Women in Slashers

[00:00:21] Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into final rock podcast. My name is Carolyn Smith Hillmer, and I am 6th Avenue's very own final girl. And today this episode is going to be a pinch different, okay? Just a pinch. I realized as of late that I. I don't know. It's not that I'm not finding films that I'm interested in anymore. That's certainly never, ever going to be the case. And it's just that I thought maybe today, instead of doing a film review, we could spend some time to do some, I don't know, scholarly research and thinking together. So today is gonna be a new podcast format that I'm discovering, and I've just been feeling a little bit like my current episode structure. It's just repetitive. And obviously consistency is super important whenever you're creating content. But I don't know, I'm hoping that maybe this, if, you know, you guys like it, is something we can do a little bit more often. Right? I'm imagining this is going to be centered. You know, these types of episodes would be centered around topics regarding subgenres within the horror genre and be more focused on, like, actual meaning rather than like, the content of the films alone, with a small analysis, like usual. So stick with me on this ride, please. As I attempt today to provide you with a detailed study on women in slasher films, I want to specifically talk about the idea that slashers do not always aim to champion female sexuality. And to begin our discussion, I would like to frame what will follow as cinema being a manipulative medium. The point of view of the viewer, right, is predetermined. We're shown what the directors want us to see and hear what they want us to hear. And absolutely none of our experience is based on an objective point of view of the content we are witnessing solely because it's already been manipulated before it's been presented to us. With that in mind, we also need to just reiterate that the essential groundwork of directors using their own conscious or unconscious biases to create the art we're being subjected to is to say that the actual creators of the film are completely guilty in their manipulation of what the viewer is exposed to and are almost nearly solely responsible for our interpretations. Oftentimes, of course, the morals and ethics that we each own individually will shape our viewing experience. But we are complicit in engaging in the views of these filmmakers, right? And while film is, and always has been and will continue to be a passion of mine, I'm certainly not blind to this matter and I hope that you're not either, were never presented with a purely objective piece of artwork. Otherwise it wouldn't be art. So to get us started, I want to talk about the slasher formula. Okay, so looking first to the slasher film, it is demonstrated that nearly all films within this subgenre follow a formula. I'll be referencing her body himself gender in the slasher film by Carol J. Clover. And in this she is specifically talking about Alfred Hitchcock's psycho as being the immediate ancestor of the slasher genre. Clover provides the basic formula. There's a monster, but it's still presented as a human. Right. There's a sexually active woman in danger and the weapon to execute harm or killing is not a gun. That's very important. Clover goes on to argue that there are component categories by which these slasher films include in their formula which are the killer, the locale, weapons, victims and shock effects. So let's start with the killer. Right? Again, we're going to be talking mainly about Ralph Hitchcock's Psycho, 1960. When we look at the killer, it all starts with the mother, right? Everything starts with the mother. You hear anything about serial killers? It all starts with the mother, right? If we're using psycho as our immediate reference, it would be irresponsible nonetheless to not include discussion of Norman's mother. And perhaps Norman's mother is the very basis of all of our troubles that we see throughout the film. Clover poses the idea that I completely agree with, by the way, that Norman is actually two people. [00:06:13] Speaker B: He is both himself and his mother. And I don't mean this in the. [00:06:18] Speaker A: Exact way that you're imagining it. [00:06:21] Speaker B: However, it is not meant to be taken literally. It is more so meant to say that Norman has been so influenced by the mother figure in his life that she has become part of his consciousness. This example of introspection illustrates to the audience that Norman is not simply a. [00:06:43] Speaker A: Crazed murderer, but rather that he adopted. [00:06:46] Speaker B: The ideals and morals of his mother. So with that in mind, it's no coincidence that Norman must kill Marian after. [00:06:54] Speaker A: He discovers he is aroused by her. [00:06:58] Speaker B: