When Halloween came out in 1978 it was a massive success, and as a result, a series of knockoff films and sequels were made that were also largely successful. Thus the infamous slasher film genre was born. The genre is characterized by its unique portrayal of gender roles, specifically its depiction of how genders cross over between masculinity and femininity, and the dynamic between the two Halloween, and the slasher film genre as a whole, portray femininity as an undesirable trait that, if a person embraces it, is inevitably punished with death, while possessing masculinity is necessary to survive even if one is female Scream forwards the genre by allowing the “masculine” female to embrace her femininity and still survive in the end, making it a more progressive film. Yet, Scream still has its limitations as it still perpetuates several sexist representations and attitudes such as shaming women for having sex and having a plot predominantly driven by males.
The difference in attitudes and gender representations the films Halloween and Scream portray can be connected to the rise and evolution of the feminist movement because they illustrate mainstream reactions and interpretations of feminism. Before we start to analyze the films in detail we need an understanding of the conventions and tropes of the genre as a whole. One of the most important aspects of the genre is the killer, He is almost exclusively male and his motivations for killing are almost always sexually motivated and misogynistic. For this reason, he predominantly kills women. Not to say that men are not killed in these films, but when they are killed it is because they make a mistake or are in the wrong place at the wrong time, not because they are male. The female victims, however, are killed for embracing femininity in the traditional sense, specifically for engaging in sex. When women are killed, it is also much more personal, and, in a sick way, the audience can tell the killer is enjoying it.
This is because the killer almost always has issues with his sexuality and kills women as a way to cope with his apparent gender confusion. This idea of gender confusion sets up the concept of the final girl in these movies The final girl is the character who survives until the end to either escape or defeat the killer. But, the character and her depiction are more complex than this because of the set of attributes that define all final girls in the genre. Most notably the final girl is always more traditionally masculine than the other female characters. She is smart, responsible, and most of all resourceful, which are all qualities seen as traditionally masculine. This creates a sense of, in Clover‘s words, gender fluidity, in that the final girl is able to cross over between genders because she exhibits boyish traits. She is also the only female to be observant and notice the killer.
Mulvey in her work Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema explains how in mainstream film men participate in an active gaze while women are displayed giving them a passive role. So when the final girl is observant to her surroundings she is participating in the active male gaze which again asserts her masculinity. But, most importantly, she never engages in the ultimate act of femininity: sex this preservation of the final girl‘s masculinity is crucial because it allows the predominantly male audience to switch their allegiance, which is initially to the killer, to the final girl as the movie progresses. In the first scene of John Carpenter’s Halloween we see everything from Michael’s point of view using what is known as the I-camera shot. This is meant to make the audience identify with the killer at first and, ultimately, it makes you root for him. When Michael kills his first victims, who are completely feminine, the audience enjoys it if they didn’t then the slasher film wouldn’t have been so successful.
Audiences come to see female victims getting killed by a male, But, after all the feminine characters have been killed, the audience begins to identify with the final girl. This again can be seen in Halloween; after Michael kills Linda and Annie, Laurie comes out and looks at the house where Michael has killed them. In this scene the I-camera is again utilized but this time the audience sees things from Laurie‘s point of view. This signifies that our allegiance has now switched to Laurie. It is important to again realize that the reason the audience switches their allegiance and the reason Laurie is allowed to survive is because of her masculine traits. If she exhibited feminine traits the predominantly male audience would fail to identify with her and as a result she would be eliminated. After Halloween’s success a plethora of similar films were created and as a result the slasher film formula became overdone and cliched.
The movies had become very predictable and unimaginative. For this reason, Scream subverted many of the conventions of the genre in order to add a new spin and revitalize the genre. One of the most important ways this movie changed the genre is the fact that it had less misogynistic undertones as the older films did. One of the most important examples of this is the fact that the “final girl,” Sidney, has sex and yet she still survives and ultimately defeats the killer. This would never occur in a conventional slasher film and is one way the movie forwards the genre. Also, the male killers in Scream are seen as more vulnerable. When the killer, Ghostface, is hit or injured we hear him cry out in pain and we don’t get the sense that he is invincible like Michael is Another example of how Scream forwards the genre is the fact that feminine women are allowed to have masculine traits.
