Gender roles and gender stereotypes are portrayed in film more often than some of you may think. Everything that happens within a film occurs for a particular reason and the producers do not make their decisions with not motives at all. However, there are some popular films produced by Hollywood and the British Film Industry that portray a dark message about women. Sexism and the gender discrimination towards women has been on going throughout history as you have all read in my previous blog post but I can’t help but wonder why sexism towards women is an issue that society is not acting up, whether it be behind the cameras or on screen. I have always had an interest in film and studying the arts of film yet I have noticed something that had bothered me for a long duration of time, I end up asking myself this simple yet complex question: How comes I see more male characters compared to female characters? From my observation of watching many films in my lifetime, I can’t help but notice that the number of male characters dominates the percentage of females.
I am personally a big, huge and hard-core fan of horror films since I first saw Scream that was made in 1996 with Drew Barrymore, Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox form the infamous TV show, F.R.I.E.N.D.S. I become infatuated with this particular horror film in my adolescent years and this obsession had resulted to me buying the DVD along with a back up copy and I consistently watched this film religiously. However, from watching this film a huge number of times along with other olden horror films from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, My Bloody Valentine, Nightmare on Elm Street film series and all those other cult horror films from the olden times, I had begun noticing how Scream has slightly changed their representation of gender roles.
If you have ever watched Scream and compared it to, let’s say Psycho, you would notice that the leading roles’ genders are completely different. In Hitchcock’s Psycho film, you have the great Anthony Perkins who plays Norman Bates and in Scream, you have a woman, Neve Campbell taking the role of the leading protagonist. During the years in Hollywood and the making of horror films, there has been drastic change in gender portrayal in horror films. Usually, we as the audience expect to see a leading male protagonist attempting to stop a crazy killer on the loose and all his friends especially the female friends getting brutally murdered by the mysterious killer and don’t get me wrong, but murder is what makes a horror film so interesting and great or else, no murder would mean that it is not a true horror film.
On the other hand, recently, Hollywood has been giving female actresses the chance to have a bigger role in horror films rather than being the stereotypical “big breasted, stupid and dumb blonde” helpless character that commonly gets viciously killed off before she engages in the act of sex with another male character. Films such as Halloween and Scream break the stereotypical gender role representation barrier in Hollywood and completely go against what is expected by the audience whom have been conditioned to always expect a male protagonist. I personally adore directors and producers that cast female actresses to play a leading role in not just horror films but also actions films as in the past, women never got these opportunities and there was always inequality in Hollywood especially when it came to the men and the women.
I always asked myself “Why were women so negatively depicted in films and it was never the men?” Women were portrayed; as the sexual icons and beings of films an example is Tatum Riley, a character from the film, scream and played by Charmed actress, Rose McGowan. This character was very interesting to me as her appearance was your typical and conventional “dumb blonde” character however, her personality said other wise and was different as to what I had expected because her personality was not at all “dumb” or “stupid” but her personality is very intelligent, very brave and very snappy when it comes to defending herself and her friends against dominant male characters and I really admired this character due to her courageous and valiant nature however, SPOILER ALERT, it was disappointing for me to see this unique character die in the most idiotic and foolish way and her death is one that would be expected on what a stereotypical “bimbo” death would appear like. I do think that Hollywood needs to immediately improve their representations of women and men in the films they produce as their messages promote inequality against women most of the time and films have a big influence on the audience or the viewers that watch the films that are being produced and Hollywood should reflect on how they could portray a good subliminal yet symbolic message on gender in their films but still make a great feature length successful film.
Since I’ve been so curious on finding out more about the negative portray of female stereotypes, I’d come across a few articles in which had given me the facts and statistics of men vs. women in slasher films and the sex and violence statistics in thriller/horror films. If you watch plenty of horror films, you would notice that during sexual content scenes, men are generally praised and applauded for their “Sexual skills” however, with the women, they are atrociously disciplined and punished by the killer in the film which eventually and always leads to death. Furthermore, it seems that the only way a female can survive a horror film according to “The Rules Of Horror Films” is that the female characters must remain a virgin and stay away from sex, liquor and drugs but the male characters are given the freedom and chance to do what they wish and still happen to survive until the end of the film.
I can definitely see the inequality and the dissimilarities there between males and females. I looked into a study that was conducted by Molitor and Sapolsky and they had concluded that there was a drastic difference on the way male characters were treated and the way females were treated and victimized, from watching 30 horror films, 5 hours of these films altogether were of women and female characters screaming in fear and horror and only less than hour of male characters doing the very same…To me, I can acknowledge the incomparable difference between those two statistics.
Also, I am pretty sure that most of you all that are reading this have noticed that in horror films, there’s always got to be a nude or an almost nude scene for at least one female character! But why is nudity needed especially for the female? Why must the audience need to see a woman’s breasts or their bare nude body? Not only does this increase popularity within the film but also it is a portrayal of sexual objectification of women. Films do not need to film this yet they still do, even knowing the fact that scenes such as this can sexualise women and condition the to straight males in the audience to think that women are sexual beings and only used for sexual actions which is not the way we should condition or teach boys, male teenagers or men. Since sex is prohibited in order to survive horror films, when nude or sexual scenes do occur, the female characters are usually the ones that suffer the most and the longest compared to the male characters that either manage to get away or die a quick death whilst the female characters die the most barbaric and humiliating deaths. I do not understand why it is so popular and desired by the audience to see naked women getting heartlessly killed off, it is as if the audience only crave to see blood, gore and naked women in horror films and they do not pay attention to the story or the narrative of the film anymore and they do not appreciate the arts of film and film making anymore as they take it for granted.
I think that it is important for those of you who desire to get into the film industry whether it is behind the cameras or on the screen to always keep in mind and be aware of how people will treat you as sexism still exists, discrimination against men or women still exist in this world and prejudice still exists. We have not managed to rid of them yet and sexism flows freely in air especially in the film industry where people may be stricter, harsh and have higher expectations of everyone but you must all remind yourself to not accept any sexist behaviour, comments or remarks from anyone as there is nothing wrong with you but with them for not being able to respect and tolerate whether you are a man or a woman. Everyone has the right to be respected and the pressure of fitting into a high company within the film industry should not pressurized you to not say anything or not talk about discrimination but you must demand for recognition.
WRITTEN BY: NATALIE KIM QUITOS