror movie. She's usually the one
who confronts the killer and survives against all odds after
watching everyone she loves get massacred in the most horrible
way possible. But she's not just any survivor. The term
final girl was coined in the nineteen nineties by film
scholar Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women and Chainsaws.
(05:52):
Gender in the modern horror film. Clover's work was revolutionary
and that it not only defined the final girl trope,
but also examine and the implications and power dynamics within
horror films in general. Clover distinguishes between a survivor and
a final girl in these ways. Character development. A final
girl often undergoes significant character development, as one would after
(06:15):
watching literally everyone die, typically transguessing from an innocence and
vulnerability to resourcefulness and strength. Survivors, on the other hand,
may not experience this transformation or may lack depths in
their character arcs. Moral standing, the final girl usually adheres
to societal norms regarding morality and behavior, often representing purity.
(06:38):
This moral standing contrasts with her peers, who may engage
in risky behavior, leading to their demise. Confrontation with the killer.
Final girls don't just hide, They actively confront their attackers,
often using their brains and strategy to outsmart some superhuman
strength monster. Whereas survivors may just hide or try and
(06:58):
escape and lack emotional complexity, Final girls often grapple with
trauma and psychological depth. Many Final Girls have a traumatizing
backstory already going into the film. Wilver argued that the
Final Girl embodies both vulnerability and strength, navigating a world
dominated by male aggression. She noted that these characters often
(07:20):
possess traditionally feminine traits like empathy and nurturing, yet they
also exhibit resourcefulness and resilience, enabling them to confront their
male aggressors. So with this, she said, it allowed audience
to connect with Final Girl on multiple levels. And just
like there are rules to being Final Girl, there are
rules to a horror movie. So let's hear those before
(07:42):
we get into some of the most iconic Final Girls.
Speaker 7 (07:46):
This is a clip from the take the Final Girl
trope explained in the.
Speaker 8 (07:51):
Early days of horror, women were almost exclusively victims damsels
in distress who were destined to die unless they were
saved at the last minute a man. They were vulnerable
and helpless.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
In F. W.
Speaker 8 (08:05):
Murnow's Knows Feratu, the main female character Ellen is clever
and tenacious, using her own purity to lure the vampire
count Orlock to his doom. Still, Ellen dies, sacrificing herself
to save the world. It would be decades before women
fought back against these horrors and lived to tell their story.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Missus Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo.
Speaker 8 (08:30):
Signing off Carol Clover traces the true dawn of the
Final Girl to the slasher films of the nineteen seventies,
which gave us young women who stood up to there
would be killers, outwitting and sometimes even subduing them. In
nineteen seventy fours, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Sally manages to
evade the deadly leather Face, even escaping her bloody confines twice.
(08:52):
But Sally becomes a Final Girl largely through endurance, and
she's only rescued by chance Jess. In nineteen seventy four,
Black Christmas became another prototypical Final Girl for fighting back
against a murderer targeting her sorority house.
Speaker 7 (09:08):
Why are you doing this?
Speaker 1 (09:10):
She was the rare fully.
Speaker 8 (09:11):
Realized woman in a horror movie, one who provides the
film's narrative point of view. Yet Jess didn't totally fit
the final Girl mold either.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
For one thing, she's far from virginal.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I'm gonna have an emotion. You can't make a decision
like that. Even as great.
Speaker 8 (09:28):
It wasn't even an attend And although Jess survives at
the end, it's far from certain that she's won.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
It's me behind.
Speaker 8 (09:37):
Most of our ideas about the Final Girl were established
in nineteen seventy eight's Halloween. Laurie Strode, played by Jamie
Lee Curtis, ticks all the main boxes of the trope.
Laurie is the only one of her friends who's not
interested in sex or even dating.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
Poor Laurie scared another one away. It's tragic you never
go into a man. All this hiding, all this preparation.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
It was for nothing.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
It took priority over your family. It cost you your family.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
If the way I raised your mother.
Speaker 8 (10:11):
Means that she hates me, but that she's prepared for
the whoores this world.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Then I can live with that.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Say goodbye to Michael and get over it.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Let's start with our final girls of the nineteen seventies.
