Research Paper Submission

Name: Mayukh Dutta

Roll No: 2021/0/024
Semester: V
Paper: Women’s Writing

Title: Women in Horror - Exploring Womanhood through

Horror in Cinema
Introduction

In a world that is predominantly addressed by various forms of media, cinema has become a
mainstream and necessary tool in shaping public opinion. It is often misunderstood that cinema
is a trivial form of social commentary, however, it does not trivialize but subtly addresses and
represents social, political, and economic issues through a form of visual storytelling. Cinema,
however, harbors its own set of stereotypes. Various genres portray various thoughts and notions
in a very conservative manner, which at times provokes us and might even lead to propagating
trauma and fear. Horror cinema is one such genre that holds a lot of stereotypes and prejudices
related to women and their representation. In this paper, we will look into how womanhood is
primarily expressed through a male gaze in horror and how the woman becomes a victim of all
forms of violence and exploitation in such cinema. Moreover, we will also try to understand how
horror movies find it mandatory to depict female characters as sexual and helpless victims, and
the 'independent woman' is often transformed into a God-following conservative person towards
the climax of the movie. It has to be further noted how females of horror cinema although bold
and intelligent, suffer all forms of violence and fetishization at the hands of sexist cinematic
techniques, the male characters, and even the viewers themselves.

Cinema has always been a medium of expression of emotions where the real and the imaginary
collide. Among its various genres, it aims to deliver and provoke strong social imagery. In the
enchantment of such imageries often stereotypes are harbored and nurtured. One such genre that
strongly propagates such stereotypes is Horror. The horror in cinema has always been an element
of inconsistent patterns. The patterns are repetitive and at the same time, they have to be
understood separately to trace the historical, social, and political connotations that they hold.
These are motivated by the dark and the evil - two of the most prominent schools of thought in
horror cinema. However, womanhood in horror cinema is often associated with the dark as well
as the evil. The genre of horror has been terrifyingly appealing, yet at the same time very
misogynistic. The idea of the supernatural in horror cinema has always been assigned to a certain
woman. It is interesting to note how these patterns are so prominent and how it is often the
woman who is the source of all terror, fear, trauma, and death. This woman usually plays the role
of either a tragic antagonist or the victim protagonist. While this is a problematic and concerning
statement that the genre claims to make, the history of horror cinema suggests that the woman is
the primary source of either all problems or all sympathy. The genre of horror in cinema has to
acknowledge the fact that the portrayal of a woman in a cinematic space cannot be restricted and
misinformed.

Understanding womanhood and the ‘monstrous feminine’ in horror cinema

The horror genre is one of the most fruitful and notorious parts of conventional film production.
It is also the most authoritative feeling in the human race and fear of the mysterious is an ancient
concept. Horror, according to its detractors, is a recurring and regular aspect of popular culture.
Horror intersects with other genres such as science fiction and thrillers. The woman of horror is
almost certainly the victim of a horrible concoction of crimes; she is stalked, frightened, abused,
raped, and slain, all for the fulfillment of not just the injurer inside the fiction, but also the
viewer. The film's cinematic architecture compels the viewer to join in terrorizing women in
films, reinforcing patriarchal institutions within both film and society. Feminist film theory, an
integral area of scholarship within film studies, has given particular attention to the horror film:
representation of female characters is a hot-button issue amongst scholars, who have utilized
psychoanalytic and semiotic paradigms as the basis for studying the objectified, repressed image
of woman in the horror genre. Alfred Hitchcock, known as the "Master of Suspense," was no
stranger to the fascination with feminine violence. The horror genre has several of the oldest
archetypal films. An early short film of Frankenstein, for example, dates back to 1910.
Nosferatu, the first vampire picture, was released in 1922. Traditional versions of Frankenstein
and Dracula were released in 1931. These films may not appear frightening to a modern
audience, but they are nonetheless widely watched for their historical significance and
occasionally campy acting.

Moreover, horror films are generally known to have a monster. The horror genre, a film genre
that did not shy away from critical scrutiny and disdain, quickly became an area heavily studied
by feminist scholars, who linked the depiction of the grotesque and monstrous as vital to the
formation of the image of the woman in relation to societal demands. Moreover, psychoanalysis
is central to critical readings of the horror genre: from studies of the monster in mainstream
horror films to analyses of madness and psychological horror, feminist approaches to the genre
used Freudian (and, as is common in current readings of horror films, Lacanian) psychoanalysis.
Scholars and critics were able to pinpoint the precise ways in which (male) desire can be mapped
onto a filmic environment, and how the female body can transform into the site of
unacknowledged fantasy and anxiety, whether on the individual or collective, societal
unconscious levels.

