Finals Week: The Rise of Women in Horror Fandom and Film

By James Morgart

“There is no pleasure. There is no pain. There is only skin.” - Pinhead, Hellraiser III

“Women tend to be more tolerant about visceral things because they have more direct personal experience with them. They cope with periods once a month, they go through childbirth and they are usually the ones who look after the bleeding and battered limbs when the kids take a tumble. They can put blood and gore in context and generally cope better than men.” - Bela Lugosi

Most scholarship on the horror film has assumed that males are the primary spectators of horror; however, there have been developments, both in scholarship as well as in mainstream media, to contradict this point. In 2009, journalist Michelle Orange pointed out, in an article written for the New York Times, “Recent box office receipts show that women have an even bigger appetite for these [horror] films than men.” Furthermore, Brigid Cherry has continually underscored the point that horror has its roots in the Gothic, a traditionally female genre whose roots are traced back to the sexually transgressive Horace Walpole and female writer Mary Shelley. Cherry also points out that a 1996 market survey “found that Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors was ‘more popular with women than men, with over twice as many women than men liking it,’” and that despite claims by Linda Williams that women “refuse to look” at scenes of horror, the gratuitous shows played at the renown Grand Guignol often resulted in women assisting men from walking out of the theater after the men had fainted at the scenes of blood and gore. Cherry’s implication, obviously, is that women have always enjoyed horror, but their enjoyment of the genre has gone unnoticed, and perhaps this is true, however, both Cherry and Orange have missed an even more significant emergent trend in horror.

Over the last decade, women have developed their own horror fandom and are more heavily involved in the production and promotion of horror films and horror culture than in the past. For example, two of the largest horror film festivals in the country were founded by women. The largest horror film festival in the country, Screamfest, founded by film producers Rachel Belofsky and Ross Martin in 2001, has been responsible for the catapulting of films such as Paranormal Activity, 28 Days Later, Hatchet, and Wolf Creek into the American mainstream. Prior to Screamfest, Denise Gossett and Kimberly Beeson founded Shriekfest in 2001, and have focused primarily on promoting low-budget independent horror films since its inception.

The creation of these two festivals and the emergence of the Internet ultimately sprung a leak in the male-dominated genre that has resulted in a surge of women involvement. In 2003, Jovanka Vukovic was named the editor-in-chief of the popular horror fanzine and website Rue Morgue – a post she remained at until 2009, when she stepped down to publish a book on zombies as well as to direct her first film, a horror titled The Captured Bird that will be produced by Guillermo del Toro. A year after Vuckovic took her post at Rue Morgue, journalist Heidi Martinuzzi founded the website Pretty/Scary.net, literally creating a space for women in horror fandom. Martinuzzi has since changed the site’s name to Fangirltastic.com, and encourages women and men on the fan forums to discuss not just horror films, but to also discuss celebrities, women’s rights, political figures, and even academic work, as Martinuzzi often posts, and encourages others to post, graduate papers in progress – papers that are normally focused on questions of gender with Marxist and cultural studies frameworks; thereby providing an opportunity for fans to see what is being discussed in academia as well as for the writers of these papers to gain feedback from fans and from one another. Though Martinuzzi continues to run her website, she, too, has embarked on a film career including a documentary that focuses on the wives of influential horror filmmakers titled Brides of Horror. The effect of these women has been a virtual explosion of women themed horror sites such as Sarah Jahier’s Fatally-Yours, Stacie Ponder’s blog Final Girl, the blog Day of the Woman, Hannah Neurotica’s fanzine Ax Wound, and has culminated with Neurotica spearheading Women In Horror Recognition Month. Moreover, in 2010, Martinuzzi and filmmaker Shannon Lark unveiled the Viscera Film Festival, the first horror film festival whose mission is to “expand opportunities for contemporary female horror filmmakers and educate the public by raising awareness of the changing roles for women in the film industry.” It comes as no surprise then that when in October 2010, as a response to the website Horror Society hosting Women of Horror 2 Film Festival in Chicago, Marcus Leshock of the news blog Chicago Now identified the Top 13 Most Influential Women in Horror, three of the aforementioned women were included on the list (italics are my emphasis): Anne Rice, Kathryn Bigelow, Debbie Rochon, Debrah Hill, Denise Gossett, Devi Snively, Heidi Martinuzzi, Ida Lupino, Jovanka Vuckovic, Karen Walton, Vampirella, Mary Shelley, and Stephanie Meyer.

In spite of the fact that Michelle Orange’s article focuses on teenage women attending recent horror films, and misses the larger scope of the emergent trend of women involvement in horror, she raises important questions about the movement – questions that academia may help to solve:
Theories straining to address this particular head scratcher have their work cut out for them: Are female fans of “Saw” ironists? Masochists? Or just dying to get close to their dates?

Although these questions are interesting, they are also myopic. Her line of questioning suggests only three options. First, women are theoretically watching films because they are sadistic – thereby inhabiting the role of male viewer . Second, they are watching films because they are masochistic – thereby inhabiting the role of female viewer. Or, finally, they are watching films because they simply want to please their dates – thereby falling into a normative role of potential housewife seeking to please her “man.” All of these are viable possibilities, however, they ignore the possibility that women are simply displeased with normative structures and have taken pleasure in watching a genre that both uncovers and critiques these structures. Therefore, it could be that women are falling into normal patriarchal roles or they could be engaging in an activity that allows them a space to critique the restrictive boundaries of normative society.

In other words, is this trend of women going to see these films and participating in the promotion and production of them an act that film theorist Laura Mulvey would call donning “transvestite clothes” in order to indulge in a male pleasure? That is, are women watching and making horror films in order to escape femininity thereby participating in a cultural act that is as reactionary as Sarah Palin arming herself with a rifle and killing a caribou while television cameras bear witness to it? Or, has the feminist discourse that emerged in the 70s been so marginalized within American society that it has driven women to a genre that has only ever been surpassed in its critique of social norms by the inquiries and critiques of academia?

The answer to these questions, as I will argue, is that the emergent trend of women is a reflection of both ideas. As my essay will show through the analysis of favorite films listed by women horror fans, the emergent trend is a result of women being attracted to horror films that often feature female protagonists and address women’s issues. In some cases, these films merely invert the patriarchal order and allow for a cathartic sadistic pleasure of dominance while in others they address issues of sexuality, gender, and identity in far more interesting ways. In order to prove this thesis, this article will first discuss the various theories scholars have offered to analyze horror films. Second, it will examine what horror films women within this emergent group have listed as their favorite films by presenting a list I compiled from women horror fans on fan forums as well as social networking sites. And finally, the paper examine the differences and similarities between the films on the list compiled in relation to a list compiled by Cherry from female horror fans in Edinburgh, while also interpreting the possible pleasures women horror fans could be indulging in by watching these films. In doing so, it will make clear these films sometimes articulate a possible sadistic pleasures of dominance as well as provide intriguing critiques about normative society and patriarchal constructs of gender.

