How Horror Represents Gender - Essay

This is an essay that we wrote as a class homework about how horror movies represent gender in the three movies that we watched in class:

How Horror Represents Gender

I am going to compare how horror represents gender in three different films; ‘Halloween’ (1978),  ‘The Shining’ (1982) and ‘Eden Lake’ (2008).

Laurie Strode - Played by Jamie Lee Curtis

‘Halloween’ represents women both positively and negatively.  One way it represents women positively is with an equal 50:50 split of male to female characters.  This is good because it shows that the film is not making one gender dominant and more visible than the other gender, unlike most media.  However, females in the film have taken very gender stereotypical roles, falling under three categories; domestic roles, sexual roles and familial roles. Domestic roles in ‘Halloween’ involve the group of girls babysitting, cleaning and cooking. Sexual roles are portrayed mostly by Annie and Lynda but also by Judith’s sexualised death.  The familial stereotypical role does not play such a big part in ‘Halloween’, but it is introduced by showing the bond with Annie and her Dad, the sheriff.  The ‘male gaze’ is used at the start the start of the film to make members of the audience see Judith as a sex object regardless of their own gender or sexuality.    Lynda and Annie are both sexually objectified in the film. Lynda is objectified in in her bed scene, as being a sex object whilst mistaking the murderer under the bed sheet to be her boyfriend. However, Laurie is not objectified in the film and is portrayed as being the ‘final girl’.  Laurie is represented as being the final girl by having a  gender neutral name and wearing gender neutral clothing.  This shows her in a completely different light to the other female characters in the film to the audience. She is also less sexualised by wearing no make up and by having short hair.  This is typical of the horror genre with ‘final girls’ typically shown as being virginal and becoming strong and able to defeat the evil in the film. 

Wendy - Played by Shelley Duvall

‘The Shining’ does not have such a positive representation on women as ‘Halloween’ does.  For a start, there is roughly a 60:40 male to female split, showing the dominant roles in the film are played by male characters.  ‘The Shining’ uses very stereotypical roles for women. It makes use of domestic, familial and sexual roles of women.   Wendy, Jacks’ wife, is shown to be very domesticated, looking after Danny and her husband. She also does some hotel maintenance. Another domestic role is the secretary’s, who is only shown bringing coffee in the film.  Family roles play a big part in ‘The Shining’, with Wendy being defined as being a housewife who only looks after her family.  Three other family roles are those of Grady and his two daughters.  There is a sexualised role for the dead woman in the bath scene in room 237.  The ‘male gaze’ is used in the bath scene, putting the audience in Jack’s eyes and seeing the woman in the bath to be a sex object.  However, when we see her as a corpse this leaves us as an audience ashamed of how we originally saw her.  The film is also very conservative, with there being a higher death toll of women than men; three female deaths versus two male deaths.

Jenny - Played by Kelly Reilly

‘Eden Lake’ has an even worse representation of women with a 3:8 ratio of women to men.  ‘Eden Lake’ also undertakes very gender stereotypical roles.  Domestic work is carried out by two of the three female characters; Jenny and the woman in the café, with Jenny working as a primary school teacher and the woman in the café serving food.  Jenny is shown in a familial role, as she becomes fiancé to her boyfriend Steve.  The woman in the café could also be seen as playing a familial role because she refers to the gang as being “her boys”.  Paige is not given a stereotypical role and acts in two different ways throughout the film.  At the start she is aggressive and shown to be sexual, however as the film progresses she is very passive, doing as she is told and only filming the violence as opposed to taking an active part in it.  Use of the ‘male gaze’ is evident in the film, with the gang members looking at Jenny in  a sexual way, however we know Jenny is uncomfortable with this and covers up.  We identify with Jenny for most of the film.  Two out of three girls die in the film and four out of eight males die in the film. The final girl however does not survive unlike the two other films and she does become monstrous herself, showing a link between herself and Brett.

In conclusion, all three films do show women in different ways with some having more important roles than others.  All horror films portray women in different ways and these three films are no exception. 

These are the comments I got from my teacher:

"B-  Good writing but I think the most interesting aspects of horror representation - the way is asks male audience members to identify with a female victim/hero rather than just objectify women, it not really discussed explicitly enough"