Barbara Creed's The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993) is an

important essay when discussing feminist studies of the horror genre, and one that is critical for
the understanding of the image of women as "monstrous."The Monstrous Feminine” is written in
the tradition of Freudian psychoanalysis, semiotics, and early feminist studies, and it features two
fundamental points that work in tandem to establish a feminist viewpoint on the horror genre. On
the one hand, Creed's thesis is based on Julia Kristeva's (1982) work on horror fiction in
literature, which contends that the image of women as monstrous stems from the concept of
abjection. That is body waste and fluids, religious 'abominations', bodily abnormalities, and
abnormal sexual desire, to name a few examples, threaten the line between what is normal and
abnormal, human and inhuman. The ideological purpose of societal institutions is to "guarantee
that the subject takes up his/her proper place in relation to the symbolic" by eliminating the
abject - those objects or ideas that ultimately straddle the border between what is proper and
improper. Interestingly, Kristeva and Creed emphasize that woman, particularly in the horror
genre, has a special relationship with the abject. Not only is a woman linked to a horror film
staple - the monster - by her similar release of fluids in menstruation and other biological
processes, as well as her subsequent disfigurement from the process of childbirth, but a woman
can also be assumed to be physically grotesque and abject, remaining on the border between
being human and inhuman. As a result of her rejection, women are labeled as "monstrous,"
posing a threat to patriarchal society's intrinsic stability. The formation of the maternal figure is
an example of how a woman is strongly tied to the abject and "monstrous," a fact that both
Kristeva and Creed emphasize in their arguments. The maternal, as a place of both sexual desire
and physical and biological impurity, "repels and attracts" people around her, violating societal
limits and thus becoming abject, just like the horror monster has the unique potential to allure
and disgust those around it. Furthermore, the maternal is judged despicable and, eventually,
"monstrous" because of her relationship with her child. Unable to fully relinquish control, the
mother figure jeopardizes the development of her child's distinct, independent personality and
final incorporation into patriarchal culture's symbolic order. On the other hand, Creed's thesis of
the "monstrous feminine" is heavily influenced by Freud's work, namely his widely held belief
that "woman terrifies because she is castrated." Using Freud's case study "Analysis of a Phobia
in a Five Year Old Boy [Little Hans]" (1903), as well as his overall theory of castration anxiety
in men, Creed refutes the commonly held belief that castration anxiety is instilled at a young age
(particularly in men, but not always) due to women's phallic attributes - power, terror, and
destruction - but lack of a penis. Castration anxiety emerges because a woman's phallic
characteristics can be exploited to castrate men, expressing her control and monstrousness.
Creed's examination of the horror film is crucial for feminist scholarship for a variety of reasons.
Creed's work, in addition to drawing critical attention to the horror film, includes a new reading
of Freudian psychoanalysis, one that reconstructs the notion of topics such as castration anxiety
and fantasy and creates a more realistic, fluid translation of the role of unconscious desire in
society. Furthermore, Creed, like Clover and Williams, emphasizes the ways in which the horror
genre redefines gender identification by examining the same forms of oscillation between male
and female subject positions.

First seen in early 19th-century literature (i.e. Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll, and Mr. Hyde),
the basic understanding of horror perpetuates the idea of an inhuman menace terrorizing human
victims. However, this basic idea is used and manipulated within the syntax of the story and it
harbors a range of themes/commentaries on romance, scientific advancement, oppression, divine
intervention, etc. These consequently further the definition of the “monster” in relation to the
human experience. To put it plainly, the semantics of horror are usually seen as a monster and a
victim, while the syntax is what specific fear the monster portrays. These horror approaches can
encompass almost anything: murder, supernatural, paranormal, psychological, mystery, body
horror, and so on, because what terrifies people changes based on the societal connotations of the
picture. Carol Clover's essay "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film" popularised the
concept of the ultimate girl, which significantly influenced how scholars view gender in horror.
The underlying semantic root of fear, commonly symbolized by a "monster," is Sigmund Freud's
concept of the repressed returning. Freud outlines a presumed inexplicable visceral feeling when
reality and dream become amplified and changed into one other in his book The Uncanny. He
delves into the repressed, and how its reappearance lies at the heart of dread and so terror. The
idea of the monstrous feminine therefore becomes a prominent and recurring theme that horror as
a genre portrays, where the woman is predominantly the monstrous entity and it is how
womanhood is often demonified in the popular discourse.

