Feminist Steps in a Sexist World
As I was writing my livejournal entry yesterday, I began to realize that for me, watching slasher films has always been a feminist experience. But there are a lot sexist qualities to them as well. So I read some articles about that. Apparently, the general consensus has always been that slasher films are sexist. The well-known film critics, Siskel and Ebert, definitely read the movies as sexist. In their Sneak Preview show they did in the 1980's, they would lambast these movies as being horrible, and would make the point that women in these films were helpless and cowering in the corner. They, along with everyone else in America, took the slasher films to be about punishing women for the sins of being independent and sexual. Even one of directors of one of these films, Adam Marcus who directed Jason Goes to Hell, said in Crystal Lake Memories that he thought these films were pretty sexist.
I'm not going to deny that there are a lot of sexist aspects to slasher films. It starts with all the female nudity in these films. Lots and lots of tits and ass, and always female. Plus, lots of ladies killed on screen.
However, only focusing on the sexist aspects of these films is ignoring half the picture. Hollywood itself tends to be an incredibly sexist place. And it still is. If anything, I've felt like we are back-pedaling. In the majority of movies that come out of Hollywood, most of the main characters are men, with women playing supporting characters for them. When the main character is female, the majority of the supporting cast is male. If the majority of the cast is female, the film is usually about how bitchy and back-stabbing women are to each other. If a women is a career woman, the film is usually about how empty her life is unless it's fulfilled by a man. Or the woman has to choose between having friends or having a high-powered career. (And of course, the power of friendship always wins. And no one ever asks why a woman can't have both friends AND a high-powered career, but you know, sexism in motion.) If it's a group of super-heroes, there's usually the Token Girl. She usually has to show just how bad-ass she is, but still being incredibly sexy for the male audience to drool over. Promotional posters always emphasis how sexy she is. From movie to movie, the personality of the action chick tends to be the same, because according to male action directors, "girl" is an archetype.
It's ludicrous that Iron Man was made in 2008, and Marvel still hasn't made a superhero movie based entirely around a female character. Their first one, Captain Marvel, isn't slated to come out until 2019, eleven years after. There are also far less female based superhero films, and when they fail, it's always blamed on the idea that audiences don't like female-based superhero movies, completely ignoring the fact that those movies didn't do well more because they weren't great films.
But in spite of the still prevelant sexsim in Hollywood, steps have been made. In some cases, baby steps. But still, progress towards feminism has been made. And the slasher films are a good example of this. In spite of the rampant sexism, the slasher films made definite progress towards feminism.
The very first way they do this is that most of them have equal or close to equal gender distribution among the cast. It is *still* unusual for films to have equal or close to equal gender distribution among the cast. I commented on this when The Avengers came out, because that movie had an equal amount of male and female extras running around. And that was in 2012! But Halloween, Friday the 13th, Prom Night, and Nightmare on Elm Street all had pretty close to equal distribution between male and female actors, and these movies came out in the 1980's. The biggest impact this distribution does is that it allows the female characters to have a wider variety in personalities. It's not just "girl," and leaving it at that.
The "final girl" concept is also one that is feminist in spite of being stuck in sexist ideas. It is sexist if you're looking at the fact that the final girl usually doesn't drink, do drugs, or have sex (and thinking of that as the "sin" factor, which from my post yesterday, I don't.) However, the final girl is usually the main character. Laurie Strode, Alice Hardy, Kim Hammond, and Nancy Thompson are the main characters of their movies. It's all about them trying to figure out what's going on around them, as the horror unfolds and people they care about start to die. These girls are just ordinary teenage girls. You could find them anywhere. Yes, Laurie is most likely a virginal character. It's implied in Halloween that she never had a boyfriend. However, I'm not so sure about the other three. No, you don't see them actually have sex in the films. But Alice is a college-age character, a little older than the other three. She was willing to play strip Monopoly. The actress that played her, Adrienne King, even said that something might have happened between Alice and Steve Christy by the end of the summer. Kim and her boyfriend, Nick, have been together for quite awhile. There is some passion there. And again, even though we might not see them having sex doesn't mean that they hadn't before the movie started. Nancy and her boyfriend, Glen, go to spend the night over at their friend Tina's house. When Tina's boyfriend, Rod, shows up, Glen tries to get Nancy to have sex with him. She says no, because they are supposed to be there for Tina, and it's not either of their parents' houses. But later, Glen shows he is perfectly comfortable with climbing the rose trellis to get into Nancy's bedroom. There is nothing that shows he hasn't done this multiple times. I highly doubt that Nancy is a virgin, even though she and Glen don't have sex in the movie. There is a lot of subtext to show that they have enjoyed a sexual relationship in the past.
