October 31, 2018 • 31 mins
Do slasher films glorify sex and violence toward women? What is the "final girl" archetype, and what can we learn from other slasher film tropes? Join Caroline and Cristen as they delve into the evolution of the slasher film genre.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
never told you. And if you're listening to this the
day it comes out, happy Halloween. And if you're not
Happy Halloween anyway, As you know, we're big horror fans
(00:29):
at the show. The second episode I did as co
host was on the Final Girl trope in Horror Movies,
and in that episode we talked about one of the
original Final Girls, Laurie from the movie Halloween. You may
or may not have heard, but there is a new
Halloween movie out that completely disregards all the other sequels.
(00:49):
How could you disregard season of the Witch or the
one that had Paul Read in it? Anyway, that's my
own issue to sort through. But yes, there's a new
Halloween movie out and it slashed through box office kurds
highest October opening day ever with thirty three point three
million dollars and seventy seven point five million dollars over
three days. And the reason that's important and that we're
(01:11):
talking about this is well, I'll let Jamie Lee Curtis
have the final word with this tweet of hers quote. Okay,
I'm going for one bos post biggest horror movie opening
with a female lead. Biggest movie opening with a female
lead over fifty five second, biggest October movie opening ever,
Biggest Halloween opening ever. Hashtag women getting things done. We
(01:35):
hope you enjoy this classic Halloween episode. Welcome to Stuff
Mom Never told You from House Stop Works dot Com. Hello,
(02:01):
and welcome to the Halloween Slash Show Spectacular. Hello. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. I hope there's spooky me music
playing in the background. I know there is in my head.
So Happy Halloween everyone, Yes, Happy Halloween. It's one of
my favorite holidays, non holiday holidays. Yeah, it's fantastic. It
(02:22):
is such a beautiful time of year. And on stuff
Mom Never told you. We like to do special episode
for Halloween. Last year we did it on the whole
sexy female costume thing, and I'm just kind of bracing
myself already. We're recording this a couple of weeks before Halloween.
I'm going to be a sexy David Bowie from Labyrinth.
(02:46):
Who I mean, you don't even have to really try
to make that sexy. He is just sexy and a
Tina Turner wig. I look awesome that the Magic Dead.
You got that right. I don't know what I'm going
to be. Maybe I'll just be like a like a
sock puppet, a giant a giant person's eyes. I like it. Well, Today, Kristen,
(03:07):
our topic is women in slasher films and are they
killed more often? Because then, because women always seem to
be dying and slasher film, yeah, there's lots of screaming
and dragging of bodies and bleeding and stuff. We're going
to examine this because a lot of researchers when when
slasher films really started to get popular, I'd say, like
(03:30):
in the seventies and eighties, Um, there was a lot
of research that said, yes, women are killed, more injured more. Um,
they are victims more often. They they're suffering is portrayed
longer on screen. Um. But then a lot of people
more recently, especially um looking at nineties movies too, a
lot of people recently have come out and said, well,
(03:50):
they're not really victims more often. Maybe you just notice
it more. Yeah, And there's some interesting archetypes that have
emerged in the slasher genre, which is a sub of
the horror genre. We're really talking about slasher films where
there's you know, like Halloween Friday the thirteenth, ro someone
out there killing a bunch of folks right with knives
and such. Yeah, rarely guns, slasher victor or slasher murderers,
(04:15):
um never, you know, they would be too quick. I
like to challenge themselves with with knives and razors and
things like that. But let me not get ahead. Well,
so one thing, well, a couple of things we're going
to talk about that. Critics and researchers have claimed that
movies like Nightmare on Elm Street feature one acts of
(04:37):
extreme violence portrayed in graphic detail, two women singled out
for injury and death hints the labels of women in
danger and violence to women films, and three scenes of
explicit violence juxtaposed with sexual erotic images. Um. And then
the question of whether or not, uh, those themes in
slasher films could be desensitizing us and sort of setting up, uh,
(05:01):
this association between sex and violence, particularly as it is
portrayed towards or as it pertains two female victims, and
whether it's having kind of like a negative negative effect
on us if we are during the Halloween season, for instance,
I like to watch as many frightening films as possible
which I know it makes it really caused a lot
(05:23):
of sleepless nights, I'm not gonna lie. But still for
the ninety minutes, it's fun. Um. I like to watch
a lot of Disney movies during it's nice to you
kind of have to balance it out, such as you know,
watching the original Black Christmas followed by the Charlie Brown
Halloween special. You know, when I was a kid, this
is totally off topic, but when I was a kid,
that Garfield Halloween movie always terrified me. There's a savory
(05:47):
as to hide from ghost pirates and a cabinet, and
I was I was terrifying that highly. I recommend it
on the edge of your seat. Um. Researchers Daniel Lens
and Edward Donnerstein are two of the of the people
who argue that slasher films disproportionately single out women for
attack and often include the mutilation of women in scenes
(06:08):
that feature sexual content, but a lot of researchers have
argued against these assumptions. In in Sex and Violence and
slasher films, researchers analysis of popular nineties films found that
the movies rarely mixed scenes of sex and violence, calling
into question claims that slasher films that portray eroticized violence
(06:28):
blunt males emotional responses. So if you there's not as
many scenes that pair violence and sex as maybe we
think there are there, I mean, I'm sure there are
movies that have a lot of that and movies that
don't have much at all, but it averages out to
not be that significant. Maybe it would be helpful for
us to quickly, um offer a little timeline of how
(06:51):
how the slasher genre really developed. Yeah, um Sopolsky and
Molitor and content trends in contemporary horror films. Bro get
down horror was established in the nineteen thirties with the
release of Dracula and Frankenstein, but by the late forties,
the desire not to offend their audiences had pretty much
blunted the genre and made it almost extinct. By nineteen fifty,
(07:14):
we have the aftermath of World War Two, the detonation
of the A bomb. People are people are getting a
little nervous. They're having drills where they get under their desks.