Exploring the male gaze in horror cinema and its impact on contemporary
cinema

Horror in cinema validates a certain way of seeing things. The typical masculinized outlook
often deems the inflected, less socially valuable, less powerful look, typically feminized. The
work of Simone de Beauvoir, whose study in works such as The Second Sex (1949), was vital in
solving the problem of female representation (and misrepresentation) in cinema, was central to
the arguments given by early feminist film scholars. In Passionate Detachments, Sue Thornham
(1997) notes that when building gender in society, a woman is characterized in terms of
"immanence," which is a position organically tied to passivity, submission, and control. To move
away from this (arguably female) stance and acquire complete freedom, fully confirming an
identity as Self, one must strive for "transcendence," which is characterized in part by active
behaviors in daily life. For de Beauvoir, transcendence is predominantly male - man is linked
with transcendence in this context and represents the ideal subject position within human
existence. The woman is thus cast in the role of the "Other" to validate the active stance of the
male Self, and she is fundamentally characterized as man's polar opposite: illogical, incidental,
and inessential. In Simone de Beauvoir's theory of gender, the woman is pitted against the active
strength of male, becoming the passive "Other" inside society. In effect, de Beauvoir depicts a
patriarchal society as one that allows the "projection of male fantasies and fears" onto the female
body. The film media, as an extension of cultural myths perpetuated within society, becomes a
vital instrument in both the objectification of woman as the "Other" and the recirculation of
masculine dominance within cultural discourse.

Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (1975) is arguably the most influential
work guiding current studies in feminist film theory, drawing on semiotics and psychoanalysis to
uncover "the way film reflects, reveals, and even plays on the straight, socially established
interpretation of sexual difference that controls images, erotic ways of looking, and spectacle."
Mulvey addresses some of the same gender issues as de Beauvoir and other semiotics-only
researchers, particularly the "question of woman as a signifier in a patriarchal order." According
to Mulvey, the image of the woman tends to operate as the bearer of difference when contrasted
to the image of the man, and because of her passive character, she is readily influenced in the
signification process and, as a result, the act of gazing on the part of the spectator. As Mulvey
articulates at the start of "Visual Pleasure," psychoanalysis is the primary method for explaining
how the image of a woman is caught in the process of signification and thus marked as a
repressed "Other," as it demonstrates "the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has
structured film form." Mulvey's "reworking of psychoanalytic film theory that places sexual
difference and the privileging of the masculine as central to the understanding of film pleasure
and film meaning" has had a lasting impact on feminist film theory. Her use of Freudian
psychoanalysis, combined with her contemporaries' understanding of semiotics, allows for a
deeper exploration of the ways in which female representation has been constructed within
mainstream film, and she sees cinema as a vehicle for spreading and sustaining messages of
societal norms and values to the public. In Freudian words, this objectifying and projecting
nature of film is known as scopophilia, which is the theory of humans utilizing other people as
objects of their desire and anxiety via a controlled and inquiring lens. This concept of ego is the
psychological foundation of narrative film pleasure. However, because film automatically filters
real-world situations through controlled fantasy with light, instrumental accompaniment, angles,
and other artistic grammar, it is perceived as an isolated and contained reality in and of itself. All
of this takes place in the darkness of a theatre or viewing room, imitating the seclusion of
connection between the film and the particular audience member, thereby fulfilling that
unconscious desire.
The dominant order, i.e. white males, creates the vast majority of films in cinematic history. Most
viewers watch films under the patriarchal gaze. The director's voice and eyes are intrinsically
spoken and perceived as art. Because there are so many white male filmmakers, the male gaze on
the female gender is unavoidable. In Dr. Mulvey’s words: “The man controls the film phantasy
and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the
spectator, transferring it behind the screen to neutralize the extra-diegetic tendencies represented
by the woman as spectacle”. Because of the fragility surrounding the female sex, the
psychological patriarchal dread of castration makes it mysterious, confusing, and potentially
dangerous. However, by objectifying the female character and essence, that anxiety begins to
fade. Objectifying persons and/or human experiences causes the fears associated with them to
diminish and become less than they appear. It's the same process of making a misunderstanding
dread tangible and understandable in the popularised white male gaze.