We have to give a shout out to Sally Hardsty
from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. She was played by Marilyn
Burns and that movie still.
Speaker 5 (10:46):
Really scares me.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
That in House of a Thousand Corpses, which does that
even have a final girl? That movie scared me so
much and it was very much like a homage in
Rob Zombie's World to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But Sally's character
is one where you can definitely feel just how horrified
(11:08):
she is. It's unimaginable horror. Also, the movie Black Christmas
is mentioned on a bunch of lists. I did not
have time to rewatch it. I know they remade it
and I saw the remake as well. But one of
the more iconic films we have Halloween with Jamie Lee
Curtis and Laurie Strode. Jamie Lee Curtis is definitely one
(11:35):
of the quintessential scream queens and Laurie is one of
the go to final girls. And speaking of scream queens,
I always forget this, but Jamie Lee Curtis's mother is
Janet Lee, who from Psycho also a scream queen, and
(11:55):
her character Jamie Lee Curtis's character Laurie. She's a shy
babysitter watching Kyle Richards and some boy, but she's also
super observant. From the beginning of the movie, she notices
Michael Myers slurking around while like all of her friends
can't see this seven foot tall man dressed in gray.
(12:17):
They're like, no, no, no, let's just get a little
bit high and have sex.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
So of course they all die. Some people argue that Lori.
Speaker 4 (12:24):
Is not a final girl because she's rescued partially by
loom Miss in the end.
Speaker 5 (12:30):
But I absolutely am. I am including her long.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
After we're declared overdue. Can we expect to rescue seventeen day?
Speaker 6 (12:43):
Seventeen days?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Hey man, I don't want to rain on your parade.
We're not gonna last seventeen hours.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
Those things are gonna come in here just like they
did before, and they're gonna come in here, and they're
come in here, and they're gonna come in.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
This little girl survived longer than that with no weapons
and no training. Right, let you.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Put her charge.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I got to just start dealing with it, Hudson.
Speaker 8 (13:10):
Listen to me, Hudson, just deal with it, because we
need you and I'm sick of your bullshit.
Speaker 4 (13:15):
Then at the very end of the nineteen seventies we
have Alien and with Sigourney Weaver and as she plays
Ellen Ripley. Some people also argue that she's not a
true survivor, but that's crazy because she escaped, she survives,
she confronts the alien, she gets her cat into a carrier.
(13:37):
Come one, can you imagine? And her character does change
the genre as well going into the eighties, when more
notable film would be A Nightmare on Elm Street with
Nancy Thompson, and she also has that traumatized backstory in there.
Speaker 5 (14:03):
There was a man.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
At the pre school.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
His name was Fred Krueger.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
This is the twenty time remade.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
He was a gardener.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
He lived in the basement of the pre school, and
you kids were his life.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
We didn't want to believe it at first.
Speaker 9 (14:43):
You all were so innocent, and you, Nancy.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
What are you drawing that is so good? You were
his favorite of all.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
You know what?
Speaker 6 (14:55):
I got some other drawings there were like really bad drawings.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Maybe you can't fiction.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
And then we started to notice things.
Speaker 6 (15:10):
Yeah, he has been acting a little strange. Lady.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
She took a secret key.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
It's okay, So.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
What did you say? What you call the police?
Speaker 3 (15:24):
He left town before we ever were able to confront him.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
He's gone. He can't hurt you anymore. So these dreams
that you're having there there are repressed memories from a terrible,
terrible time.
Speaker 7 (15:43):
That is not the kind of gaslighting that I would
expect from Coach Taylor's wife.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
A very simple formula.
Speaker 8 (15:51):
Horror is a genre built on formulas, and it wasn't
long before the Final Girl became one as well. With
nineteen ninety six's Scream, director Wes Craven offered a meta
commentary on the many slasher tropes he'd helped to create
through films like A Nightmare on Elm Street, including the
concept of the Final Girl. Scream sets Sydney Prescott up
to be a typical final girl.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
She's sweet and chased.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
To settle for a Pt.
Speaker 8 (16:16):
Thirteen relationship, and she even sees herself as the opposite
of a horror film's usual victims. They're all the same,
some stupid killer stocking, some big breasted girl who can
Acto's alway running up the stairs when she should be going.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Out the front door.
