Horror and Representation

Who wrote about the ‘Final Girl’ in 1992?

The Final Girl was written by Carol Clover, the Damsel in Distress was the typical woman in films, and only a damsel to masculine rage but she argued that the final girl fought back and most likely lived.  Carol Clover released the book ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws’ which was written about the Final girl and the origins of the hit movie ‘Carrie.’  The three traits of the Final Girl are that she’s androgynous, she fights back and she’s a virgin, for instance Laurie Strode in Halloween has these traits.

Who wrote about existing research on women’s roles in media texts in 1983?

Jeremy Tunstall looked at a wide range of research that had been carried out on gender representation in the media, he came to the conclusion that the media emphasised four key roles woman played, the roles were domestic, sexual, consumer and marital.  In 1992 research showed that men outnumbered woman on the screens 2:1 and the only genre that showed an equal number of males and females was advertisements.  One of the main problems with the findings was that males were shown to have occupations in the media more than woman.  Reading suggests that Ripley (Alien) is more progressive than Lara Croft (TR) because of Lara Croft being sexualised.  He also wrote about the three C’s when discussing the portrayal of woman in some lifestyle magazines which are cooking, cleaning and caring.

Who Wrote ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’?

Laura Mulvey wrote ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ which was an essay about how commercial cinema puts the spectator into the position of an ‘appraising heterosexual male’ by using camera techniques such as POV, CU and reaction shots to encourage the audience to view woman as objects that are present to please the male audience and in the film.  Examples of the techniques were used in Cabin in the Woods in the cabin scene when Jules is sexualised due to alcohol and the Male Gaze.  In the 1980’s Cosmopolitan removed its male centrefold as woman thought it was more comical than sexy, this shows the difference of gender representation in the media.