It is often overlooked that a keystone component of the genre determination of “scary

movies”—(e.g., thrillers, horrors, slashers, dark comedies)—is the audience effect, which is
where the name “thriller” finds its origin. Thriller films are all about the evocation of excitement,
suspense, and a high level of anticipation. The American Film Institute’s 2001 list of “America’s
100 Greatest Thrillers,” in congruence with this delineation, ranked films on their
“heart-pounding” and “adrenaline-inducing impact.” But the attribution of excitement and
adrenaline onto the content of this film—women stalked, sexualized, and physically
assaulted—fundamentally favors a problematic masculine view that derives visual pleasure from
violence towards women. Not only is a woman's body and her role victimized, but the
supernatural is also assigned mostly to the woman to evoke terror. This goes on to establish a
conflict between the supernatural woman and the normal protagonist woman, both of whom are
portrayed through an overly masculine perspective. The impact of the male gaze in contemporary
cinema is very evident, as movies ranging from Alfred Hitchcock’s classics to ones like Scream
and Texas Chainsaw Massacre often tend to portray the woman as a physically vulnerable and
potentially weak and inefficient character that can be exploited, assaulted and murdered to bring
out the element of fear, insecurity, terror and at the same time pleasure and contentment.

Alfred Hitchcock wrote the book on the male gaze in horror-thriller cinema, with Vertigo being
possibly the most iconic example. The film's frequent use of slow close-ups of women and
subjective camerawork, such as point-of-view shots from the male hero's eyes, places these
ladies in a position to be gazed at, and, more crucially, this position generates visual pleasure
from the viewer. The early moment in Vertigo in which Scottie first looks at Madeleine in the
restaurant serves as the thesis of the male gaze. The camera initially focuses on Scottie, who has
his head turned, but when the camera pans in the direction he is looking, the audience's
perspective blends with Scottie's; the camera movement frames Scottie as the subject, the "seer."
According to Mulvey, this subjective camerawork produces a natural alliance with the voyeur,
noting, "Hence the spectator, lulled into a sense of security by the apparent legality of the
surrogate, sees through his look and finds himself exposed and complicit." We go towards
Madeleine's back, the camera voyeuristically moving through the crowd to gawk at her naïve
figure. She is framed by the dining room entryway and the bar doorway at the same time; she is
contained in not one, but two frames, heightening the sense of capture and victory. Madeleine
falls victim to the masculine gaze before we ever see her face, yet this wanting manifests itself in
a different way. It appears to be justified in a romantic fashion. She stands up and walks towards
Scottie, and when she arrives, She comes to a halt in the middle of the field for a time, and we
focus on her features. The background is greatly emphasized. Scottie's — and the viewer's —
desire is suggested by a saturated crimson, and the colors are further intensified in her presence.

Another example of the study of the male gaze is the anime film Perfect Blue. Perfect Blue
encourages this voyeuristic male look at first with identical cinematography and set design that
emphasizes the masculine desire to possess the objectified female, but its acceptance of the male
gaze turns the gaze itself into a disgusting bastard. Shots from Mima's farewell concert as a
member of the pop group CHAM! are intercut with shots of Mima going about her daily
activities, such as taking the train, shopping for groceries, and walking her bike home, in the
film's opening sequence. The inventive suturing of these dichotomous moments—the public
performance and her private life being muddled, mangled together—amplifies and intensifies the
act of watching and stalking; the audience is no longer a simple viewer "lulled" into the security
of the subjective camerawork that constructs Vertigo; instead, the viewer finds themselves in a
state of anxiety, aware of impending doom and fearfully anticipant of the stalker for whom the
camera moves. A shot of Mima on the train is particularly significant in this context. Her form is
captured from high, intimidating perspectives within the train car, as opposed to eye-level
pictures in Madeleine's first presentation. Perfect Blue frequently employs a technique to turn
Hitchcock's "oblique rendition of terror" (Clover 205)—one that supports a certain amount of
subtly in order to avoid objectionability—into something apparent, and hence unacceptable. The
masculine gaze is still characterized sentimentally in Vertigo, but this tenderness does not
transcend into animation.

Objectification and sexualization of women in horror cinema

The representation of gender is very crucial in the horror genre. It is developed through ages in
the old movies, the role of women was naive, powerless, and trivial, they just try to scream as a
psycho slashed them in a shower (Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho), but in the 1970s which represents
the rise of the feminism in horror movies, the woman became the central character and the
sufferers who suffered from "sexualized terror." Horror movies are well known for sexist tropes
such as the common facts that the “slut” dies first and the “virgin” continues to exist. On the
other hand, outside of the slasher genre, these tropes are somewhat inescapable.

