Explore how the horror genre represents women

The changing attitudes towards women have been reflected in their representation in the media as well as in day-to-day life and stereotypes.  Historically, women have always been considered as the ‘lesser sex’, but for the latter part of the 20th Century especially, it appears that they have been represented as equals and their characters as having more depth than previously.  Whilst in the past, women were seen as objects, usually glamorous and at times provocative  (pin ups)

they are now shown more as powerful, successful and intelligent which, up until the 1940’s was almost unheard of.  The horror genre is no exception to this; it represents women in similar ways although the character type is often very stereotypical and ‘2D’ using a ‘classic’ approach to gender.  This is unlike some other genres; except in the case of the female protagonist victim/hero which challenges the stereotypical view of passive weak women.

One of the main concepts of representation is visibility; this applies to the amount of female characters, their age, and their general character.  Generically within horror the visibility of the females is greater than males, like in Scream:  

and they are typically shown as the victim protagonist and occasionally as the victim/hero (as they often succeed to the end of the film) or as extras which are quickly killed off.  However it must be taken into account that generally in horror, the protagonist is female, which in other genres is unlikely.
Typically the women characters are younger than the male characters, and are often teenagers or young adults to appeal to the main demographic of their teenage male audience.  The character types of the minor females characters are as ‘ditsy’ usually sexually active, relatively attractive (with a focus on physical beauty) and shown objectively and frequently naked, like in Halloween with over 3 sex scenes and full nudity:

 

 

Another overt example of this is in this clip of Scream 2, when the female victim (Sarah Michelle Geller) is shown as attractive, a gossip, and a typical ‘sorority girl’ talking about sitcoms.  This  is opposed to the ‘final girl’ who is often portrayed as androgynous, plain and intelligent. In Eden Lake, Jenny is a teacher, Laurie from Halloween being more involved in her studies rather than boys like her friends, when they are walking home and she is the only one with books, connoting intelligence, a quality which many attribute to men rather than women.

Yet the reason for the ‘final girl’ being shown as gender-free or over masculine could suggest that she only survives because of her masculine attributes of cunning and intelligence. Typically the female characters know less than the male characters as it is the males who usually have inside knowledge or are in authoritative positions within the narrative.  A good example of this is in ‘The Shining’, where the gender ratio is 1:6 females to males, respectively; the only woman being Wendy.  She doesn’t know anything about room 237, about the murders, or the ‘shining’ and doesn’t understand the transformation of Jack’s alter ego.

Tunstall argued in his 1983 book ‘The media in Britain’ that across media as a whole, women’s roles are usually as: domestic, sexual, consumer or familial objectifying them to a basic role.  Within horror specifically, this is no different as it is a common element that the final girl has a more maternal role this is shown in 'Halloween', 'When a stranger calls' and 'The Shining'. Particularly in 'Halloween' and 'When a stranger calls' the female character is a babysitter showing them as responsible as well as maternal as they are heavily relied on.  This is also shown as once in this role they put the children's well-being ahead of their own in an attempt to save them from the 'threat'.  This role is contrasted against the male roles of: authority figures, killers, and occasional familial as a

father (but highlighted as a more dominant figure than the mothers role).  These binary oppositions empower the men, yet create a view of women as submissive, passive and because of this they are usually defined through their relationships with men.  This idea is used in Eden Lake as they begin as a couple, with the male having a more dominant role (picking th destination, driving, standing up to the 'thugs' etc) yet as the story progresses the man's power is undermined as he is tortured and killed. It is the female who rescues him, highlighting the change in power and who challenges the killers and who who survives until the end.

