Carol J. Clover – Bitch Flicks

‘Felt’: When the Final Girl Comes Home

While the exact parameters of Amy’s scarring experience are never disclosed, hints are dropped, including an awkward conversation about date rape and the artist’s newfound fixation on creating nightmarish costumes featuring exaggerated genitalia and blank faces. We know, without having to ask, that Amy has endured some sort of sexual violation, visited upon her by a man.

This is guest post by Claire Holland previously appeared at Razor Apple and is cross-posted with permission.

The majority of horror movies end with a “final girl” (so christened by Carol J. Clover in her pioneering book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws) conquering her attacker and would-be murderer in a final battle: Sally Hardesty bellowing in the back of a pickup truck as it drives away from Leatherface, who waves his chainsaw in useless frustration; Ginny Field stabbing Jason with his own machete; Sydney Prescott shooting Billy Loomis between the eyes as he lunges toward her in a failed attempt at one last assault. All of these women literally and figuratively stick it to the man, and by extension, to the patriarchy, if only temporarily. But what happens to these final girls – both fictional and, all too often, real – after the credits roll, and they are expected to reintegrate into a society that remains unchanged by their personal traumas?

That is the inherent question in Felt, a micro-budget indie film from Jason Banker about an artist, Amy (Amy Everson, also the co-writer), recovering from an unnamed, but easily assumed, ordeal. While the exact parameters of Amy’s scarring experience are never disclosed, hints are dropped, including an awkward conversation about date rape and the artist’s newfound fixation on creating nightmarish costumes featuring exaggerated genitalia and blank faces. We know, without having to ask, that Amy has endured some sort of sexual violation, visited upon her by a man.

It’s a classic setup for a rape revenge movie, except that there is no rapist–not a specific one that we meet, anyway. Felt is missing the inciting incident, which is surely a deliberate move. Whether or not a rape occurred is beside the point – the point is that Amy obviously feels deeply, painfully intruded upon in one way or another. She continues to feel further invaded and degraded throughout the film, while socializing with her roommate’s aggressive boyfriend or while on a first date with a man who becomes exasperated when she doesn’t acquiesce to his desires. In this way, the audience feels the buildup of these small and not-so-small intrusions along with Amy, from strangers and friends alike. Unlike your typical rape revenge movie, there is not one rapist, not one villain at which to lash out, but rather potential villains everywhere. Society is the villain, and Amy is just doing her best to cope with this new reality.

Her method of coping, and to an extent fighting back, involves frequent use of the aforementioned costumes. Most of them are grotesque caricatures of the male form – Amy roams the woods in a beige leotard with a large, dangling penis and a yarn head; another suit features freakishly bulging arm muscles that she pretends to flex, the camera panning down to her breasts, bound and flat. She dons a mask with tufted hair and stubble when her roommate tries to talk to her about her strange behavior. As things grow too somber, Amy sticks her tongue out of a hole in the mask, causing her friend to physically recoil. The suits are armor and weapon combined.

Later, Amy takes part in a seedy hotel room photo shoot, but instead of getting naked for the pimp-like photographer, she shows up wearing fake padded breasts and a pair of granny panties adorned with a lurid, intricate cloth vulva. The photographer uncomfortably tries to laugh it off and turn her away, but she and the other model, Roxanne, end up taking over the shoot, asserting their power in a situation where they previously felt powerless. The two women become fast friends, instantly linked by a shared mistrust of the opposite sex and, as Roxanne puts it, a desire to “leave [their bodies].”

The friendship is knocked off-balance when the two meet a guy named Kenny at a bar. The encounter begins as just another bonding activity of sorts for the women – Amy and Roxanne pick Kenny up, but then abandon him on the side of the road, laughing hysterically. Later, though, Amy runs into Kenny on the street and they seem to connect, resulting in a tentative, tender relationship that Roxanne has trouble accepting. Because this is a horror movie, we know that nothing good can come of it.