The subversive nature of sexist cinema also doesn't allow the expression of a female protagonist,
needless to say, the female supernatural is heavily terrorized and villainized. It also has to be
observed how such a form of cinema treats female rage and the expression of it as an element of
horror. Horror movies are primarily known for their sexist tropes. They have a fascinating way of
representing women wherein there is a tendency of the genre to provide the woman the role of a
hero in the narrative, as well as the overestimated sex symbol and the victim.

The stereotypical traits of gentility, attractiveness, and morality are prevalent in horror films,
particularly in slasher films. "One of the most enduring images of the slasher film is that of the
beautiful heroine screaming with fear- as the killer approaches," writes Rockoff (2002). Many
feminist thinkers are concerned about the genre's presentation of women as victims. The great
majority of horror films feature female protagonists or finish with a solitary female character
remaining after all of the other characters have been murdered. This is known as 'the final girl'
cliche in cinema studies. The "Final Girl," a collective term for these post-modern damsels in
distress, are typically the only ones who survive the killer's spree. The subject is always being
pursued by some sort of malevolent power, and this creature is almost always portrayed as
masculine. This cliché is heavily criticized for portraying women as victims of male violence,
and it is a significant critique of the genre as a whole. This, however, ignores the fact that women
are statistically the more common victims of male violence. This victimization might even be
used to justify women's anxieties as legitimate threats.

In these slasher movies, female characters are significantly more likely to flee the killer and only
engage in a physical fight when absolutely necessary. Women are often seen displaying dread
and terror for considerably longer lengths of time than their male counterparts. These prejudices
promote gender norms in the eyes of the show's viewers. Stereotypes may also exist for certain
subgroups inside a broader category of humans, such as feminists within the larger section of
women. Certain factions, such as feminists, may strive against women forming relationships with
males in a male-dominated culture. These preconceptions in the media for specific subgroups,
notably in television and movies, can pose a threat to males in society, reinforcing unfavorable
prejudices. Traditionally, studies have discovered that males prefer to categorize women in
television and cinema into three fundamental categories: housewife, professional, and sex object.

Scholars of feminist cinema have criticized the sexism of the mainstream media, notably the film
industry, which frequently labels women as objects. In the early days of cinema, directors created
films that followed a societal value system that regulated women's sexuality, keeping them
virgins exclusively for males to utilize for pleasure and power. They were not to have any actual
sexual wants of their own and were just to service the male appetites. The "male gaze," as
defined by feminist cinema experts, refers to the way the camera follows women on screen as
sexual objects. When a female character is subjected to the objectifying male gaze, what remains
of her is a male-created female fabrication whose identity, more specifically a "role," is owned
and molded by the patriarchal system; her existence then becomes performance. Unlike other
film genres that use the gaze and thus appreciate female construction, horror-thriller films also
enjoy female destruction; there is intense gratification—and, of course, pleasure—found in both
constructing the female and violating, even killing her.

Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy), a character in the 1996 film "Scream," describes the cliche of
the last girl. He outlines a set of "rules" that a female protagonist in a horror film must follow in
order to survive. The most crucial criterion is the law of virginity: the female heroine must be a
virgin in order to survive the killer. Despite the fact that "Scream" violates this condition, the
meta-awareness of the "virginity in horror" stereotype underscores horror's long-standing legacy
of tormenting women for their sexuality.

Given that women may be both victims and villains due to their sexual orientation, what prevents
them from acting in the other way? Jennifer Check develops her abilities and becomes the film's
major adversary in 'Jennifer's Body' when a group of boys tries to offer her to the devil after she
lies about being a virgin. In this case, Jennifer becomes the monster because of her sexual past,
as opposed to previous horror films where a female lead's lack of sexuality made her the heroine.

