Horror movie icons Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Michael Meyers always seem to let the good girl get away in the end, at least until the sequel.
This phenomenon, dubbed the "Last Girl" by horror fans, was the subject of a documentary created by two Ball State University students. "The Final Girl and the Dead Girl: Gendered Tropes of the Slasher Genre" was screened in the David Letterman Media and Communication Building on Thursday evening as part of Women's Week at Ball State.
The film examined the four main stereotypical roles of women in horror films and debated whether these roles were inherently sexist or empowering of women. The filmmakers, senior Rebecca Parker and junior Bruce Snyder, attempted to keep a neutral tone in presenting these roles.
According to "The Final Girl," the first stereotypical role for women in horror is "the soon-to-be-dead sexpot," who is attractive, sexually active and often rude and unlikable, making for a satisfying early kill. The second role is "the monstrous mother," the violent, overbearing older woman most famously depicted in the original "Friday the 13th". The "vengeful woman" is most common in revenge horror like "I Spit on Your Grave," which features a woman being brutally raped for the first 40 minutes of film, followed by her bloody revenge on her assailants for the rest of the movie. The most famous gender trope in horror films is "the final girl," the nice, innocent, virginal girl who manages to escape and often defeat the killer.
The documentary included footage of multiple horror films from the past 50 years to demonstrate Parker and Snyder's points.
Included in the documentary is footage of film critic Roger Ebert accusing horror films of glorifying violence towards women and accusing audiences of supporting this notion. As a counterpoint, filmmakers like Rob Zombie are featured defending the treatment of women in horror films, arguing that the triumph of the final girl is empowering to women.
"The Final Girl" takes a neutral stance on this issue, as do the filmmakers.
"While the horror genre tends to be sexist, each director comes in it with their own agenda," Parker said.
She offered films such as "The Descent" as examples of horror films that don't sexualize women. She also said "Five Across the Eyes" featured "the least stereotypical females I've seen" but also said it was "awful."
Snyder said George Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" and its sequels often feature strong women.
Parker and Snyder also discussed the presence of women in writing and directing horror films.
"Horror movies are kind of a genre ... where women have more opportunities," Parker said, "(but) all of Hollywood is a boy's club."
The screening was followed with a Q-and-A session, where an audience full of horror fans discussed movies and clichés not touched on by the film. One person brought up the film "Teeth," about a woman with a unique and grotesque birth defect, which places her in a role of power in a twist on revenge horror. Parker responded to this outlier, saying "Teeth" was "just all kinds of messed up."
The idea to make a documentary about women's roles in horror movies came after Parker, a women's and gender studies student, read "Men, Women and Chain Saws" by professor Carol J. Clover, who also coined the term "Last Girl."
She asked her fiancé Snyder, a telecommunications major, to help her with a film project due to their shared interest in horror films.
"Bruce and I are huge movie nuts," she said. "Together we have over 800 movies."
The screening was part of "Bad Girls and Blood: Gender, Culture and Slasher Films," a series of horror-themed panels and screenings for Women's Week. On Tuesday, the movie "Psycho" was screened, and after the screening of "The Final Girl," a panel discussion on "Psycho" and ‘60s culture was held.
Due to the large amount of copyrighted material in "The Final Girl," Parker and Snyder have no intentions to distribute it. "I would love to ... but it would need a major overhaul," Parker said.
The film will be shown again at the Student Symposium on Tuesday, and Parker said she would like to give copies to the Women's and Gender Studies department for further use.
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