U A sub genre developed of science fiction horror, and
it's sort of vented fears of the atomic menace, and
in the nineteen fifties with the development of the teenage
culture in the US. This is when, um, you have
(07:35):
a competition from television in this new consumer market with
teenagers that's really developing, and so they start making horror
team picks, especially in color, to shock these younger audiences, right,
and teams had been watching a lot of these older
movies on on TV and sort of getting getting into
(07:57):
the horror thing. And so when people really as soon
just like anything with teenagers, as soon as you realize
you can make money off of them from something, it
becomes a huge So, um, yeah, these horror movies really
took off, and in the nineteen sixties they started to
really become more explicit in their portrayals, portrayals of sex
and violence. You have movies like I have to take
(08:19):
really deep breath before I say this title, The Incredibly
Strange Creatures who Stopped living and became mixed up Zombies,
And I watched the trailer for this last night. I'm
never going to watch it, but it looks hysterical. It's
it looks like a terrible version of Big because a
guy takes his girlfriend to the carnival and then she
really wants to go to the gypsy and the prediction
(08:42):
something happens and then he becomes a zombie. But it's
a musical. It's a musical musical music zombie tacular. Oh man, Yeah,
that's that's wow. I know I can't top that, but
Alfred Hitchcock can, Yes he can. And in nineteen sixty
Psycho single endedly launched a new subgenre called gore hor
(09:03):
which eventually did give rise to slasher films. And whereas
before maybe some of these movies were looked upon as
though I don't know, silly, um, this movie actually had
the weight of alfredy Hitchcock behind it, his money, his fame,
his the respect that he got. Um sort of made
Psycho more popular. And Psycho also planted the seeds for
(09:27):
a number of the slasher tropes that will talk about
in more detail, such as you know Norman Bates, the
mother obsessed killer and the attractive female victim played by
Janet Lee. Yeah, all these guys who were sort of
obsessed with women in a in a weird way and
(09:47):
and maybe kept preserved there in Grandmother's lying around. Yeah,
it seems like there's always a strange relationship with some
major female in their life. And they're either the slasher
when they're males anyway, the male um slasher killers. Slasher
killers often are either highly sexualized like they have there's
some kind of like sexual deviant like h Nightmare on
(10:10):
Elm Street, or they're de sexualized completely right the other face,
there's Michael and Halloween who went on his lifetime killing
spree after he saw his sister having sex with her
boyfriend in their parents bed, and then he went around
killing women as if he were killing his sister all
over again. I guess. Whereas when the slash of killer
(10:31):
slasher killer. When the slasher killer is a woman, usually
her rage is related to some kind of wrong done
to her by a man romantic, just like an attack
of the fifty ft woman. Another incredible trailer. I actually
have two incredible trailers I want to talk about. One
(10:52):
is attack of the fiftt woman, which is not it
wasn't in the sixties, I think it was. But um,
she is so angry, her good for nothing husband is
out running around on the town and so of course
you know she's out driving around and she encounters like
some nuclear something or other from space and you know, naturally,
like this giant hand comes down and touches her and
(11:15):
she becomes a giant woman. I'm really unclear on the details. Um,
so she's a really angry woman walking around in lingerie
but impeccable hairstyle. The whole time it just attacking people
and ripping roofs off things. So there's that. And then
there was play Misty for Me, which before we read
about all this horror stuff, um, I had never heard of.
(11:36):
It's starring Clint Eastwood and okay, so it features he's
a d J, a radio DJ, and this woman is
a fan and she always calls in and requests a
song Misty, and finally they have a they meet, He
picks her up at a bar. They have a fling,
and when he get involved gets involved with someone else,
things get weird, like, you know, she's doing all the
(12:00):
boiling the bunny type of stuff, you know, stalking him
and and it's all crazy. But I don't think I'll
ever be able to take it seriously because the version
of the trailer that I watched, I think was the
one that was edited to look hysterical. So but it's funny. Yeah,
there's a lot of stabby stuff, and so it seems
like horror movies that feature women as the killers are
more like the spurned woman. Um, the look at how
(12:23):
terrifying this woman is because she wants to love me
kind of thing. Yeah, kind of creepy, like whoha, you
need to I didn't call for a reason. Um. And
we have to cite nineteen sixty three's Blood Feast for
also helping kick off the gore slasher film. Um. And
I would like to note that I have not seen
(12:44):
Blood Feast, but I would like to since Uh it
was produced by Herschel Gordon Lewis, and it's about an
Egyptian caterer who murders women in Miami in order to
use their in trails to reanimate a dormant Egyptian goddess.
It sounds like my kind of Halloween. Yeah. I did
(13:05):
read a description of it that involved like I think
some some kids were necking and some girl got her
part of her brain chopped off or something. I don't know.
There were descriptions of brains in the sand, like like
brains through an hour glass. Well this is yeah. Blood
Feast is significant. Um, even though it's I think one
of the lesser known horror films, because it was one
(13:26):
of the first to use that combination of the really
attractive females and really intense viilence, and it made a
lot of money, right, And let's not forget Night of
the Living Dead with zombies and and women and such,
but I will. There is one point though, that Sarah
biclely Um wrote about the difference between zombie movies and
(13:49):
slasher films, especially as they relate to women. She points
out that zombie movies are often about groups of people
and it's a it's typically human struggling to work together
to these zombies, whereas slasher movies are about individuals where
a lot of times one man is doing all the
killing and only one girl will out with him and survive.
(14:11):
It sounds like a tagline for a movie. Yeah, And
what Kristen is talking about is the final girl, the
girl who survives. And this really, this theme really came
up starting in the seventies with um Texas Chainsaw Massacre
with the girl who just fights and fights to survive
and at the end is the only one standing. Should
(14:31):
I should I drop the name of the final girl
in Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Is that a terrible spoiler alert? Oh?
I don't know. I mean, come on, sure, go ahead, okay,
cover years if you don't. Yeah, I guess it really
makes no difference. But um, I just I was going
through all of these, uh, these old horror films, these
seminal horror films and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Ur we have
(14:55):
Sally as the final girl, A good names, my MoMA's name.
In how loween we have Lorie is the only one
who survives Michael's wrath. Right at the thirteenth, We've got
Alice hell Night Night one, Martie Nightmare on Elm Street
eighty four. Nancy, I mean it's it goes on and
on even in Texas Chainsaw Massacre too. That comes out
in N six Final Girl Stretch Stretch. Yeah, I didn't
(15:19):
even know that existed. I just knew about the remake.