When there's a chainsaw lunatic on the loose, the sexual status of the women is always the
deciding factor in whether or not they survive. The media then takes it a step further, displaying
something terrible that many horror films have in common: female torture. This is frequently
seen in the "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Evil Dead" series. In comparison to their male
counterparts, female character deaths are elevated to a higher level. Their deaths are more drawn
out and make you squirm in your seat, as opposed to the male stars who just get a knock on the
head or are viciously stabbed. In addition to being tormented, they accomplish next to nothing in
these moments, further sexualizing them. Women are ensnared in bear traps in their
undergarments, hunted through the woods naked, and even slain in the shower. These directors
regard women as meat, and it's horrible to witness how normalized the violence in these films is
against them. This isn't deemed to be a big issue because it's all made up and part of the “horror”
factor. It might be what separates the final female from the rest. All of the blood and pain she
must endure may make her survival seem more meaningful. Adding to the horror of women's
bodies, there are numerous incidents of female bodies being simply vessels for the monster. A
female character is assaulted and mystically inseminated, and subsequently undergoes an
excruciating or nearly non-existent pregnancy, passing without consequence. The infant is then
either transformed into a monster that must be destroyed or is taken away from the character
immediately. This stereotype reduces a woman to her biological components while downplaying
the emotional and physically demanding challenges of bearing and giving birth to a child.

This gendered reality of cinema, like the concept of gender itself, is so much the routine ground
of everyday activities that question its taken-for-granted assumptions and presuppositions is like
thinking about whether the sun will come up. This involves not just the presence or absence of
autonomous female characters, but also the language used to express meaning in films.
Male-defined ideas of women's roles in film, or femininity defined from a male perspective or
gaze, extend to women's history and the unique symbolism of women as witches, even in
modern-day cinematic portrayals, being controlled, chronicled, and visualized by men.

For decades, men have dominated gender discussions in cinema, both in front of and behind the
camera. Their central positions both in front of and behind the camera allow them to construct
and contextualize gender however they see fit, which has traditionally been accomplished by
sedating, sexualizing, and sidelining female characters while centering male characters as the
active and driving forces of film narrative.

Movies like The Autopsy of Jane Doe, use very subtle ways to sexualize the body and blatantly
turn the body into an object. Despite her nakedness, Jane Doe is frequently filmed from the collar
up throughout the film, centered in the frame and her breasts completely cropped off. When she
is brought before Tommy and Austin, her body bag has been unzipped, revealing a plunging "v"
that exposes her chest, but her breasts are still covered by the bag, and the opening stops short of
exposing her vagina. Shots that do include her sexual anatomy are typically distant, off-center, or
out-of-focus, resulting in her existence as a non-sexualized body inside the film. The cataleptic
women characters are overwhelmingly portrayed as pliant, silent, and submissive bodies who
have no option but to submit to whatever acts the males who oversee them perform against them,
whether those actions take the form of sexual assault.

With her unresponsive and stone-faced lead character, The Autopsy of Jane Doe evokes another
core idea of cinema theory: the Kuleshov Effect. Lev Kuleshov, a Russian filmmaker, pioneered
this technique in the early twentieth century. This implies that how a filmmaker mixes and
juxtaposes multiple views in succession produces a complex network of connections in the
spectator that would otherwise be absent if these photos were not organized together in that exact
way. In other words, the context in which distinct photos are presented generates new meanings
and connections in the spectator that are independent of the individual meanings of the shots.
The Kuleshov Effect is used to great success in The Autopsy of Jane Doe, although this time she
is the blank-faced character onto whom the viewer projects meaning, and the disclosures about
her or the destruction she causes are the opposing visuals. Except for the odd adjustment of her
head by Tommy and Austin or the accompanying trickle of blood from their inquisitive probing,
nothing about her look changes fundamentally throughout the film. Even though she is possessed
of a malevolent will that lashes out at the men around her, she has no external means of
expressing her interior thoughts or reactions. Because the story immediately centers and assumes
the perspective of her male victims, The Autopsy of Jane Doe is only sometimes effective in
garnering the audience's sympathies for the vindictive Jane Doe. Its emphasis on indexical
indications, while more clearly constructing Jane Doe as a victim of religious persecution and
patriarchal revenge

These films reveal not only that we have a lot to figure out about gender’s enduring place in
history, film, and society, but that the very foundation of our culture is marbled with violence,
exploitation, and exclusion. Females in horror-thriller films are subjected to violence and
fetishization at the hands of cinematic methods, the male protagonists of the movie, and even the
audience themselves. Put succinctly, feminist critique is desperately needed to counter a lengthy
history of sexist clichés. However, it is critical that horror films be critiqued through a feminist
lens so that the unfair torment of both ideal and corporeal women is avoided.