The Academic Gaze: Scholarship on Horror

The academic response to the emergent trend of women in horror fandom and the aforementioned questions has been practically nonexistent and not particularly fruitful. Only one scholar, Brigid Cherry, has addressed the influx of women in horror fandom, however, her studies have not been indicative of the community mentioned above. In studying the Internet community in an article titled “Stalking the Web: Celebration, Chat and Horror Film Marketing on the Internet,” Cherry limited her study to “Yahoo!Group” pages and mainstream websites like SciFi Channel’s bulletin boards as well as websites created by major production studios such as New Line Cinema. Furthermore, as a British scholar, it appears that she has largely focused on British-based fans and acknowledged that the lists she looked at contained “a high number of fans working in libraries and universities and many have studied in higher education.” Her article is only made all the more problematic in that even though it was published in 2010, the research seems to have been conducted in 2002, just prior to the influx of activity by women in horror fandom, however, two previous publications of hers did attempt to decipher the influx of women she has witnessed. In a 1999 publication “Refusing to Refuse to Look: Female Viewers of the Horror Film,” and later revisited in a 2008 article titled “Gothics and Grand Guignols: Violence and the Gendered Aesthetics of Cinematic Horror,” Cherry surveyed 107 British women horror fans in an attempt to ascertain what it was that women liked about horror. Although the survey covered a wide age demographic, 18 to 50, Cherry identifies these participants as predominantly “white and well-educated.” Furthermore, it appears that the women she surveyed were largely British as the survey was conducted in Edinburgh, thereby ignoring the American market. In fact, Cherry acknowledges that she is “not claiming that this sample is a statistically accurate representation of habitual female viewers of horror films. Though her findings are interesting, her results are more of a reflection of those she polled rather than of the emerging trend within fandom identified earlier. That is to say, Cherry’s results has led her to argue for a “feminine aesthetic” existent within horror that appeals specifically to women as her “white, well-educated” participants often displayed a “morbid fascination with horror, death, and monstrosity” as they described what drew them to the films in visual terms such as “striking,” “beautiful,” “atmospheric,” and “wonderful” – terms that an art history student might use to describe what draws them to Van Gogh or what a creative writing student might use to describe Faulkner. Not only does this conclusion not take into consideration the nationality and education level of her participants, it also ignores the possibility that male audiences with a similar educational background and knowledge base might be drawn to horror films for similar “aesthetic” reasons. Moreover, this approach also ignores the thematic elements and plot devices of the films that may attract women audiences without them necessarily realizing it, or wanting to admit to it. Prior to Cherry’s work and the emergence of women’s heightened involvement in horror fandom and horror film production, most scholars seemed to believe that there was little attraction for women within what has been called the “modern horror film” – generally a term that refers to post-1960 horror films that, arguably, have their roots in Hitchcock’s Psycho and Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom – although the first surge of American modern horror films would sometimes carry heavily politicized subtexts.

In fact, the modern horror film originally became of interest to academics after several independent filmmakers began to gain recognition for what scholar Matt Becker has identified as “hippie horror.” Although Becker limits his identification of these filmmakers to Wes Craven, Sean S. Cunningham, George A. Romero, and Tobe Hooper, his list of “hippie horror” filmmakers could be expanded to include several other filmmakers from this generation such as John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, Mick Garris, and S.F. Brownrigg. Generally speaking, these filmmakers consider their work to go beyond the normally accepted boundaries of horror to simply frighten, and is also intended to critique society. As Stuart Gordon points out, “The 70s were a time of us realizing that all art is political.” In fact, not long after Gordon and his wife were arrested for their involvement at the protests of 1968 Democratic National Convention, he found himself behind bars yet again for having adapted Peter Pan into an allegory for what happened in Chicago – his play contained all of the original dialogue, but featured Captain Hook as Mayor Daley, the pirates as the Chicago police, Peter Pan and the Lost Boys as hippies, and Wendy and her siblings as straight-laced suburban kids. Similarly, Craven asserts that his first films Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes are critiques of patriarchal society, and when Craven began stating that the latter film is an allegory for the Vietnam War, it did not take long for academics to notice.

This surge in socially-aware horror filmmakers ultimately resulted in a group of scholars – Andrew Britton, Richard Lippe, Tony Williams, and Robin Wood – publishing the work American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film which has laid the groundwork for much of the horror film criticism and scholarship that has occurred in its wake. Wood’s introductory essay, “Introduction to the American Horror Film,” has since been recognized a landmark work as it uses Marxist and psychoanalytic theory, specifically invoking Gad Horowitz’s notion of “surplus repression,” to identify what Wood refers to as “apocalyptic horror films.”

Wood’s mixed formula of Marxism and psychoanalysis in relation to monsters in the horror film is particularly useful in interpreting horror films. Horowitz, according to Wood, suggests that there are two forms of repression in society: “basic” and “surplus.” Basic repression is supposedly “universal, necessary, and inescapable;” furthermore, “it is what makes possible our development from an uncoordinated animal capable of little beyond screaming and convulsions into a human being.” Surplus repression is what “makes us into monogamous bourgeois patriarchal capitalists even if we are born into the proletariat,” and Wood identifies “sexual energy,” “bisexuality,” “female sexuality/creativity,” and the “sexuality of children” as examples of surplus repression as Wood sees it that “none of these forms of repression is necessary for the existence of civilization. To complicate matters further, Wood suggests that it in order to understand modern horror films it is important to combine Horowitz’s understanding of surplus repression with the concept of “the Other: that which bourgeois ideology cannot recognize or accept but must deal with.” Furthermore, Wood identifies “other people,” “woman,” “the proletariat,” “ethnic groups within culture,” “alternative ideologies or political systems,” and “children” as potential forms of the Other. Therefore, it becomes of the utmost importance to recognize what is being portrayed as the Other as well as how the Other is being portrayed in the horror film in order to understand whether or not the film is progressive or reactionary. In other words, by understanding that the monster in horror films usually represents the Other, we can begin to recognize what is being repressed and/or who is being oppressed if the monster is being portrayed as sympathetic or innately evil – all of which is usually mediated by the narrative.

For example, in applying his formula to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , a film directed by one of the aforementioned hippie horror directors, Tobe Hooper, Wood recognizes that unlike previous horror films the monster does not represent the Other, but instead represents the bourgeois patriarchal family unit while normality is depicted as “quasi-liberated,” progressive youth. It is significant to note that though the film itself is progressive in its condemnation and critique of patriarchal society tearing apart youth and progression with a chainsaw, Wood’s experience watching the film with a theater full of teenagers who cheered at Leatherface destroying their counterparts was not a hopeful one. As he put it, the youth’s adulation of Leatherface’s actions:

expresses, with unique aspect of what the horror film has come to signify, the sense of a civilization condemning itself, through its popular culture, to ultimate disintegration, and ambivalently (with the simultaneous horror/wish fulfillment of nightmare) celebrating the fact.

As we move forward, it is important to recognize that two possible conflicting pleasures can emerge from even films with “progressive potential”: an indulgence in seeing socially restrictive norms or forces critiqued and/or an indulgence in sheer sadistic violence (sometimes in the form of revenge). Although Wood does not address female audiences, these conflicting possibilities are worth noting early and keeping in mind. there

Linda Williams addresses the issue of female viewership of the modern horror film directly, and though she does not cite Wood as an influence, she does make use of monsters in combination with Laura Mulvey’s theory of the “male gaze.” In Mulvey’s seminal essay, “Narrative Cinema and Visual Pleasure,” the feminist film theorist used psychoanalysis to argue that patriarchal narrative cinema is constructed exclusively for male audiences and their pleasure. As the Freudian argument goes, the female form and her absence, or lack of a penis, creates a castration anxiety for the male viewer. In order to “master” this anxiety, the cinema makes woman an object in one of two ways (as paraphrased by Williams): “a sadistic voyeurism which punishes or endangers woman through the agency of an active and powerful male character” or a “fetishistic overvaluation [scopophilia] which masters the threat of castration by investing the womanly body with an excess of aesthetic perfection.” Williams suggests then that in the early Universal monster films of the 1930s, which predate the modern horror film, women audiences are ultimately made privy to seeing their own lack or absence on the screen by recognizing the monster as a mirror to female monstrosity. The monster, like the woman, slows down time and disrupts the narrative as their introduction into the film regularly results in “show-stopping” entrances onto the screen. Furthermore, the monster threatens normative male power just as woman does in evoking castration anxiety. In fact, Williams points out that this parallel is literalized in the case of The Phantom of the Opera where the monster appears in a mirror image of Christine Daae.