Speaker 8 (16:28):
But Scream also shows us Sydney isn't quite as demure
as she appears. She may not be totally innocent either.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
During the trial, you did all those stories about me.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
You call me a liar.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
I think you falsely identified him.
Speaker 8 (16:40):
Yes, and my film even takes away her purity by
allowing Sydney to have sex with her boyfriend.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Now you no longer virtue.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Now you gotta die.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
Those are the rules.
Speaker 8 (16:53):
Sydney proves to be a different kind of Final Girl.
She exerts total control over what happens to her, knowing
the rule.
Speaker 7 (17:02):
Knowing the rules allows her to bend them. Why do
I hate the virginity trope so much? Because I would
have died starting in the year two thousand. I'm fine
in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Allows her to bend them.
Speaker 6 (17:16):
This is the moment when the supposedly dead kill her
comes back to life for one last scare.
Speaker 7 (17:24):
That's a great thing about Scream is the survival friendship part.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
In the nineteen nineties, we have so many Final Girls,
so I'm mainly going to talk about Scream and I
know what you did last summer. So Scream is interesting
because we get two Final girls out of it, not
only the already traumatized Sidney Prescott, but also the person
(18:25):
who's partially responsible for traumatizing.
Speaker 5 (18:28):
Her, Gail Weathers.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
And I think that that's something we start to see
more with the final Girl of the nineties, is that
she can't survive without a little bit of help from
her friends. I often see Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the
movie listed as Buffy Summer's movie version, listed as a
final Girl, but as far as the show, I never
(18:51):
see Buffy listed as a final Girl because the ending
is so different. I don't want to spoil it if
anyone hasn't seen this show that came out twenty years ago.
Speaker 5 (19:02):
But Buffy wouldn't.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
Make it to the end without help from her friends.
I know What You Did Last Summer is not one
of my favorites, even though I do like it, and
I think one of the reasons is because Buffy Summers
makes an appearance in this one, but she is not
a Final Girl, and my twelve year old brain could
truly was not accepting of that. I was just like, Okay,
(19:26):
he's cornered, you just beat him up. I actually still
feel that way. Poor Sarah Michelle Geller anytime she's in
a movie. But we do get Final girls out of
that other than Jennifer love Hewitt, also Brandy and I
still know what you did last summer, and there are
(19:46):
still This is changing, but very disproportionately. The final girls
are white girls. That starts to change once we get
into the two thousands. And I'm going to play another
clip from the Take for you about that.
Speaker 8 (20:02):
The modern final girl is empowered by her sexuality. It's
a feminist update to a trope that has long been
mired in subjugation.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
I am that very rich. When I sleep, my spirit
slips away from my body and dances naked with the devil.
Speaker 8 (20:22):
Even as the modern final girl may have more agency
than those girls of the seventies and eighties, she remains
confined by at least one outdated trapping.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
The final girl is still usually white.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
A black final girl sweetheartly kill both Top of My Complexion.
Speaker 8 (20:39):
First director Alfred Hitchcock once mused, blondes make the best victims.
They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.
And this attitude has prevailed even in modern, more enlightened
horror films, which still depend on the empathy for female
victims whose purity is conflated with whiteness. In many ways,
this reflects real world attitudes. PBS angor Gwen Eifel coined
(21:02):
the term missing white woman syndrome to describe the disproportionate
panic that surrounds imperiled white women, and we see this
reflected in horror films that repeatedly foreground white women in
danger while treating minority characters as disposable. The flip side
to the final girl, after all, is the black guy
dies first trope.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
I've seen this movie, the black dude dies first.
Speaker 8 (21:23):
While audiences are expected to be terrified for the white girl,
the deaths of black characters are regarded as just part
of the show. As nerdists, Ty Gooden has pointed out
black women and girls weren't perceived as vulnerable people whom
an audience could identify with as victims of violence because
we were barely seen as people at all, much less
valuable ones.
Speaker 7 (21:43):
All I'm saying is that the horror of generals historical
co excluding the African American.