After all, she is a sexually active and beautiful, gorgeous, stunning woman. Norman's mother, as described by Norman, was a clinging, demanding woman. Seeing Marian as the type of woman that his mother would have hated, Norman becomes a martyr to the cause right of continuing and enacting these morals and ideals onto others. And he must enact violence, therefore unto Marian to should make not himself but also his mother proud of him. The absolute necessity of his mother's approval allows him to execute poor Marian simply because she is a sexually active woman, which is something that Norman's mother would never have approved of. And I'd like to make a point here that if you have seen the film which is honestly who this audience is intended for, people who have seen psycho, then you would tend to agree. And the sick attachment between Norman and. [00:08:11] Speaker A: His mother is a rather early example. [00:08:15] Speaker B: In horror and cinema alike, of emotional incest. [00:08:19] Speaker A: The torment and unfair treatments and expectations of Norman's mother throughout her lifetime. To meet and nurture her emotional needs constantly, rather than receiving this from a romantic partner, has placed Norman in a compromised state, one in which he cannot simply allow himself to accept the actions of others. He cannot tolerate what other people choose to do in their own life if. [00:08:46] Speaker B: They don't meet the qualifications or expectations of those of his own mother. [00:08:57] Speaker A: The locale. Right. A common theme includes the location of all of the bad things we're soon to bear witness to. Typically, right, unwitting victims enter into a location or venue that would otherwise not be a life threatening destination. In the case of Marian, she simply checks into a motel. Seems normal. Seems like an everyday occurrence. Right? Well, you're obviously wrong if you've seen a slasher ever in your entire life, but, like, that is where, and I talked about this in the episode I did on Rosemary's baby. And additionally, inside is that homes, right, are meant to be a sanctuary. They are intended to be a safe place, which is why exactly any type of dwelling, right, it could be a cabin in the woods, it could be a motel on the side of the road. It could be your very own home, it could be a hostel abroad. It could be anywhere. These are places that typically you're meant to sleep at night, which instinctively, if you're intended to sleep somewhere, your body allows you to feel relaxed and not in defense mode, you're not in fight or flight. You know, you're just in a state of rest. But unfortunately, that's not the case for these slasher films, right? So they're kind of. These victims are lured into this false sense of security so that way they can become a victim. As our victims begin to understand, though, that the place they are is not exactly the place that they were expecting, they begin to pick up on subtle or not so subtle, in some cases, evidence. They adopt an understanding of their potential and or immediate peril that they face. [00:11:06] Speaker B: The horrors that have taken place or will soon take place at these venues becomes the very thing that frightens us most. A safe sanctuary is not safe in any way at all. [00:11:20] Speaker A: This is why when you talk about the strangers, I often find myself saying, I don't know why I find that so, so scary. That film is not gory. It's not excessively violent there. There's really so little that is shown that is intended to frighten. It's more of what's not shown. It's more of what is left for the audience to pick up on. It's intended. It almost triggers in the audience, right when you're watching it, you're almost like. [00:12:03] Speaker B: Oh, my God, like, he's in the. [00:12:04] Speaker A: Window, or they're in the window. I don't know who they are. Right. We're almost trying to, like, aid the victims in this home invasion by, like, talking to the screen as if they, they can actually hear us and we can actually help them. So it triggers something innate to humans that we want to protect, particularly our homes and places that we are intended to stay, sleep, nurture, normal dwellings. Right. That's kind of why Friday the 13th is so effective. When you think about it, other than the fact that misses Voorhees is absolutely frightening. And then in the other films, her son Jason is also absolutely frightening. But it's simply, they're simply at a campsite, right? Like they're trying to. It's supposed to be a happy place. It's supposed to be a place that they're supposed to fix up and invite young, you know, adolescents and pre teens to come to, to have a good time. And out of nowhere, everything falls apart. Weapons. Carol makes careful, okay, to note in her article that guns are not the norm in slashers because a gun would be too