It wasn't that Jessica Bielle. It was Jessica bile Okay,
that's all I really remember. But but back to this
final final girl archetype. Carol J. Clover, who wrote Men,
Women and Chainsaws, offers this nice analysis. She writes, the
final girl is on reflection a congenial double for the
adolescent male. She is feminine enough to act out in
(15:41):
a gratifying way away unapproved for adult males, the terms
and masochistic pleasures of the underlying fantasy, but not so
feminine as to disturb the structure of male competence and sexuality.
Interesting because if you think about a character like Lorie
played by Jamie Lee Curtis in the original Halloween, you know,
(16:01):
she's the only one she's she's attractive, but she's the
only one within her group of friends who isn't sexually active,
and she's kind of ridiculed for being uh too bookish
and not social enough. Yeah. Well, who's laughing now? Exactly
after everybody she was probably crying like yeah, I'm sure,
(16:23):
or maybe cry laughing. Yeah, it could be. Okay, Well,
let's look at people who aren't laugh crying anymore because
they've been killed, because they're bleeding to death. Yeah. Um So,
(16:46):
looking at more of these studies, looking into who who's
killed and who who survived, females were not singled out
for attack. Fewer than half of innocent victims are actually
female in these movies, and the amount of violent acts
actually increases against males in the eighties, while it dramatically
drops for females. And that might have something to do
(17:07):
with There were complaints to studios and producers and whatnot
of violence against women, so that could have had a
lot to do with it too. And really, if you
are if you're a character in a horror film, if
you want to guarantee that you will get slashed, just
play a logical man, a logical boy, scout leader, guy
(17:30):
who has some very formulate plan for you know, dodging
the slasher on the loose logic will not win, because yeah,
what what was that thing that that the men who
have really good plans and horror movies are often the
first to be killed off so that the plot can continue.
And if you're mean spirited, slasher films don't like mean
(17:51):
spirited people or adulterers. But it might seem like women
are more often the victims of slasher death because when
it comes to the violent scenes, they are a lot
more drawn out when it's a female victim as compared
to a male victim. A lot of times, the guys
(18:11):
and slasher films, they die quick and dirty with women.
They will drag it out, they will torture us. Yeah, yeah,
we we have to suffer. You have to watch us
bleeding for a while. Yeah. It's often referred to as
torture porn. Yeah. Yeah. And there are a lot of
studies that that look at porn and and porn movies
and I mean could because it is it is disturbing
(18:33):
to to watch. And it's also, um, you know, thinking
about those those films in the nineteen seventies and eighties, Um,
it's understandable why a lot of film critics were not
too comfortable, um calling them violence toward women films because
of these extended scenes of women, often you know, scantily clad,
being being brutally murdered. Carol Clover certainly did not seem
(18:58):
to like them. In her introduction to her lasher film
chapter in Men, Women in Chainsaws, she said, a slasher
is the immensely generative story of a psycho killer who
slashes to death a string of mostly female victims one
by one until he is subdued or killed, usually by
the one girl who survives. And she goes on to
say that these movies are drenched in taboo and encroaching
(19:18):
vigorously on the pornographic Yeah. And she also mentions that
that rape is often non existent in slasher films, perhaps
suggesting that sex and violence are substitutes for each other
or um And I can't think of specific instances, but
I know that I've seen in some of um these
death scenes, especially if it's a male slasher killing UM
(19:40):
a female character. It's like the death and sexual assault
are just combined into one, very gory lots of grossness.
But one one film that we have to mention that
really took on um all of these uh potentially anti
female themes of violence against women and over sexualizing women.
(20:04):
A lot of these, especially early slasher films. We gotta
talk about two slumber Party Massacre, which was written by
Rita may Brown, and it was her attempt to satirize
the slasher genre for its anti feminist tropes. But Hollywood
basically ended up getting the last laugh because it um,
(20:27):
it just sort of threw any satire out the door
and made it a um a bloody romp. Yeah, drills
were involved, drills and a lot of female characters in
saucy bedroom attire. Well it was a slumber party, yes,
And I don't know, I don't know how you dressed
up when you have slumber parties with your friends. Yeah,
it's about it's about a serial killer. Russ Thorne, who
(20:49):
escapes from a mental institution and terrorizes you guessed it,
a slumber party. Um and the New York Times was
highly disappointed in the product. Um, the film critic wrote,
and this is two. Doesn't matter that, in the name
of progress the filmmakers see to it the occasional teenage
boy is slaughtered, along with plenty of girls. No, it doesn't.
(21:11):
And the fact that Miss Brown and Miss Jones that
was the director, have obviously tried to inject a little
satire and innovation into the genre just makes the ultimate
vulgarity of their film all the more disappointing. But there
is a last girl at the end, right, Oh yeah,
and and she breaks his drill, Yeah, in a very
metaphorical right, the phallic drill. Yeah. Well, I'm moving on
(21:37):
to two women who UM participated in the horror genre
are Karen Kusama and Diablo Cody. They made A Jennifer's
Body which was starting Megan Fox a couple of years ago,
and um. This was part of an article in e
W about Entertainment Weekly about women making up a huge
chunk of the horror fan base, and Um Diablo Cody
(22:01):
said that she had been always been a huge horror
fan and wanted to make a horror film for women
because that's probably the most perplexing part of all of this. Uh,
this research on slasher films and especially how women are
portrayed and slasher films and and and killed and sexualized,
(22:21):
is that at the end of the day, women make
up a majority of the people watching these movies, especially
these days for instance. And these aren't necessarily slasher films,
but they but there are horror films. Just to give you,
give you an idea. With The Ring, Okay, sixty percent
of the audience female, The Grudge sixty five percent female,
(22:43):
The Exorcism of Emily Rose one percent female. That's that's
pretty close. Yeah, I can't watch I can't watch The Ring.
Yeah I'm not. I'm like I still, I'm a panting
I can't terrify as me. But you are among the minority, apparently,
I know. Yeah. Maitland McDonough, who's written about horror movies
for about twenty years, said that maybe it's the toughness
(23:04):
that some of these female characters convey that that helps
women identify with them, and she said that she's certainly
seeing a lot more women in the audience now than
she did twenty or thirty years ago. Right, And UM,
there was a study that we found that analyzed UH
slasher films that were made in the seventies and eighties, UM,
comparing them to their more contemporary remakes to see whether
(23:27):
or not they treat the female characters or um any
any differently. And this is coming from Chad Brewer's thesis.