Speaker 8 (21:48):
Animis Horror films also reflect this in their settings, taking
place in the familiar confines of high schools and safe
suburban neighborhoods, showing terror invading an idyllic, often lily white
community that leaves.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
It's not supposed to happen here, doctor, do you know
what happy feel is? Families, children all lined up in rows,
up and down these streets.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
You're telling me they're lined up for a slaughterhouse.
Speaker 8 (22:10):
Films have long treated violence against black people as commonplace
and not especially terrifying. The black woman is therefore almost
never the final girl. She is at best the close
to final girl, there to offer her support and common sense.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Truly stupid people go back. Okay, smart people run Wh's
we people?
Speaker 8 (22:27):
So we just get before she is inevitably dispatched to
teach the final girl a lesson. But the recent rise
of social horror has begun to challenge this aspect of
the trope as well. Jordan peels Us subverts horror's predominantly
white perspective through Lupita Neango's adelaide. She's the rare black
final girl, one who's been assimilated into those safe confines
(22:49):
of white society through her wealth.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Anyways, we should go back to our place. Sure, I
think it's vada claw.
Speaker 8 (22:55):
When that comfort is threatened by a mysterious other, a
group of murderous doppelgangers known as the Tethered. It highlights
just how much Adelaide has participated in creating the horror
she now faces.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
If it weren't for you.
Speaker 5 (23:11):
I never would have danced at all.
Speaker 8 (23:14):
But the film's twist that Adelaide is a member of
the tether while her doppelganger is the one who really
belongs challenges us to ask who we side with?
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Hi, people, we're Americans.
Speaker 8 (23:27):
Adelaide is both villain and victim, monster and final girl,
and by making us both empathize with her and feel
terrified of her, the film forces us to confront the
social constructs that are the film's true source of horror.
A similar social commentary underpins twenty eighteen's Assassination Nation.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Such a group of diverse.
Speaker 8 (23:47):
High schoolters, transgender and black singer Abra become a collective
of Final Girls who find themselves under attack by local
men over their supposedly loose morals.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
So here's the second really bothers me? Who sees a
naked photo of a girl and their first thighs, ye
I gotta kill this pitch.
Speaker 8 (24:08):
They not only survive, they violently turn the tables on
their attackers.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Calling on all the.
Speaker 8 (24:13):
Other girls to join them in overthrowing the patriarchal terrors
they make, and in Sophiata Calls Loose, twenty nineteen remake
of Black Christmas, one of the original sources of The
Final Girl, fully enters the twenty first century as the
film's protagonist, Riley, bends off zombie like fraternity brothers who
seek to keep women in their place and who targeted
(24:34):
her for refusing to keep silent about her own sexual assault.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Women who are willing to be obedient, like your friend here,
will be spared.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
Those of you who refuse to be compliant squestion readily.
Speaker 8 (24:47):
In the film's climax, Riley is joined by an army
of multi racial, multi gender survivors.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
No longer alone.
Speaker 8 (24:54):
The terrors in these films are systemic, affecting more than
just one kind of girl, and they take more than
one Final Girl to defeat them. Even as The Final
Girl has evolved, she's remained rooted in ideas about women
as inherently innocent, a waiting vessel for the violence the
world cruelly inflicts. The Final Girl still feels sadly relevant
(25:16):
because violence against women is still rampant in our world.
But whereas former Final Girls were defined by their victimization,
today's Final Girl is a far stronger, far more complex character.
She's a more intersectional representation of not just gender and sexuality,
but of race and class and the many ways in
(25:37):
which we are made to live in fear Today.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
I feel like they do try and make it seem
like the whole purity aspect ended with Scream, but I
really don't feel like that part has gone away.
Speaker 8 (25:52):
In Halloween, Laurie's friends are killed because they're distracted by sex.
Laurie only survives because she's far more conservative and largely sexless.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Guys think I'm too smart.
Speaker 8 (26:03):
The Final Girl is usually the only one who doesn't
give in.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
To her body's desires.
Speaker 8 (26:08):
Glenn not now, and as critics have noted, there's obvious
symbolism the fact that slasher films usually find men trying
very hard to penetrate them with phallic objects. When Laurie
strikes back at Michael with knitting needles wirehangers, he is
what becoming masculine and erasing her. The Final Girl did
(26:33):
represent some progress from those early horror heroines. In the eighties,
women became fighters, not just victims.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And in the wake of.