loud. It would be too noisy. [00:13:41] Speaker B: If I'm misses Voorhees hunting down a group of rambunctious teens out at Camp Crystal Lake, why would I use a gun? So that I can easily expose myself? There's no chance, right? [00:13:53] Speaker A: Why would I want to do that? [00:13:55] Speaker B: The reason that these films are so effective is that the audience is able to see that there is a proverbial or literal pile of bodies in the vicinity of them. It's near them geographically, it's in close proximity, and a gun would simply give that away too easily and would lead the victims, you know, to flee the venue early so that it's so early in the film, we wouldn't have a film at all. [00:14:25] Speaker A: I love most recently, if you haven't seen it, there is a great film called in a violent nature, and I was supposed to see it at Sundance, but it wasn't playing until after I had left already, if I remember correctly. So I didn't get a chance. And what's really interesting about in a violent nature is that if you've seen it, okay, you likely think this is a ripoff of this is a rip on Jason. This is a rip on Friday the 13th. Like, this is not necessarily an original film concept. And if that's your critique, I might agree with you slightly. What does set in a violent nature apart is this. We have this masked killer. He has the necklace his mother adorned. In the woods near where he's buried. A group of young adults find this necklace and they take it. And when they do take it, that awakens something in him. You've disturbed him. He comes up from where he's buried and he's on a hunt to execute. Now what's funny about this, though, is that if we're living in the idea that slasher films can't include guns as weapons, this film uses a literal wood like saw, you know, like the big machinery, electric ones that, like, you can cut like a logging machine. Okay, those are loud. Those are not quiet at all. So I mean, in a way it's like this particular killer in this film wants to be discovered. Like he kind of wants you to know where he is because he wants. [00:16:30] Speaker B: You to seek him out. [00:16:34] Speaker A: And the victims that our perpetrator is hunting are using guns. So it's like they don't even try to, and they're using four wheelers, right? Like, they don't even try to hide themselves from this guy. And eventually what occurs is one victim, just one, escapes. She flees. She's able to escape the forest, you know, the woods, and she gets picked up by someone on the side of the highway who takes her to the hospital. Like, that's not the normal slasher formula. That's a complete deviation of the slasher formula. The slasher formula says that no one gets out unless they're the final girl, which this film, she is. She is the final girl trope. But it's not in the way that you think it is. It's not in the final girl stereotype. She just so happens to be the last woman standing. She happens to be the last person standing. That's also a woman. So if you haven't seen in a violent nature, I highly recommend because it completely dismantles what you expect a slasher to be. It also is from the point of view, mostly from the killer and not from the victim. And I must say I have a newfound appreciation for all of the planning and time that goes into the execution of these kills. I mean, when we see misses Voorhees, we're just like, oh, she just appeared out of nowhere. But in a violent nature. [00:18:15] Speaker B: No. [00:18:15] Speaker A: We see this killer stalking. We see him, you know, carefully planning out how these things are going to be executed. Like, it's a really great example of specifically weapons and locale in Slasher. So I agree that everyone should see that if you're a fan of the subgenre. But if we're continuing our argument that the slasher films punish women for their. [00:18:47] Speaker B: Sexuality, why would we use anything other than a weapon that requires personal contact? A knife, needles, axes, etcetera, all require the victim to be in close proximity. They're going to be in the same frame on the screen, oftentimes as. [00:19:14] Speaker A: The. [00:19:14] Speaker B: Murderer, as the killer, as the perpetrator. And that is why the knife is chosen as Norman's preferred method of murder against Marian. And there's two reasons for that. [00:19:24] Speaker A: Yes. [00:19:25] Speaker B: It's because he feels that this act. [00:19:30] Speaker A: Of martyrdom that he's about to commit is so deep within him that it simply could not be carried out by anything other than something that would require the utmost punishment, which would be stabbing. Stabbing many times. Right. A gun would simply take away the punishment. It would be too fast, it would be too easy. It wouldn't be, you know, the death that he wants Marion to have. Additionally, he doesn't use a gun because he's