From there, Felt follows the familiar trajectory of the rape revenge flick, and the ending feels as inevitable as it does predictable. That, too, seems deliberate. When a person is stripped of her agency and her humanity, sometimes the only option she can see is to strike back. The movie meanders, often sacrificing tension or a cohesive narrative for the dull ache of authenticity, merely putting off what we know is to come. The sheer predetermination of the story may well be its message. We watch as the plot marches toward its inexorable conclusion, the cycle of violence playing out yet again.

Claire Holland is a freelance writer and author of Razor Apple, a blog devoted to horror movies and horror culture with a feminist bent. Claire has a BA in English and creative writing, but she insists on writing about “trashy” genre movies nonetheless. You can follow her on twitter @ClaireCWrites.

Horror Week 2012: Patriarchy in Crisis: Power and Gender in ‘The Stepfather’

This is a guest review by Allison Maria Rodriguez.

“Wait a minute . . . who am I here?” is the central question posed by Jerry Blake in the 1987 slasher film, The Stepfather. It is a story of patriarchy in crisis. In a world in which “traditional” and “old fashioned” (both characteristics attributed to Jerry) notions of male dominance and the nuclear family are thoroughly challenged, the patriarchal order is undergoing a desperate identity crisis. The film is about a man who marries into a family that eventually disappoints him by not living up to his expectations of the perfect family, so he kills them and moves on to another town and another family. In The Stepfather, it is patriarchy that is broken and unable to find a reality in which its conceptualization of self exists. Without the structural order “the father” is accustomed to, he simply does not know who he is, and rather than deal with this and evolve, he chooses to deny reality, destroy it, and recreate it in his own image, which, ultimately, always fails.

“Am I Jerry, or Henry, or Bill?” — patriarchal schizophrenia in The Stepfather

The Stepfather (the 1987 version) is not like most slasher films; it is a uniquely feminist horror film. Carol J. Clover’s theory of the “final girl”*, the trope in horror cinema that leaves one unique girl as the sole survivor, is brilliant and generally accurate. But our heroine, Stephanie, is not like other final girls. For one, she is one of the ONLY girls in the film. The film is full of empty, impotent signifiers of male power: the male lieutenant, the male therapist, the male high school teacher, the male hero/amateur detective, the male reporter and, of course, Stephanie’s dead father. More importantly, throughout the duration of this film no women are killed. Let me repeat that: NO women are killed. It may not be obvious to some viewers, but it is strikingly obvious to me, a feminist who loves horror films. When the film opens, Jerry (or Henry Morrison, his identity before Jerry) has already killed his previous family, which we know contained a wife and at least one daughter, but during the film only men are slaughtered. They are men who attempt to rescue Stephanie and her mother Susan, but the only person who actually rescues Stephanie is Stephanie.

Stephanie’s character is portrayed as a strikingly healthy, good-natured, 16-year-old girl. The first time we see Stephanie, she is riding her bicycle toward the camera, over hills, the wind in her hair; she is strong and independent. She arrives home to have a playful autumn leaf battle with her mother in the backyard. Both are vibrant and laughing, and the bond they share is evident: these women genuinely like one another and enjoy each other’s company. When Jerry arrives home and Stephanie’s mother, Susan, runs off to greet him, Stephanie is blatantly disappointed. She tells her (male) therapist, “If he wasn’t there, Mom and I’d be alright.” It is important to note that Stephanie is not portrayed as a damaged child who will not permit anyone to replace the unmarred memory of her dead father. Though she misses her father, she knows there is something fundamentally wrong with Jerry, and every time he refers to the three of them as a family or himself as her father, it feels intensely creepy and inappropriate.