Speaker 8 (26:40):
Halloween they only became more proactive, cunning, and deadly. Yet
in many respects, these women were still being used symbolically.
Like Ellen and knows Ferratu, they were visions of purity,
and their femininity was conflated.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
With abject terror.
Speaker 8 (26:56):
As Carol Clover wrote, angry displays of force may belong
to the male, but crying, cowering, screaming, fainting, trembling, begging
for mercy belonged to the female.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
What about.
Speaker 7 (27:13):
Movies like Hostile saw those guys cry?
Speaker 2 (27:21):
After anything?
Speaker 1 (27:23):
The Final Girl was a tool.
Speaker 8 (27:25):
She was used because audiences presumably wouldn't identify with male
characters in similar danger. The Final Girl could fight back,
and she lived to tell the story, but it would
be a while before she controlled it.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
I was just going to really disagree with that and
be like, no, male's survival stories are just as interesting.
But I've watched almost every episode if I survived, and
there's a handful of dudes I've skipped. But that's because
their stories are like I was climbing on a glacier
and I fell into that glacier, and it's just that's
(28:02):
also just what I would expect to happen to me
if I went near a glacier and we are going
to take one final break. Other than the casting of
Final Girls and the lack of diversity there, the thing
(28:22):
that bothers me about the trope in general, no matter
who it's happening to, is when the sequels happen and
you have these characters who have had so much trauma.
So best case scenario they have they're like armed to
the gills, they have all this militia training, but oftentimes
they're really paranoid. They're not integrating well back into society
(28:44):
anymore because they've had this huge traumatizing experience that other
people play down. I feel like this would happen less
in real life, and there would be like a lot
more if I was a Final Girl, like, Okay, here's
my lifetime movie. In horror, though, there's kind of an
(29:05):
absence of that. You do have the paparazzi media presence,
but there's just this loneliness of the Final Girl, especially
when you have two movies, three movies, six movies where
she has to face the same monster or concept again
and again and again and again.
Speaker 7 (29:26):
This is for a YouTube essay on Final Girl studios.
The obsession with female rage and media.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
What on Earth is a female rage character?
Speaker 10 (29:38):
Female rage characters are women in film, television, and other
media who exhibit characteristics or emotions that may be more
rare to see from female characters on screen, such as violence, anger,
and rage. Common female rage characters you'll see the girls
worshiping online are perl from per Lisa from Girl Interrupted,
(30:02):
Nina from Black.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Swan, a female Jennifer from Jennifer's.
Speaker 10 (30:08):
Body, Tommy from the Tomy manga series, amongst others.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Though this online phenomenon of.
Speaker 10 (30:14):
Female rage is surprisingly not exclusive to female characters, as
discussed in my previous essay Why Women Love. American psycho
Patrick Bateman has also been claimed by the female rage
FuMB cells of the Internet. Real women can also be
attributed to the female Whilst scrolling the female rage tag
(30:37):
on Tumblr, you would be apt to find photos of
Fiona Apple, Mitski and Ethel Caine, alongside Sylvia Plath.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Excerpts, Where's Courtney Love? And are we all going to
start using Tumblr again?
Speaker 10 (30:51):
The obsession with female rage stems from a woman's programming
to perform for the male gaze. Since the day when
men are born we are taught and programmed to behave
in ways that are the most appealing to men, to
be delicate.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Sweet.
Speaker 10 (31:11):
Cinemas has been largely a field dominated by men. We
have throughout history almost exclusively watched women being portrayed through
the perspective of the male gaze, and therefore we have
internalized this way of seeing women, and as women, we
have internalized this way of seeing ourselves. It has been
(31:32):
suggested that women operate with an internalized man inside of
our heads, judging our every move, and therefore we perform
for him. When we are alone in our rooms, sprawled
out on our bed, we fix our.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Posture to lay more seductively.
Speaker 5 (31:48):
For whom the camera.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
The narrator for the invisible audience.