in a fucking motel. And everyone and their brother would know that it's a gun, right. Like, everybody would be able to hear it. So he can't draw that kind of attention to himself. Right. Because, lest we forget, Marian is a. [00:20:18] Speaker B: Bit on the run. [00:20:19] Speaker A: She had just stolen money for her and her, you know, current boyfriend to use. So he really. He does her a favor, in a way, by not drawing attention to her being there, but he also does her no favors at all by killing her, obviously. [00:20:38] Speaker B: But Norman hates Marian for everything she stands for, right? Particularly her openness and her sexuality. And so much so that he needs that killing to be more personal than the gunshot wound from 25 yards. Norman actually needs to touch his victim in a way that allows him to feel morally superior, meaning he's taking down the beast of this femininity and sexual freedom that Marian possesses. And I'll talk about this slightly more later. But also it's likely that at this point in Norman's psyche, he's been so instilled with the ethics and virtues that his mother held that women are supposed to be quiet and small and. [00:21:30] Speaker A: Virgin. Right? They're supposed to be a virgin. They're supposed to be something that is able to be penetrated, right? And so when all of those things are taken away, right? She's a criminal. She stole money. She's traveling on her own. She has a boyfriend. She's having sex outside of wedlock. She maybe had other partners previously that Norman doesn't even know about. And so the fact that he feels like he's attracted to her and might even go as far as to think about having sex with her makes him feel dirty. She is a temptress, right? She is practicing the art of seduction somehow, and he simply cannot tolerate that because that would be typically seen as a male trait. So in essence, if he's in his mind thinking he's attracted to a masculine woman, then that would certainly not be something that his mother would have approved of. Let's talk about the victims. And this is perhaps a component that. [00:22:51] Speaker B: Makes the slasher film formula the most recognizable, as discussed in depth in Scream 1996. Obviously, one of the main roles of surviving the unknown masked killer, Ghostface can be seen in almost every slasher ever. [00:23:10] Speaker A: If you have sex, you will die. [00:23:13] Speaker B: So our main character, Sidney Prescott, played by Nev Campbell, a high school girl, is being targeted by an unknown masked killer on the anniversary of her mother's death. And Sidney puts off having sex with her asshole boyfriend for a long time, for as long as humanly possible, pretty much in the film, until she decides that she wants to have sex with him. But at that point, Sidney has now violated the rules of the slasher game. Never have sex if you want to stay alive. So this causes a bit of a. [00:23:44] Speaker A: Stir for Sidney, but she is actually able to escape her attempted killing and survive. This was a pivotal film for me. [00:23:52] Speaker B: Personally, and I'm sure many others, when it comes to the stereotype of the final girl, she had sex and survived, right? This communicated to me that women can be smart and have sex. That's a joke. I didn't. It's not like I didn't already fucking know that, okay? But it was new to the screen and. [00:24:16] Speaker A: And kind of a newer idea or concept for horror audiences, particularly for slashers. [00:24:26] Speaker B: For Marion, this is unfortunately not the case. As made obvious by the infamous shower scene, Marion was on the road after stealing 40k from her employer to pay off her boyfriend's debt so they could get married sooner. And that, coupled with the fact that she has had sex before while not married, coupled with her advice to put Norman's mother in a mental hospital that he did not take well, coupled with her ability to arouse, Norman makes her the perfect victim. She's not the moral, virtuous picture of a woman that Norman requires in his presence. And interestingly enough, there really is only the killing of Marion in psycho. And like as the slasher subgenre evolves, the number killings really only goes up. [00:25:16] Speaker A: From there. [00:25:21] Speaker B: An increasing number of male deaths begin to occur as well. And rather than only, you know, a sexually active and promiscuous woman getting the axe, then both parties engaging in sexual activity are punished. And this is obvious in Friday the 13th where Kevin Bacon is murdered right after his engagement. And I'll have more details on this later. But we cannot examine the slasher subgenre without acknowledging the trope of the final girl. And she is the one that survives the film. She's the last one standing. She possesses many key characteristics, but is also the most aware character in each