The American family, weird and creepy

In Clover’s “final girl” theory, she states that the final girl is identified early on in the film as different from her peers: she is more intelligent and perceptive than her friends, and, among other attributes, she has sexual hang-ups. In fact, these sexual hang-ups are the key to the final girl’s power in that they allow her to identify enough with the killer to overpower him. There are many examples of this in the slasher genre (Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Scream, etc.), but Stephanie isn’t one of them. Stephanie’s awakening sexuality is portrayed as natural, romantic and exciting. Stephanie knows she likes boys and she knows that is perfectly normal, a fact her mother reinforces on the porch after Jerry accuses Paul, Stephanie’s new boyfriend, of attempted rape. “He just kissed me goodnight Mom, and I wanted him to,” Stephanie says. “Of course you did,” her mother responds reassuringly, confirming that, despite what Jerry thinks, female sexuality is completely normal. Though Susan later slaps Stephanie when Stephanie says of Jerry “He’s a creep, how can you let him touch you,” it is also the first time Susan reprimands Jerry, and it is the beginning of the end. She slaps Stephanie out of defensiveness of her own sexual desire for Jerry. The only sex scene in The Stepfather is instigated by Susan and focuses on her pleasure, emphasizing her moaning and showing her face in close-up. In fact, when the camera cuts to Jerry’s face, we can see he is not really enjoying himself at all. He is doing what a man is supposed to do, and obviously has severe issues with sex that the women in the film do not have. In fact, other than Stephanie’s lackluster friend Karen, the only other woman we really engage with is Annie, the records desk clerk who assists our pseudo-hero Jim because she doesn’t like her male boss (patriarchal figure), and she is somewhat attracted to Jim. Though we only see her for less than a minute, it is significant that within 60 seconds her sexuality and rebelliousness are highlighted.

Jerry starts looking for a new family after the confrontation over Stephanie’s sexuality

In his current identity in the film, Jerry Blake is a real estate agent – he sells houses. The audience is given no opportunity to miss this metaphor when, at a family barbeque comprised of the first five families Jerry sold houses to in the neighborhood, Jerry declares “I don’t just sell houses. I sell the American Dream.” The film is basically about the nuclear family, the American Dream, and a dying patriarch trying to force everyone to “play house” with him. The actual physical structure of the house functions visually in the film to illustrate the psychological space of the characters’ power struggles. The basement is relegated as Jerry’s safe space; Freud would call it his unconscious, where he blows off steam by throwing on a flannel shirt and playing with his gender appropriate toys – construction tools, hammer, saws, etc., – implements used to build and create structures, to create order, to fix things. Oh, and he also periodically yells at himself, violently. Stephanie enters this space during the barbeque and witnesses one of Jerry’s rants. Symbolically it demonstrates Stephanie’s ability to see through Jerry’s facade and his promise of familial love and security. The staircase is rendered as an iconic image utilized over and over in the film, usually featuring Jerry at the top via a low camera angle looking up. There are multiple staircases in the film, but they all function the same way, to demonstrate Jerry’s positioning of himself in dominion over the domestic space. The climax of the film is on the staircase, with Jerry trying desperately to climb to the top to reach and kill Stephanie.

Jerry finds Stephanie in the basement witnessing his freak-out session

Both of the murders in the film also feature a house structure. The first is when Jerry kills Stephanie’s therapist who, posing as a potential client, is beaten to death with a wooden beam from the construction of the house Jerry is showing him. The second is Jim, poor Jim, the stereotypical ruggedly good-looking pseudo-hero. Jim’s sister was Jerry’s last victim (when Jerry was Henry), and throughout the film we watch Jim playing amateur detective, hot on Jerry’s trail. He finally figures out where Jerry is right at the end of the film and rushes over to save Susan and Stephanie. He walks in after Susan has been pushed down the basement stairs, right when Jerry is climbing the main staircase to kill Stephanie. Though Jim has been preparing for this moment with firearms training, he is ridiculously ineffective when he cannot even get the gun out of his jacket pocket before Jerry stabs him to death at the bottom of the staircase.