When Tatum is attacked by the killer, rather than just acting helpless, she actually defends herself and is almost able to escape. Throughout the movie she is seen as the “ditsy blonde” character who is very feminine, yet the movie allows her to be resourceful, which is traditionally a masculine trait. These instances reflect a more progressive View on the relation between masculinity and femininity; but, Scream shouldn’t be seen as totally progressive because the movie does still subscribe to many sexist conventions of the genre and has its limitations. One important thing to realize is the fact that the plot of this movie is still male driven for the most part. The main driving force for this movie is the killer who is male. The female characters, for the most part, just react to what the killer doesi Tatum is essentially in the movie just to be killed and doesn’t really serve many purposes besides being a plot device so that Sidney can express her emotions and development as a characters Gale is also in the story only because she is reacting to the story of the killer.
Even though this is not completely the case, women in Scream react and don‘t act The exception to this, which will be explored later, is when Sidney assumes the active role of defeating the killers. There’s also the fact that when men are killed, it is still not as personal or drawn out as when women are killed When the killer murders Casey in the beginning of the film it is very drawn out and extremely gory. But her boyfriend is killed off-screen and very quickly. Also, when the principal is killed, it is again done very quickly, and we later find out that he was gutted and hung from the goal post at the school though we never get to see this on-screen. When the same was done to Casey in the beginning of the film, it is extremely vivid, and ends with a close up of her lifeless corpse hanging from a tree. There is also the fact that all the main female characters, who display some masculine traits, have androgynous names, Sidney, Gale, and Tatum all display masculine traits, and they all have names that could be either a boy or girl‘s name. One gets the sense that the male audience wouldn’t be able to deal with a Jenny or a Katie having these masculine traits so the directors gave them more masculine names.
This is significant because it shows that the audience and director still see masculinity and femininity as forces at odds with each otheri If a woman embraces masculinity she has to lose a degree of her femininity rather than being able to embrace both in harmony. This idea severely limits the progressive nature of the film. Another important thing to realize is that the plot of Scream centers around Sidney trying to redeem the “sins“ of her mother. The first time we get a sense of this is when Sidney talks to Gale about her mother’s death, Sidney says that her mother was raped and killed by Cotton Weary and then Gale insists that he was having an affair with his mother and was framed. When she says this Sidney is left speechless and we almost get the sense that she is in denial that her mother could have been engaging in promiscuous behavior.
Then later Sidney overhears two girls talking about her in the bathroom and one of them says that maybe she‘s a slut just like her mother and that its common knowledge that her mother was a total tramp. When she says this Sidney is visibly hurt and when she leaves the stall she mutters to herself that she’s pathetic. Sidney feels she is living in the shadow of her mother’s promiscuous behavior, and this concept sets up the diegesis of her redemption as the film progresses A critical scene in Scream is when Billy and Sidney make up and eventually have sex, Sidney says that she has been so withholding because she’s scared that she will turn out like her mother. But she decides not to dwell on the past and embrace her femininity by having sex with Billy. But the audience later learns that Billy is the mastermind behind all the murders and we see that Sidney has made a tragic mistake, Billy also reveals his motive for killing Sidney’s mother which is because she slept with his dad which caused his mother to abandon him.
