”The whore, she's corrupted, she dies first. The athlete. The scholar. The fool. All suffer and die at the hands of whatever horror they have raised, leaving the last to live or die, as fate decides. The virgin." - The Director (Sigourney Weaver)
After watching The Cabin in the Woods this
quote is all I can think about while watching typical slasher films anymore. It
sums up (with minor differences in character tropes) almost every classic
slasher movie around, including The Nightmare on Elm Street. We start in a suburban
location with "The Whore" in this film, Tina, who has been having
nightmares of a man with knives for fingers (it's apparently not that weird at
all that her boyfriend had seen the same man in his sleep as well). Tina later
has sex with her boyfriend, "The Fool" trope in my opinion. She dies
first of course in a brutal way (no matter how corny it is it's still brutal)
in her underwear. The next to go is her boyfriend, another supporting character
who is not really useful to the story and I hate to say it but neither is
Johnny Depp's character. The only really important character is Nancy, the
Final girl or "The Virgin" who faces off with the deformed monster,
Freddy, at the end.
The Final girl is
important in these slasher films because the audience (male and female) are
rooting for her. We see her lose her friends and struggle with dealing with the
monster. She gets character development. She's doesn't have sex and is usually
very smart and strong (emotionally and sometimes physically). In the article, John
Carpenter is quoted as saying that the Final girl and the killer share a link,
which is sexual repression. Nancy doesn't have sex in the film and Freddy is
continuously taunting her and using sexual violence to do so (maybe this is his
way of getting the repression out?). The knife hand in the bath tub is a really
creepy scene and it's frightening because you're thinking what if that happened
to me? And I don't mean what if Freddy
Krueger actually existed and did that. I mean that Nancy is in a vulnerable
state, naked, in the bath usually a place where you're exposed and helpless.
And this is probably why the shower scene in Psycho also gives off that same
creepy feeling. It would be a terrible way to die.
However, this is from a
female's point of view of watching the film. I love horror movies. I've watched
plenty and I've been beginning to wonder
what the male audience feel while watching scenes like that. Being in the
killers (the man's) point of view or perspective in that certain scene but also knowing the
character development and sympathizing with the victim (always the woman) do they identify with the killer or do the
identify with the victim?
But anyway, back to the
sexual repression of Nancy and Freddy, one of the links between them. Carpenter
goes on to say that the repression of the Final girl comes out when she
eventually kills the monster. Since this is a class about the 1980's I was
thinking about how this could relate to what was happening during the time this
film came out and I kept relating in back to the fact that the 80's were when
AIDS was first discovered in the US. People were finding out that sex could
actually kill you. The 80's also showed a rise in conservatism due to Reagan
being president and the founding of the "Moral Majority". So, in
Nightmare On Elm Street. the girl who has sex is the one who dies first along with
her boyfriend and Glen who wanted to have sex with Nancy. Nancy, the character
who doesn't have sex stays alive throughout the film and gets her sexual
repression out by killing Freddy who taunts Nancy in sexual ways. Thinking of the film in terms of what's happening in the 80's, Freddy is AIDS and is killing teenagers who have sex. The girl who doesn't have sex lives and
confronts "AIDs" and tries to kill it while getting her sexual
repression out but in the end, is still trapped by it. A true nightmare.
Am I crazy for thinking of
this analysis? Who knows. But in the end the Nightmare on Elm Street. is still a
classic horror film and a good, fun, cheesy one!
I think it Is very interesting that you connected the sexual anxiety in the film to the fear of AIDS that occurred in the 80’s. In horror films sex is the first step to being killed in these movies. It’s always the female who is a little promiscuous that has sex and then is killed off almost immediately. It’s almost like it’s meant to be a message to teenagers, “If you have sex you will die or someone will brutally murder you.” I think it’s very interesting that this message is mostly directed towards females than males.
ReplyDeleteI like your analysis about connecting the social anxiety of AIDS to this style horror movie. While the sexual subtext of horror movies wasn't new to the 80's, a whole new element was added with the influx of AIDS. Suddenly, sex became even more taboo than it already was. You could now literally die from sex. The violence being directed towards females I think is just the unfair portrayal that Hollywood likes to present towards females.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your male audience perspective I root for the character in the end, whether it be male or female, to survive. There's usually no use in rooting for the killer slasher because in the end he NEVER wins so it ends up being a lot of wasted energy. I have a difficult time watching horror films because of how similar of a pattern they all follow.
ReplyDeleteI really liked all the comparisons you used, such as Cabin In The Woods and Psycho. Cabin In The Woods is personally my favorite horror films and I’m not a big fan of horror films. That quote, and others similar to it are the reason I love that film. It pokes fun at the genre and makes it very clear that this is how every single horror film is. There is no surprise in the genre anymore. I think that’s why it has revamped itself with films like Paranormal Activity and The Conjuring. These films are based on true stories, which in itself are scarier, and the audience never really knows what is going to happen. I was dragged to see the first Paranormal Activity and I jumped every time something happened. Now that may be because I scare easily or because most of the things that happened were unprecedented. If I did like horror films, now would be a good time to be into the genre. Horror films now are scarier and I think serves its purpose, of scaring the crap out of people, even better.
ReplyDeleteYou're raising some really good points here. Just to be clear--Carpenter's point wasn't that repression comes about as a result of the confrontation between the slasher and the final girl, but rather, that _sexual violence_ is the result of repression--that her power to fight against him, to match his violence with violence, is all her repressed energy bursting out. Which is pretty twisted. I did mention in class that there's a possible parallel with the AIDs crisis, because of sex now being a thing that could kill you. I'm not sure of my own analysis there. It was a bit early for the general public to be connecting AIDs with sex in general yet. Most people still more or less believed that it affected mostly gay men, even though new information in 1983 revealed that it also affected Haitians, drug users, and hemophiliacs, so was therefore not a 'gay disease.' You _could_ make a generalization that AIDs threatened anybody considered outside the norm sexually, and certainly there's a link between infection and promiscuity there. But the renewed popularity of vampire fiction is a more direct parallel--something borne in the blood itself, transmitted through weird erotic practices, that killed you or made you dangerous. But yeah, it's a reasonable case to make, if you set it up right. What I'd really like to know is, why do young women enjoy slasher movies, even though the sexual messages are pretty gross? Do you not take the sexuality seriously, or not take it personally, or....?
ReplyDelete