According to Williams, the Universal monster films provide a progressive potential in that they allow women to be made aware of not just their monstrosity but also of their sexual power. In the case of the vampire films, this power becomes even more poignant as the vampire looks human and sucks the blood of their victim just as the woman takes away the male’s semen during intercourse. Furthermore, the threat of the monster and woman combining in examples such as King Kong and Fay Wray, the Phantom and Mary Philbin, Dracula and Helen Chandler, the Zombie and Madge Bellamy, and Wolf Man and Evelyn Ankers all do in the 1930s and 1940s monster films is man’s worst anxiety realized, and according to Williams, creates a “great excitement and surplus danger” in the female audience. It seems significant for Williams that this courtship between female character and monster take place in order for female audiences to understand the potential power their sexuality holds over males and to relate to the film. As she summarizes:

[I]n the classic horror film, the woman’s look at the monster offers at least a potentially subversive recognition of the power of potency of a nonphallic sexuality. Precisely because this look is so threatening to male power, it is violently punished.

Williams, however, was not so kind in her reading of the modern horror film in relation to women, specifically Psycho and those that follow its formula. According to Williams, the psychopathic killers are shown as human and often afflicted due to a psychosis brought on by issues created by their mother, while the women in the film are the monsters. In films like Psycho and Peeping Tom, women “are increasingly punished for the threatening nature of their sexuality” and their “mutilated bod[ies] are the only visible horror.” Just as Wood identifies a potential subversion and progressiveness within the horror film due to its focus on repression, Williams sees a potential subversion and progressive nature due to its ability to address sexuality, however, she ultimately refuses to locate it in the modern horror film. The opening of her essay aptly summarized her view:

Whenever the movie screen holds a particularly effective image of terror, little boys and grown men make it a point of honor to look, while little girls and grown women cover their eyes or hide behind the shoulders of their dates. There are excellent reasons for this refusal to look, not the least of which is that she is often asked to bear witness to her own powerlessness in the face of rape, mutilation, and murder. Another excellent reason is the fact that women are given so little to identify with on the screen.

In spite of the fact that Williams seems to have misread Psycho by locating the cause of Norman’s psychosis on the overbearing nature of his mother - that is, as an audience we come to find that Norman is his mother (at least he is his mother’s voice – a voice that we, as an audience, have assumed to be his mother) and that he is, ultimately, an unreliable source, therefore, no determination can be made as to whether his mother really was overbearing or if he projects this onto her after he murders her in a jealous rage – the majority of academics have agreed with her reading of the modern horror film, specifically the slasher subgenre, as a reactionary genre. The most notable of these academics has been Carol Clover, whose book "Men, Women, and Chain Saws" has not only been a landmark work in academia but, as Cherry has noted, is endlessly discussed and criticized within horror fandom, however, why she has been critiqued can be addressed once her formula has been explained.

Clover’s work provides only a slight departure from Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze, but it is ultimately a reinforcement of the indictment of horror, specifically the slasher subgenre, as a reactionary genre. As noted earlier, Mulvey states that in order to overcome castration anxiety, patriarchal narrative cinema objectifies women by either sadistic voyeurism or a fetishistic scopophilia. Clover argues in her book that the slasher film forces the male viewer to identify, via an “introjective view,” with the female protagonist, thus engaging in a masochistic pleasure from being frightened by the active male (the slasher) stalking them on the screen. Although this offers a potential progressive move on the part of the slasher, Clover essentially argues that this introjective view is actually an excuse for male on male violence. This female protagonist, who Clover coins the “Final Girl,” is actually a boy who, by the end of the film, will have gone through a rite of passage. This is to say that if the typical slasher film is ninety minutes long, then the first eighty minutes is a masochistic pleasure for the male viewer as he is threatened by the castration anxiety of experiencing the narrative cinema through female eyes as he is stalked by, typically, a large brawny, silent man with an oversized knife (machete, chain saw, or phallic symbol of the filmmaker’s choice) until the last ten minutes of the film when the Final Girl picks up her own knife and penetrates the slasher, usually, to death.

Although the formula does not fit perfectly for every single slasher film ever made, Clover’s theory is virtually iron tight even within the few variances of the genre. For example, horror fans are quick to point out that in Friday the 13th, the slasher is Jason’s mom, however, this argument fails to recognize that Mrs. Voorhees is perpetually armed with a three foot long machete and is, therefore, an object of overpresence and absence that serves as a castration threat to the male viewer. Simply put, the slasher genre often serves as a safety valve for adolescent males to engage in sexual insecurities – either by indulging in the ultimate sadistic pleasure of watching normative teenagers being hacked away by a killer or by indulging in homophobic tendencies or repressing homosexual desires, depending on how one looks at it, by viewing a film that allows them to overcome the threat of another male overpowering and penetrating them.

The other grievance I have often encountered has been that Clover limits her study to male viewers and does not consider female viewers – which speaks directly to the purpose of this paper. Judith Halberstam, in particular, has taken issue with Clover and Williams’s assessment of the genre suggesting that psychoanalysis does not have the tools that are properly “calibrated” for the “nuances” of horror. Williams, in particular, Halberstam has pointed out as offering a “heterosexist” view for her suggestion that women and little girls “refuse to look at horror” – obviously something the paper has already addressed through Cherry’s work. Furthermore, though Halberstam praises Clover for recognizing the “radical potential” horror holds by forcing males into a female point of view, she laments that Clover does not go far enough, and instead states that “the queer tendency of horror film, in my opinion, lies in its ability to reconfigure gender not simply through inversion but by literally creating new categories.”

Although I find it difficult to believe that the majority of horror fans take pleasure in the transgression of sexual boundaries, Halberstam’s methodology touches upon an important point within the horror genre. In analyzing A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halberstam argues that Wes Craven’s film “advocates for an active and aggressive spectatorship which does, as Clover might argue, feminize the audience.” Halberstam states that part of this lies in how the film creates tensions between reality and representation by centering a plot around teenagers not falling asleep or else risking the possibility of losing their lives to a patriarchal killer. Halberstam attempts to exploit this tension between representation and reality by eventually introducing Kaja Silverman’s concept of the “suture.” That is, according to Halberstam, Silverman suggests that spectators acknowledge a “lack” or a “wound” in films – such as a cutting of images or any number of limitations of the cinematic process that hinders its ability to fully recreate reality. The spectator then ignores the wound by way of another quality of the film, usually by way of the narrative. What Halberstam essentially wants to argue is that horror pries open the suture and exposes the wound, and more often than not, the wound is already made available through the monster on the screen – we know the monster cannot exist and yet there it is, so what are we to make of it?

Although Halberstam’s investment in her analysis of the slasher subgenre, and horror genre at large, is to argue for a queer gaze in which horror films like Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2, engages in “the chain saw cut[ting] both ways and the splattering of bodies simultaneously pulverize[ing] otherness and suture[ing] it into new and increasingly odd subject positions,” it does not seem likely that the majority of horror fans are necessarily engaged in the queer pleasure that Halberstam articulates. That said, I would posit that the suture does seem useful in considering that the horror fan’s heightened awareness will often force them to not always take special effects, monsters, and mise-en-scène as “real,” but will instead seek metaphorical or allegorical meaning out of them. Though Halberstam does not quite apply the concept to A Nightmare on Elm Street so thoroughly, the film has much to offer in the way of exposing the metaphoricity of particular aspects of the film, thereby rupturing the suture. For example, Freddy Krueger’s own name, as most horror fans are aware, is a combination of two patriarchal figures from previous Wes Craven’s films – Fred, the patriarch of the monstrous family from The Hills Have Eyes and Krug, the patriarch of the monstrous family of criminals from Last House on the Left. In addition, Freddy only ever attacks when the teenagers fall asleep in already (re/o)pressive institutions such as the school, the prison, the home, and the hospital. In fact, horror is arguably the most self-reflexive genre in cinematic history. For example, in The Hills Have Eyes, just before the occurrence of a rape scene that triggers the showdown between two families, the camera catches a glimpse of a half-torn poster of Jaws. In The Evil Dead, just before the protagonist engages in a showdown with the evil that is haunting the house, and prepares by fastening a chain saw to his arm as a prosthetic, the camera catches a glimpse of a half-torn poster of The Hills Have Eyes. More often than not, these films break up the narrative for horror fans so that they are reminded they are engaged in a fiction that contains a theme, and often serves as a marker that something “terrible” that is of great significance to the plot and the subtext is about to occur. For example, in Hostel, just before the first male victim is kidnapped and tortured, a famous scene featuring Samuel L. Jackson from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction plays on the television set of the hostel’s lobby. Similarly, in the same film, just before the male protagonist enters into the torture chamber that will lead to the climax of the film, famed Japanese horror director Takashi Miike makes a cameo in the film warning him that if he goes in that he will “lose all his money,” thereby reminding the audience of the significant link between capitalism and the patriarchal binary of domination/subordination.