of these films. The final girl is the one who is pushed, she's wounded, she escapes by an inch. She falls, she screams and she wins. Clover makes note of the two endings that final girls have in slashers. She will either live long enough to kill the killer or she will live long enough to be rescued. The final girl is practical, competent, and some, like Clover argue, slightly paranoid. In Psycho, it happens that the final. [00:26:45] Speaker A: Girl, if we can really call her that, which I think we can, is Marian's sister. Right? She's curious. She comes. She's trying to find out what happened. Like, you know, she's, um. She's in an idea of our final girl in Psycho. Let's talk about shock effects. The funny thing about Psycho to me always was that it evoked so much shock without really showing much of anything at all. I recently watched a film about Hitchcock's journey of making Psycho and Janet Lee. [00:27:25] Speaker B: Was slightly concerned about her public image, the idea of herself being shown entirely naked in the shower, being stabbed to death. And Hitchcock took the time to make her feel more comfortable, explaining to her that they're really not going to show much of anything at all. And what we actually see instead mostly is the shower and the stabbing hand and the knife and the blood running down the drain of the shower. But we see very little of Marion actually being stabbed. The shock value here came from two things. The first is that the shower scene is shown to audience as a series of, like, rapid succession shots that allow our brains to fill in the gaps in such a way that makes us believe we really saw her get stabbed over and over again. And the second is that Hitchcock had an insanely genius marketing plan. Like, he would send out pamphlets and instructions to movie theaters that would be showing his film stating, like, there's going to be riots. So you need increased police presence and not to allow anyone to enter the theater after the film has begun and so on. He, like, built the hype around the film already and put everyone in a state of fright before it even started. Okay, so he was just a genius in that aspect. [00:28:53] Speaker A: However, he did really need this film to be a success. His, you know, prior films had not done so well. People kept asking him to do, you know, north by Northwest. Apparently Vertigo is not a popular film. That's my favorite Hitchcock film. I don't know how everyone else feels, but, like, I was a little sad to hear that. So with the idea that we have. [00:29:23] Speaker B: Now, right, of the slasher genre. [00:29:28] Speaker A: You might be thinking to yourself right now, I think that slashers disproportionately punish women. And I think that you can still hold that value if you, depending on what you're watching and how you interpret what I'm about to tell you. But let's talk more about male versus female character victims. [00:29:59] Speaker B: In 1990, Gloria Cohen and Margaret O'Brien, California State University in San Bernardino, published an incredibly influential study of the slasher subgenre. And these two researchers sought to provide evidence surrounding surviving versus non surviving male and female characters in slasher films. And what they found was actually groundbreaking. They selected 56 films. They originally had 100, but they ended up reducing that to 56 films only because they needed to eliminate films that featured anything like supernatural or paranormal. So they didn't want anything like that. They just wanted humans and, you know, human like killers. And these are the films that they used. Alice, Sweet Alice, American Gothic, Anguish, April Fool's day, bloody birthday, chainsaw massacre two cheerleader Camp chopping mall, class reunion massacre, color me Blood Red, Death House dream no evil drive and massacre, Fatal Pulse, Friday the 13th, 1345 and six, Frightmare Girls Night, Halloween one and two. Happy birthday to me, hell night, hello Mary Lou, I dismember Mama, I spit on your grave. KIller workout, the last house on the left, New Year's, evil nightmare on Elm street. One, two, three and four, prom night, psycho two and three, rock and roll nightmare, silent night, deadly night one and two, silent scream, slaughter high, sleepaway camp one and two, slumber party massacre one and two, the black room, the burning, the deadly intruder. To all a good night, toolbox murders, unsane and eventually Friday the 13th seven. So our researchers use many key variables that we often associate with slasher films, such as revealing clothing or nudity, promiscuity, sex and gendered traits, both positive and negative. [00:32:43] Speaker A: Like for a woman, an example would be a positive trait would be that she is. [00:32:50] Speaker B: Docile, and a negative trait would be that she is aggressive. [00:32:56] Speaker A: Okay. [00:32:59] Speaker B: And the results of this study might surprise you. They surprise me performing square tests. I'm a statistics nerd. So sorry. The total number of victims analyzed was 474. So there were 232 women and 242 men. Of the victims that did not survive their attack, 188 were women and 217 were men. Therefore, a greater number of women survived their attacks than menta. At a statistically significant level, p value is zero. Two. It was also concluded that women were no more likely than men to be victims or non survivors of their attacks. Women non survivors and sexuality indicators showcased that women wearing revealing clothing, showing nudity, provocative clothing, shown undressing on screen and presented promiscuously were more likely to be killed than their male non survivors at a statistically significant level of zero. Zero across all variables. So women non survivors were more likely than men to be killed when engaging in sexual behavior immediately before the slashing. Women non survivors were rated as more physically attractive than women survivors. And more women survivors were rated as having both expressive and sex typed traits than female non survivors, which include independence, empathy, assertiveness. So all of this is to say, in conclusion, women in slashers are actually no more likely than men to be the victim and they're no more likely to survive in the event that they are victimized when compared to men. And clearly, this goes against our communal understanding that slashers showcase violence that is mostly directed at women. So what do we do with the notion that Cohen and Brian pose that the overall message of the slasher film is that women who are non sexual or pure are more likely nearly guaranteed survival while women engaging in sexual activity are punished for such a gruesome death. [00:35:22] Speaker A: I mean, it's not necessarily a lie, is it? Like, as we already discussed. [00:35:32] Speaker B: Women non survivors were more likely than men to be killed when engaging in sexual behavior immediately before the slashing. [00:35:39] Speaker A: So are we intended to understand that this is simply the idea that slashers only showcase violence against women is not true? That's not true. And I think we all, like, know that. But, like, when we think of slasher, we think of the seventies and eighties girl with her tits out, running around Camp Crystal Lake, you know, getting slaughtered. Right? Like, that's what we think of. So we need to ask ourselves why we think that right? For me, I can tell you that I mostly associate slashers with killing female characters because I am a woman and like, I always look for myself. Right? You always look for yourself in art. But also, it's always felt unfair. That and with proof from this study we just discussed that the men are not being killed because they're having sex. The women are being killed. They're more likely to be killed after having sex. And in a world where men and women are equal, why are women being punished for having sex? [00:37:05] Speaker B: Erin Harrington, in her book Women Monstrosity and horror film Gyno horror, spends a great deal of time actually, in chapter one, roses and thorns, virgins, vagina dentata, and the monstrosity of female sexuality. Explaining the concept and origin of virginity. [00:37:26] Speaker A: Harrington describes virginity as a feminine characteristic, one that means to have virginity means you are pure and you are innocent. And male virginity is a sign of that man having done something wrong. They're not mature. Male virginity is seen as pathetic. It's something that is the topic of discussion for entire films, like 40 year old Virgin, where the entire film revolves around getting the main character, who's a male virgin, into bed with a woman to have sex. Women are often told, well, don't have sex, right? You don't want to sleep around. You don't want to have sex with whoever you want. It's supposed to be saved for, you know, between you and one other person. [00:38:17] Speaker B: And men are told, you need to. [00:38:19] Speaker A: Have sex as soon as possible with whoever you can. And the woman that you choose will likely not be a woman that you respect. It will likely be a woman that you don't, because they see the act of simply taking their virginity, or if you're the male, removing your virginity, essentially, they would then see that girl as dirty. So they're not going to. It's not going to be somebody that they respect. That's a very interesting concept. I think that's a total topic for another day. When women are no longer virgins and become sexually active, she is now seen as less feminine, though, and more masculine. So her lost virginity or sexual purity means that, or implies to some that she seeks out sex from her male counterparts. Assuming the role of the