Representation of women

Much research has shown the stereotypes of women as domestic, marital and a consumer is usual in most areas of the media however modern horror challenges this stereotype a lot. Women are represented in quite a different way in horror than other genres. However a lot of the basic conventions are still in there. The women on the ‘good side’ will always be attractive; I cannot recall a single movie when the innocent girls are unattractive. This is due to what’s known as the ‘male gaze’. The idea that the media always portrays things as through the eyes of a heterosexual male and is down to the face that heterosexual males make up the best part of the viewing public thus making sense to make it most relevant to them. The ‘Good girls’ are always represented as attractive as the males will enjoy watching them more. Mostly women are not shown as antagonists in most circumstances since that would conflict with the slight innocence and passiveness seen in all female characters. A long running trend in teen horrors is that the least innocent girls will fall victim to the antagonist first with the protagonist being an innocent girl that in most cases survives. This brings up a few questions about representation – why does this theme keep recurring and what effect does it have on society. One theorist concluded that the reason for this was down to the audience empathizing with the protagonist and releasing their own unconscious feelings of fear thus the innocent characters would be easiest to portray through.

How women are represented in horror

Up until the eighties women in films were usually used as love objects or rescue objects for the male hero. They were sexual objects, helpless, dumb and weak, needing the male character to seduce them or save them. They were one dimensional characters and nowadays would be seen as a very sexist representation. The male gaze prevented any of characters as being seen as more than sex objects. Their addition to the plot was usually to be saved or be seduced.


This is still seen in films today such as Cloverfield or Die Hard and (especially James bond but it is based on books from a more sexist age) but it has almost completely vanished from horror. This is because horrors today are less about quests and more and survival. Another important factor in this change was ‘Alien’ in 1979.This brought a tomboyish heroine in as the main protagonist and although strange at the time, was a box office smash and brought in a new era of females being seen as more than just sex objects and becoming victim heroes. The victim hero is usually tomboyish e.g. Ridley Scott and may or may not be attractive but is not very sexual. This is to prevent the viewer using their ‘male gaze’ and seeing the victim hero as a sexual object. This type of film became very successful during the eighties and usually contained a ununderstood antagonist that seemed inhuman, these became known as ‘slasher movies’. The formulaic idea of a female victim hero and the inhuman antagonist was copied many times and most of the first movies spawned many sequels e.g. Halloween, Nightmare on elm street or

Friday the 13th.In Halloween the lead character Laurie is not lustful and seen as more interested in her studies than guys this is a clear example of the victim hero being a non sexual character and surviving perhaps because of it. The other female characters in Halloween are very sexually active and could be seen as the kind of stereotypical sexualised women common in pre 1970 movies, these characters all meet grisly ends, being killed by what could be seen as phallic symbol, a knife. This seems to hint that the stereotypical sexualised women would not fare well in a dangerous situation whereas un-sexual girls could cope. A Freud theory is that female victim hero’s can’t attack the enemy directly and need a phallic symbol such as a knife or gun to get the masculinity needed to beat the enemy. Although this might seem like an abstract idea it is seen in a lot of horror films, although it could be argued that a phallic object such as a knife or gun is needed to defeat the enemy anyway since the character is lacking in physical strength. This was a step forward in the characterizing of women in movies but it wasn’t until the 90s with the serial killer thrillers that we started to see women high ranking jobs with authority or in their older ages.