While women (especially women of color) are constantly misrepresented, the trans* woman is without a doubt the most misrepresented minority group in existence. The horror genre frequently comes under fire for its formulaic uses of tropes and characters, and the “mentally ill trans* woman/psycho killer” is one we should really stop using.
Felissa Rose as Angela Baker in Sleepaway Camp
This guest post by BJ Colangelo previously appeared at her blog Day of the Woman and is cross-posted with permission.
While women (especially women of color) are constantly misrepresented, the trans* woman is without a doubt the most misrepresented minority group in existence. The horror genre frequently comes under fire for its formulaic uses of tropes and characters, and the “mentally ill trans* woman/psycho killer” is one we should really stop using. (NOTE: The asterisk at the end of “trans” is an umbrella term to encompass all non-cisgender gender identities including: transgender, transsexual, transvestite, genderqueer, genderfluid, non-binary, genderfuck, genderless, agender, non-gendered, third gender, two-spirit, bigender, and trans man and trans woman.)
The first thing that needs to be addressed is the depressing use of trans* women or cross dressers in horror and the fact filmmakers are treating the two like they’re interchangeable. For example: Norman Bates in Psychomay lose his cool and dress like his mother when he kills someone, but that doesn’t make him a trans* woman. However, Angela Baker in Sleepaway Camp is revealed as having male anatomy but then returns years later in the sequels happily living and identifying as a woman. I’d make the argument that Angela Baker is a trans* woman. Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs wanted to be a woman, I’d consider him a trans* woman, while The Bride in Black from Insidious and Insidious 2may have been struggling from an identity crisis caused by the years of abuse inflicted on him by his mother. It’s difficult to tell whether The Bride in Black wanted to castrate himself because he truly wanted to be a woman, or if it meant his mother would finally love him. That’s a complex issue and one that could easily constitute its own article.
Origin of The Black Bride in Insidious 2 (see: boy in a dress)
Mey Valdivia Rude is a trans* woman and contributing editor/author to Autostraddle who recently covered this very topic with an incredible article titled “Who’s Afraid Of The Big, Bad Trans* Woman? On Horror and Transfemininity.” Her article is highly informative, but it is her experiences as a trans* person and a horror fan that are truly telling of the impact film has on its audiences. In describing her theatrical experience watching Insidious 2 she states:
As the movie was ending, I sank down into my seat, hoping that no one would notice that I was trans*. I was afraid that if someone realized I was trans*, they might make the connection between me and the serial-killer-turned-ghost in the movie. After all, if you don’t know me, you might see me and (incorrectly) think that I’m just some man who is dressed up like a woman. According to the filmmakers behind Insidious Chapter 2, that makes me creepy, insane and dangerous.
When I think of women in horror films that I can identify with, I can respond with characters like the bodacious and brash Elvira, Mary from Hocus Pocus, and a handful of other sassy, independent women. For trans* women, they have motel owning serial killers, kidnapping lepidopterists, malicious ghosts, and slashers. Considering horror films are predominately made by men and the fact Western society heavily values men over women, it’s somewhat predictable that we’d have all of these “mentally ill” male characters dressing like women. Why would a man want to live as a woman? That’s just insane! Henry Lee Lucas was forced to dress like a girl when he was a kid, and look how he turned out! Mey Rude goes on in her article to say, “The same insanity that causes them to be transgender is the thing that causes them to become serial killers, and causes them to be seen as frightening.” It’s very difficult for the average cis-gendered male to understand what it feels like to misidentify with the gender their anatomy and society tells them they’re “supposed” to be. Film representation is very, very important. Think of it this way–if Jaws made people scared of the ocean andITmade people afraid of clowns, what sort of idea are we perpetuating about trans* women if they’re frequently shown as psychotic, violent, or perverted?
Buffalo Bill putting on lip makeup in The Silence of the Lambs
A recent study showcased that trans* people across the U.S. experience three times as much police violence as non-transgender individuals. Even more terrifying, when trans* gender people were the victims of hate crimes, 48 percent reported receiving mistreatment from the police when they went for help. These statistics are the true horrors. Mey Rude sums it up perfectly:
When people look to pop culture and see trans* women portrayed as dangerous impostors that they should be afraid of, they cease to see trans* women as people and start seeing them as monsters. In the fictional world of movies it may be the trans* women who are frightening and menacing killers, but in real life, those trans* women are far, far more likely to be the victims of horrific and violent murders.