On the one hand, Halberstam’s point is worth considering in that some horror fans do enjoy horror films for their metaphorical critiques of society as they are often desensitized to onscreen violence and instead can take pleasure in a more scathing critique of normative values that other films do not allow for. Therefore, a male or female viewer indulging in A Nightmare on Elm Street because of his or her own disgust with the repressive structures of normative patriarchal society does not seem far-fetched. On the other hand, female viewers watching misogynist slasher films with little socio-political content and a gratuitous amount of blood, gore, and, as Halberstam points out, tits and ass, are arguably indulging in a sadistic pleasure to dominate and to punish those they feel repressed by in a ninety minute cinematic catharsis. Moreover, it would be a far too grandiose of an argument to suggest that the majority of these films contain the same level of sophistication as a film directed by Wes Craven or produced by Quentin Tarantino contains. It seems far more likely that in some cases, there are horror fans, both male and female, who indulge in them due to their content while in other cases, they are using the films as safety valves or outlets for repressed energies, anxieties, and frustrations.

In spite of the fact that this section has largely been a rehearsal of previous scholarship, it sets up various tools that can be used to assess the emergent trend of women horror fans. In following sections, the paper will discuss first the methodology of how data was collected, and then analyze that data by often applying the aforementioned approaches in various methods.

What Women in Horror (and the Men who Follow Them) Watch: Methodology

When I decided to investigate the trend of women’s increased involvement and influence in the horror genre by addressing the films they watch and the pleasures they indulge in, I encountered several challenges that inevitably forced me to make difficult decisions. These problems were primarily rooted in how to compile a list similar to Brigid Cherry’s that was more representative of the women in horror movement. As I will show in what follows, I ultimately relegated my work to web-based discussions that were outside of male-dominated horror websites.

The first problem I encountered in formulating a list similar to Cherry’s was methodology. My previous experience in conducting surveys and polling had taught me to select at least 100 or more subjects randomly from a general population. In this case, the general population would be horror fans and the random sample would be after accumulating names. The ideal situation might be to collect these names from conventions, festivals, or websites and then to select them randomly, however, monetary and time constraints rendered this impossible. I, therefore, decided to limit my study to web-based fans, however, when I visited websites, I recognized a second problem.

The larger horror sites and their attached fan forums such as Rue Morgue, Fangoria, Horrorhound, and Horror.com, were dominated overwhelmingly by males suggesting that women are not necessarily being as drawn into the more mainstream fields of horror so much as they are carving out their own niche – despite the fact that these magazines are employing more women. In fact, as of their January 2011 issue, Fangoria’s magazine lists four women out of the ten total employees involved in the regular production of the magazine – two as “Contributing editors,” one as a “Literary Associate,” and one as “Customer Liaison.” Similarly, as of December 2010, Rue Morgue lists four out of eleven regular staffers that are women – one as “Managing Editor,” one as “Office Manager,” one as “Copy Editor,” and one as “Marketing/Advertising Editor.” Despite the near identical split of male to female ratio of both magazines’ regular staff, the split among those contributing content was far more lopsided, which might explain why women are not to be found as often on their fan forums. Of the 49 contributing writers for both magazines, only nine were readily identifiable as female.

Furthermore, these particular fan forums on websites dominated by males rarely ever include threads involving the lists of fans’ favorite top ten or more horror films; instead, there are threads that are often more specific than that. For example, Fangoria had various threads that included “Top 20 Favorite Horror Films Over the Past 20 Years” and “Top 15 Horror Films from 1970 to 1974.” In both of these cases, all of the participants, except for one, were male. That is not to say that women do not ever participate on these forums, it is only to say that it is a rare occurrence. For instance, in one thread titled “Top 20 Favorite Horror Films of the 1980s,” only three women participated on the thread. One woman’s post might explain the pleasure of why some women engage male-dominated sites:

I'd like to take a second to tell you guys how much I love you all. It brings tears to my eyes because I thought I'd never be able to find people that were just like me. Horror fan/ Metal fan. You don't even have to be both! Fangoria has opened me up to a whole new generation of people. Im [sic] just a kid and to learn that I can be an even bigger horror fanatic like you guys just makes me happier then Chucky getting slain by Glen.

On the one hand, this insightful post displays a desire to be accepted into a community due to an ostracized feeling brought on by the restrictive norms of dominant society. On the other hand, it also suggests that this exclusion is a result of a desire to be one of “you guys.” Although a psychoanalytic reading of this particular post – as well as the others made by women on the male-dominated horror forums – might unveil an interesting set of desires being sought out and pleasures being indulged in by women, it did not appear to be representative of the more significant movement of women becoming more actively involved in horror.

By eliminating both mainstream horror sites and male-dominated horror sites, I narrowed the field to social networking sites, female moderated blogs, and female moderated websites such as Martinuzzi’s Fangirltastic. What I found was that the users of these sites were predominately female, however, still had males participating in the discussions of horror films and horror culture. Furthermore, unlike the previously mentioned fan forums, these female-oriented websites and social networking pages featured more generic “top ten” lists that asked only for favorite films rather than the more narrowed lists such as “Top 15 Horror Films from 1970-1974.” From these lists I tabulated the films mentioned and sorted them out by gender, when I was unsure of a member’s gender due to ambiguity in the username, I contacted the website’s moderator and was provided with the user’s gender. Overall, I gathered 72 total lists featuring over 250 films. Women submitted forty of these lists while the remaining thirty-two were from men. Although I felt the sample size was small and was uneasy about the self-selection that was involved – that is, these lists were open to anyone who wanted to list their films – the results seem significant and worth analysis. As the following section will demonstrate, the list that I have compiled shows significant departures from Cherry’s previous list as well as some interesting intersections.

What Women in Horror (and the Men who Follow Them) Watch: Data and Analysis

In this section, I will consider the differences and similarities between the three lists provided in Table 1. The first list is a reproduction of Cherry’s list of the twenty most frequently listed horror films by “white, well-educated” women who are most likely British. The second list is my own compilation of the most frequently mentioned favorite horror films listed by women horror fans on women-oriented websites and social networking pages. The third list is, again, my own compilation of the most frequently mentioned favorite horror films listed by male horror fans one women-oriented websites and social networking pages.

Table 1 – Three Lists of Favorite Films Listed by Frequency: Brigid Cherry’s List (Female Participants), Web Based Women in Horror (Female Participants), Web Based Men Following Women in Horror (Male Participants)

Note: (t) signifies a tie among frequency of films listed; Cherry does not note if any films were tied for frequency

The task of analyzing these three lists is a chore within itself; however, doing so opens up some fascinating differences and similarities. To sort some of these out, I would first like to look at the similarities. In an attempt isolate what films are shared in common, it might be possible to come to a conclusion about those films before moving onto what separates the lists.