Some of this might be reading too much into the films, but I much prefer a more analytical approach than just shallowly accepting what's on the screen.
Another key thing is that Alice and Nancy, along with the rest of the ladies of Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, is that they are the ones who face the monsters in the end, and triumph. Gina Field, Chris Higgins, Trish Jarvis, Pam Roberts, Megan Garris, Tina Shepard, Rennie Wickham, Jessica Kimble, Rowan LaFontaine, Lori Campbell, and Whitney Miller from the "Friday the 13th" franchise are all the ones who ultimately have to face the monster head on to win. Lori is unique in that she had to face off with two monsters, both Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, and in Freddy vs Jason, she was the one who triumphed. Lisa Webber, Kristen Parker, Alice Johnson, Maggie Burroughs, Heather Langencamp, Lori Campbell, and Nancy Holbrook are the ladies who have to face Freddy Krueger and triumph. They are the ones who outsmart the monster. They rescue themselves, sometimes with the help of other characters, but usually, they are the ones who have to face him head-on in a battle royale for their survival. Alice Johnson is particularly a notable character, because she is the only one of these girls to have faced her monster, Freddy Krueger, more than once, and lived to tell the tale. She did get some outside help, in the form of divine intervention in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: the Dream Master, and with the help of a friend, Yvonne Miller, and Freddy's mother, Amanda Krueger a.k.a. Sister Mary Helena, in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: the Dream Child. But again, everyone she got help from the fifth movie was female.
A Nightmare on Elm Street is particularly notable in its portrayal of female characters. The girls of this series have very distinct personalities. Tina Gray comes from a broken home, but is the first to start to realize that something is off about the nightmares she is having about Freddy Krueger. Yes, she is the "troubled girl" who "sins in having sex with her boyfriend," but it goes beyond that. There is something deeper to the characters of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise, both male and female. Nancy Thompson is a smart, athletic girl who takes an intelligent approach to solving the problem of Freddy. She is the one who ultimately figures out how to defeat him, and she is ultimately the one who gives the characters of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and Freddy vs Jason a chance to survive. She even has an influence in the movies she's not in, because helping Kristen Parker learn her dream power in the third film allows Alice Johnson from movies four and five to survive. It's huge!
Yes, the male killer characters have overshadowed their female counterparts. They are the ones who appeared in all the movies. Michael Myers, Leatherface, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger are all better known than their female adversaries. Heather Langencamp, who played Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, made a documentary called I Am Nancy in 2011 that explores this very idea. But that doesn't take away from the impact these female characters have. I'm a fan of these movies not because of the killers, (to me, Leatherface, Michael Myers, and Jason Voorhees aren't all that different from one another,) but because I love the female characters, and that good triumphs over evil. (In real life, I've noticed that evil triumphs over good a lot, so I prefer my escapist fantasy stuff where good *always* wins.) I especially love the ladies of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise. These girls are freakin' awesome! Even the ones who die, like Tina Gray, Taryn White, Jennifer Caulfield, Debbie Stevens, Sheila Kopecky, Greta Gibson, Julie, Kia Waterson, and Gib Smith, are all very memorable to me. It hurts when they die, which I prefer. In my slasher films, I want to care when the characters get killed. Give me reasons to like them, and the kills have that much more impact for me. Maybe I'm a child of my time, but if there's not enough characterization, then it doesn't matter how good the special effects are for the kill, I don't care, and it's not scary for me. And since causing fear is the entire point of every horror movie ever made in the history of film, that's a problem.
So yes, these movies do have sexist aspects to them. They couldn't help that. Hollywood was and is incredibly sexist. But in small ways, every single one of these movies, especially the well-known ones that have become classics to the genre, did baby steps to make things more equal. Even when they weren't thinking about it. For instance, in Friday the 13th: the Final Chapter, there was a scene when all the girls had to go skinny-dipping, or at least be topless. The male actors in the same scene decided to go skinny-dipping as well. They just stripped down entirely to their birthday suits to do the scene. It's a small thing, but it doesn't make it any less significant. Both male and female characters were nude. It's baby steps.
