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The representation of gender in horror films, particularly depictions of women, has been the subject of critical commentary.
Critics and researchers have argued that Horror film depict graphically detailed violence, contain erotically or sexually charged situations which verge on becoming pornographic, Retrieved April 12, 2012. and focus more on injuring or killing female as opposed to male characters. Many also perceive recurring themes of misfortune for male characters who exhibit overt masculinity or sexuality. Audience reception is suggested by researchers to be affected by the respective gender representation depicted in these movies.
Psycho-biddy is a film subgenre which combines elements of the [[horror|Horror film]], [[thriller|Thriller film]] and woman's film genres. It has also been referred to as Grande Dame Guignol, hagsploitation, and hag horror. Per Peter Shelley, the subgenre combines the concepts of the [[grande-dame]] and "[[Grand Guignol]]". Films in this genre conventionally feature a formerly glamorous older woman who has become mentally unbalanced and terrorizes those around her.
The genre is considered by scholars such as Shelley and Tomasz Fisiak to have been launched with the 1962 film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Films in this vein continued to be released through the mid-1970s and, per Fisiak, have influenced multiple areas, including music videos. Renata Adler, in her New York Times review for the 1968 film The Anniversary, referred to the genre as "the Terrifying Older Actress Filicidal Mummy genre."
Per Shelley, for a film to fall within the subgenre the movie must use grande guignol effects and have an actress who portrays the lead character as one "with the airs and graces of a grande dame". He further stated that common hallmarks of actresses in the subgenre included those who were "no longer considered leading lady material" or had "previously specialized in supporting roles", and "had not worked for some time".
The term and genre have received criticism, particularly in regard to claims that psycho-biddy films exploit actresses who have experienced or are vulnerable to ageism. Timothy Shary and Nancy McVittie noted the genre in their book Fade to Gray: Aging in American Cinema, stating that the "cycle of films renders the aging women at their core as monstrously 'othered' objects." Bustle writer Caitlin Gallagher criticized the term "hagsploitation", as she felt that it "shows a certain lack of respect for the actresses who starred in these types of movies", further noting that together with the term "psycho-biddy" the terms "use disparaging terms for older women — 'hag' and 'biddy' — to not only indicate how unattractive the female characters are in these types of films, but to also show that these characters are psychotic."
BFI's Justin Johnson commented on the genre, saying that "If Crawford and Davis didn't carve out this niche with Baby Jane and all the films that followed, then a lot of legendary actresses would not have had third career acts". Peter Shelley has argued that criticism of the psycho-biddy subgenre is inaccurate, as it implies that the actress is lowering her standards by acting in a horror film by also suggesting that her earlier work is superior. Shelley opined it also means the actress only portrays a character out of her usual range out of desperation.
Slasher films can include "scenes of explicit violence primarily directed toward women, often occurring during or juxtaposed to mildly Eroticism scenes". Although there are more male slasher film victims than female ones, a study of slasher films from the 1990s found that women were shown in fear for more time than men and that there were relatively more female victims compared to Action film from the same period.
Eli Roth, the creator of the Hostel films, taps into an "undercurrent of anxiety about the place of gendered bodies in relation to torture as well as the connection between gender equality, torture, global capitalist venture, and the passive American consumer." Maisha Wester states in her article, "Torture Porn And Uneasy Feminisms: Re-Thinking (Wo)Men in Eli Roth's Hostel Films", that the popularity of the Hostel films makes the questioning of gendered dominance "both elusive and inescapable in the face of capitalism since, within such a system, we are all commodifiable and consuming bodies."
Additionally, Briefel separates the suffering of gendered monsters in horror films into two types: masochism and menstruation. Masochism is central to the identification of male monsters "who initiate their sadistic rampages with acts of self-mutilation." By contrast, female monsters do not commit acts of self-mutilation out of pleasure but instead "commit acts of violence out of revenge for earlier abuse by parents, partners, rapists, and other offenders." Female monsters will engage in masochistic acts when coerced or attempting to terminate her monstrosity. Briefel provides examples of such masochistic acts by female monsters with films like Carrie (1976), The Exorcist (1973), Stigmata (1999), The Hunger (1983), and Alien 3 (1992).