Evolution of horror as a genre and its dileanation of misogyny in popular

culture

Horror as a genre evolved through the meanders of time. Starting from the classic monstrous
horror films like Frankenstein in the early 20th century, to the classics of Alfred Hitchcock, it
moved into a period of slasher in the 1970s and subsequently the supernatural in the 1990s. Over
time, the representation of women and the underlying misogyny has only increased in magnitude
and the genre has failed to overcome its prejudices. The idea of women's cinema first surfaced in
tandem with the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, therefore it was born with political
connotations and goals. But it was never a cohesive or accepted category; "the other insisted on
rigorous, formal work on the medium," while one branch of female cinema was dedicated to
political action onscreen. The term "women's cinema" can apply to films directed by women,
films about women or women's concerns regardless of the author, or films that incorporate
feminist activism, postfeminist consumerism, or any other aspect of "prefeminist 'essence'."
Three significant "waves" have emerged in women's cinema history: the first occurred during the
silent era, which was easily forgotten and only rediscovered by feminist film scholars in the
1990s; the second occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, coinciding with the establishment of feminist
film theory and the emergence of women's cinema as politically charged "counter-cinema"; and
the third, which has occurred in the 21st century, with an increase in the number of women
working behind the camera. When Claire Johnston coined the term "counter-cinema" to describe
women in filmmaking, she did not mean that women should produce films that, in Laura
Mulvey's opinion, aim to subvert pleasure. Instead, Johnston believed that entertainment was an
essential weapon for female directors. According to Johnston, a successful women's film
investigates, affirms, and normalizes feminine desire while balancing political goals with
entertainment value. With the introduction of Pretty-Scary in 2004, the first website designed
specifically for the female horror fan community, women-directed horror films started to take on
many of these important responsibilities.

Women's horror film often addresses and investigates the wounds caused by patriarchal ideology
via depictions of self-destructive violence. In techniques reminiscent of clinical research on
self-mutilators, they examine self-destructive violence, showing how people self-harm "to
relieve tension, release anger, regain a sense of self-control." Using the term "homoepathic
horror," used by Eyes Without a Face director Georges Franju in 1960 to characterize his own
films, is a helpful way to integrate these clinical texts into the critical framework. It describes the
dangerous but moderate administration of negative materials for therapeutic purposes; one
develops immune, or at least accustomed to, poison by ingesting small amounts of it. Examples
of women's horror films illustrate how to confront and reinterpret harmful stereotypes by delving
into the themes of violence against the female body. Nonetheless, a lot of horror films produced
by women also capture the strange, unreserved pleasure of these "poisons," as they are created by
lovers and aficionados of the genre. Marina de Van's 2002 film In My Skin, in which the
protagonist Esther (de Van), a successful businesswoman, becomes fascinated with her body
after she fails to notice a deep wound in her leg following a fall, maybe the most concrete
example of how self-destruction enables self-control. Esther's fixation with cutting herself turns
into self-mutilation when, in a startling episode, she imagines that her forearm has been severed
from her body. Through the act of reconstructing herself and her body "to her own
specifications," Esther views self-mutilation as a way to take control of her body and, therefore,
how it is seen. Furthermore, it symbolizes the price a woman must pay for "having it all,"
according to Lowenstein, as it requires her to "return to inhabit the very site where the
irresolvable tensions structuring her private and public personae take shape: her body."