To my knowledge, there is really only one horror movie that showcases trans* women in a positive light, and even then the film showcases drag queens…not trans* women. (Pro-tip, not all drag queens are trans* women and not all trans* women are drag queens.) Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives is a tongue-in-cheek rape revenge film meant to be an entertaining film of empowerment a la I Spit on Your Grave. GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) protested the film at its original Tribeca screening, but opinions on the film are extremely polarized. Considering the somewhat cartoonish film is the only real positive representation trans* women have in horror, I can sympathize with the anger from the trans* community. At the end of the day, I can’t hate the player but I will hate the game. Hollywood (horror in particular) needs a makeover on its portrayal of trans* women, and fast.
Just picture Jamie Clayton as a Final Girl real quick. THAT is a film I want to see.
If horror were to take a page from the books of dramatic films like Dog Day Afternoon, Dallas Buyers Club, or even the smash hit TV series Orange Is the New Black, we can start showcasing trans* women as actual people with feelings and complex thoughts and not just an easy way to tell an audience “this guy is supposed to be a weirdo, so we put him in a dress.” There are amazing trans* women actresses, and they would be amazing additions to the female horror cannon as much more than a punch line or a quick villain. Laverne Cox, Harmony Santana, Jamie Clayton, and Candis Cayne are just a few working actresses that would completely dominate in the horror world. Trans* women deserve proper representation in horror, and it’s about time someone does something about it.
BJ Colangelo is the woman behind the keyboard for “Day of the Woman: A blog for the feminine side of fear” and a contributing writer for Icons of Fright. She’s been published in books, magazines, numerous online publications, all while frantically applying for day jobs. She’s a recovering former child beauty queen and a die-hard horror fanatic. You can follow her on Twitter at @BJColangelo.
Often in feminist criticism female friendships are discussed as a great barometer for the authenticity of the female characters. Strong bonds and healthy interactions serve the dual purpose of highlighting positive female roles and for showing the many dimensions of women as whole persons. I propose that in order to continue the push to show women as well-developed characters we also need representations of flawed female friendships.
This guest post by Deirdre Crimmins appears as part of our theme week on Female Friendship.
Examining the female friendship featured prominently in 2008’s French horror film Martyrs can bring about different conclusions depending on the perspective of the inquest. On one hand, the relationship is the heart of the film and was the force that pulled two young girls through their childhoods at an orphanage. On the other hand, each woman clearly has a different sense of what the basis of their bond is and their friendship is what ultimately leads to their demise. Rather than acting as opposing appreciations of the female friendship in the film, the varied consequences of this friendship function as a testament to the varied consequences of real world friendships.
Martyrs is one of the new wave of French horror films referred to as New French Extremity. These films often feature women as the central characters – Inside and High Tension are two notable examples – though they are ultimately united by their extreme violence. Martyrs is no exception and is quite brutal in its unflinching assaults and deaths.
The story begins briefly in the aforementioned orphanage. Young Anna and Lucie are bunkmates who are both spooked by the dark. Though flashback we see a small glimpse of what horrors Lucie had to endure before the orphanage. Given her state of arrival, it makes sense that she is completely aloof, and that Anna codependently tries to bond with her.
The bulk of the film takes place in present day. Without giving too much away, it is safe to say that Lucie is still haunted by her early life and has not given up her quest to find the couple that tortured her as a small child. She does all that she can to hunt these monsters down, and is unable to function due to this burden of craving vengeance. Anna has been by her side all this time, and sees herself as Lucie’s caretaker. Anna cleans up Lucie’s messes (which can be impressively bloody) and tries to get Lucie to let go of her demons.
When we catch up with the pair, Lucie has just located what she believes is the house of her captors. Given her unstable nature along with the horrors that she believes these people have done to her, the massacre that follows is not surprising. This does not make the assaults any easier to watch, but to see what pain Lucie is in is helps the audience have a bit of compassion for her. With Lucie’s job done, she awaits her cathartic release.
This relief does not come. Anna’s arrival to the house serves as a cool-headed contrast to Lucie’s paranoia. Lucie is self-mutilating, hallucinates, and refutes all of Anna’s attempts to calm her.
Here is where we get to clearly see the dynamics of Lucie and Anna’s friendship. Lucie is not well. She needs someone to watch after her, but is such a danger to herself and others that the task of keeping her intact mentally and physically is impossible. Anna tries as hard as she can to keep Lucie moving towards healing but falls into the Florence Nightingale Effect: Anna is in love with Lucie. Lucie can barely see past the end of her own nose she is so consumed with rage, and Anna cannot see past her romantic feelings for Lucie.
