Gender Representations

To what extent do you think horrors representation of gender challenges dominant representations?

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Many media studies research into a wide range of media texts have reached similar conclusions about how gender is represented in the media. They have generally shown that males and females are usually presented in terms of stereotypes in the media. Males are generally portrayed as dominant, strong, active, independent, intellectual and authoritative. On the other hand females are generally shown in a submissive or passive role and are often defined through relationships with men, with a focus on physical beauty. Jeremy Tunstall (The Media in Britain 1983) argued that the existing research found that representation of women in the media emphasised women's

·         Domestic

·      Sexual

·      Consumer

·      Marital

activities to the exclusion of all else. Clearly by looking at these studies, we can see how vastly different males and females roles in the media can be.

When looking at examples from study texts in my own classes work, it’s clear that even in horror the stereotypical roles that women play in mainstream media are mostly evident. For example in Halloween (1978) the female characters apart from Laurie are all shown in sexualised or domestic roles. Linda, Annie, and Judith, are all shown in states of undress throughout the film cementing the idea that women are generally shown as objects in mainstream media. Although the main protagonist Laurie isn’t portrayed in an objectified way, she is still shown in a domestic role, either cleaning or babysitting throughout. The same applies to other texts we studied such as The Shining (1980) with Wendy portrayed in a domestic and marital role, and Eden Lake (2008) with Jenny also playing a marital role.

However what differs the above mentioned characters in the horror genre, with other typical female roles in mainstream media is how the narrative plays out. Wendy in The Shining, Laurie in Halloween, and possibly even Jenny in Eden Lake can be described with a term that the theorist Carol Clover coined as the “final girl”. These characters all turn out to be the main protagonist despite other on screen male characters and are shown to fight, or even defeat the ‘monster’ in the film. This is a very interesting occurrence, one that’s not seen in many other mainstream media texts where a female is shown to have the most strength and will power.

1992 research has shown that on screen, men outnumber women by two to one therefore it is clear that visibility is an issue in itself when studying media texts. According to this study men have a lot more time on screen solidifying the idea that the audience are generally made to identify with males more as they are more likely to be the main protagonist and the subject in a narrative.

In addition to women’s roles in the media and their visibility, another important area is to do with how the camera “looks” at the woman. It has been argued that in mainstream media texts the camera objectifies women, thus denying any subjectivity or identification with the character who in turn becomes an object to be looked at by the subject, who is almost always male. This is called the “Male Gaze”.

Many theorists, particularly Laura Mulvey in her famous essay “Visual Pleasure And Narrative Cinema” have suggested that in most commercial cinema, the spectator is put in the position of an ‘appraising heterosexual males’ by adopting certain technical camera techniques to objectify women characters through the eyes of the male subjects. Some cinematic techniques used to create a “male gaze” include:

·         Use of CU, POV, and reaction shots which encourage the identification of the male as the subject.

·         Use of long shots and tilts up on the body help to fragment the body (i.e. only seeing the legs, then body, the face) and are often from the point of view of the male subject; helps to encourage culture to view women as objects for male pleasure.

Through her research Mulvey claims that mainstream media is part of the sexist regime of viewing which denies women subjectivity in the roles they play. The male gaze is a sadistic and voyeuristic way of objectifying and controlling women.

From analysing my study texts in terms of their use of the ‘male gaze’, I have come up with some very varied findings. In all three of the texts, there are examples of the male gaze such as the POV shot of Judith Meyers at the beginning of Halloween, however the results aren’t as simple as that. In some cases the male gaze is undermined. For example in The Shining, a scene occurs where a naked woman in a bathtub is portrayed in an objectified way with a POV shot from Jack, the subjects, perspective. This is later undermined however when this woman suddenly transforms into an older dead version of herself. This leaves the audience questioning how they could have ever gotten pleasure from viewing the woman to begin with. Similarly in Eden Lake, Jenny is objectified as a sex object from Brett’s perspective through a pair of binoculars, but again the gaze is undermined when Jenny covers herself up as she is actually the subject of this text.




However, the view that all women are portrayed in such a negative way in mainstream media isn’t shared by every theorist, especially when it comes to studying the horror movie genre. Many people argue to what extent does horror reinforce or depart from these classic representations? Carol Clover is a theorist who has been particularly vocal about the roles and representations of gender in the horror genre in her book “Men, Women, and Chainsaws”. She believes that the typical identification/objectification of women in many horror texts is much more complicated than in most other genres. Clover argues that instead of the “sadistic objectification” of the woman which occurs in many mainstream texts, horror provides a point of “masochistic identification with her”. This is achieved when a woman is portrayed as a victim like main protagonist in a horror movie, a role Clover calls the “final girl”.  This raises a very interesting issue because it makes the genre of horror one which differs from the “regime of representation” of almost all other mainstream media texts aimed at men. She suggest a theory about why adolescent males, the core target audience of horror, are willing to identify with a female protagonist. Essentially, because all males are acutely aware of their position in a “hierarchy of masculinity” they can relate to the experience of being dominated by a stronger male force, much like a child being bullied on a school playground.

Overall I would say that in many ways, horror does challenge the dominant representations of genre in mainstream media. Carol Clover’s ‘final girl’ is a prime example of this where a female character is the subject of the audiences viewing, portraying typical masculine traits such as strength at the same time, a role rarely seen in any other genre of film.