He was a student at l s U. And his
thesis was called the Stereotypical Portrayal of Women and Slasher
Films then versus Now, And he examined the films Black Christmas,
watched the nineteen seventy four addition, it is terrifying, yes,
(23:50):
side note, he looked at Black Christmas, Halloween, prom Night,
Psycho Texas, Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills have Eyes, the Hitcher,
and when a stranger calls. And so he found that
the remakes UM portray women a little bit better. Generally,
they are more often seen as intelligent problem solvers. Uh,
(24:12):
they're not as physically helpless toward male slashers, and I
guess toward toward female enemies as well. UM. Half of
the remale made films allowed the female characters to have
very strong dialogue, but at the same time, the women
of the remade films also had to remain feminine and
beautiful before the killer attacks him and forces them to
act more masculine in order to survive. Switching gender rolls up.
(24:36):
Some things change, some things stay the same. So true,
but that on a pillow. Um. Yeah. Talking about the
appeal of women, Bob Weinstein says, the appeal isn't watching
women in jeopardy and most importantly fighting back. So you know,
I mean, you don't want to see a poor, helpless woman,
you know, just get beat up all the time. You
(24:58):
want to see your kick butt. Yeah, salutely. And there is,
for whatever reason, I think there is more audience satisfaction
when it is um, a female who's fighting back against
leather face. Yeah. Well, they do talk about boys and
the audience who might cheer on the killer the whole
movie while he's while he's doing all of a gory
(25:18):
killing and slashing and whatnot, But then they turn around
and end up cheering for the the the last female,
the final the final girl, the final girl. Um. And uh,
here here's one more little trope that we found. Uh.
Slashers prefer blondes or whatever reason. Can that be the
zombie remake of Gentlemen Zombie? Sup? It's true the final
(25:41):
girl is almost always brunette. Um, and that probably has
to do with a lot of bogus cultural stereotypes we
have about blonde females that I do not agree with. Um.
But yeah, if I were in a horror film, I
can breathe a little bit easier. Good. Yes, yeah, I
my hair color changes, so I don't know. I think
(26:03):
I'm okay. I'm brunette, hopefully kind of spirited and not
an adulterous So yeah, here that Michael, oh God, inviting trouble. Yeah, well,
I think to close things out, are there any any
horror films, slasher films in particular, that you would recommend
people to watch this Halloween? I really think you should
(26:26):
all go out and watch that movie with a really
long title about the zombie musical. Watch the Zombie Musical. Yeah,
I um, I am really interested in what's what was it? Misty?
I really want to see that the woman is insane
in the movie. I mean, yeah, she didn't boil any bunnies,
but I mean she does everything but and yeah, and
(26:47):
if only to hear the song called misty um and
my ultimate favorite but don't watch it alone movie is
Black Christmas. I've never, I've never what is it about?
It takes place in over Christmas break in a sorority house.
And that's that's all I canna say. Um, it will
(27:07):
It'll freak you out, So that is all. I hope
that you all have enjoyed the Halloween Halloween slash of
Spectacular and I hope you all enjoy a very safe
(27:31):
and fun Halloween indeed, and let us know your favorite
slash your films too. Mom Stuff at house stuff works
dot com is our email address, but this time we're
not going to read any of your emails. We are
turning to Facebook because we got such a great response
to our question of who are your favorite characters on
(27:51):
female characters on TV? And there were so many awesome
ones that we did not mention in the episode that
I thought, Caroline, you and I just call out some
of them. Sure, so you have a few you want
to toss out, I do. I highly highly support the
nominations of Angela Lansbury and Murder, she wrote, and Maxine
Gray on Judging Amy. I've never seen Judging Amy. Oh,
(28:15):
it was such a good show. I really I really
liked it. I really did. But she was also in
Cagney and Lacey. Oh, okay, okay. Um. I liked how
Nancy Boughtwyn from Weeds was kind of controversial, really yeah,
because she you know, she plays this uh this drug
deal in Mama and she's super tough and always drinking
coffee through a straw. Um and Mary Louise Parker, who
(28:38):
I do I do love, but I could I could
see how she can be kind of um, kind of
a polarizing figure. Buffy was far and away the number
one pick. And you guys also love some Veronica Mars.
I tried to watch that show once and I was
not successful. Yeah, I never I haven't haven't watched it Blossom. Yeah,
(28:58):
Daria Darry I I I also had her same attitude
towards volleyball. Who have Scully Scully of course from X Files,
some women on TV today Leslie Nope and Liz Lemon
from Parks and rec and Thirty Rock respectively, and then
some ladies from back in the day. We have Laura
(29:19):
Petrie who was um Mary Tyler Moore on The Dick
Van Dyke Show, and then also Mary and Rhoda from
The Mary Tyler Moore Show. And let us not forget
Elaine Bennis from Steinfeld. I know, I can't believe that
there are so many. I could believe Claire on Modern
Family Who I really enjoy, Joan Holloway on Madmen, Uh,
(29:39):
The Connor Women, Rosanne Darlene when we have to Panga,
she of the crimped hair style for Boy Meets World
Panga um Audrey Horn from Twin Peaks. I thought was
a great um suggestion. She's kind of a creepy character,
but I love Sydney Bristow. That's alias right, there, is it? Yeah?
(30:02):
Clear Fisher from six Ft Under, Donna from Dr Who,
Penny from The Big Bang Theory, Laura Holt from Remington's Steel.
I loved the variety of all these suggestions. Um, So
I guess thank you, it's what we're trying to say. Yeah,
it's good to know that there are so many good
female characters on TV and in movies. Yeah, and it
(30:22):
reminds me of some some TV I need to catch
up on, yeah for real, such as just two more
from shows that I have I have not seen at all,
which is kind of sad. Brenda Lee Johnson from The Closure. Yeah,
I love her and I got I carry her on
a giant black bag too, and I can never find
anything in it. Doesn't she have? Um she's a Southern lady,
right she is. She's from Atlanta, but she has just
(30:46):
you know, I don't know what people think of what
people in the rest of the country think of people
in Atlanta. I know people were disappointed that we didn't
have Southern accents. But Brenda Lee or Brenda whatever her
name is, Brenda Lee Johnson, thank you. That's such a
deep Southern accent. So so if they need their Southern
accent fixed after the podcast, they can watch The Closer.