initiator, which is a stereotypically male role, she's also fighting actively against the perpetrator of the. [00:39:29] Speaker B: Violence, most commonly a man in slashers. So to be a virgin means to be penetrated, right? It means to be taken over. For women, it's something that we're taught to hold close to ourselves when others around us begin to engage in sexual activity. Before we do, we sometimes feel left out or like an outsider, and we're simply not experiencing what those around us are experiencing. Right. And so thinking back to our final girl discussion, part of her stereotype is that she's a virgin. She's by nature an outsider, and all of her friends are engaging in sex. But because she's not, she's able to think more clearly and develop other skills and hone other interests. [00:40:17] Speaker A: Right. [00:40:17] Speaker B: She may know how to fix a. [00:40:19] Speaker A: Car, or like, she may know how to, I don't know, handle a bank account. [00:40:28] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:40:28] Speaker A: It could be anything, right? Like practical skills. [00:40:32] Speaker B: And that's interesting. When we look at it follows. If you've seen it follows, you know what I mean? Jay is the main character. She's a sexually active teenager and is constantly being hunted. Her friends are the ones who are virgins. So she has become the outsider by having sex rather than abstaining it. So she's a final girl who's sexually active. Jay and Sidney from Scream take the final girl trope and completely flip it on its head. As Sarah Lukowski perfectly describes in her thesis titled Female Victimization in the 1970s and 1980s, slasher film data provided by Cowan and O'Brien is not consistent with Siskel and Ebert's description that slashers are called women in danger films. They actually theorize that women might be perceived as the victim more often than men because the scenes depicting violence against women are more memorable, particularly when it involves something sexual. Cohen and O'Brien also point out that it could be related to chivalry. [00:41:46] Speaker A: Right. [00:41:46] Speaker B: Chivalry is, you know, the concept of, like, where women are more protected, they have a more protected status in society and thus they need protection from men. And the murderous of on screen women is thus more salient. Lukowski cites many sources that the duration of the scenes of violence against women are actually longer on screen than the scenes of violence against men, which prolongs our exposure to the violence. But because the final girl is not having sex, she becomes more easily identifiable and relatable to male audiences, which many speculate that film. I don't know if we can say now, but prior male audiences or who films are intended to be shown to. Right? And the final girls are the protectors. They're the winners, they're the fighters, they're the intelligent ones. Men can identify these characteristics within themselves and relate to the final girl in a way that makes their viewing experience more pleasurable in a gender role. Socialization of affect done by Zelman, Weaver, Mindoro and Aust in 1986, relationships between opposite gendered companions and their response to horror film were studied. Their study concluded that men enjoyed movies the most when accompanied by a distressed woman. Women found the most enjoyment when their male counterpart was indifferent to the responses of the woman while watching the depictions of gore. So men are more likely to enjoy these films when they feel that their female counterpart needs protection. And women enjoy these films more when their male counterpart does not feel that. [00:44:02] Speaker A: They are incapable of that protection. And with that in mind, we reach the time where we're faced with the topic of desensitization of violence and lack of sympathy for victims due to overexposure. But that's a topic for another day because as we all know, I try to keep these episodes to 45 minutes to an hour, sometimes an hour 15 if I'm feeling bold. But in conclusion, I think there's room, obviously for more research to be done. [00:44:39] Speaker B: On the impact of violent media and. [00:44:41] Speaker A: How we become desensitized to it. But overall, after the research that I've presented to you all today, I hope. [00:44:48] Speaker B: That you have a better understanding that the slasher film is the final girl in. The slasher film is intended to please male audiences in a way. And it does make me, though, as a woman, feel empowered. When I see the female heroine killing the bad guy and saving the day, I'm able to understand that I can both feel empowered and that men can enjoy and relate to the female final girl. [00:45:18] Speaker A: I don't think that those two things are mutually exclusive. I firmly believe that you can have