The rest of that horror essay I was quoting yesterday debates a super-Freudian interpretation of the “final girl” in slasher films— the one who doesn’t die— as a simultaneous castrator and phallus-envier. Cut something off that monster and wave your big knife in the air, ladies. The horror can’t end until the cocks are properly distributed according to your moral fortitude. Meh.
After all the feminist sexuality reading I usually do, it is bizarre to read an essay where somebody takes Freud seriously, even temporarily. Nobody seems to get away with discussing Freud’s take on sexuality without at least a disclaimer about the myth of vaginal orgasms, but in discussing horror apparently it is acceptable to dive into repressed womb envy and castration complexes with all sincerity. Maybe the academic tone of the essay disguised the author’s disdain, but it seemed like she was buying it.
I got a lot more interested when she started pondering why it has been so much easier to have women transition into monster-killing hero roles on film than to spend any screen time on men screaming in terror. Gender as theatre, this is more my speed. It actually made me sad for guys, to think of (mostly) guys in the ’80s making slasher movies for (mostly) other guys and having to kill all the men quickly in the distance while the women got butchered in close-ups. The audience’s only chance to identify with fear in most of those movies was through feminine characters. Men had a very limited range of possible emotions and options for expressing them. How were people supposed to learn about masculine fear? That’s terrible!
The author pointed out that the cliched lack of stereotypical femininity in the surviving girl (always the smart one, or the one wearing pants, or the one who doesn’t put out… also usually the one named Stevie or Georgie or something) might not just be about misogynistically killing all the feminine or sexually active women. She suggests it’s about giving guys a somewhat mannish hero to identify with, since an actual terrified man is off limits. The last girl is the character who realizes the full scope of the danger— she’s the most afraid, and spends the most time being afraid. Those are the interesting emotions, the ones that prompt the shivers and startles. I think it’s terrible that it’s still largely taboo for that to be a man’s role! Hopefully my kids will be able to activate their repressed fears with screaming victims of all genders.
If anybody knows some movies where men scream and cry in terror (preferably half naked?), do tell. I feel like I must know some, but all I can think of at the moment is Deliverance. Maybe some war movies would fit the bill.