Speaker 10 (31:58):
Presentation of women through the male gaze, and thus the
representation of their emotions through the male gaze and their
fear of female anger is far from modern and is
evident within folklore and female archetypes as well. American novelist
Leslie Jamison states in I used to insist I didn't
(32:19):
get angry, not anymore. The phenomenon of female anger has
often been turned against itself. The figure of the angry
woman reframed as a threat. She conjures a lineage of
threatening archetypes, the harpy and her talents, the witch and
her spells, the Medusa and her writhing locks. The notion
(32:40):
that female anger is unnatural or destructive is learned. Young
children report perceiving displays of anger as more acceptable from
boys than from girls. Because films have largely been written
by men for men, female archetypes can fall into a
trap of leaning heaby on gender roles. They sulk beautifully
(33:03):
in their bedroom instead of raising their.
Speaker 4 (33:05):
Voice until someone comes along and massacres everyone.
Speaker 7 (33:11):
They know. That's a quick way to tap into that
feminine rage.
Speaker 5 (33:16):
So I guess that's a plus side.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
And I don't want to get too far into good
for her horror, but that's definitely touching on it. And
then on the other side of that, what I love
the most about The Final Girl is it always made
me feel like I too could kind of do anything.
I never had the purity on my side or the
clear head, but I was like, you know, it's good enough.
(33:41):
It's good enough if we're doing a full good and evil.
And I think that's an important takeaway lesson for viewers
regardless of gender and definitely good for younger viewers, as
long as we're not doing too much of the crazy
all sex leads to your her imminent death. And next time,
(34:02):
I want to talk about good for Her horror, which
is a reason that some of your favorite Final Girls
may have not been included here because in the real
revenge kind of stories, I'm saving that for good for
Her horror. A film that I really like that's a
horror comedy came out in twenty fifteen. It's called The
(34:23):
Final Girls, and I want to play a little clip
from that because I highly recommend it. Also not delightful,
but a pretty scary read the book Final.
Speaker 5 (34:34):
Girls by Riley Sager.
Speaker 4 (34:36):
There's also a book that I keep hearing about called
The Final Girls Support Group, but I haven't read that yet.
Maybe i'll download that. I have a bunch of audible credits.
It's another thing i'd love is some good creepy book recommendations.
Speaker 5 (34:50):
Going back into fiction.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
I've done a ton of nonfiction this year and it's
been so depressing, So at least give me the pretend
depressing stories.
Speaker 6 (35:05):
Camp Bloodbath is the granddaddy of all campsite slasherphones.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
Mass's mom plays Nancy this.
Speaker 6 (35:11):
Shy girl next door on her slegs?
Speaker 1 (35:14):
What time they open?
Speaker 9 (35:15):
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
You get to remember your mom this way.
Speaker 9 (35:17):
At least they get to see her on the anniversary
of her death, even if she is being choosed by
a psycho.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Guys, somebody's coming. Okay, do you guys know the way?
They can't blue vance too, so we're in the movie.
Speaker 7 (35:48):
Oh hi, they get stucked into the movie and she
gets to be with her deceased mom.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
Anyone want to help you get some strawberries?
Speaker 9 (35:58):
Nope, but I'll give you a hand with those talking
about her.
Speaker 8 (36:01):
Booze writing is so bad.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
He's coming. Everyone who has sex in this movie dies.
It's awesome. No sex.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
What wait?
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Wait, wait, Sophie time, How do we.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Get out of here?
Speaker 6 (36:20):
Movies like this end when the final girl kills the
bad guy and the credits for that's.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
The final girl.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
We just have to stay with her till the end
of the movie.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
Here, I like, I want highly recommend. It's streaming on
peacock right now. All right, thank you for listening to
another episode of Broad's next Door. I know this was
(36:49):
a short one, but there are some really long ones
coming up, and I have readded some old.
Speaker 5 (36:54):
Spooky season episodes again.
Speaker 4 (36:57):
I hope everyone is hanging in there. You can find
me online, can Yella Screamlaw or Broad's next Door at Everything.
You can always send me a DM. I right back
to everyone. I even check the junk messages folder.
Speaker 7 (37:12):
Sometimes it takes me a while, but I do get
there and I love hearing from you. If you enjoy
this episode, please leave a short review. Also check out
our merch store broadsnextdoor dot com.
Speaker 5 (37:26):
Love you very much, I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
Bye.
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