Shelley Stamp Lindsey states " Carrie is not about liberation from sexual repression, but about the failure of repression to contain the monstrous feminine". Audiences are not supposed to identify with Carrie White whilst she becomes the monster, instead they are supposed to be scared of her ability and destructive potential. Carrie is purposely portrayed in this manner because the character demonstrates what happens when women gain power and are no longer repressed. Carrie could portray the message to its audience that they must live in a patriarchal world, and if they fail to successfully integrate then this is what will come of it.
Clover concludes that the final girl is "an agreed upon fiction for male-viewers' use of her as a vehicle for his own Sadomasochism fantasies."
The final girl is one of the most commonly seen tropes in slasher films. The final girl is always female, usually a virgin, and according to Carol J. Clover, who coined the term, is the lone survivor of the slasher villain.
Men only stay on the screen long enough to show their incompetence, unless they are seen to be a true form of patriarchy. The repressive patriarch is often dressed as a female and because he does not exemplify patriarchy at its finest, the final girl is his "homoerotic stand-in".
The "masochistic monster" revels in acts of self-mutilation before the audience sees the harming of others being done. Briefel looks at films like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), The Fly (1986), Hellraiser series, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), and (1991). All these horror films show examples of masochistic monsters that take pleasure in the pain they inflict on themselves; it is something they must endure to be monstrous.
In the article "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film", scholar Carol J. Clover noted that during the 1980s there was a shifting and loosening of traditional , as these films showed the "killer as feminine male and the main character as masculine female" and an othering in horror, which she felt may have been a product of the time period's "massive gender confusion". Dr. Julie Tharp expanded on this in 1991, writing that movies such as Dressed to Kill and The Silence of the Lambs "more directly comment on the gender problematics at work in the genre" as they exaggerated these components and showed how feminine male characters "must include a grappling with the sex and gender problematics of Sigmund Freud thought because it is utterly interwoven in the fabric of the horror genre". She further opines that the latter film showed how "As women's power increases, the Freudian paradigm on which most slasher films are based, and, consequently, their villains, degenerates." The character of Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill exploits cisnormative societies' fear of gender outside the binary, while the character of Norman Bates in Psycho stokes fear of an emasculated man suffering with an Oedipus complex.
There are few depictions of trans-masculine characters in either horror or non-genre films. Films that do feature trans-masculine characters include Warren in Homicidal (1961), George Atwood in Private Parts (1972), and Barney in Girls Nite Out (1982). Edwin Harris of Gayly Dreadful, describes trans-masculine characters by writing "victims of internalized misogyny and threatening vectors of gender ideology, trans men in horror are commonly depicted as simultaneously pitiable and frightening".
This trope reduces a woman down to the biological, and degrades the emotional and physically complex aspects of bearing and giving birth to a child. The women often have no say in what happens with the baby or even with their own bodies, becoming little more than an object. In horror films such as Rosemary's Baby (1968), Rosemary can be often seen being told what to feel about her pregnancy by her husband and others in the apartment complex. She does not seem to be given an opportunity to make decisions on the subject of her baby, even after it is revealed to be the spawn of Satan. She remains the vessel for others to take advantage of throughout the film.
Aviva Briefel believes that pain is central to the audiences understanding of horror films. It is "the monster's pain that determines audience positioning in the horror film." "By gendering the monster's pain, the horror genre prevents the audience from losing control of its own."
Kathleen Kendall argues, however, that it is important to remember that horror films do have a female audience. Additionally, Clover recognizes how groups of adolescent girls made up a proportion of horror movie goers.
There is not "much difference between an object of desire and an object of horror as far as the male look is concerned." Williams is stating that it isn't an expression of sexual desire that is formed between the monster and the girl but instead "a flash of sympathetic identification."
Ariel Smith states that "by forcing the subconscious fears of audiences to the surface, horror cinema evokes reactions, psychologically and physically: this is the genre's power." The genre holds a great amount of potential to not only explore violence against women and minorities, but also inform the public and show the extents of that violence in a powerful way." However, instead of bringing these issues to the forefront of public discussion, films in this genre have neglected to cover these issues and provide gendered and racially prejudiced points of storytelling. By reusing and creating trope images and plot devices like the "Indian burial ground" and "Magical Negro" these films trap entire minorities in set cinematic roles while also supporting erasure of their culture.