Yeah exactly. Um. Well, with that, thanks everyone for writing in,
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Today on iTunes,
Hey, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
never told you. And if you're listening to this the
day it comes out, happy Halloween. And if you're not
Happy Halloween anyway, As you know, we're big horror fans
(00:29):
at the show. The second episode I did as co
host was on the Final Girl trope in Horror Movies,
and in that episode we talked about one of the
original Final Girls, Laurie from the movie Halloween. You may
or may not have heard, but there is a new
Halloween movie out that completely disregards all the other sequels.
(00:49):
How could you disregard season of the Witch or the
one that had Paul Read in it? Anyway, that's my
own issue to sort through. But yes, there's a new
Halloween movie out and it slashed through box office kurds
highest October opening day ever with thirty three point three
million dollars and seventy seven point five million dollars over
three days. And the reason that's important and that we're
(01:11):
talking about this is well, I'll let Jamie Lee Curtis
have the final word with this tweet of hers quote. Okay,
I'm going for one bos post biggest horror movie opening
with a female lead. Biggest movie opening with a female
lead over fifty five second, biggest October movie opening ever,
Biggest Halloween opening ever. Hashtag women getting things done. We
(01:35):
hope you enjoy this classic Halloween episode. Welcome to Stuff
Mom Never told You from House Stop Works dot Com. Hello,
(02:01):
and welcome to the Halloween Slash Show Spectacular. Hello. I'm
Caroline and I'm Kristen. I hope there's spooky me music
playing in the background. I know there is in my head.
So Happy Halloween everyone, Yes, Happy Halloween. It's one of
my favorite holidays, non holiday holidays. Yeah, it's fantastic. It
(02:22):
is such a beautiful time of year. And on stuff
Mom Never told you. We like to do special episode
for Halloween. Last year we did it on the whole
sexy female costume thing, and I'm just kind of bracing
myself already. We're recording this a couple of weeks before Halloween.
I'm going to be a sexy David Bowie from Labyrinth.
(02:46):
Who I mean, you don't even have to really try
to make that sexy. He is just sexy and a
Tina Turner wig. I look awesome that the Magic Dead.
You got that right. I don't know what I'm going
to be. Maybe I'll just be like a like a
sock puppet, a giant a giant person's eyes. I like it. Well, Today, Kristen,
(03:07):
our topic is women in slasher films and are they
killed more often? Because then, because women always seem to
be dying and slasher film, yeah, there's lots of screaming
and dragging of bodies and bleeding and stuff. We're going
to examine this because a lot of researchers when when
slasher films really started to get popular, I'd say, like
(03:30):
in the seventies and eighties, Um, there was a lot
of research that said, yes, women are killed, more injured more. Um,
they are victims more often. They they're suffering is portrayed
longer on screen. Um. But then a lot of people
more recently, especially um looking at nineties movies too, a
lot of people recently have come out and said, well,
(03:50):
they're not really victims more often. Maybe you just notice
it more. Yeah, And there's some interesting archetypes that have
emerged in the slasher genre, which is a sub of
the horror genre. We're really talking about slasher films where
there's you know, like Halloween Friday the thirteenth, ro someone
out there killing a bunch of folks right with knives
and such. Yeah, rarely guns, slasher victor or slasher murderers,
(04:15):
um never, you know, they would be too quick. I
like to challenge themselves with with knives and razors and
things like that. But let me not get ahead. Well,
so one thing, well, a couple of things we're going
to talk about that. Critics and researchers have claimed that
movies like Nightmare on Elm Street feature one acts of
(04:37):
extreme violence portrayed in graphic detail, two women singled out
for injury and death hints the labels of women in
danger and violence to women films, and three scenes of
explicit violence juxtaposed with sexual erotic images. Um. And then
the question of whether or not, uh, those themes in
slasher films could be desensitizing us and sort of setting up, uh,
(05:01):
this association between sex and violence, particularly as it is
portrayed towards or as it pertains two female victims, and
whether it's having kind of like a negative negative effect
on us if we are during the Halloween season, for instance,
I like to watch as many frightening films as possible
which I know it makes it really caused a lot
(05:23):
of sleepless nights, I'm not gonna lie. But still for
the ninety minutes, it's fun. Um. I like to watch
a lot of Disney movies during it's nice to you
kind of have to balance it out, such as you know,
watching the original Black Christmas followed by the Charlie Brown
Halloween special. You know, when I was a kid, this
is totally off topic, but when I was a kid,
that Garfield Halloween movie always terrified me. There's a savory
(05:47):
as to hide from ghost pirates and a cabinet, and
I was I was terrifying that highly. I recommend it
on the edge of your seat. Um. Researchers Daniel Lens
and Edward Donnerstein are two of the of the people
who argue that slasher films disproportionately single out women for
attack and often include the mutilation of women in scenes
(06:08):
that feature sexual content, but a lot of researchers have
argued against these assumptions. In in Sex and Violence and
slasher films, researchers analysis of popular nineties films found that
the movies rarely mixed scenes of sex and violence, calling
into question claims that slasher films that portray eroticized violence
(06:28):
blunt males emotional responses. So if you there's not as
many scenes that pair violence and sex as maybe we
think there are there, I mean, I'm sure there are
movies that have a lot of that and movies that
don't have much at all, but it averages out to
not be that significant. Maybe it would be helpful for
us to quickly, um offer a little timeline of how
(06:51):
how the slasher genre really developed. Yeah, um Sopolsky and
Molitor and content trends in contemporary horror films. Bro get
down horror was established in the nineteen thirties with the
release of Dracula and Frankenstein, but by the late forties,
the desire not to offend their audiences had pretty much
blunted the genre and made it almost extinct. By nineteen fifty,
(07:14):
we have the aftermath of World War Two, the detonation
of the A bomb. People are people are getting a
little nervous. They're having drills where they get under their desks.
