Women and the horror genre

[George Ebersole]

So I'm cruising YouTube looking for good indy short films, and check out a couple of horror genre entries, and they're pretty good, so I spend the evening watching the stuff. And the thing that I'm noticing is that most of them dealing with scaring the bejeezus out of women.

 

Has it always been that way?

 

I remember seeing the original "The Thing", ostensibly a sci-fi film, but it had some scary moments. Ditto with "Alien" and a few others, and they were aimed at men. But it seems like most horror films are aimed at females instead of males.

 

Anyone have any insight on this?

[David Mullen ASC]

I talked about this a lot with Karyn Kusama when we did "Jennifer's Body" and watched a number of 70's/80's horror like "Halloween" (1978) and "Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984), both of which had a female protagonist, as did many other horror movies. It sort of dates way back to the Grimm fairy tales, which often had female heroines. It may be because these fairy tales were first told by mothers to their children, I don't know, but in an odd way, it seems easier to accept the surreal premise of the horror situation from a female perspective, maybe because the protagonist is not a physically powerful male hero who takes charge immediately, but is someone who is more physically vulnerable at the start and discovers their strength as they face the horror. Or maybe because a lot of the threats are symbolic of the dangers and temptations that a young woman faces. You'll note a lot of Freudian subtext in these horror stories... Also, in a number of these movies, the young female heroine ends up protecting even younger children, becoming a mother figure.

 

Now the flip side is that some of these tales are written by men who seem to have certain "issues" regarding women and seem to want to enact a form of revenge fantasy out on them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny_in_horror_films

 

Some horror has its roots in Gothic literature, much of which was written by women:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction

[George Ebersole]

I talked about this a lot with Karyn Kusama when we did "Jennifer's Body" and watched a number of 70's/80's horror like "Halloween" (1978) and "Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984), both of which had a female protagonist, as did many other horror movies. It sort of dates way back to the Grimm fairy tales, which often had female heroines. It may be because these fairy tales were first told by mothers to their children, I don't know, but in an odd way, it seems easier to accept the surreal premise of the horror situation from a female perspective, maybe because the protagonist is not a physically powerful male hero who takes charge immediately, but is someone who is more physically vulnerable at the start and discovers their strength as they face the horror. Or maybe because a lot of the threats are symbolic of the dangers and temptations that a young woman faces. You'll note a lot of Freudian subtext in these horror stories... Also, in a number of these movies, the young female heroine ends up protecting even younger children, becoming a mother figure.

 

Now the flip side is that some of these tales are written by men who seem to have certain "issues" regarding women and seem to want to enact a form of revenge fantasy out on them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misogyny_in_horror_films

 

Some horror has its roots in Gothic literature, much of which was written by women:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_fiction

 

Huh, that's interesting. I remember hearing that the fairy tales told to young women and girls were to keep them from getting into trouble or assaulted. I guess the horror genre is an extension of that.

 

But yeah, I've never liked the horror genre, but can admire the craft in the indy films I've seen recently. I guess if you're a male you're expected to take charge, and even though you might get a fright or something the first time, as males, we're supposed to figure things out and tackle the threat head on.

 

I guess if you're a woman that process is a bit slower, and there's a larger payoff at the end because the female sex is still seen as possibly weak, so as she develops her strength in the film she's become powerful.

 

For me, when it's in a scifi context then both sexes can use science and technology at their disposal to defeat the threat, whatever it may be. And I think those make for cool stories. But it's just some single white female, usually a babysitter, then it just seems really cliche or, as you say, like the film maker or story teller has issues.

 

Interesting. I guess if someone wanted to know what I thought about the genre, well ... there you go. Not much.

[David Mullen ASC]

Horror is a pretty broad genre, covering everything from Dracula movies to "Sleepy Hollow", or ghost stories like "The Others" or "The Innocents", not just teenager slasher movies. Some might even put a crime drama like "Seven" in that category.

[Justin Hayward]

[George Ebersole]

Yeah, the two late greats Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert speak my mind to an absolute "T". Unlike them I didn't even like the Halloween films. I think trying to scare people for the sake of scaring them is pretty malicious and sadistic all at once.

 

If you're going to include scary scenes in your film, then, in my book at least, they need to have a purpose and resolution.

 

I think the unspoken truth about the films that Siskel and Ebert talk about is that they were probably meant to be emotional outlets for disturbed males who feel threatened by women, but that the trend just went too far in the 80s, and they became celebrations of some real disgusting attitudes towards females.

 

So, upon reflection, cruising YouTube the other night when I started this thread, I wonder how much knowledge the young film makers have of the genre. Do they know what Siskel and Ebert and we here know? Or are they just imitating what they saw in other movies, and trying to give the audience a good scare?

 

Irregardless, I'm still baffled as to why they continue to pick on the fairer sex for cheap scares. I mean they hired actresses, presumably spoke to said actresses as they directed these women in these projects, and yet most of the projects are focused on scaring or victimizing women.

