Has the representation of women and their ideology
evolved in cinema through time, paying particular attention to the horror
genre?
In this investigation I will analyze how female
protagonists and their ideology are represented in my chosen horror genre
texts, 'Psycho' and 'Scream', and if their portrayal and role has evolved. It
is believed by some that women, for many years, have been represented as being
sex objects, weak, and under the rule of men in many of Hollywood’s biggest films.
The texts I have chosen will help me identify these issues and allow me to
compare and contrast the texts and discover if representations have evolved
within the same sub genre, that being’ slasher films’, but also made in
different eras. I firstly will scrutinize the horror genre and its conventions
to see if the female protagonist’s mindset and ideology has changed making it
more relative to our current society, and juxtapose their reliance on men.
Looking at the genres take on women will give me a good indicator as to whether
my texts both comply with having the weak, over ruled female protagonist or one
is more evolved.
Secondly I will investigate psycho, and build an
understanding and ask the question if the texts serves its own moral justice. I
will question whether the female protagonists death was some kind of punishment
for her out of wedlock sexual relations, and if so why isn’t her lover
punished? Thirdly I shall state the differences between the female protagonists
in both texts throughout. I will use primary and secondary research to see if
female representation reflects the society in which it was made; I will look at
Hollywood as a whole and identify issues relating to it being patriarchal.
Again, through research I will bring to attention the growth in violence
related to women, making them the attacked or more prone to fight back.
To help in my investigation I will apply Laura
Mulvey’s ‘male gaze theory’ to Psycho, seeing how Hitchcock technically
objectifies Marion and at times addresses voyeuristic pleasures shared by the
audience and the antagonist Norman Bates. In doing this I can build an
understanding of the time the film was made and how Hitchcock wanted to show
off his leading actress and why he wanted the audience to be included in
Norman’s sexual yet murderous desires. After I can then apply the theory to
scream and begin to see some form of evolution in the female protagonist in
these iconic horror films. The feminist theory aids the male gaze concept,
therefore I intend to utilize this to support my investigation, thus proving
that patriarchy is visible in this text, more so than ‘scream’, due to the era
in which it was filmed. This will help me see the way each protagonist is
represented and the change in their ideology.
“The classical Hollywood format has always empowered
men and directly objectified women through ‘visual pleasure.’” (1) In the
documentary Miss-Representation it states “Females
are not represented in the Media for doing something; they are represented for how
they look”. (2) More specifically this type of female representation
occurs in the Horror genre. “Horror films, and the
slasher subgenre, are famous for portraying women as hypersexual damsels in
distress who are usually murdered within the first five minutes as punishment
for their indiscretions…”. (3) My first text Psycho conforms and
subverts to this; the protagonist Marion is first seen on a bed wearing a skirt
and bra; this is shown through a track/panning shot gazing into the window,
instantly making the audience the voyeur. “Voyeurism and the gaze are major
themes in Hitchcock's movies as well as elements of his techniques” (8). As the
film then cuts to inside the room we then see a man half naked who she is
having sexual relations with out side of marriage. Immediately we see her indiscretions but she
addresses the fact that they are not married and they meet in secret. She says,
“We could meet respectively. With mother’s picture on the mantle piece and my
sister helping me boil a big steak for three.” this shows that she no longer
wants the relationship to be secretive or just about sex. This makes us believe
that she has an innocent side and that she wants to be good, therefore the convocation
takes place as she is putting her clothes on; the camera pans up ,as she stands
from the bed, to a very awkward position, as if the audience is spying on them.
The shot is a high angled two shot with slight shallow focus thus ensuring the
focus is on Marion. This opening does objectify the woman technically with the
two shot of her on the bed and only the mans lower half in shot, making the
male look powerful and conforming to my previous statement. Also the long mid
shots of them on the bed mean that we see a lot of her body and sexual nature,
this is where it subverts the second quote as we don’t get the impression that
she is “hypersexual” as she confronts the wrong in what they are doing. But this
opening scene is all about how the female protagonist looks and getting a
glimpse at her naïve ideology.
The sequence in scream where Sidney is first attacked
(4), shows us a completely different mind set to that of Marion. The film is
sees by some as a parody, this means that it mocks the slasher sub genre via
the dialogue and the stories plot; also making the film self aware. Audiences
at the time the film was released would have been somewhat cineliterate having
had the resources to watch a number of horror films thus developing the ability
to spot the irony and satire in the inter-textual references. Sidney believes
that her boyfriend is on the phone as we get a long shot of her pacing round
the living room talking to him. When talking about horror films she says “You
know I don’t watch that shit. What’s the point there all the same, some stupid
killer stalking some big breasted girl who can’t act, who’s always running up
the stairs when she should be going out the door!”, she mocks the layout of a
typical horror film but also directly tells the audience what is about to
happen. Sidney's ideology is way more advanced than Marion's as she mocks the
stereotypical horror film.