The one unfortunate thing on the baby steps, though, is that they are being reversed. In that last ten years or so, I have noticed less and less female representation in films and television shows. Throughout the 1980's and the 1990's, there were plenty of shows out there that had female leads, or ensemble shows that had equal or close to equal parts male and female. There just seems to be less and less now, which irritates the hell out of me. (It's part of the reason why I love Game of Thrones as much as I do. There's a ton of female characters in that show, and they're all of different personalities, no less strong, but not all of them are Xena: Warrior princess types either. Which is fantastic!)
I just hope things get better.
I'm not going to deny that there are a lot of sexist aspects to slasher films. It starts with all the female nudity in these films. Lots and lots of tits and ass, and always female. Plus, lots of ladies killed on screen.
However, only focusing on the sexist aspects of these films is ignoring half the picture. Hollywood itself tends to be an incredibly sexist place. And it still is. If anything, I've felt like we are back-pedaling. In the majority of movies that come out of Hollywood, most of the main characters are men, with women playing supporting characters for them. When the main character is female, the majority of the supporting cast is male. If the majority of the cast is female, the film is usually about how bitchy and back-stabbing women are to each other. If a women is a career woman, the film is usually about how empty her life is unless it's fulfilled by a man. Or the woman has to choose between having friends or having a high-powered career. (And of course, the power of friendship always wins. And no one ever asks why a woman can't have both friends AND a high-powered career, but you know, sexism in motion.) If it's a group of super-heroes, there's usually the Token Girl. She usually has to show just how bad-ass she is, but still being incredibly sexy for the male audience to drool over. Promotional posters always emphasis how sexy she is. From movie to movie, the personality of the action chick tends to be the same, because according to male action directors, "girl" is an archetype.
It's ludicrous that Iron Man was made in 2008, and Marvel still hasn't made a superhero movie based entirely around a female character. Their first one, Captain Marvel, isn't slated to come out until 2019, eleven years after. There are also far less female based superhero films, and when they fail, it's always blamed on the idea that audiences don't like female-based superhero movies, completely ignoring the fact that those movies didn't do well more because they weren't great films.
But in spite of the still prevelant sexsim in Hollywood, steps have been made. In some cases, baby steps. But still, progress towards feminism has been made. And the slasher films are a good example of this. In spite of the rampant sexism, the slasher films made definite progress towards feminism.
The very first way they do this is that most of them have equal or close to equal gender distribution among the cast. It is *still* unusual for films to have equal or close to equal gender distribution among the cast. I commented on this when The Avengers came out, because that movie had an equal amount of male and female extras running around. And that was in 2012! But Halloween, Friday the 13th, Prom Night, and Nightmare on Elm Street all had pretty close to equal distribution between male and female actors, and these movies came out in the 1980's. The biggest impact this distribution does is that it allows the female characters to have a wider variety in personalities. It's not just "girl," and leaving it at that.
The "final girl" concept is also one that is feminist in spite of being stuck in sexist ideas. It is sexist if you're looking at the fact that the final girl usually doesn't drink, do drugs, or have sex (and thinking of that as the "sin" factor, which from my post yesterday, I don't.) However, the final girl is usually the main character. Laurie Strode, Alice Hardy, Kim Hammond, and Nancy Thompson are the main characters of their movies. It's all about them trying to figure out what's going on around them, as the horror unfolds and people they care about start to die. These girls are just ordinary teenage girls. You could find them anywhere. Yes, Laurie is most likely a virginal character. It's implied in Halloween that she never had a boyfriend. However, I'm not so sure about the other three. No, you don't see them actually have sex in the films. But Alice is a college-age character, a little older than the other three. She was willing to play strip Monopoly. The actress that played her, Adrienne King, even said that something might have happened between Alice and Steve Christy by the end of the summer. Kim and her boyfriend, Nick, have been together for quite awhile. There is some passion there. And again, even though we might not see them having sex doesn't mean that they hadn't before the movie started. Nancy and her boyfriend, Glen, go to spend the night over at their friend Tina's house. When Tina's boyfriend, Rod, shows up, Glen tries to get Nancy to have sex with him. She says no, because they are supposed to be there for Tina, and it's not either of their parents' houses. But later, Glen shows he is perfectly comfortable with climbing the rose trellis to get into Nancy's bedroom. There is nothing that shows he hasn't done this multiple times. I highly doubt that Nancy is a virgin, even though she and Glen don't have sex in the movie. There is a lot of subtext to show that they have enjoyed a sexual relationship in the past.
Some of this might be reading too much into the films, but I much prefer a more analytical approach than just shallowly accepting what's on the screen.