 

It's just really baffling to me. I mean ... is there some "horror film making" course that they teach at SF State or USC or UCLA that I'm not aware of where they teach this crap?

 

Sorry for the high horse moment. What started out as a simple inquiry has turned into a sore point after seeing these two video clips of Siskel and Ebert. I miss them both.

 

Presumably if you're going to make one of these things, then you want to scare everybody, not just the young women.

 

Just my two bits. Again, sorry for the rant here.

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, I don't get "torture porn" horror movies like "Saw" but some people enjoy them. I think for general audiences who like horror, it's just like getting onto a roller coaster ride, it's not supposed to "mean" anything, they just want to jump in their seats and scream now and then. Otherwise, what's the appeal to a Haunted House on Halloween?

 

But as I said, it's a broad topic and I wouldn't write off all horror, otherwise we wouldn't have Bram Stoker's "Dracula" or Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", we wouldn't have "Cat People" nor "Sleepy Hollow" nor "The Innocents". It's not all just teenager babysitters being killed by a guy with a knife.

 

Here's an article by a woman:

http://bust.com/movies/16675-five-horror-movies-directed-by-women-that-are-worth-the-nightmares.html

 

I've shot one of those five and I shot a different movie for another director listed.

[George Ebersole]

David; as usual, a font of wisdom. That's very true about those other titles. I guess Siskel and Ebert got my serious side all fired up. I haven't seen Cat People in forever ... HBO back in the 80s? Some of the indy films posted on YouTube were really clever. I'll have to post some links later on.

 

I'm also thinking you need to be a certain age or a certain mindset to "get scared" so to speak, because it seems like a lot of these films are built on the notion that something inexplicable can hurt you (or the characters on screen at least) really bad. And you kind of know that's not true, and if you know that, then the "fright" element is lost.

 

I'll have to check out Dracula and Frankenstein again.

[David Mullen ASC]

In simple mechanical terms, there is some enjoyment from a directorial standpoint in learning how to frighten an audience. Audiences often laugh after they've screamed when they realize they have been taken in by some simple camera + sound trick. I remember the scene in "Alien" when they are searching the medical lab for the missing face hugger and Dallas accidentally knocks over something that causes a big bang and everyone jumps, both in the scene and in the theater, after which Dallas says "Sorry..."

 

Then that's followed by the scare as the tail of the face hugger drops from the ceiling behind Ripley's head and then the (dead) creature drops onto her. All very classic hunted house stuff, but it works. And it works particularly well because we had the bloody, violent death of Kane in the lunch room. Ridley Scott knew that if he made that scene memorably horrific, he could be very subtle with the violence after that because the audience knew that the stakes were high, and were expecting to see something terrible again, so Scott just had to suggest horrible things after that.

 

It's part of the surprise versus suspense thing that Hitchcock often talked about, to generate suspense, you need to establish the stakes, the audience needs information, and then their minds can work after that, anticipating something that may or may not happen. Surprise, he said, was a bomb going off unexpectedly under a table -- suspense was first seeing someone plant a bomb under the table and then seeing two people sitting and talking about nothing import unaware that there is ticking bomb under the table. So effective horror involves both surprise and suspense, but mainly an early surprise leads to more suspense as the audience waits to be surprised again.

 

David Lean got his audience to jump in their seats early on in "Great Expectations" in a dark cemetery -- Pip is backing away from something when he hears a noise, the camera pans with him as he backs up, and then he turns around and bumps into the criminal Magwitch and Pip screams (I think there maybe was a clap of thunder or something at the same time, often this gag is accompanied by a loud noise.) Nicholas Meyer copied this set-up exactly in "Star Trek 2" when Kirk and McCoy are exploring the dark Regula One science station -- McCoy sees a rat and he backs slowly away from it, the camera panning with him in a profile close-up, the door shuts between him and the rat and he relaxes, exhales, spins around and bumps into a dead body hanging from the ceiling (accompanied by a loud screech in the music score.)

[George Ebersole]

Yeah, I remember those tricks being taught at both my junior college and at SF State, and the whole Hitchcock lesson in film theory and criticism as well as screenwriting. I have to admit that violin screeching seems to work nearly everytime it's used in one of those "discover a dead body" scenes.

 

I guess there're people who like a good scare.

 

Anyway, here's a few links to the shorts I found on YouTube. Note that only the last one deals with trying to scare a male;

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuTThXJAer4

 

[David Mullen ASC]

One of my favorite horror movies is "The Innocents" (1961), just because it gets under your skin -- when you see the ghost of some dead character, it often is at a distance, which just makes it even creepier:

 

[George Ebersole]

Boy, I vaguely remember this film from one of my film classes.

[George Ebersole]

Now here's a scary video that had me on the edge of my seat;