The three lists share seven films: A Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead 2, Hellraiser, Night of the Living Dead, The Evil Dead, The Exorcist, and The Thing. One way to explain the similarities is that these are seven of the most popular horror films made by a handful of the most successful filmmakers the genre has produced. For example, Sam Raimi’s debut films The Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2 are both horror-comedies that included assistance from the Coen brothers, and all three filmmakers have gone onto extremely successful careers; while Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street), George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead), Clive Barker (Hellraiser), William Friedkin (The Exorcist), and John Carpenter (The Thing) have all solidified their names as staples within the horror industry. Another possibility as to why these films made it onto all three of these lists is a desire to show one’s knowledge of the genre by including films that are considered “classics.”

This mastery of the genre or “being in the know” is nothing new to scholarship as Matt Hills has pointed out in his use of Sarah Thornton’s concept of “subcultural capital.” For Thornton, subcultural capital “can be objectified or embodied…objectified in the form of fashionable haircuts and well-assembled record collections…embodied in the form of ‘being in the know, using.” Hills’s application of the phrase in his essay was to suggest that attending certain festivals was a form of subcultural capital – the more festivals and conventions one has attended, the more subcultural capital they gain within the community, however, he briefly points out that this can be applied in the knowledge one has about the genre. For example, “embodied in the [horror] fan’s knowledge of horror fans and auteurs. What I am suggesting is that since these lists are being viewed by the public in some way – in Cherry’s case via her study and in my case, shared in the public forum of the Internet – then these fans would want to demonstrate their own knowledge of the genre and not leave out a film that they consider significant to the foundation of the genre. If this is the case, then the selection of these films can potentially be read as the mastery of a genre rather than an emergent use of the genre by women.

That said, some of these films that are shared in common do have particular thematic elements involved within each. In spite of Robin Wood’s theater experience with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Matt Hills has pointed out in his observation of horror fandom that:

Horror fans are knowledgeable, and seemingly not scared by horror, given their ‘educated,’ metaphorical, and allegorical rather than literalist readings. Aware of horror’s conventions and representations, fans actively ‘read’ aesthetically and thematically, whereas…non-fans appear to watch naively, as if what is represented onscreen is somehow affectively ‘real.’

This observation coincides with horror filmmaker Stuart Gordon’s assertion that the horror fans he has come across are “incredibly well-read” and echoes Halberstam’s earlier observation about horror’s focus of the “sutures” of society. In relation to the similarities on the three lists, this knowledge of fans could explain the inclusion of more socio-politically-oriented films such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, Night of the Living Dead, Hellraiser, and The Exorcist.

Hellraiser, for example, is quite possibly one of the more transgressive horror films of the 1980s. The film opens with a man named Frank visiting what we assume is somewhere in the “Far East,” inquiring about an old relic. An aged Asian man asks Frank what his “pleasure” is, to which Frank responds, “The box.” This “box” that Frank refers to is a Chinese puzzle box that when played with opens up a world of sadomasochistic pleasure and pain ruled by beings known as the cenobites. Frank’s use of the box results in this world opening up, hooks being dug into his flesh, and his body torn apart. The narrative quickly shifts to two women: Julia, who is clearly unhappy in her current marriage, and her stepdaughter Kirsty. In a series of flashbacks, it is revealed that Frank is the brother of Julia’s husband, and that before and during her marriage, Frank and Julia engaged in a torrid love affair. Frank is never shown in any sort of positive manner, and is arguably a critique of unfettered male virility while Julia is, arguably, what might be considered the masculinist female to rise out of the ashes of 1970s second wave feminism. Julia wears suits, sports a short haircut, and when she finds out that she can assist Frank in escaping from the hell he’s been trapped in by feeding him male victims, she uses herself as bait to lure men into their destruction. Although Julia and Frank’s self-centeredness are monstrous in their own right – that is, they eventually sacrifice Julia’s husband so that Frank can have skin to cover his newly reborn body – the true monstrosities of the film are the cenobites. These creatures are beings that were once human, however, their desire to indulge in sadistic pleasures led them to finding the box and being trapped in the world they now rule where they can continually consume victims without fully ever being fulfilled. Between the representations of Frank and Julia as sadist/masochist and the cenobite world of sadism/masochism, the openly gay horror writer and filmmaker Clive Barker is demonstrating a clear dislike for the binary structure that patriarchal society is responsible for creating. It is in Kirsty where the lines have been blurred.

Hellraiser’s female protagonist is arguably Kirsty whose behavior is neither completely in the mould of the traditional female nor masculine enough to categorize her as one of Clover’s Final Girls. Throughout the narrative Kirsty repeatedly refuses to live with her family despite her father’s pleading with her to move into the house with him and Julia, thereby asserting her independence and establishing her rejection of the patriarchal household. Furthermore, unlike past Final Girls, Kirsty pursues and engages in consensual sex with a boyfriend who is neither domineering nor completely submissive. When Kirsty finally discovers Julia’s unsettling behavior of trapping men to bring Frank back to life, she is eventually imprisoned within a hospital where, of course, neither legal nor medical authorities believe her story after interviewing her. Fortunately, before landing in the hospital, Kirsty had stolen the puzzle box from Frank. More importantly, Kirsty has a natural ability to have the box react to her touch in ways that Frank could not get the box to do; that is, Kirsty is able to both open the world to the cenobites as well as close the world. Moreover, just as the cenobites are about to consume/punish her for opening up the portal to their world, she makes a deal with them to deliver Frank to them so long as she and her father is spared. In the final climatic scenes to the film, Kirsty is able to escape the wrath of the cenobites by not only sacrificing Frank and Julia to them, but by taking control of the box. In a poignant scene, just as one of the cenobites are closing in on Kirsty and her boyfriend, Kirsty yanks the box out of the hands of her boyfriend ,who seems incapable of manipulating the box, and uses it to send the enclosing cenobite back to their other world.

Hellraiser

On the one hand, Hellraiser’s setup is a rather poignant critique of the sadism/masochism binary of patriarchal society as Frank, Julia, and the cenobites are all figures representative of the dangers and monstrosities of patriarchal society suggesting that patriarchy exists in forms other than simply the male body. On the other hand, it is not required of the viewer to understand the thematic elements of the film in order to gain pleasure from watching it. Barker’s aesthetic is incredibly gory featuring scenes that include rats nailed to walls and several scenes focused on the skin of rats and humans ripped from their bodies – scenes that would fit well with Halberstam’s understanding of the suture. Therefore, while I have made the earlier assertion that the films the current trend of women in horror have been listing as their favorites is a sign that they have been using the genre to sort out their identity and place within society, this ability for Clive Barker’s Hellraiser to be enjoyed as social critique and as a sadistic tour de force of blood and gore ultimately underscores the problem of understanding precisely what pleasure women are indulging in from watching films like it.

After looking at the similarities of the three lists of films, I have shown that there are at least three possible ways of understanding these shared interests. The first is simply that they are popular films and therefore the same pleasures men get out of these films, women are arguably getting out of them as well. That is to say, any conservative or reactionary reading of the films that might coincide with Williams’s or Clover’s reading of horror films in relation to male viewers would dually apply for women. The second is to display a desired mastery of the genre, which again, would be an assertion of one’s dominance of a genre and no different from normative approaches to culture and society. The third is a possible deeper identification and understanding of the films, which, depending on the subtext of the film could serve to unleash the “potential” that Wood, Williams, and Clover asserted exists, and that Halberstam assures us is often realized. In keeping these possibilities in mind, I believe that in applying them to the differences in the list will provide more answers that will illuminate exactly what is going on in the recent trend of women’s involvement in the horror genre.

In isolating the differences, I have constructed a table below that has filtered out all of the films that any of the two lists share in common. In doing so, we will see that Cherry’s list appears to be reflective of British female horror fans as her studies have come to describe them. Moreover, the films that remain from the web-based female horror fan list appear to address more directly issues of femininity and gender.