U A sub genre developed of science fiction horror, and
it's sort of vented fears of the atomic menace, and
in the nineteen fifties with the development of the teenage
culture in the US. This is when, um, you have
(07:35):
a competition from television in this new consumer market with
teenagers that's really developing, and so they start making horror
team picks, especially in color, to shock these younger audiences, right,
and teams had been watching a lot of these older
movies on on TV and sort of getting getting into
(07:57):
the horror thing. And so when people really as soon
just like anything with teenagers, as soon as you realize
you can make money off of them from something, it
becomes a huge So, um, yeah, these horror movies really
took off, and in the nineteen sixties they started to
really become more explicit in their portrayals, portrayals of sex
and violence. You have movies like I have to take
(08:19):
really deep breath before I say this title, The Incredibly
Strange Creatures who Stopped living and became mixed up Zombies,
And I watched the trailer for this last night. I'm
never going to watch it, but it looks hysterical. It's
it looks like a terrible version of Big because a
guy takes his girlfriend to the carnival and then she
really wants to go to the gypsy and the prediction
(08:42):
something happens and then he becomes a zombie. But it's
a musical. It's a musical musical music zombie tacular. Oh man, Yeah,
that's that's wow. I know I can't top that, but
Alfred Hitchcock can, Yes he can. And in nineteen sixty
Psycho single endedly launched a new subgenre called gore hor
(09:03):
which eventually did give rise to slasher films. And whereas
before maybe some of these movies were looked upon as
though I don't know, silly, um, this movie actually had
the weight of alfredy Hitchcock behind it, his money, his fame,
his the respect that he got. Um sort of made
Psycho more popular. And Psycho also planted the seeds for
(09:27):
a number of the slasher tropes that will talk about
in more detail, such as you know Norman Bates, the
mother obsessed killer and the attractive female victim played by
Janet Lee. Yeah, all these guys who were sort of
obsessed with women in a in a weird way and
(09:47):
and maybe kept preserved there in Grandmother's lying around. Yeah,
it seems like there's always a strange relationship with some
major female in their life. And they're either the slasher
when they're males anyway, the male um slasher killers. Slasher
killers often are either highly sexualized like they have there's
some kind of like sexual deviant like h Nightmare on
(10:10):
Elm Street, or they're de sexualized completely right the other face,
there's Michael and Halloween who went on his lifetime killing
spree after he saw his sister having sex with her
boyfriend in their parents bed, and then he went around
killing women as if he were killing his sister all
over again. I guess. Whereas when the slash of killer
(10:31):
slasher killer. When the slasher killer is a woman, usually
her rage is related to some kind of wrong done
to her by a man romantic, just like an attack
of the fifty ft woman. Another incredible trailer. I actually
have two incredible trailers I want to talk about. One
(10:52):
is attack of the fiftt woman, which is not it
wasn't in the sixties, I think it was. But um,
she is so angry, her good for nothing husband is
out running around on the town and so of course
you know she's out driving around and she encounters like
some nuclear something or other from space and you know, naturally,
like this giant hand comes down and touches her and
(11:15):
she becomes a giant woman. I'm really unclear on the details. Um,
so she's a really angry woman walking around in lingerie
but impeccable hairstyle. The whole time it just attacking people
and ripping roofs off things. So there's that. And then
there was play Misty for Me, which before we read
about all this horror stuff, um, I had never heard of.
(11:36):
It's starring Clint Eastwood and okay, so it features he's
a d J, a radio DJ, and this woman is
a fan and she always calls in and requests a
song Misty, and finally they have a they meet, He
picks her up at a bar. They have a fling,
and when he get involved gets involved with someone else,
things get weird, like, you know, she's doing all the
(12:00):
boiling the bunny type of stuff, you know, stalking him
and and it's all crazy. But I don't think I'll
ever be able to take it seriously because the version
of the trailer that I watched, I think was the
one that was edited to look hysterical. So but it's funny. Yeah,
there's a lot of stabby stuff, and so it seems
like horror movies that feature women as the killers are
more like the spurned woman. Um, the look at how
(12:23):
terrifying this woman is because she wants to love me
kind of thing. Yeah, kind of creepy, like whoha, you
need to I didn't call for a reason. Um. And
we have to cite nineteen sixty three's Blood Feast for
also helping kick off the gore slasher film. Um. And
I would like to note that I have not seen
(12:44):
Blood Feast, but I would like to since Uh it
was produced by Herschel Gordon Lewis, and it's about an
Egyptian caterer who murders women in Miami in order to
use their in trails to reanimate a dormant Egyptian goddess.
It sounds like my kind of Halloween. Yeah. I did
(13:05):
read a description of it that involved like I think
some some kids were necking and some girl got her
part of her brain chopped off or something. I don't know.
There were descriptions of brains in the sand, like like
brains through an hour glass. Well this is yeah. Blood
Feast is significant. Um, even though it's I think one
of the lesser known horror films, because it was one
(13:26):
of the first to use that combination of the really
attractive females and really intense viilence, and it made a
lot of money, right, And let's not forget Night of
the Living Dead with zombies and and women and such,
but I will. There is one point though, that Sarah
biclely Um wrote about the difference between zombie movies and
(13:49):
slasher films, especially as they relate to women. She points
out that zombie movies are often about groups of people
and it's a it's typically human struggling to work together
to these zombies, whereas slasher movies are about individuals where
a lot of times one man is doing all the
killing and only one girl will out with him and survive.
(14:11):
It sounds like a tagline for a movie. Yeah, And
what Kristen is talking about is the final girl, the
girl who survives. And this really, this theme really came
up starting in the seventies with um Texas Chainsaw Massacre
with the girl who just fights and fights to survive
and at the end is the only one standing. Should
(14:31):
I should I drop the name of the final girl
in Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Is that a terrible spoiler alert? Oh?
I don't know. I mean, come on, sure, go ahead, okay,
cover years if you don't. Yeah, I guess it really
makes no difference. But um, I just I was going
through all of these, uh, these old horror films, these
seminal horror films and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Ur we have
(14:55):
Sally as the final girl, A good names, my MoMA's name.
In how loween we have Lorie is the only one
who survives Michael's wrath. Right at the thirteenth, We've got
Alice hell Night Night one, Martie Nightmare on Elm Street
eighty four. Nancy, I mean it's it goes on and
on even in Texas Chainsaw Massacre too. That comes out
in N six Final Girl Stretch Stretch. Yeah, I didn't
(15:19):
even know that existed. I just knew about the remake.
It wasn't that Jessica Bielle. It was Jessica bile Okay,
that's all I really remember. But but back to this
final final girl archetype. Carol J. Clover, who wrote Men,
Women and Chainsaws, offers this nice analysis. She writes, the
final girl is on reflection a congenial double for the
adolescent male. She is feminine enough to act out in
(15:41):
a gratifying way away unapproved for adult males, the terms
and masochistic pleasures of the underlying fantasy, but not so
feminine as to disturb the structure of male competence and sexuality.
