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Ok, this article is a few months old and it's from Entertainment Weekly and I read it in a hair salon, but that doesn't mean it doesn't raise an interesting point.
I've always thought there's something more bizarre going on, whatever it is. Like, does it matter that The Ring, The Grudge, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose all feature female "monsters"? Nobody seems to talk about that aspect of "women and horror" because we're so stuck on the protagonists, but it's an interesting thing to look at. The Exorcist is a classic example (I read a reasonably good analysis about that one for class, but then the analysis concluded that what made Reagan horrific/powerful was that she was masculinizing/masculinized, and I was like, *groan*). So is Carrie. The really scary ghosts in The Shining are female. The really scary ghost in The Sixth Sense is little Mischa Barton. Even Rosemary's Baby features evil within Rosemary (and personified by the nosy female neighbor). The Omen is one of the few horror movies where the evil is totally masculine, although of course it's a little boy. The Descent featured a bunch of fairly gender-neutral subhumans, but there was a lot of bloody women killing other bloody women in that movie, IIRC. Regardless of what drives writers and producers to fill their movies with female monsters (I think for the most part that's a different issue), I wonder what these monsters reflect about the female audience.
Then of course there's the serial killers, the last refuge of the male "monster." For all their apparent immortality, these guys are not metaphysical, horrifying, all-powerful and all-present ghosts that seem to kill by the sheer fear they inflict. Like zombies, they're beatable. Serial killers also aren't demonic in any frightening way - the jury is out on Freddy Krueger, I suppose, but he's not literally summoning Satan like Reagan. I personally don't find serial killer movies very scary, but more importantly, I frequently root for the serial killer. For all this talk of empowerment, a lot of people go to serial killer movies to watch annoying teenagers get killed. Sure, you'll say "don't open the door!" but it's to protect yourself from the jump, not because you give a shit about Girl In Halter Top. No one goes to see horror movies for the protagonists. They go for the monsters, for the slow creeping death, for the fear.
It's terribly ironic that the article mentions Lars von Trier's new Antichrist as another horror movie with a female protagonist - for many reasons, not the least of which is that Charlotte Gainsbourg is "the Antichrist." Listen to a bunch of male studio execs trying to figure out why women want to see their movies and they conclude meekly that "The appeal is in watching women in jeopardy and, most importantly, fighting back" - all I can do is laugh. That's like seriously arguing that rape/revenge is feminism in disguise. It's a fundamentally dishonest assessment of the horror experience. What made The Descent phenomenal was that no one survived. Is Naomi Watts really fighting back in The Ring? Remember, Samara/Sadako "never sleeps."
Name any recent horror hit and odds are that female moviegoers bought more tickets than men. And we're not just talking about psychological spookfests like 2002's The Ring (60 percent female), 2004's The Grudge (65 percent female), and 2005's The Exorcism of Emily Rose (51 percent female). We're also talking about all the slice-and-dice remakes and sequels that Hollywood churns out.The article goes on to give some pretty ridiculous, flat-footed reasons for this: 1) oh, it's about the empowerment of the final girl! 2) it's an excuse to cuddle up with the boyfriend. The second explanation contradicts the data presented; the first explanation is old news. As a woman who goes to horror movies, I don't think either has got anything to do with anything, but all I can really say is "I like horror!"
''I don't think there was anyone who expected that women would gravitate toward a movie called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,'' says Chainsaw producer Brad Fuller of the 2003 remake, which became a female-driven $81 million hit. ''For us, the issue now is that it's harder for us to get young men into the theater than women.'' And female audiences stay loyal. ''I've seen married women who are, like, 35 years old at horror movies and they're like, 'Oh, our husbands are with the kids and we all came out together,''' says Clint Culpepper, the president of Screen Gems, which is releasing a remake of the 1987 slasher film The Stepfather in October. ''Men stop seeing horror at a certain age, but women continue to go.''
I've always thought there's something more bizarre going on, whatever it is. Like, does it matter that The Ring, The Grudge, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose all feature female "monsters"? Nobody seems to talk about that aspect of "women and horror" because we're so stuck on the protagonists, but it's an interesting thing to look at. The Exorcist is a classic example (I read a reasonably good analysis about that one for class, but then the analysis concluded that what made Reagan horrific/powerful was that she was masculinizing/masculinized, and I was like, *groan*). So is Carrie. The really scary ghosts in The Shining are female. The really scary ghost in The Sixth Sense is little Mischa Barton. Even Rosemary's Baby features evil within Rosemary (and personified by the nosy female neighbor). The Omen is one of the few horror movies where the evil is totally masculine, although of course it's a little boy. The Descent featured a bunch of fairly gender-neutral subhumans, but there was a lot of bloody women killing other bloody women in that movie, IIRC. Regardless of what drives writers and producers to fill their movies with female monsters (I think for the most part that's a different issue), I wonder what these monsters reflect about the female audience.
Then of course there's the serial killers, the last refuge of the male "monster." For all their apparent immortality, these guys are not metaphysical, horrifying, all-powerful and all-present ghosts that seem to kill by the sheer fear they inflict. Like zombies, they're beatable. Serial killers also aren't demonic in any frightening way - the jury is out on Freddy Krueger, I suppose, but he's not literally summoning Satan like Reagan. I personally don't find serial killer movies very scary, but more importantly, I frequently root for the serial killer. For all this talk of empowerment, a lot of people go to serial killer movies to watch annoying teenagers get killed. Sure, you'll say "don't open the door!" but it's to protect yourself from the jump, not because you give a shit about Girl In Halter Top. No one goes to see horror movies for the protagonists. They go for the monsters, for the slow creeping death, for the fear.
It's terribly ironic that the article mentions Lars von Trier's new Antichrist as another horror movie with a female protagonist - for many reasons, not the least of which is that Charlotte Gainsbourg is "the Antichrist." Listen to a bunch of male studio execs trying to figure out why women want to see their movies and they conclude meekly that "The appeal is in watching women in jeopardy and, most importantly, fighting back" - all I can do is laugh. That's like seriously arguing that rape/revenge is feminism in disguise. It's a fundamentally dishonest assessment of the horror experience. What made The Descent phenomenal was that no one survived. Is Naomi Watts really fighting back in The Ring? Remember, Samara/Sadako "never sleeps."