them both. Even if. [00:45:29] Speaker B: Even if. [00:45:30] Speaker A: Right. The final girl is typically a more masculine quote unquote masculine character. All of us are final girls when we think about it. That is not to say that we are all inherently masculine. That's to say that. [00:45:54] Speaker B: We all have. [00:45:55] Speaker A: Morals, we all have virtues, we all have ethics, we all learn practical skills. We all are intelligent. And, you know, everybody's strengths and intelligence are obviously different, but, like, we all possess those qualities. [00:46:09] Speaker B: And at the end of the day. [00:46:13] Speaker A: I don't feel like I'm the heroine and the final girl that can save the world. It's not really how I see myself. What I see myself is, is that I'm the final girl, essentially stereotype of my. Of my life, right? I'm independent. I do things for myself. I do things for those around me. When I can, I, you know, attempt to be practical. I try to learn life skills early in life. All of these things, right? And that has led me to be. [00:46:50] Speaker B: The heroine of my own life. [00:46:52] Speaker A: And it just so happens that that female heroine in horror is typically the final girl. I think that both, you know, both. [00:47:11] Speaker B: Sides of the final girl serve distinctly different purposes, but ones that are important in film, because otherwise, would we still have the same viewership? Would we still have as many men going to see these films as women? I don't know. [00:47:32] Speaker A: Right. [00:47:33] Speaker B: That's something I wouldn't know. But I want horror to be for everyone. So if it makes a male audience want to go, and it makes a female audience want to go, and it makes a non binary audience want to go, then, like, I'm in horror is for everybody. [00:47:53] Speaker A: Horror has been the genre that's been about taking the dark parts of people's lives and putting them on the screen. [00:48:02] Speaker B: There's always something somebody can relate to, and I do not. I just want to reiterate, I do not want anyone to take what I'm saying here today as me being like a pro covert misogynist, because nothing could be further from the truth. I want you to take away from this today that films are subjective and however they make you feel is how they make you feel. I want films to make you feel and to make you think. If you were somehow able to conjure a purely objective view of film, where would all the fun be? [00:48:39] Speaker A: And looking back on our discussion as sex as a punishment for women in these films, I truly think that as the. The tides of society ebb and flow, right. As you know, people become more accepting of the fact that women are humans as well. And women also would like to have sex from time to time. That that doesn't make them masculine, it doesn't make them a bad person. It doesn't make them a person to be disrespected. It doesn't make them an object to be used. I think on screen in slashers, we will hopefully see less of, like, you have sex, so you get killed, whereas guy on screen gets killed for any number of things. And it can include sex, but it's not the main driver. I think we're gonna see a big shift. [00:49:41] Speaker B: But remember, whatever you do out there, people don't have sex. [00:49:47] Speaker A: If you're in peril, it doesn't end well. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. You can find my podcast and many others like it. Part of the morbidly beautiful network. Morbidly beautiful is your home for horror. If you love horror, you are welcome at morbidly beautiful. You can check out my content my library of content. You can check out other podcasts, other blogs, other reviews as well. Head on over to morbidlybeautiful.com to check it all out. Show us some love. You can find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music, and Pocketcasts. If you enjoyed the show, it would mean the world to me, obviously, if you left me a five star review and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. For any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions or requests, you can email [email protected] or send me a message on Instagram iinalgirlonsix. I will be posting all of my sources, obviously for the articles that I used and the books that I used and referenced in today's episode for you, and I would encourage you all to take some time to check those out as well. You might find something in there that I didn't touch on or that you found to be profound. So again, thank you so much for listening. I will be taking a slight break from the show, but not anything crazy. Typically, I would have, you know, the next show posted on August 8 I will be out of the country, so you will have to wait until August 22 to hear from me again. But I can't wait until then. Don't forget, I'm six.