The genre constantly evolves as a result of the ways critics, audiences, and producers present,
accept, and reinterpret particular films for various purposes within other genres. This aligns with
Rick Altman's interpretation of genre as a “process,” and it also contributes to the discussion
around Stuart Hall’s idea of negotiated subject positions by redefining female horror filmmakers
as shaped by their experiences as genre filmgoers. Famously, Hall suggests three reading stances
that viewers of audiovisual texts might employ. The first is what he refers to as the "dominant
hegemonic position," in which readers comprehend and adopt the producer's intended meaning.
A "negotiated code or position" is the second. The negotiated version's decoding includes both
oppositional and adaptive features. This reader "makes its own ground rules—it operates with
exceptions to the rule" while also partially accepting the intended interpretation of a document.
Ultimately, a reader is placed in an "oppositional code" when they "detotalize the message in the
preferred code in order to retotalize the message within some alternative framework of
reference." Brigid Cherry found that her respondents used a pattern of "deliberate interpretative
strategies to accommodate the films’ representations of women, either ignoring and making
excuses for what they see as negative representations or condoning feminine behavior in strong
female characters," which is another example of the positive mode of engagement. Cherry
conducted her study of British female horror fans in the 1990s. Cherry's assertion that female
fans' perspectives ignore some aspects and emphasize others is similar to how women
filmmakers choose which horror narratives and tropes to explore in their works, eliminating,
altering, or reframing certain aspects of horror through the prism of critique, reclamation, or
general revision.The Reaganite principles of capitalism and the middle-class family, which were
prevalent in the 1980s horror films, were openly embraced by them, occasionally being criticised
and frequently reinforced. This decade has seen a lot of horror films that explore the negative
repercussions that the capitalist, male American Dream has on women, families, and men.
Nonetheless, motherhood—rather than chastity—is the predominant revered feminine quality in
the bulk of 1980s horror films, which depict a slasher subgenre's simplistic portrayal of
femininity.
The slasher film reached its most misogynistic apex in the 1980s, despite having begun in the
1970s with films like Carpenter's Halloween (1978) and Clark's Black Christmas (1977). In
slasher films, women are slain slowly and painfully to stress the idea of shame and retribution for
women who cross social and sexual limits. Men are killed in these films, but their deaths are
incidental and dealt with quickly. These scenes of sexualized violence, of course, also contain a
hypocritical aspect of erotic display. Because they are viewed as harmless, thoughtless
entertainment, 1980s horror films are able to spread conservative gender stereotypes.

In fact, their success is so great that even a writer such as Rockoff, who is obviously well-versed
in slasher films and does not come off as particularly sexist, is oblivious to the extent to which
women are objectified and victimized in his field of study. Friday the 13th (1980) by Sean S.
Cunningham followed the Halloween model, which was a horrific past incident whose
unresolved state culminates in a slaughter in the present. This formula was then employed
frequently in slasher films. The horror genre has been connected to pornography due to
accusations of misogyny and objectification of the female body. On the one hand, the
performance component of self-dissection reads academic research on the horror and
pornographic genres as genres that dehumanize the female body by showing it as individual
pieces rather than as a single picture. This is especially true of the vaginal and thoracic regions.
However, the performance interprets the problem of the unachievable beauty standards that
women attempt to meet in (Western) culture by means of horrifying acts of self-injury and
violence to others. According to Susan Faludi, the New Right's 1980s rhetoric was "pro-life" and
"pro-family," but in reality, men were pushing "for every man's right to rule supreme at home-to
exercise what Falwell called the husband's "God-given responsibility to lead his family"-under
the guise of "family rights." A number of well-known horror films from the 1980s use the idea of
the man as the leader of his family to subvert ideas of capitalism and the associated ideal of
masculinity. The Shining (1980) by Stanley Kubrick and The Stepfather (1987) by Joseph Ruben
are two of the most significant of these films. Concepts of capitalism, the American Dream, and
the patriarchal position of the father and husband as the family's provider and leader are all
woven throughout the films.

Horror being one of the most widely sought genres can shape opinions and thoughts, and it
becomes a major ingredient in shaping popular culture and discourse. To cite an example, the
realm of social media openly mocks female rage and anger, and at the same time sexualizes and
targets all female opinion that doesn’t conform to the masculine appeal. It is under such
conditions that horror as a genre in cinema finds a space to thrive and grow. A range of punitive
political and social policies emerged in the 1980s with the intention of undoing the achievements
that women had made during the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
Women appeared to be punished for even daring to think they could make their own decisions or
even "have it all" by the New Right, Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, systemic capitalism,
and even patriarchal capitalism.

Conclusion

Women in horror cinema have been victims of a violent and sexist representation of a
male-dominated form of storytelling. Most women in horror cinema are portrayed as the victims,
and the rest are either the Final Girls or the supernatural herself. This trope is not just extremely
stereotypical but also contributes to creating a male-dominated status quo in society. Horror is
simply not a genre to be fiddled with, and not one to afford misrepresentation. Being a genre that
is one of the most sought and watched, it holds the responsibility to break norms and customs
that are exploitative and discriminatory, not to promote them through sexist and misogynist
structures. For the longest time, the monsters in horror were either a non-human supernatural
entity or a woman. This categorization of women into the folds of monstrosity is yet another
factor that we explored in the paper. The paper has discussed extensively the male gaze and the
indecent and insensitive portrayal of women in horror cinema. While the male gaze creates the
story for the visual, sexual, and emotional pleasure of men, women are heavily exploited and
their roles are put through a perpetual cycle of torture, fear, and violence.

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