Though Stephanie has not been training for several months to kill Jerry, and does not have a gun, she is quick and resourceful. She picks up a piece of glass with a towel and stabs Jerry in the arm. She then leads him into the attic where, while pursuing her, he falls through the ceiling. This is significant because it is the actual structure of the house that protects Stephanie. During the climax on the staircase, Susan has survived her fall. She retrieves Jim’s gun, crawls to the bottom of the staircase and shoots Jerry twice (misses once) before the bullets in the gun run out (why Jim goes to kill Jerry without a fully loaded gun nobody knows; he doesn’t seem like the over-confident type). Jerry continues to climb the stairs. In the final moment, Jerry’s hand and Stephanie’s hand are both on the knife, the symbol of phallic power. Stephanie stabs Jerry and he falls down the staircase. The last shot of the scene is Stephanie standing at the top of the staircase, a low camera angle looking up. But rather than looking down triumphantly, she calmly sits down on the top step. She seems to be analyzing the scene, and we look at her looking and feel the power of her gaze.

Stephanie is her own hero

Throughout the film, Jerry has been making a birdhouse – a miniature version of his idea of the perfect home. Susan and Stephanie help Jerry erect it mid-way through the film, and we are given a distorted shot from the top of the birdhouse, looking down, emphasizing how high and unreachable Jerry’s idea of family really is. In the closing scene of the film, Stephanie cuts the birdhouse down. We see it lying in the foreground while Stephanie and her mother walk arm-in-arm, happy and complete, back into their home. They do not relocate as many families in horror films do after tragedy because of the symbolic significance of reclaiming their house, their structure. The film shows us that these two women are a complete family. They do not need a patriarch, and they do not need the conventional notion of the nuclear family to be happy – in fact, they are better off without it.

Stephanie and Susan, happy without the “American Dream”

The Stepfather is not only about the collapse of the traditional patriarchal social order, but it is also about the strength of alternative notions of family. You do not only see “evil” destroyed, but you see something positive replace it. I really like Stephanie as our heroine, not only because she is strong and smart and resourceful, but also because she is not represented as an anomaly, as most final girls are. She is a normal, likable, regular teenage girl that takes down the patriarchy. A strong message like this cannot help but be subversive.

*For more on the final girl theory, see Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol J. Clover. It rocks.

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Allison Maria Rodriguez is a visual artist and a writer. She received her BA from Antioch College and her MFA is studio art from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Some of her art work, and her contact information, can be found on her website: http://allisonmariarodriguez.com/

Horror Week 2012: ‘The Strangers’: The Horror of Home Invasion and the Power of the Final Girl

Guest post written by Mychael Blinde. Originally published at Vagina Dentwata. Cross-posted with permission.

The home invasion horror film The Strangers received bad reviews. Like, really bad. Critics wrote things like:

“What a waste of a perfectly good first act! And what a maddening, nihilistic, infuriating ending!”

and:

“Kind of like what The Shining might be if you took out the ESP. And the ghosts. And the chilling atmosphere. So call it The Sucking.”

But The Strangers totally works for me as both a horror fan and a feminist. Here’s why:

As a horror fan:

The film opens with Kristin (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) driving to his parents’ rural summer home in uncomfortable silence. We learn that they have come from a friend’s wedding, at which James proposed to Kristen. Kristen has rejected his proposal, not because she doesn’t love James, but because she isn’t ready to get married.

The sense of discomfort and unease we feel at the couple’s awkward, painful situation transforms into a sense of fear and alarm with a loud knock on a large door at 4 in the morning. We are emotionally invested in the characters when the shit starts to go down — and boy does shit go down. But The Strangers takes its time.

The cinematography contributes to the film’s tone of discomfort: the camera is never steady, and the subtly shaky hand held shots jostle the viewer. Director Bryan Bertino makes great use of wide angle shots, forcing the viewer to strain hir eyes looking for the killer in the peripheral screen space.

Kristin (Liv Tyler) in The Strangers | I spy with my little eye a creepy-as-fuck guy!

The sound effects are equally disconcerting. The Strangers assaults the audience with banging and crashing, and most terrifying of all, with silence. It insists that its audience listen; diegetic sounds like a repeating record player situate the audience in the film’s world. And in case you had any doubts, Liv Tyler can scream.