When Sidney hears this she expresses a sense of contrition and even though we don’t see Billy’s actions as justified we understand why he did them. We see Sidney’s mother as totally to blame for the broken marriage even though Billy’s father willingly had sex with her, Once again Sidney’s mother’s promiscuous behavior is seen as immoral and wrong. It is also important to acknowledge the fact that her behavior is portrayed as immoral simply because she was promiscuous and not because she was engaging in adultery, When characters in the movie criticize her mother it is not because she is cheating on her husband, which is never brought up, it is simply because she is having copious amounts of sex. The morality of adultery is never even really mentioned. Also we are never told that Sidney’s mother had any other negative traits. The movie focuses on her promiscuity as being her one fatal flaw.
So we come to the conclusion that Sidney feels she has to redeem her mother simply because she had sex which is not a progressive View and is rather backwards. Now in order to redeem her mistake and the sins of her mother Sidney has to kill Billy, While in this process she embraces masculine traits by being extremely resourceful and dominanti When Stu and Billy lose track of where Sidney is she assumes the active dominant role of the killer and now it is her who is watching and waiting for them, Also when she kills both of them she uses common household items, such as an umbrella, to defend herself, displaying her resourcefulness, So even though she survives after embracing her femininity, the only reason she is able to do so is by redeeming herself through masculine actions It becomes evident that even though Sidney is allowed to embrace her femininity and survive the film still has misogynisric undertones that are typical for the slasher genre.
Women are shamed for having sex simply because it is thought that women having sex is immoral, and the only way to reverse their shameful femininity is to embrace the “cleansing” force of masculinity. The different perspectives the movies Halloween and Scream adopt regarding gender roles is very much tied to the time period they were produced and subsequently what stage the feminist movement was in at the timer Halloween was released in 1978, which was shortly after what was known as second wave feminism, which occurred in the late 60’s and early 70’s. This wave of feminism was characterized by its radical nature and its overt protests.
The most publicized event of second wave feminism was the protests of the Miss America Pageants in 1968 and 1969. The purpose of these protests was to expose the fact that women’s looks were regarded as more important than what they do or think. Protesters held up provocative signs and even snuck into the pageant to chant “Freedom for Women. Predictably, due to their radical positions there was a great deal of opposition and anti-feminist sentiment. Halloween can be interpreted as a popular form of this backlash against second wave feminism. In the film a gender confused killer kills women for being feminine. This killer can be seen as a metaphor for the emasculation men felt due to second wave feminismt In order to cope with this emasculation men wanted to suppress women and they vicariously satisfied this desire by watching the male killer do exactly that, but to the extreme.
The final girl is also a representation of men’s perceived superiority of masculinity as opposed to femininity. The female victims represent the suppressed position of women which is what the emasculated male believes they deserve, When Scream came out in 1996 the feminist movement had changed significantly and so had public interpretations of it. What became known as Third Wave Feminism occurred in the early 90‘s. It was characterized by its open mindedness as opposed to the rigid ideas of second wave feminism and abolished the idea of universal womanhood. A woman could embrace both feminine and masculine traits and still be feminist. Scream adopts some of these ideals in the fact that the movie allows feminine characters to have masculine traits and vice versa. Though, as discussed, these ideas are limited, they do forward the slasher genre in a very similar way to how third wave feminism forwarded the second wave The fact that Scream was so popular also suggests that mainstream beliefs shifted to be more sympathetic to some feminist ideas and strayed away from many of the sexist beliefs prevalent when Halloween was released.
Slasher films are infamous for their distinctive portrayal of gender roles and the misogynistic implications that they hold. These gender roles are clearly exemplified in Halloween and countless other slasher flicks that closely followed a set formula for how masculinity and femininity interacted. This formula eventually became overdone and a new perspective was needed to revive the now stale genret Scream did this by subverting and poking fun at typical horror conventions while also progressing the genre in terms of allowing female characters to embrace both feminine and masculine traits. But, it is important to realize that even though Scream was a progressive film for the slasher genre, it is not a totally progressive film due to its sexist implications. The new perspective Scream adopts regarding gender roles, in comparison to Halloween, can be connected to the mainstream reaction and interpretation of the feminist movement and how this interpretation evolved over time.