Linz and Donnerstein state that slasher films single out women for attack. They argue that the female body count in slasher films should be examined in the context of other film genres. Linz and Donnerstein affirm that "across most television and film content females are less often murdered and brutalized than males by a very large margin." The study tested this assertion compared with the genre selected for analysis, which is popular action/adventure films containing violence.
Gloria Cowan conducted a study on 57 different . Their results showed that the non-surviving females were more frequently sexual than the surviving females and the non-surviving males. Surviving as a female slasher victim was strongly associated with the absence of sexual behavior. In slasher films, the message appears to be that sexual women get killed and only the pure women survive. Slasher films reinforce the idea that female sexuality can be costly. Films such as Fatal Attraction feature actresses sexualized for viewer pleasure. Liahna Babener examines the movie, arguing "Beth acts the perfect Total Woman, wearing clingy undershirts and bikini panties around the apartment, primping before the mirror in lacy black undergarments, making a voluptuous ritual out of the nightly bath and applying lipstick with sensuous strokes to the accompaniment of Dan's and the camera's admiring gaze."
If a person watched all of the slasher films included in the Molitor and Sapolsky study, they would have seen sex and violence paired approximately 92 times. Sexual behavior included female characters shown in undergarments, partially or completely nude, or teasing or enticing male characters in a sensual manner. Couples seen kissing, fondling, or involved in sexual intercourse were also coded as acts of sex. According to Molitor and Sapolsky, sexual behavior is considered linked to violence when one of three types of circumstances occurred. A partially nude female was shown being tortured by the central villain. Martin discussed how there was more time showing female deaths than male and that these women are more likely to be promiscuous and wear revealing clothing.
In other cases, violence immediately followed, or interrupted, a sexual act, such as when a couple was shown kissing passionately and the central villain then attacked both or one character. The third type of circumstance consisted of continuous cuts between two scenes, one sexual and one violent. This third type of sex and violence combination occurred to a lesser extent than the other two.
The study also reported that the number of violent acts against males increased across the 1980s, but tended to decrease for females. Apparently, the producers were criticized for the depiction of women as victims in slasher films, so they toned down such attacks.
Carol J. Clover argues in her article that "Horror film and pornography are the only two genres specifically devoted to the arousal of bodily sensation. They exist solely to horrify and stimulate, not always respectively, and their ability to do so is the sole measure of their success: they 'prove themselves upon our pulses". Exposure to scenes of explicit violence combined with sexual images is believed to affect males’ emotional reactions to film violence. It has also shown to lead males to be less disturbed by scenes of extreme violence and degradation directed at women, claims the Molitor and Sapolsky article. Carol Clover states that the implied audience for slasher films are "largely young and largely male".
Studies show that the most popular slasher films of the 1990s are more violent than the most commercially successful slasher films released in the 1980s. Specifically, according to this article, there was a 44% increase in the number of violent acts suffered by innocent victims in the 1990s crop of slasher films. Slasher films of the 1990s portray an act of brutal violence an average of once every two and a half minutes. Also, characters are shown in terror an average of three and a half minutes longer in slasher films in the 1990s. According to Gloria Cowan and Margaret O'Brien, experimental studies have been done to show the effects of viewing R-rated violent films have found "increased acceptance of interpersonal violence and rape mythology". These studies have also found desensitization with "carry-over attitude effects" towards victims of violence. These studies have shown, that after viewing slasher films, college male students have less sympathy for rape victims, see them as less injured, and are more likely to endorse the myth that women enjoy rape.
In their article, James B. Weaver and Dolf Zillmann explain "watching horror films is said to offer viewers a socially sanctioned opportunity to perform behaviors consistent with traditional gender stereotypes and early work on this topic found that males exposed to a sexually violent slasher film increased their acceptance of beliefs that some violence against women is justified and that it may have positive consequences".
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