Another key thing is that Alice and Nancy, along with the rest of the ladies of Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street, is that they are the ones who face the monsters in the end, and triumph. Gina Field, Chris Higgins, Trish Jarvis, Pam Roberts, Megan Garris, Tina Shepard, Rennie Wickham, Jessica Kimble, Rowan LaFontaine, Lori Campbell, and Whitney Miller from the "Friday the 13th" franchise are all the ones who ultimately have to face the monster head on to win. Lori is unique in that she had to face off with two monsters, both Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger, and in Freddy vs Jason, she was the one who triumphed. Lisa Webber, Kristen Parker, Alice Johnson, Maggie Burroughs, Heather Langencamp, Lori Campbell, and Nancy Holbrook are the ladies who have to face Freddy Krueger and triumph. They are the ones who outsmart the monster. They rescue themselves, sometimes with the help of other characters, but usually, they are the ones who have to face him head-on in a battle royale for their survival. Alice Johnson is particularly a notable character, because she is the only one of these girls to have faced her monster, Freddy Krueger, more than once, and lived to tell the tale. She did get some outside help, in the form of divine intervention in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: the Dream Master, and with the help of a friend, Yvonne Miller, and Freddy's mother, Amanda Krueger a.k.a. Sister Mary Helena, in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: the Dream Child. But again, everyone she got help from the fifth movie was female.
A Nightmare on Elm Street is particularly notable in its portrayal of female characters. The girls of this series have very distinct personalities. Tina Gray comes from a broken home, but is the first to start to realize that something is off about the nightmares she is having about Freddy Krueger. Yes, she is the "troubled girl" who "sins in having sex with her boyfriend," but it goes beyond that. There is something deeper to the characters of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise, both male and female. Nancy Thompson is a smart, athletic girl who takes an intelligent approach to solving the problem of Freddy. She is the one who ultimately figures out how to defeat him, and she is ultimately the one who gives the characters of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and Freddy vs Jason a chance to survive. She even has an influence in the movies she's not in, because helping Kristen Parker learn her dream power in the third film allows Alice Johnson from movies four and five to survive. It's huge!
Yes, the male killer characters have overshadowed their female counterparts. They are the ones who appeared in all the movies. Michael Myers, Leatherface, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger are all better known than their female adversaries. Heather Langencamp, who played Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, made a documentary called I Am Nancy in 2011 that explores this very idea. But that doesn't take away from the impact these female characters have. I'm a fan of these movies not because of the killers, (to me, Leatherface, Michael Myers, and Jason Voorhees aren't all that different from one another,) but because I love the female characters, and that good triumphs over evil. (In real life, I've noticed that evil triumphs over good a lot, so I prefer my escapist fantasy stuff where good *always* wins.) I especially love the ladies of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise. These girls are freakin' awesome! Even the ones who die, like Tina Gray, Taryn White, Jennifer Caulfield, Debbie Stevens, Sheila Kopecky, Greta Gibson, Julie, Kia Waterson, and Gib Smith, are all very memorable to me. It hurts when they die, which I prefer. In my slasher films, I want to care when the characters get killed. Give me reasons to like them, and the kills have that much more impact for me. Maybe I'm a child of my time, but if there's not enough characterization, then it doesn't matter how good the special effects are for the kill, I don't care, and it's not scary for me. And since causing fear is the entire point of every horror movie ever made in the history of film, that's a problem.
So yes, these movies do have sexist aspects to them. They couldn't help that. Hollywood was and is incredibly sexist. But in small ways, every single one of these movies, especially the well-known ones that have become classics to the genre, did baby steps to make things more equal. Even when they weren't thinking about it. For instance, in Friday the 13th: the Final Chapter, there was a scene when all the girls had to go skinny-dipping, or at least be topless. The male actors in the same scene decided to go skinny-dipping as well. They just stripped down entirely to their birthday suits to do the scene. It's a small thing, but it doesn't make it any less significant. Both male and female characters were nude. It's baby steps.
The one unfortunate thing on the baby steps, though, is that they are being reversed. In that last ten years or so, I have noticed less and less female representation in films and television shows. Throughout the 1980's and the 1990's, there were plenty of shows out there that had female leads, or ensemble shows that had equal or close to equal parts male and female. There just seems to be less and less now, which irritates the hell out of me. (It's part of the reason why I love Game of Thrones as much as I do. There's a ton of female characters in that show, and they're all of different personalities, no less strong, but not all of them are Xena: Warrior princess types either. Which is fantastic!)
I just hope things get better.