Before proceeding, I would also like to point out that since the nature of this study is not to look at male horror fans, the following analysis will not focus on male horror fans (moreover, my analysis of Cherry’s list will be significantly brief compared to the web-based women horror fans in order to stay focused on understanding the current trend that is in question). That said, it is perhaps not surprising, and worth noting, that what remains on the male list are films which feature male protagonists such as Re-Animator and Jaws - a film that Shannon Lark has labeled as “buddy-buddy” horror. I do feel it is important to note, and to keep in mind, that though these films feature male protagonists, they do not seem to, in any way, necessarily address male sexuality or gender constructs in society. Furthermore, I found it fascinating to note that Friday the 13th found its way onto the male list, which coincides with a study conducted in 1997 at Kansas State University that reported that the film was reported the most often as scaring college males in their childhood; and as previously stated, it is one of the few films to feature a woman with a machete as the killer – as a side note, women reported that A Nightmare on Elm Street frightened them the most. If castration anxiety and buddy-buddy films attract more males, why would it be any different for women?

At first glance, Cherry’s list is a scattershot of films in a way that perhaps undermines the notion that sexuality and gender identity plays a factor in what men and women gravitate towards in the horror genre. A closer look at the list, however, reveals that sexuality does, in fact, play a role in the pleasures of British women horror fans. One way to locate a commonality between the films on Cherry’s list is to exclude Army of Darkness – the third film from Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy – and to consider that Bram Stoker’s Dracula, The Lost Boys, The Hunger, and Interview with the Vampire are vampire films (a genre that continues to receive academic attention for its use of sexuality), and that Nightbreed, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2, and The Haunting are adaptations of books well-known for their sexual transgressions. It appears that the women from Cherry’s survey are attracted to films whose themes are lathered in sexuality and exploratory in their sexual transgressions, however, do not necessarily explore female sexuality and identity explicitly. In fact, only in The Haunting, The Hunger, and Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 are there clearly identifiable female protagonists.

One way to explain the films from Cherry’s list is the repressed nature of women’s sexuality in British culture. The fact that these films deal with sexuality in a rather oblique or circumvential manner may be a reflection of what Cherry has noticed in British society where women who like horror films are unlikely to even identify themselves as “horror fans.” In her essay, “Devouring Desires,” Gina Wisker has underscored the transgressive nature of the vampire genre that has been observed within academia. For example, she has quoted Richard Dyer as having applied Kristeva’s work to the concept of the female vampire who “represents the abject because she disrupts identity and order,” as well as Barbara Creed who argued that the female vampire “represents abjection because she crosses the boundary between the living and the dead, the human and the animal.” This understanding of the female vampire as abject and transgressive would go far in explaining the pleasure British female fans indulge in from watching a film like The Hunger in which the female protagonist played by Catherine DeNeuve is a female vampire who engages in relationships with both men and women. Furthermore, Wisker’s understanding the relationship of Louis and Lestat in the film Interview with the Vampire as “explicit…gay content” would underscore the vampire as a potentially transgressive subgenre of horror. This pleasure, however, is almost entirely cathartic and, therefore, contained. That is to say, because the vampire is usually killed off or punished in each of the films on Cherry’s list – either tragically or to the relief of the audience – the transgression never leads to a questioning of one’s own sexuality or place within the social structure. In this respect, the films serve as a safety valve for women to escape from the normative sexual and gender structures that British patriarchy has functioned under for hundreds of years, and though this lack of progression as a result of the films is not necessarily worth condemning, it does explain the attraction of these films to British women horror fans.

It is, therefore, intriguing to consider the differences that arise in the latest trend of American women horror fans. Are they, too, watching films that allow them to “safely” transgress? Moreover, are these films dealing with sexuality and gender in a curiously circumvential way similar to the films British horror fans indulge in? My answer to these questions is yes and no. On the one hand, it appears that the films that stand out as different from the web-based male horror fan list and the British fan list are films that consistently feature the patriarchal family, mothers shaped by patriarchy, and society as monstrous. In this way, American women are engaging in a pleasure that is safely contained within a cinematic viewing. On the other hand, as will be demonstrated below these films often explicitly tackle womanhood rather bluntly. Unlike their British counterparts, American women horror fans are engaging films that deal expressly with the family unit and patriarchal norms set for women as repressive.

Carrie, May, and Ginger Snaps, for example, follow teenage female protagonists who are dealing with sexuality for the first time in their life. All four young women (Ginger Snaps follows two sisters) are social outcasts that are isolated from others their own age and cannot relate to the normative structures of society. In the case of Carrie, this social divide is largely the result of the title character’s overbearing religious fanatic mother that has created an overwhelming amount of insecurity and lack of self-esteem. In the case of Ginger Snaps, it is due to a mother who is “too” girly attempting to overcompensate for her failing marriage and inability to relate to her daughters’ lack of interest in what is “feminine,” their fascination with death and the macabre, and overall despise of all that is “normal.”

Ginger Snaps

It becomes obvious that in both cases, there is the monstrous woman as represented in the mother and it is the onset of puberty that threatens the daughters to replicate that monstrosity, literally. In the case of Carrie, it is the emergence of supernatural powers Carrie cannot control while in the case of Ginger Snaps, it is Ginger’s “curse” of turning into a werewolf. In the former, Carrie is almost immediately chastised by other girls in the girls locker room when it is discovered that she has menstruated for the first time – a discovery that culminates in Carrie being showered in public mockery with tampons by the other “normal” girls. In Ginger Snaps, it perhaps comes as no surprise then that Ginger is attacked by a werewolf and “infected” just moments after blood trickles down her thigh because she has experienced her first period. Moreover, Ginger and her younger sister “B.” are opposed to their mother’s “girly-ness” who deals with problems and obstacles in life by baking cakes and pastries for her daughters. In fact, color becomes of a thematic significance in Ginger Snaps as the mother’s favorite color is pink while the girls’ bedroom is painted purple, and the antidote that winds up being concocted to save those infected with the werewolf curse is also the color purple. In other words, the color pink - a color traditionally associated with the normative feminine – is associated with the monstrous mother, while the color purple – a color that has been adopted as a source of “pride” for the gay community – has been offered as a possible source of salvation for women. At this key moment in life, where a young girl – Ginger or Carrie – is experiencing puberty, they are entering into womanhood for the first time and have now become monstrous threats, not only to others, but to themselves as well.

It does not seem as though it would be a leap to assume that American women, growing up in American society where body image and sexuality is often a source of major anxiety, are attracted to these films because they not only identify with the characters and the plot, but also because it offers both an alternative and critique to normative culture. On reflecting on his work, Stephen King stated that:

Carrie is largely about how women find their own channels of sexuality…which is only to say that, writing the book in 1973 and only out of college three years, I was fully aware of what Women’s Liberation implied for me and others of my sex…For me, Carrie White is a sadly misused teenager, an example of the sort of person whose spirit is so often broken for good in that pit of man – and women-eaters that is your normal suburban high school. But she’s also Woman, feeling her powers for the first time and, like Samson, pulling down the temple on everyone in sight at the end of the book. Heavy, turgid stuff – but in the novel it’s only there if you want to take it. If you don’t, that’s okay with me.

Once again, King underscores the possibility to ignore the subtext if the viewer so chooses, however, it seems difficult to do given the number of films on the women’s list that underscore gender and sexuality. Moreover, King suggested that DePalma’s adaptation of the book “is up to more ambitious things,” and that the film “belongs almost entirely to the ladies.” There is, however, a significant difference between Carrie and Ginger Snaps in both their structure and their ending.

