Representation of females in Horror

         In this essay I will be discussing the representation of the female gender in the horror genre and whether the views of the horror genre tend to be more conservative or more progressive.

The visibility of females within horrors is a major part of how females are represented in horror. Commonly the ratio of the males to females in horror is two to one. But due to more movies being more conservative in which they have less females compared to men, for example in the film Eden Lake (2008) there are nine males and only 3 females, as the main characters and few minor characters. Although in conservative horror films men out number women at two to one, in more progressive horror films they challenge the amount of women in the films compared to men, for example the film Halloween (1978) there are five female characters and only four male characters, this is making the film have the same amount of women in it compared to me and challenging the conservative films. Overall more and more films are being produced with a more progressive view on the amount of females in the films.

The majority of horror films show the roles of females in a negative way, the roles are: Domestic, Sexual, Consumer and Familial. These are the roles that most films make there female characters fit into. The roles are showing that the females are just going to stick to conservative stereotypes that are out-dated within modern society, for instance in the film Halloween the characters Lynda and Annie are depicted as sex objects and as nothing apart from a sex object, the character Annie is also shown to enforce the conservative stereotype of the domestic women as she is shown to be staying at home and doing the house work, in the film she is doing the laundry, “the stereotypical house wife”, she also at home looking after her sister while her parents are out, again backing up the stereotype. Also in the film The Shining (1980) the character Wendy is shown to be a housewife, very passive, weak and submissive, in the beginning of the films most of the shots that you see of Wendy as being domestic, looking after Danny, but she isn’t objectified in the film, we do however identify with Wendy. Morally the roles that females are shown as in horror films are wrong, horror films tend to be more conservative in the roles that the female characters are shown in compared to more progressive views on these roles.

In The Shining the audience is made to identify with Wendy and the position that she has been put in because of Jack, the work that he is meant to do and yet here is making Wendy do it because he feels that he can over power her, due to his feelings on the stereotype of women e.g. he feels that the women should do the “house” work. By the use of the male gaze later on within the film, the audience objectifies the woman in the bath, making all eyes on her, the male gaze is then hugely undermined within a few cuts where you see that the alluring woman has turned into a rotting and decaying woman, this makes Jack feel repulsed and the audience is repulsed, this was a clever way of attracting the audience towards how females are represented in horrors. In the film Eden Lake in the film there is a point in which Brett’s Gang are “eyeing up” Jenny, in this the gang encircle the couple and the use of a tracking shot makes the audience feel like the part of the gang, but this is also making the audience understand what Jenny is going through and how the character has been objectified as just a sexual object for the gang to “perv” on. In many horrors the gaze tends to be progressive and doesn’t objectify women as conservative films.

In Halloween it shows that any of the characters that have sex will eventually die, this is also backed up by the fact that Laurie is the final girl and is shown to be androgynous and not really in with the “popular” girls, due to the fact that her name is boyish, in no way sexualised and wear masculine clothes. The film basically punishes the teenagers for having sex.  In both Halloween and The Shining more of the female characters die compared to the amount of male characters that die within the films.

Overall the way that females are represented in horrors is pretty equal but with some more overpowering qualities in the films and making them swing more towards conservative views of females in horror, although these might be swing more towards conservative views more and more films are tending to have a more progressive view on the way they are shown in horror.