The aesthetic has a vaguely 70s feel (the car, record player), but The Strangers dates itself as late 00s by the two silver flip cell phones. The 70s props and look, paired with the strong sense of rural-areas-are-scary-places-full-of-psycho-killers urbanoia and the masked* assailants call to my mind The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it is not the psycho killers who invade the house, but their victims.

James (Scott Speedman) and Kristin (Liv Tyler) in The Strangers

The Strangers is a more like Funny Games: it’s a home invasion horror in which the violence is presented as horrible, inexplicable, and inevitable. Director Michael Haneke created Funny Games as a reaction to (and criticism of) the Quentin Tarantino style of glamorized violence. Funny Games explicitly asks its audience to think about why we enjoy watching horrible things being inflicted upon people.

The Strangers doesn’t take things that level of meta cinematic criticism, but it makes its point.

The Strangers | “Why are you doing this?” “Because you were home.”

Sometimes humans do awful things to other humans for no reason at all. Violence is always horrific, and sometimes it is senseless and inexplicable. In the wake of the shooting at the screening of The Dark Knight Rises — a movie that certainly falls into the category of stylized violence — the representation of violence as ugly and meaningless in The Strangers resonates strongly with me.

As a feminist:

Kristin is the character with whom we spend the entirety of the film. In the beginning, while James goes to get her more cigarettes, and later when he stupidly breaks the first rule of surviving a horror film and goes off on his own, the audience stays with Kristen.

Not only is she the film’s protagonist, she’s a woman who is not presented as a helpless idiot. When the shit gets real, she puts on pants.

The screenplay makes a point of establishing Kristin’s affinity for her bridesmaid’s dress. After the couple arrives at the house Kristin, takes a bath, and instead of changing into sleepwear she puts on her dress again. She explains to James that this is the only day she gets to wear it, and says, “It makes me feel pretty.”

Kristin (Liv Tyler) in The Strangers

Director Bertino could have easily left Liv in her flimsy pink dress for the duration of the film.** Not only would this have accentuated her vulnerability, it would have offered ample opportunity to include titillating look-how-sexy-she-is-while-she’s-being-attacked shots.

But Bertino opts not to portray violence as sexy. When masked weirdos attack, pretty is not a priority; Kristin doesn’t hesitate to change into something more sensible for combating psychotic murderers: pants!

It is Kristin who loads the shotgun after James confesses he’d lied about going hunting with his father and doesn’t know how to work it. Ultimately, James fires the gun, but by loading it Kristin proves she isn’t an incompetent damsel-in-distress. Throughout the film she strives to fight back.

Kristin (Liv Tyler) in The Strangers

In Men, Women, and Chainsaws, Carol Clover identifies a film trope common to the horror genre: the Final Girl, the last woman left alive who ultimately wields the metaphorical phallus and kills the monster.

The Final Girl phenomenon is problematic because it is predicated on society’s sexist notion that women are the weaker sex. But scream time results in screen time, and while watching a movie like The Strangers, with whom is the viewer being asked to identify? The masked maniac? Or the woman frantic to survive? (Hint: it’s not the maniac.)

The character of the Final Girl offers women a chance to play protagonists in films marketed to men, which offers men the chance to identify with female characters. Which is awesome.

Kristin doesn’t exactly fit the requirements for Final Girl status, but she is the character with whom viewers of The Strangers are encouraged to identify, and she is presented as woman who is neither stupid nor incompetent.

Yes, The Strangers is derivative. Films about home invasion have been made before, and a movie about a woman being terrorized by a masked assailant isn’t exactly original. But in spite of its myriad predecessors, The Strangers manages to keep things creepy as fuck — all without resorting to tired sexism or misogyny.

* * *

*“Dollface,” “Pin-up Girl,” and “Man in the Mask.” What do you make of the way the masks gender the assailants?

**Liv does end up back in that pink dress in the film’s bleak climax, but she is never sexualized.

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Mychael Blinde is interested in representations of gender and popular culture and blogs at Vagina Dentwata.