- 'The killer is distinctly male, where his fury is unmistakably sexual in both roots and expression; his victims are mostly women, often sexually free and always young and beautiful... the victims are eternally and prototypically the damsel.' Here she expresses that men are portrayed as superior, praying on women who are seen to be victims.
- 'Dario Argento puts it, 'I like women, especially beautiful ones. If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man'. Reinforces the male gaze, where women are portrayed as sex symbols for the male audience to have pleasure even the directors, however he also puts forward the argument that there's also a female gaze contradicting Carol Clover, who only talks about the female gaze and thus female being sex victims within the genre of horror.
- Victimizing women within horror films are so intense and common, famous figure head directors such as Hitchcock states 'The trouble today is that we don't torture women enough' reinforcing the hidden agreement women are seen to be weaker in society, which is also transparent in horror films.
- Men have the pleasure in violently abusing women and thus has become the normality 'gender lines authorizes impulses toward violence in males and encourages impulses towards victimization in females'.
- Make us as the audience question the representation of women within horror films as 'we are inclined to do in the case of low horror and pornography in particular'.
- Slasher begins with the processes of point of view and identification. Here boyfriends or schoolmates of the girls tend to die early in the film. Ironically policemen, father, and sheriffs are always late on arrival.
- The killer is often unseen or barely glimpsed, during the first part of the film. Furthermore he is commonly masked, fat, deformed, or dressed as a woman.
- The villains never live to tell the tale, such example can be seen with 'Friday the Thirteenth' of 1980. In contrast the finale girl is the only character who lives to tell the tale, she's introduced at the beginning and is the only character to be developed in any psychological details. 'She is intelligent, watchful, levelheaded, in the same way, she's the only one whose perspective approaches our own privileged understanding of this situation. We register her horror as she stumbles on the corpses of her friends.'
- 'When she downs the killer, we are triumphant. She is by any measure the slasher films hero.' Is apparent that the final girl is ultimately the hero, who lives to tell the story.An example of this can be seen in 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' of 1986, where 'Chop Top' is the only character left alive on either side.
- 'We are linked, in this way, with the killer in the early part of the film, usually before we have seen him directly and before we have come to know the final girl in any detail'. It can thus be argued that the final girl along with the audience shares a history with the killer, this is highlighted through camera positions e.g. midshot shows her emotion as well as the villain.
- Social critics state the obvious that the male audience have pleasure and thus cheered up by having women in horror films rape, plunder and murder their screaming, writhing female victims. Others critics on the other hand argue that these same critics 'don't realize that these same men cheer on the heroines, who are often as strong, sexy, independent as the victims, as they blow away the killer with a shot gun or get him between the eyes with a machete.
- '....masculinity is severely qualified : he ranges from the virginal or sexually inert to the transvestite or transsexual or even equipped with vulva and vagina.' Showing how 'Alien' 1979 subverting the conventions of how women are portrayed, showing men to also be viewed sexualised. Stating that '...sexually ambiguous from birth' suggesting that they may possible mental illness so thus cannot be blamed, hinting the conventional horror films such as 'Pyscho' of 1960.
- McCarthy 1980, stated the final girl has a shared history with the killer due to the fact that 'not because she's a virgin, but because all that repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy.... She and the killer have a certain link: sexual repression'.
- 'The tale would indeed seem to be of sex and parents'. Could imply Freud's theory, where he suggests sons were in love with their mothers, and thus diverting the representation of men, and how we as the audience view them in horror films.
- 'The audience, we have said, is predominantly male; but what about the women in it?' Is obvious horror is based more on the perspective of men, as men are mostly the directors.
http://www.wideo.co/edit/742621382536573419 <-- click here to see animation. Thank you
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