Stereotypically within past horror films ‘women’s liberation’ has been considered the fear, expressing this in the context of their survival against a commonly male threat yet one which men can still relate to. It has been said by King that in the film Carrie while on the surface it appears 'the most feminine of stories' as she is a victim of bullying means that her "revenge is something that any student who has ever had his gym shorts pulled down in Phys Ed or his glasses thumb-rubbed in study hall could approve of". 
All horror films contain a fear, a hero and a monster in some form, and occasionally the female victim protagonist fulfils all three. The threat of the unknown creates her fear, and her inevitable survival generates her heroic title, however her survival in many cases then turns her into a monstrous hero.  This idea of the final girl becoming almost demonic as her survival instincts turn her panic and fear into brutality. This is shown in many films. 'High Tension' (image to the left) a french horror thriller shows this explicitly as the girl we believe to be the 'final girl' turns out to be schizophrenic and is in fact the killer even though she attempts to help them escape. This means that she is her own fear and so fulfills all three roles as the fear, the hero and the monster.  Whilst this isn't always the case in many films the final girl is the hero as she tries to help others, and also become brutal due to her panic that once she has the chance she tries to kill or injure the killer rather than just escaping.  As well as monstrous this could also show female strength which contracts against the passive role they usually begin as, showing character growth.

The basis of female representation is portrayed overtly through character type and costume as well as covertly through camerawork and plot.  Laura Mulvey suggested in ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ that within cinema the audience is put in the position of a heterosexual male using the camera techniques to present women as objects, this is more commonly known as ‘the male gaze’.  These cinematic techniques are more covert than visibility and role in creating female representations. They allow the audience to be the subjects and identify with the male point of view to look voyeuristically to objectify the female characters.  In many horror films, sex and death appear to be very closely linked, and many of the female characters are shown in a sexual context or in some cases like ‘Halloween’ with excessive exposure.  This idea of the relationship between sex and death has been discussed a great deal in relation to horror films as there appears to be a link betweent those sexually active and those brutally murdered. Directors like John Carpenter from Halloween said that this link isn't a showing that sex equals death, just that the characters are too preoccupied to help themselves.The use of POV and CU of the male encourages the audience to identity with him, even when the audience is female, and when the POV is from the killer himself, in Halloween (21-54 seconds) we are literally in the eyes of Michael (the killer), as if we are in his mask which is unnerving as it is as though we are killing, and we are afraid of ourselves.  Other techniques include the use of LS and tilts up the female form fragments the female character and objectifies the woman in a male perspective again, even when the audience is female.   It has been said that in the media women are seen either 'voyeuristically' or 'fetishistically' meaning that they are either shown sexually or as madonnas.  This is shown in ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’ a 1940’s film, as our first impression of female character is as an object, created by a shot of her legs which then slowly pans upwards, and the attention then moves as she exits to her hips and figure with a sexual manner.  This overt camerawork shows straight away the main female character is objectified to a sexual role, so shown 'voyeuristically'.

However, women aren’t always looked at in a sexual way in the horror genre as the ‘final girl’ is depicted as a more masculine character and innocent in comparison to the other women, shown not as a sexual object but virginal, often appearing in bed asleep.

 With the main audience of horror being young men, the male audience must have to identify with the female survivor, so perhaps the reason for the main protagonist in horror being androgynous, plain (with not much makeup if any) is so that both genders can relate and at times internalise the female character, even after all the other male and female characters are killed off.

I suppose the question becomes, does the horror industry create the representations, or reflect them? If you consider the usual murders reported,

 on average it is more likely to hear about a

female victim rather than a male, and typically there are more females which go missing, it is usually violent crimes like gang attacks and fights which involve male victims, and so if you consider the usual plot of killer lurking in an isolated surrounding with a group of friends, it would be more likely that the victim hero would ultimately be female.  So whilst many argue that the horror genre has the most rigid view of woman as helpless, perhaps it only reflects the current issues.  On average, females are shown stereotypically, which reinforces the dominant ideology of women as the weaker sex, however once shown as the survivor, it usually turns into a countertype as they are shown as strong and at times even monstrous. This is unlike any other genre and challenges the dominant ideology of gender and it could be argued highlights the superiority of the female sex, as they are the only survivors.