Sex Gender and Citizenship- A 5 Person podcast script talking about Violence against women in Horror movies

A podcast script wriiten for 5 different people. The topic is violence against women in horror movies. Some notes to base the podcast off of Female Victimization in the Horror Genre– Grace Lemon

• Sexism that has perpetuated a vast majority of class horror films

• Laura Mulvey’s groundbreaking essay 1975- “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”

• Traditional cinema –spectator in a masculine viewing position

• Perpetuating a male gaze

• Forces female characters to maintain passive roles—”objects of desire”

• Female victimization and violence– meant to satisfy male spectators

• Recently, producers have developed more progressive understandings of gender

Psycho– Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror classic

• Marion falls victim– traditional tropes

• Violence and sexuality–set new standards on cinematic history–Slasher film genre

• Murder scene– blurs the lines of male and female pleasure

• Close-up shots of her naked body in the shower

• Up until her dealth–constant object of the camera’s lens

• Positions of vulnerability–brought upon male characters

• Active male and passive female

• This shows the influences of strict gender roles in classic cinema—- in which these ways reinforce cultural violence towards women

Jennifer’s Body— 2009– Karyn Jusama

• Orginially promoted in an ad campaign that focused on the sexualization of Megan Fox to appeal to a straight male audience

• Has recently garnered a feminist cult following

• Director’s intention of creative the film for young women

• Summary of the film:

• It follows Jennifer Check, a high school girl who is transformed into a man-eating demon after a band, composed entirely of men, tries to sacrifice her to Satan in exchange for fame. The sacrifice fails because Jennifer is not a virgin, and this scene thus satirizes the classic trope of women being punished for their promiscuity. The film continues to stray from tradition by giving Jennifer the opportunity to become a monster that fights against and from within the ultimate societal villain: the patriarchy.  

• Her friendship with Needy is ripped apart as a result of the men who victimized Jennifer in the first place

• Forefront of our culture today—hits many gender-based stereotypes and issues

• Ex, sexual violence, blaming of women, perspective of women being sexually permiscious

• Needs a critical revisit of a modern feminist perspective

• Work to be done in the genre at large

• Traditional depictions of women perpetuate violence inflicted toward women and a suppression of female sexuality. 

• We should enjoy these films, but acknowledge the movement toward gender equality, needs to align itself with these changes

• Films can be entertaining even when it is not victimizing women

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Suffolk University- Female Victimization in the 1970s and 1980’s Slasher Film-Sarah Lukowski

• Written– April 28th, 2022

• 1970s, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and John Carpenter’s Halloween, emerged a new era of horror.

• As it evolved, it concerned itself with the representation of women dn the roles women assume as victims.

• Texas chainsaw massacre– responds to the values of the late sixties and early seventies

• Horror films “plays on fears about the environment” comments on the dangers faced within our neighborhoods, camps, schools

• For women, these fears are different from men, fear of being sexually assaulted, drugged, or brutally killed while walking alone late at night.

• Slasher films differ from traditional horror– explicit violence primarily directed towards women

• Violence in slashers– often paired with sexual behavior

• Basis of many plots– appeal to male audiences

• Misogynistic representation of women in slasher films from the 70s and 80s

• Suffering of female characters

• Slasher- recognized for being predictable and this predictability is part of the experience for moviegoers– high level of replication in terms of narrative structure

• Misogyny manifests itself in the genre– what type of people survive or are immediately killed

• Sexually-active women get brutally slashed in lengthy scenes, whereas the pure, less attractive women survive.

: Horror Movies

Scream 2

• Maureen talking about the historical exclusion of Black people from horror

• Movie within the movie paying homage to Psycho and original Scream with Drew Barrymore lookalike getting naked about to shower, Maureen asking what her being naked has to do with the plot

• Maureen gets stabbed as the movie is going on in the background and nobody is paying attention because they’re focusing on the movie

• Dies in front of the screen

• Sidney’s roommate Hallie–black best friend/side kick trope?

• Encouraging Sidney to get her life together, move on from the crime

• Violence towards sexually active women in the first movie (ie. Tatum was killed when she was sexually active, Sidney wasn’t a target until she had sex with Billy)

• Dewey and Randy talking about who could be the killer, speculating about Hallie–Dewey says the killers are commonly white males, Randy brings up the fact that Mrs. Voorhees was the perfect killer, Candyman’s daughter

• Hallie calls herself Sid’s therapist

• Hallie gets killed because Sid wanted to see who was under the mask in the car, ultimately taking the fall for Sid

Psycho 

• Origin of “slasher” type films

• The sexualization of Marion’s murder scene–she’s naked in the shower, close-ups of her naked body as she’s dead

• Frequently reinforced as vulnerable and passive

Terrifier & Terrifier 2, All Hallow’s Eve

• Unnecessarily brutal and graphic scenes of women being murdered

• First movie, woman hung upside down and sawed in half with a hacksaw starting at her groin (hanging people upside down causes blood to rush to their head, keeping them alive longer and subjecting them to more pain)

• All Hallow’s Eve, one woman has her limbs and breasts cut off and has misogynistic obscenities carved onto her body

• Sequel, bedroom scene where one girl is murdered so brutally that this specific scene is infamous for how disgusting it is–Art mutilates a girl, scalps her, and pours salt and bleach into her wounds, rips her face off

• Previous scene known for making people vomit and faint

• Director intentionally based kills off of Jack the Ripper and medieval torture methods