In Carrie, the audience is expected to identify entirely with Carrie. We are consistently presented with her point of view, and very rarely does the camera ever deviate from her narrative. In Ginger Snaps, we are presented with B.’s point of view – the sister who is witnessing Ginger’s transformation and, as the younger sister, arguably a year away from experiencing the threat of Womanhood herself. Although this difference might make Clover’s Final Girl enticing as means to read the film, that is, we are distanced from the woman experiencing the transformation while also threatened by it, the film did not appear on even one list of any of the male horror fan lists and certainly did not appear on the threads of male-dominated websites. This does not mean that Ginger is not a character the audience is incapable of identifying with, as she is presented as conflicted character rather than a wholly positive or negative one. It simply suggests that Ginger is noticeably distanced from the audience.

Moreover, the resolutions to the problems within both films are intriguing to note and problematizes the possibility that this trend of women in horror is creating a new space for women to engage issues of sexuality and gender. The conflict in Carrie ends with the title character destroying the high school during the school dance, and ultimately killing herself in the process. As King has noted, not only does the high school represent a “matriarchy” but this ending “is something that any student who ever had his gym shorts pulled down in Phys Ed or his glasses thumb-rubbed in study hall could approve of.” On the one hand, Carrie presents the complete destruction of one of the major state institutions contributing to her own oppression – the matriarchal high school – and destroys herself in the process. On the other hand, the ending does not necessarily offer a solution to the problem or any sort of progressive breakthrough, but does allow for the possibility to ignore the larger issues of oppressive patriarchal constructions of sexuality and gender in favor of a cathartic and sadistic pleasure for both male and female viewers.

Ginger Snaps, however, is far more intriguing due to it’s open-ended nature of its resolution. In an attempt to save her sister, B. slices her hand and Ginger’s hand open and places them over one another in a blood oath thereby infecting herself with her sister’s werewolf curse. B.’s goal is ultimately to get her sister back to their house where the antidote to end the werewolf curse is stashed. After a series of events that go horribly wrong, Ginger is completely transformed into the werewolf and the two sisters are brought face-to-face in a showdown in their bedroom. In one hand, B. holds the antidote to save her sister and in the other is a knife that she holds out in protection in case Ginger decides to jump. Ginger, of course, lunges at her human sister and the knife plunges into her heart. As Ginger breathes her last breath, B. lingers over the body and places her head over the chest of her werewolf sister. On the one hand, B. has penetrated her sister and averted the threat in a typical Final Girl fashion. On the other hand, both the act of penetration and the ending of the film are ambiguously open-ended. It is not made clear whether B. intentionally stabs her sister with the knife or if Ginger unwittingly lands on it. Moreover, before placing her head on her sister’s chest, B. looks at the syringe that holds the antidote, but never uses it, thereby leaving it open as to whether or not she will use the antidote on herself. Unlike the slasher film where the threat is overcome as soon as the killer is murdered, the threat in Ginger Snaps still lingers – notably inside the body of the female protagonist we have been guided to identify with – thereby leaving the question open for female audiences – what would we do in her position? Become the monster like Ginger, become the monstrous-feminine like mother, or sort out some sort of new identity? Although the film does not offer an answer to the patriarchal threat, leaving this ending open does force the female viewer to consider her own role in society as well as what she may view as most beneficial for herself.

Two of the films on the list, Last House on the Left and I Spit on Your Grave are notorious rape revenge films that do not seem to have the same allure for men. In fact, not a single male horror fan listed I Spit on Your Grave among their favorites, nor did it show up with any regularity on the male compiled lists I found on male-dominated horror websites and fan forums. Last House on the Left also received little attention as only two men listed it among their favorite films, in spite of the fact that the 1972 cult film is Wes Craven’s first attempt at a horror film. Reading what the film means and how to decipher the sort of pleasure a woman might be indulging in by watching the film is difficult to unravel. Rape revenge films are regularly formulaic. They begin with a woman often making the “mistake” to go out alone.

I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

In the case of Last House on the Left, two young suburban women go out to a rock concert and while in the city ask a stranger on the street for marijuana, which leads to their entrapment by a monstrous family of criminals – a father named Krug, his son, Krug’s brother, and Krug’s girlfriend (who regularly proclaims she belongs to no one). In I Spit on Your Grave, a young female writer escapes the pressures and stresses of the city by renting a house out by a lake where she is eventually ambushed by four men who repeatedly, and brutally, beat and rape her.

The second half of the rape revenge film is often dedicated to the “revenge” aspect of the genre where the female protagonist in drawn out fashion ambushes each of her victimizers and tortures and/or murders each of them. More often than not, these films also make certain to include a literal castration scene for good measure. In Last House on the Left, after the girls are repeatedly raped and then eventually murdered, the normative family transforms into a monstrous one themselves engaging in a showdown between the two suggesting a reading of the film that is not too far off from what Wood applies to Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Both normative and criminal families are patriarchal in construction and therefore, capable of evil, sadistic acts. The father rips apart Krug with a chainsaw while the mother bites off the penis of Krug’s brother. Just like Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a female viewer can indulge in the film as a scathing critique of patriarchal society where all such structured families are monstrous; or, a female viewer could indulge in a sadistic pleasure from the visceral revenge taken against misogynist rapists, however, I Spit on Your Grave arguably complicates matters.

The initial reaction in how to “read” rape revenge films like I Spit on Your Grave would be to turn to Clover’s theory of the Final Girl, and she addressed this particular subgenre of horror explicitly in her book in a way that steered slightly away from her theory of the Final Girl while at the same reaffirmed her belief in her theory. Clover pointed out that rape revenge films “repeatedly and explicitly articulate feminist politics.” In fact, had she not been so convinced that males are the consumers of such films, she suggested that the films might be read differently:

So trenchant is the critique of masculine attitudes and behavior in such films as I Spit on Your Grave…that, were they made by women, they would be derided as male-bashing. (Were they mainly consumed by women, they would by the same token be derided as a sop to feminism.)

The aforementioned list shows that women are, in fact, consuming these types of films (at least two of them), and so we are once again faced with the question of, are women watching these films in order to assume masculine roles, or, is there something deeper going on?

It is difficult to conclude that women are consuming rape revenge films as a means to participate in what has often been identified as a traditionally male-oriented genre. Clover has pointed out that the narrative plot is structured entirely around the female protagonist, just like the slasher subgenre, and that there is rarely anything done by the female protagonist that would suggest she has “asked for it” or “enjoys the rape.” Furthermore, the films tend to be an indictment not just of the individual – that is to say, the monster is not just a single psychopathic male – but also of patriarchal society. As Clover noted:

[T]he fantasy of female revenge, which may serve less than savory purposes for the male viewer, brings with it, is indeed predicated on, detailed and sometimes trenchant analyses of quotidian patriarchy…In I Spit on Your Grave, that analysis turns on the dynamic of males in groups – how they egg each other on to increasingly abhorrent behavior, and then, when they are brought to account, how they disavow individual responsibility.

The evidence and outline that Clover provides is that for, a female viewer, there is a pleasure to take in watching patriarchy be destroyed and the victimization and literal rape of women be avenged in often brutally explicit ways. This pleasure, however, may not be quite as progressive as we might suppose.

Earlier it was revealed that a film like Carrie can result in a cathartic sadistic pleasure by taking revenge on the normative structures that a female viewer feels oppresses them, and it appears that rape revenge films seem to function in the same exact manner. Rather than complicate the issue of rape or the dynamics of society, the rape revenge formula has a tendency to reinforce the sadistic violence that patriarchy so revels in. The passive female transforms into active male by the end of the film, and while it may not be pleasing to think of women watching rape revenge as a reinforcement of patriarchy, participating in viewing these films could, potentially, be viewed as reinforcing the sadism/masochism, active/passive, male/female, victimizer/victim patriarchal binary by simply inverting it. That is to say, as we have already seen with Hellraiser, the patriarchal threat does not necessarily have to come in the male form, and a disturbing nature of the rape can lead to equally disturbing effects outside of victimization; however, it might be worth reinforcing that women horror viewership is part of a larger project here.