Interesting because if you think about a character like Lorie
played by Jamie Lee Curtis in the original Halloween, you know,
(16:01):
she's the only one she's she's attractive, but she's the
only one within her group of friends who isn't sexually active,
and she's kind of ridiculed for being uh too bookish
and not social enough. Yeah. Well, who's laughing now? Exactly
after everybody she was probably crying like yeah, I'm sure,
(16:23):
or maybe cry laughing. Yeah, it could be. Okay, Well,
let's look at people who aren't laugh crying anymore because
they've been killed, because they're bleeding to death. Yeah. Um So,
(16:46):
looking at more of these studies, looking into who who's
killed and who who survived, females were not singled out
for attack. Fewer than half of innocent victims are actually
female in these movies, and the amount of violent acts
actually increases against males in the eighties, while it dramatically
drops for females. And that might have something to do
(17:07):
with There were complaints to studios and producers and whatnot
of violence against women, so that could have had a
lot to do with it too. And really, if you
are if you're a character in a horror film, if
you want to guarantee that you will get slashed, just
play a logical man, a logical boy, scout leader, guy
(17:30):
who has some very formulate plan for you know, dodging
the slasher on the loose logic will not win, because yeah,
what what was that thing that that the men who
have really good plans and horror movies are often the
first to be killed off so that the plot can continue.
And if you're mean spirited, slasher films don't like mean
(17:51):
spirited people or adulterers. But it might seem like women
are more often the victims of slasher death because when
it comes to the violent scenes, they are a lot
more drawn out when it's a female victim as compared
to a male victim. A lot of times, the guys
(18:11):
and slasher films, they die quick and dirty with women.
They will drag it out, they will torture us. Yeah, yeah,
we we have to suffer. You have to watch us
bleeding for a while. Yeah. It's often referred to as
torture porn. Yeah. Yeah. And there are a lot of
studies that that look at porn and and porn movies
and I mean could because it is it is disturbing
(18:33):
to to watch. And it's also, um, you know, thinking
about those those films in the nineteen seventies and eighties, Um,
it's understandable why a lot of film critics were not
too comfortable, um calling them violence toward women films because
of these extended scenes of women, often you know, scantily clad,
being being brutally murdered. Carol Clover certainly did not seem
(18:58):
to like them. In her introduction to her lasher film
chapter in Men, Women in Chainsaws, she said, a slasher
is the immensely generative story of a psycho killer who
slashes to death a string of mostly female victims one
by one until he is subdued or killed, usually by
the one girl who survives. And she goes on to
say that these movies are drenched in taboo and encroaching
(19:18):
vigorously on the pornographic Yeah. And she also mentions that
that rape is often non existent in slasher films, perhaps
suggesting that sex and violence are substitutes for each other
or um And I can't think of specific instances, but
I know that I've seen in some of um these
death scenes, especially if it's a male slasher killing UM
(19:40):
a female character. It's like the death and sexual assault
are just combined into one, very gory lots of grossness.
But one one film that we have to mention that
really took on um all of these uh potentially anti
female themes of violence against women and over sexualizing women.
(20:04):
A lot of these, especially early slasher films. We gotta
talk about two slumber Party Massacre, which was written by
Rita may Brown, and it was her attempt to satirize
the slasher genre for its anti feminist tropes. But Hollywood
basically ended up getting the last laugh because it um,
(20:27):
it just sort of threw any satire out the door
and made it a um a bloody romp. Yeah, drills
were involved, drills and a lot of female characters in
saucy bedroom attire. Well it was a slumber party, yes,
And I don't know, I don't know how you dressed
up when you have slumber parties with your friends. Yeah,
it's about it's about a serial killer. Russ Thorne, who
(20:49):
escapes from a mental institution and terrorizes you guessed it,
a slumber party. Um and the New York Times was
highly disappointed in the product. Um, the film critic wrote,
and this is two. Doesn't matter that, in the name
of progress the filmmakers see to it the occasional teenage
boy is slaughtered, along with plenty of girls. No, it doesn't.
(21:11):
And the fact that Miss Brown and Miss Jones that
was the director, have obviously tried to inject a little
satire and innovation into the genre just makes the ultimate
vulgarity of their film all the more disappointing. But there
is a last girl at the end, right, Oh yeah,
and and she breaks his drill, Yeah, in a very
metaphorical right, the phallic drill. Yeah. Well, I'm moving on
(21:37):
to two women who UM participated in the horror genre
are Karen Kusama and Diablo Cody. They made A Jennifer's
Body which was starting Megan Fox a couple of years ago,
and um. This was part of an article in e
W about Entertainment Weekly about women making up a huge
chunk of the horror fan base, and Um Diablo Cody
(22:01):
said that she had been always been a huge horror
fan and wanted to make a horror film for women
because that's probably the most perplexing part of all of this. Uh,
this research on slasher films and especially how women are
portrayed and slasher films and and and killed and sexualized,
(22:21):
is that at the end of the day, women make
up a majority of the people watching these movies, especially
these days for instance. And these aren't necessarily slasher films,
but they but there are horror films. Just to give you,
give you an idea. With The Ring, Okay, sixty percent
of the audience female, The Grudge sixty five percent female,
(22:43):
The Exorcism of Emily Rose one percent female. That's that's
pretty close. Yeah, I can't watch I can't watch The Ring.
Yeah I'm not. I'm like I still, I'm a panting
I can't terrify as me. But you are among the minority, apparently,
I know. Yeah. Maitland McDonough, who's written about horror movies
for about twenty years, said that maybe it's the toughness
(23:04):
that some of these female characters convey that that helps
women identify with them, and she said that she's certainly
seeing a lot more women in the audience now than
she did twenty or thirty years ago. Right, And UM,
there was a study that we found that analyzed UH
slasher films that were made in the seventies and eighties, UM,
comparing them to their more contemporary remakes to see whether
(23:27):
or not they treat the female characters or um any
any differently. And this is coming from Chad Brewer's thesis.