This article summarizes the characters seen in typical
slasher films (10) “The protagonist: this is usually a female role, they are
usually the most morally standing and smartest of the group. The sex appeal:
this role is often filled by a promiscuous woman who is often first to be
killed…” Scream conforms to this as we have Sidney, the protagonist who always
manages to escape and then we have Tatum; who wears provocative clothes and is
a flirt. Her death sequence (5) starts with a mid shot of her walking into the
garage to get beer. She has a lot of makeup and red lip stick, also a short
skirt and a tight top on which make her breasts stand out giving the audience
visual pleasure. As she walks to the fridge the camera tracks before cutting to
a shot from behind her where we then see her bum become objectified as it is in
centre frame throughout the shot. Here I would say that it conforms to the male
gaze as when the camera cuts back we see that that is where the killer is
standing.
“The Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right
to vote, was ratified in 1920. This fight for equality was later termed “the
first-wave of feminism”. The “second-wave” began in the early 1960s and ran
through the late 1980s. In this wave, women strived to reach a further sense of
equality with men and to allow women to have a greater control over their body
and the protection from physical abuse” (6) the politics show that feminists
have battled for equality for years but only really to build motion at the
start of the 60s where fighting for women “women to have a greater control over
their body and the protection from physical abuse”, which suggests that psycho
was a male attack on the fighting feminists; a way to divert the public’s
thinking by reminding them that women are week but can also be controlling in a
negative way, for example the antagonist Norman who’s alter ego is that of his
dead mothers! Right at the very end there is an unsettling slow zoom in mid
shot of Norman sat on a chair in the police station. The woman’s voice over is
his thoughts as he now has completely taken on the mind set of his dead mother.
At the end of the dialogue he looks up directly into the camera, like scream,
making the film self aware. Scream on the other hand was made in 1996 the film
has a less misogynistic feel as it is the women who are empowered in the end as
the last scene where the two antagonists are threatening to kill Sidney she
manages to turn it round. When antagonist Billy is dying on the floor we get a
high angle over shoulder shot of him, from Sidney's perspective; this then cuts
to an extreme low angle shot looking up from his gaze, where he is surrounded
by two females who are in total power.
“Feminist critics who have analyzed Psycho see this as evidence both of Alfred
Hitchcock’s misogyny and of the more perverse patriarchal ideology of
Hollywood” (7) so far I have proved that psycho does objectify women and portrays
them as being weak by attacking them in the narrative and technically. I
believe that Hollywood does conform to this statement, both at the time psycho
was made and present day although feminists and actresses are making a point
that Hollywood is male dominant. In 2006, actress Nicole Kidman accused
Hollywood of contributing to violence against women by portraying them as sex
objects. “When asked whether the film
industry "played a bad role" in the way it portrayed women, Kidman
replied "Probably", before going on to say that she refused to take
roles that portrayed women as weak sex objects. "I can't be responsible
for all of Hollywood, but I can certainly be responsible for my own career”
(9). This supports the idea that Hollywood has a patriarchal ideology. To
reinforce this; “97%
of publishing companies are owned by Males.10% of writers of film are female” (11). These facts
show that even more modern films such as Scream are still produced my men
within a male dominant society.
Based on the facts and arguments presented, I believe
that the representation of women has not evolved, yet their ideology has. We
are still being show the sexual nature of women but there has developed a
certain sophistication in some female roles within the horror genre. For instance,
Sidney is able to escape from the killer and defeat him. The character
conventions state that in the slasher sub-genre there is mainly a female
protagonist. In psycho the audience is lead to believe that Marion has out
smarted her male boss and is now running off with his money, but when the film
takes that dramatic turn it is then left to the men to search for her, find her
and capture Norman.
I do believe
that the feminist movements played a huge role in changing the way women were
perceived. Although I feel it has slightly failed, in that areas of Hollywood
and the media still portray the females as sex objects and ruled by men; as in
Scream not all the women are as powerful as Sidney. Conventions still state
that there will still be the “sex object” character.
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1,977
10. http://www.slideshare.net/lalaland_xo/horror-film-forms-and-conventions. Talks about the conventional characters in slasher
movies. quote ' (10)