Although rape revenge films could be viewed as condemning patriarchal values by unwittingly inverting its binary system – woman as active victimizer rather than passive victim – the fact that these two films have shown up on the web-based women horror list is part of a larger picture. As we have already seen, films like Ginger Snaps and Carrie, which explicitly deal with the coming of age of adolescent female to the monstrous form of woman, are also on the list. When viewed in tandem with the rape revenge films, it becomes clear that what women horror fans are engaging in is a viewership that is centered around gender identity and sexuality in America. Included among these films are also Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects, both of which feature a monstrous family much in the same way as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The major difference with Zombie’s work is that his films often have an almost nihilistic philosophy as an undercurrent, as not only is the psychopathic family monstrous, but the representatives of normative society are just as disturbingly monstrous in their own right.

In this regard, Romero’s Creepshow falls into a similar category as the vignettes of the films often depict the normative family as restrictive and, ultimately, monstrous. Although it is possible that the film would eventually be filtered out with a larger sample-size, the film is written by Stephen King and pays homage to the old EC Comics of the 1950s – comics that demonstrate the ambivalent nature of horror. That is, on the one hand, the EC Comics often featured stories that were morality tales – those who transgressed the boundaries of society were ultimately punished for their transgressions. On the other hand, parents often admonished children for reading these comics, and the eventual creation of a censorship board in the United States ironically led to the demise of these reactionary tales that simultaneously carried moral tales while featuring stories of a macabre nature. It is a fitting example that continues to make the deciphering of women horror fan lists both perplexing and surprising.

Concluding Thoughts: Horror Without Guarantees

After having conducted the research and the analysis of these films, I am thoroughly convinced that more work needs to be done in regards to this emerging trend of women horror fans – both on the level of horror fans engaged on web fan forums and in the women in horror movement as well as on the larger mainstream scale of teenagers attending the recent trend of explicit “torture porn” and body horror films. My conclusion on the former is that the current evidence suggests that horror is providing a space for women to work out issues on sexuality and gender, while the latter is most likely a reflection of the effects of mainstream feminism that long ago abandoned the notion of exploding patriarchy, but instead advocates that women wear men’s clothes, climb the corporate ladder, and engage in male-dominated activities.

Initial evidence appears to support both of these conclusions. On Martinuzzi’s Fangirltastic website, issues of gender, and even socialism, continually arise and are discussed and debated among members. Moreover, Neurotica’s Ax Wound fanzine and Women In Horror website consistently attempt to engage what it means to be a woman in American society, even if part of that debate includes, as Michelle Orange puts it, “taking back the knife” and accepting mainstream feminism as an “empowering” source of womanhood. In fact, Marya Diedrichs, writer for Ax Wound, seems to suggest that older women horror fans have a unique sense of self:

I would argue…that an adult female horror fan is…among the most confident of women. While many of us have our triggers in specific films or situations we dutifully avoid, we’re self-aware enough to know the reasons behind our fears. By recognizing the deeper meaning behind slasher and horror films we build a better understanding of ourselves as a gender and our place in the larger culture.

The fact that Diedrichs qualifies her statement with the phrase “adult female horror fan” suggests that there is a difference between adult female horror fans and teenage or adolescent female horror fans. Undoubtedly, this horror community seems to provide a space for women to communicate what it means to be a woman and which horror films are specifically speaking to them about “gender and [their] place in the larger culture.” It is in this sense that there appears to be a schism between those who enjoy the films that address these questions directly and the films that merely invert the dominant/subordinate binary. It is rather telling that Shannon Lark analyzes the phenomenon in a very similar manner:

Wouldn’t it make sense that, in general, men would gravitate towards more dominating archetypal characters since they relate more to the act and idea of penetrating (using force and a phallic weapon) as opposed to a female who internally feels and recognizes and deals with events on a more psychological level? I feel like women who admit they enjoy horror are more likely to delve into the truly fucked up gory and psychological subjects…I think the issue with the ‘feminist’ rape/revenge films is that we, as a culture, are so used to turning away/ignoring horrific events. When graphic rape is seen on film, the female audience is a bit traumatized because we are so used to being sheltered from those horrible acts in the world (Rape camps in Russia in the 90s, anyone? Did the media really cover this?). There is this whole ‘feminist’ idea that being sexy and ‘owning’ your body by using it as a sexual object is empowering. I can see how many women get confused by this. So when they see a woman ‘taking back her power’ by becoming just like her persecutors, it confuses the topic and makes it seem like a good thing.

Although Lark does not situate the rape revenge phenomenon and female horror fans who take pleasure in “becoming just like [their] persecutors” in a specific demographic within the horror fandom or within the current trend of women watching horror films, it seems very possible that it is among the younger or less informed women who would be drawn to the sort of discourse the rape revenge indulges in.

In fact, unlike these more focused spaces like Ax Wound and Fangirltastic.com that address sexuality, identity, and gender directly, the larger mainstream audiences appear to be indulging the same sadistic pleasures that male audiences indulged in during the surge of slasher films in the 1980s, and why wouldn’t they? In fact, it is not without irony that a journalist writing an article for the New York Times would be perplexed at teenage women attending torture porn. In an age when the news media has persistently exploited the missteps and monstrosities of Courtney Love, Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Miley Cyrus, and Lindsay Lohan, the more impressive “head scratcher,” in my opinion, is why would anyone be surprised at the allure horror films have for teenage women? Before the emergence of Lady Gaga, the horror film is perhaps the one location where women could engage in monstrous acts and teenage girls could revel in it. Eli Roth speaking about his film Hostel II appears to confirm this:

With Hostel II…I wanted a movie that would have girls as the central characters, to be a counterpart to the first one. I actually thought I was making a feminist film….Stuart does not want to kill Beth with any tools, he wants to dress her like his wife, who emasculates him, and rape her and choke her to death, and Beth tricks him and turns the tables. I wanted girls to be terrified for a moment, but that terror is only used to make the castration that much more satisfying. Any girl who has ever been in that situation or close to it has imagined how she could castrate the attacker. So in that sense, it’s a feminist movie. I wanted all the girls to scream during Lorna’s torture, and all the guys to scream during the castration. But the idea was that the girls would be cheering so loud you wouldn’t even be able to hear the squealing men. And when I saw it with an audience, that’s exactly what happened.

Unfortunately, although Hostel and Hostel II have remarkably poignant subtexts about capitalism, desire, and pleasure, the feminism Roth refers to is the same mainstream feminism that rewards women for masculine accomplishments. In this sense, the film unwittingly trains women to indulge in a pleasure that males have engaged in over the past thirty years by serving as a “counterpart” to the previous film that had ended in the sadistic pleasure of fulfilling revenge against a male antagonist who tortured and murdered other males. Even though the films are more complicated than this in their critique of capitalism, the pleasure audiences derive is hardly a breakthrough, and perhaps might be worthwhile for the current emergent trend of female horror filmmakers to consider engaging directly.

Over thirty years ago, Michel Foucault offered the following thoughts in his introduction to the memoir of 19th century hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin:

Do we truly need a true sex? With a persistence that borders on stubbornness, modern Western societies have answered in the affirmative. They have obstinately brought into play the question of a ‘true sex’ in an order of things where one might have imagined that all that counted was the reality of the body and the intensity of its pleasures.

In a film genre that is so innately tapped into sexuality and primal pleasures as horror is, and at a time where the consumption of these films is shifting from marginalized males to marginalized females, it appears to be fertile ground for raising Foucault’s question from the dead. Hopefully this time will lead to a socially productive realization of the potential that Robin Wood, Linda Williams, Carol Clover, and many other scholars have suggested exists in horror; however, if the formula of horror plays out as it has in the past, the sun will eventually rise and the normative order will be restored until the repressed is presented with the opportunity to return anew.