![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glitter_n_goreFor this, my second official post for Women in Horror Month, I want to take a look at the all-female horror cast. I'll be talking about four different films that have the following things in common: they all have a female in the roles of both protagonist and villain, they all have a healthy head-count of females in the supporting roles, and they all pass the Bechdel Test. The question I'm putting forward is this: When the cast of your horror movie is either predominantly or exclusively female, does it automatically negate or subvert the harmful negative stereotypes that women tend to occupy in horror as a whole?
This blog post wound up a little longer than I originally anticipated, so I've split it into two parts. For this half, I'm going to take a look at Suspiria and The Craft.
One of the recognized greats of horror film is Dario Argento, an Italian director with a flair for gruesome death scenes filmed in high-contrast technicolor and framed inside gorgeously constructed set pieces. His plots are flimsy at best, and the architecture of his haunted-house style settings seem to occupy this Lovecraftian null space that could never exist in the real world. He's a style-over-substance kind of guy, and horror fans tend to enjoy his work for the visuals rather than the story.
His best-known and highest praised film is Suspiria, a story about an American girl in a German ballet school run by a coven of witches. I watched it for the first time a couple years ago during one of my month-long movie marathons that I do every October to jazz myself up for Halloween. And despite some instances of Critical Research Failure--lead actress Jessica Harper's mispronunciation of the word "Occult" for one (It's a-CULT, a-CULT, not ACK-ult!), and the shameful misrepresentation of how witchcraft and covens actually work for another--I rather liked it. The reason I'm bringing it up here is because, although a lot of women die horribly in this movie, and the last one who survives is a female and for that reason might be construed as a Final Girl, and the villains are all witches which is your standard Villainous Female type in these kinds of movies, you never really get the impression that gender has any bearing whatsoever on the characters' actions or circumstances. You could easily change the villains to male sorcerers and the setting to a school for boys, and the story wouldn't change that much. The gender of the characters is incidental. Make no mistake--they're still wooden, stock-types with no real personalities and take turns carrying the Idiot Ball--but they're not particularly offensive from a feminist point of view.
Next, let's talk about The Craft, directed by Andrew Fleming. It's about a lonely high school newcomer who falls in with a clique of misfits, who also happen to be a coven of witches. (Are you sensing a pattern here?) In some ways, this is the polar opposite of Suspiria--the four girls are more developed and decently acted as characters, but they manage to inhabit some deeply problematic stereotypes all the same. Let's start with Bonnie, Neve Campbell's character: Her main "flaw" is that she's covered in burn scars (which conveniently stop just below the neck), and this makes her self-conscious and shy. When she works a spell to erase the scars, she becomes aggressively self-centered and narcissistic. While I find her character arc both believable and interesting--it's a bit Dorian Gray-ish, with the idea of physical beauty corrupting and changing a person inside as well as out--it's never fully explored. Her personality is defined by her appearance both before and after that tipping point, and then she gets shoved into the background along with the other filler character. Which brings me to Rochelle, played by Rachel True. She has no discernable flaws. Unless you count race. And the film seems to expect us to. So . . . yeah. Her only issue is that the resident popular girl is a racist and therefore mean to her, so she casts a curse that makes said popular girl's hair fall out. That's it. She does nothing else in the movie. Technically, this isn't a gender-specific stereotype, but that doesn't make it even a little bit okay.
Lastly, let me address the two leads: Nancy (Fairuza Balk) and Sarah (Robin Tunney). These two are opposite sides of the same coin; Sarah is a powerful witch in her own right with Mommy issues, whereas Nancy is hungry for more power and has Daddy issues; Sarah is conservative in her fashion choices and virginal, and Nancy is decked out in black-on-black goth regalia and rumored to sleep around a lot. Guess which one A) turns evil, B) uses sex as a weapon, and C) gets defeated by the 'good' one in the end? Oh, and guess which one almost gets raped when her love spell goes haywire? Yep.
Truth be told, I like this movie. It's become a Halloween staple for me, and plays to its audience (that being teenage girls in their Occult phase) perfectly. However, it's also very simplistically written, and the characters, while well acted, are predictable and fall into some really bad tropes along the way. The girls form a believable bond and behave more or less the way teenagers do in real life, but their ambitions and motivations revolve around boys, fashion and popularity.