He was a student at l s U. And his
thesis was called the Stereotypical Portrayal of Women and Slasher
Films then versus Now, And he examined the films Black Christmas,
watched the nineteen seventy four addition, it is terrifying, yes,
(23:50):
side note, he looked at Black Christmas, Halloween, prom Night,
Psycho Texas, Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills have Eyes, the Hitcher,
and when a stranger calls. And so he found that
the remakes UM portray women a little bit better. Generally,
they are more often seen as intelligent problem solvers. Uh,
(24:12):
they're not as physically helpless toward male slashers, and I
guess toward toward female enemies as well. UM. Half of
the remale made films allowed the female characters to have
very strong dialogue, but at the same time, the women
of the remade films also had to remain feminine and
beautiful before the killer attacks him and forces them to
act more masculine in order to survive. Switching gender rolls up.
(24:36):
Some things change, some things stay the same. So true,
but that on a pillow. Um. Yeah. Talking about the
appeal of women, Bob Weinstein says, the appeal isn't watching
women in jeopardy and most importantly fighting back. So you know,
I mean, you don't want to see a poor, helpless woman,
you know, just get beat up all the time. You
(24:58):
want to see your kick butt. Yeah, salutely. And there is,
for whatever reason, I think there is more audience satisfaction
when it is um, a female who's fighting back against
leather face. Yeah. Well, they do talk about boys and
the audience who might cheer on the killer the whole
movie while he's while he's doing all of a gory
(25:18):
killing and slashing and whatnot, But then they turn around
and end up cheering for the the the last female,
the final the final girl, the final girl. Um. And uh,
here here's one more little trope that we found. Uh.
Slashers prefer blondes or whatever reason. Can that be the
zombie remake of Gentlemen Zombie? Sup? It's true the final
(25:41):
girl is almost always brunette. Um, and that probably has
to do with a lot of bogus cultural stereotypes we
have about blonde females that I do not agree with. Um.
But yeah, if I were in a horror film, I
can breathe a little bit easier. Good. Yes, yeah, I
my hair color changes, so I don't know. I think
(26:03):
I'm okay. I'm brunette, hopefully kind of spirited and not
an adulterous So yeah, here that Michael, oh God, inviting trouble. Yeah, well,
I think to close things out, are there any any
horror films, slasher films in particular, that you would recommend
people to watch this Halloween? I really think you should
(26:26):
all go out and watch that movie with a really
long title about the zombie musical. Watch the Zombie Musical. Yeah,
I um, I am really interested in what's what was it? Misty?
I really want to see that the woman is insane
in the movie. I mean, yeah, she didn't boil any bunnies,
but I mean she does everything but and yeah, and
(26:47):
if only to hear the song called misty um and
my ultimate favorite but don't watch it alone movie is
Black Christmas. I've never, I've never what is it about?
It takes place in over Christmas break in a sorority house.
And that's that's all I canna say. Um, it will
(27:07):
It'll freak you out, So that is all. I hope
that you all have enjoyed the Halloween Halloween slash of
Spectacular and I hope you all enjoy a very safe
(27:31):
and fun Halloween indeed, and let us know your favorite
slash your films too. Mom Stuff at house stuff works
dot com is our email address, but this time we're
not going to read any of your emails. We are
turning to Facebook because we got such a great response
to our question of who are your favorite characters on
(27:51):
female characters on TV? And there were so many awesome
ones that we did not mention in the episode that
I thought, Caroline, you and I just call out some
of them. Sure, so you have a few you want
to toss out, I do. I highly highly support the
nominations of Angela Lansbury and Murder, she wrote, and Maxine
Gray on Judging Amy. I've never seen Judging Amy. Oh,
(28:15):
it was such a good show. I really I really
liked it. I really did. But she was also in
Cagney and Lacey. Oh, okay, okay. Um. I liked how
Nancy Boughtwyn from Weeds was kind of controversial, really yeah,
because she you know, she plays this uh this drug
deal in Mama and she's super tough and always drinking
coffee through a straw. Um and Mary Louise Parker, who
(28:38):
I do I do love, but I could I could
see how she can be kind of um, kind of
a polarizing figure. Buffy was far and away the number
one pick. And you guys also love some Veronica Mars.
I tried to watch that show once and I was
not successful. Yeah, I never I haven't haven't watched it Blossom. Yeah,
(28:58):
Daria Darry I I I also had her same attitude
towards volleyball. Who have Scully Scully of course from X Files,
some women on TV today Leslie Nope and Liz Lemon
from Parks and rec and Thirty Rock respectively, and then
some ladies from back in the day. We have Laura
(29:19):
Petrie who was um Mary Tyler Moore on The Dick
Van Dyke Show, and then also Mary and Rhoda from
The Mary Tyler Moore Show. And let us not forget
Elaine Bennis from Steinfeld. I know, I can't believe that
there are so many. I could believe Claire on Modern
Family Who I really enjoy, Joan Holloway on Madmen, Uh,
(29:39):
The Connor Women, Rosanne Darlene when we have to Panga,
she of the crimped hair style for Boy Meets World
Panga um Audrey Horn from Twin Peaks. I thought was
a great um suggestion. She's kind of a creepy character,
but I love Sydney Bristow. That's alias right, there, is it? Yeah?
(30:02):
Clear Fisher from six Ft Under, Donna from Dr Who,
Penny from The Big Bang Theory, Laura Holt from Remington's Steel.
I loved the variety of all these suggestions. Um, So
I guess thank you, it's what we're trying to say. Yeah,
it's good to know that there are so many good
female characters on TV and in movies. Yeah, and it
(30:22):
reminds me of some some TV I need to catch
up on, yeah for real, such as just two more
from shows that I have I have not seen at all,
which is kind of sad. Brenda Lee Johnson from The Closure. Yeah,
I love her and I got I carry her on
a giant black bag too, and I can never find
anything in it. Doesn't she have? Um she's a Southern lady,
right she is. She's from Atlanta, but she has just
(30:46):
you know, I don't know what people think of what
people in the rest of the country think of people
in Atlanta. I know people were disappointed that we didn't
have Southern accents. But Brenda Lee or Brenda whatever her
name is, Brenda Lee Johnson, thank you. That's such a
deep Southern accent. So so if they need their Southern
accent fixed after the podcast, they can watch The Closer.
Yeah exactly. Um. Well, with that, thanks everyone for writing in,
(31:10):
for writing on our Facebook page, which you can go
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can also follow us on Twitter at Moms Stuff Podcast,
and you can check out the blog during the week
It's stuff Mom Never Told You at how Stuff Works
dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
(31:31):
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