The whores in horror are the signature flesh of the slasher flick. Women in this genre have long been given the cold shoulder: cold in as much as they are often lacking for clothing. Often a female character’s dearth of apparel becomes prominent at the pivotal point of slaughter: in cinema, women dress down to be killed. Filmmakers pair scopophilia with the gratuitous gore of killing–leaving viewers to male gaze their way into a media conundrum: When did sexual arousal and brutality towards women pair to become the penultimate money shot?
Doctors Barry Sapolsky and Fred Molitor, in their article “Sex and Violence in Slasher Films” write “Unlike the original horror films, slasher films use graphic violence and sexual titillation to attract audiences.” This formula has proven to be successful at the box office and keeps these films churning out at a remarkable rate. The desire to be the next scream siren crossed media paths in the form of the short-lived Vh1 reality show Scream Queens. This reality TV gem promised that:
Over the course of the series’ eight one-hour episodes, those skilled and sexy enough to command the screen survive. Those who don’t will “get the axe” until only one strong, seductive and stellar actress remains, earning the break-out role in “Saw VI” and the title of Scream Queen.
The season 1 winner, Tanedra Howard, won the chance to show audiences just how seductive and stellar she could look while being tortured.
Cue the Maxim spread.
In a heavily media saturated world, audiences have become overall harder to shock and please. Sapolsky and Molitor write:
As years passed, young audiences required that gruesome images become more intense and explicit for them to become scared…In 1978, a movie called Halloween not only sold more tickets than any other horror film, it broke all previous box-office records for any type of film made by an independent production company. Hollywood immediately tried to tap into the success of Halloween. Films such as Friday the 13th, Don’t Go In the House, Prom Night, Terror Train, He Knows You’re Alone, and Don’t Answer the Phone were all released in 1980. These movies, which are some of the first slasher films, were extremely successful. However, with their increasing popularity came strong criticism. Slasher films were condemned for frequently portraying vicious attacks against mostly females and for mixing sex scenes with violent acts.
A prime example of this type of gore porn occurs in Jason Goes to Hell. In one of many kill scenes, a man and two topless women are shown camping, though frolicking in the woods may be the more appropriate scene description. While the man and one of the women return to their tent to get it on, lonely naked girl #1 goes and gets herself killed. Cut to the tent couple where, naturally, they begin having sex. There is a brief bit about whether or not to use a condom, ending in the decision that this time they can get freaky sans protection. This, itself, is foreshadowing the fate of these fornicators. Nudity abounds as Deborah straddles her man, moaning with pleasure and close to orgasm, when, bam, she is sliced from breast to collar bone. This sneak slaughter attack first arouses and excites with the feel of cheesy porn and then ends with the kill you know is bound to come: a woman cut almost cleanly in half. What a bummer to the audience’s boner.
Maxim Magazine, known for its portrayal of scantily clad women, picked the following clip as its number one horror movie kill.
This popular kill from Jason X involves scientist Andrea getting her face dunked in liquid nitrogen. While struggling with Jason, Andrea’s shit (half of what could be a sexy scientist Halloween costume) rides up revealing to the audience the bottom of her full breasts. While this small glimpse does not equate itself to the arousal of an all-out sex scene, it is intentional. From costuming to blocking, every aspect of the character’s femininity in this scene was meticulously plotted. The fact that filmmakers, audiences, and Maxim find a kill scene more enticing if the woman is sexy and almost shirtless speaks to the fact that modern horror films sexualize slaughter.
The Scream franchise, produced by Wes Craven, poked fun at the overarching tropes common in horror films–particularly the fact that women who have sex will die. Don Summer’s book Horror Movie Freak writes explicitly on the rules of survival in a horror movie. Making the cut at number 1 is: Don’t have sex. Sex = death. This is especially true for women. Women’s sexuality is often exploited in horror with the knowledge that the bad girl will more than likely die. It is a throwback to the most popular book ever published, The Bible.
Within this trope lies a distinctive problem: the pairing of violence and sexuality in a fetishistic binary. Sapolsky and Molitor write:
Social scientists have expressed concern over the negative effects that slasher films may have on audiences. In particular, exposure to scenes that mix sex and violence is believed to dull males’ emotional reactions to filmed violence, and males are less disturbed by images of extreme violence aimed at women (Linz, Donnerstein & Adams, 1989). These effects on male viewers are said to derive from “classical conditioning”.
Sapolsky and Molitor rebuff this idea, believing that the pairing of sex and violence does not occur often enough for classical condition to occur. However, they further state:
The concern over potential negative effects of exposure to slasher films remains. Possibly, depictions of violence directed at women as well as the substantial amount of screen time in which women are shown in terror may reduce male viewers’ anxiety. Lowered anxiety reduces males’ responses to subsequently-viewed violence, including violence directed at women. Accordingly, the desensitizing effects of slasher films may result from a form of “extinction” and not from classical conditioning.”
It appears that no matter how you slice it, this pairing, on unconscious level, does not leave viewers unaffected.
Slasher films thrive on their gratuitous gore. Adding sex is a natural way to titillate the audience and bring in viewers hoping to catch a glimpse of their favorite actress’s nipple. A question that must be asked of this pairing is what comes next? When it is no longer enough to simply have naked women and gory kills in our films, how will filmmakers reinvent the horror genre? One thing I know for sure, whenever I’m on a date that is leading to sex, I’m going to be little black dressed to kill.
Cali Loria is a thug and the mother of a King. She tweets as @realcaliloria.