I haven't drawn my conclusions quite yet though. Next time, I'll be talking about Silent Hill and The Moth Diaries.
This blog post wound up a little longer than I originally anticipated, so I've split it into two parts. For this half, I'm going to take a look at Suspiria and The Craft.
One of the recognized greats of horror film is Dario Argento, an Italian director with a flair for gruesome death scenes filmed in high-contrast technicolor and framed inside gorgeously constructed set pieces. His plots are flimsy at best, and the architecture of his haunted-house style settings seem to occupy this Lovecraftian null space that could never exist in the real world. He's a style-over-substance kind of guy, and horror fans tend to enjoy his work for the visuals rather than the story.
His best-known and highest praised film is Suspiria, a story about an American girl in a German ballet school run by a coven of witches. I watched it for the first time a couple years ago during one of my month-long movie marathons that I do every October to jazz myself up for Halloween. And despite some instances of Critical Research Failure--lead actress Jessica Harper's mispronunciation of the word "Occult" for one (It's a-CULT, a-CULT, not ACK-ult!), and the shameful misrepresentation of how witchcraft and covens actually work for another--I rather liked it. The reason I'm bringing it up here is because, although a lot of women die horribly in this movie, and the last one who survives is a female and for that reason might be construed as a Final Girl, and the villains are all witches which is your standard Villainous Female type in these kinds of movies, you never really get the impression that gender has any bearing whatsoever on the characters' actions or circumstances. You could easily change the villains to male sorcerers and the setting to a school for boys, and the story wouldn't change that much. The gender of the characters is incidental. Make no mistake--they're still wooden, stock-types with no real personalities and take turns carrying the Idiot Ball--but they're not particularly offensive from a feminist point of view.
Next, let's talk about The Craft, directed by Andrew Fleming. It's about a lonely high school newcomer who falls in with a clique of misfits, who also happen to be a coven of witches. (Are you sensing a pattern here?) In some ways, this is the polar opposite of Suspiria--the four girls are more developed and decently acted as characters, but they manage to inhabit some deeply problematic stereotypes all the same. Let's start with Bonnie, Neve Campbell's character: Her main "flaw" is that she's covered in burn scars (which conveniently stop just below the neck), and this makes her self-conscious and shy. When she works a spell to erase the scars, she becomes aggressively self-centered and narcissistic. While I find her character arc both believable and interesting--it's a bit Dorian Gray-ish, with the idea of physical beauty corrupting and changing a person inside as well as out--it's never fully explored. Her personality is defined by her appearance both before and after that tipping point, and then she gets shoved into the background along with the other filler character. Which brings me to Rochelle, played by Rachel True. She has no discernable flaws. Unless you count race. And the film seems to expect us to. So . . . yeah. Her only issue is that the resident popular girl is a racist and therefore mean to her, so she casts a curse that makes said popular girl's hair fall out. That's it. She does nothing else in the movie. Technically, this isn't a gender-specific stereotype, but that doesn't make it even a little bit okay.
Lastly, let me address the two leads: Nancy (Fairuza Balk) and Sarah (Robin Tunney). These two are opposite sides of the same coin; Sarah is a powerful witch in her own right with Mommy issues, whereas Nancy is hungry for more power and has Daddy issues; Sarah is conservative in her fashion choices and virginal, and Nancy is decked out in black-on-black goth regalia and rumored to sleep around a lot. Guess which one A) turns evil, B) uses sex as a weapon, and C) gets defeated by the 'good' one in the end? Oh, and guess which one almost gets raped when her love spell goes haywire? Yep.
Truth be told, I like this movie. It's become a Halloween staple for me, and plays to its audience (that being teenage girls in their Occult phase) perfectly. However, it's also very simplistically written, and the characters, while well acted, are predictable and fall into some really bad tropes along the way. The girls form a believable bond and behave more or less the way teenagers do in real life, but their ambitions and motivations revolve around boys, fashion and popularity.
I haven't drawn my conclusions quite yet though. Next time, I'll be talking about Silent Hill and The Moth Diaries.