It is this lack of symmetry in their relationship that causes so many issues. Anna must know on some level that she is not trained to help Lucie get better. She is not a nurse or a psychologist, and given Lucie’s far-along psychosis a warm bedside manner is not going to have a significant impact. This nurturing is squarely attributed to Anna’s attraction to Lucie and not to a motherly nature or platonic love. As Anna is trying to comfort Lucie after a fit, Anna takes the opportunity to try to kiss her. A kiss would not benefit Lucie at this moment and is a selfish move by Anna. It exposes her denial of Lucie’s demented state.
Lucie conversely sees Anna as an assistant. She calls her to drive to and from her massacres. Lucie has Anna clean up blood and pushes her to affirm her paranoid notions even when Anna resists placating her.
This is not to say that their relationship is completely negative. Each woman gets a bit of something that they need from the other. More importantly, however, is the fact that they are the only constant family that the other has ever known. From the orphanage to today neither has had another friend or family. The shared history has made then dependent on one another and they would both be completely alone without each other.
Often in feminist criticism female friendships are discussed as a great barometer for the authenticity of the female characters. Strong bonds and healthy interactions serve the dual purpose of highlighting positive female roles and for showing the many dimensions of women as whole persons. I propose that in order to continue the push to show women as well-developed characters we also need representations of flawed female friendships. So often these “bad” women are shown as catty and self-serving, but that is not the only way that women exist in the world. We are not all exclusively either friends or frenemies.
Women have complex relationships that develop and change over time. At the very center of Martyrs we have a sordid and multifaceted female friendship that is equally functional and dysfunctional. The filmmakers have gone out of their way to craft a representation of a friendship that cannot be quickly summarized. While these women are both horribly flawed, their corresponding flawed relationship reflects the complexity that women everywhere experience with their own friends. Though I do hope your own friendships have a lower body count.
Deirdre Crimmins is a staff writer for AllThingsHorror.com and wrote her Master’s thesis on George Romeo. She lives in Boston with her husband and two black cats.
Neil Jordan is best known for ‘The Crying Game’ —aka The Movie Where It Suddenly Turns Out That the Main Character is in Love with a Trans Woman – but he also made two vampire movies, and damn if those weren’t kind of interesting, too. Taken together, they show that the vampire genre can be re-invented in all kinds of ways, as long as there’s substance under the biting and blood.
Neil Jordan is best known for The Crying Game—aka The Movie Where It Suddenly Turns Out That the Main Character is in Love with a Trans Woman – but he also made two vampire movies, and damn if those weren’t kind of interesting, too. Taken together, they show that the vampire genre can be re-invented in all kinds of ways, as long as there’s substance under the biting and blood.
This family is non-traditional in more than one way
Let’s start with the obvious one. Interview with the Vampire is unusually relaxed about its LGBT content, especially given that it came out 20 years ago, in 1994 (a special anniversary blu-ray will be available soon). It’s a mainstream Hollywood movie about a bisexual man finding the self-esteem to leave an emotionally abusive relationship, and it has bankable A-list actors – one of whom famously sues people for saying he’s gay – in the lead roles.
Yet, it’s not remembered as being especially controversial. The characters don’t have sex – in the Rice verse, vampires are pretty much impotent and only get off on biting – but it’s clear that Brad Pitt’s character, Louis, is in two separate homosexual relationships over the course of the film. Interview was marketed as a vampire movie, though, rather than a gay romance, and the fact that people are biting each other rather than kissing apparently masks all other content.
In fact, “They’re vampires!” seems to mask many of the emotional and interpersonal dynamics in the film, which is kind of a shame, since Interview with the Vampire is a very complicated, well-dramatized story about co-dependency and toxic, emotionally abusive or incestuous relationships. The fact that at least two of these relationships are homosexual is treated as No Big Deal by the movie, and could potentially sail right past you – I guess – because of the fangs.
The female vampire, Claudia (played by a 12-year-old Kirsten Dunst), is literally an adult woman trapped in a child’s body, but she’s also a representation of how her fathers’ infantilizing treatment of her has kept her from becoming independent. When Lestat (Tom Cruise) turns her into a vampire, he does it specifically to manipulate Louis, after Louis threatens to leave him – it’s not about wanting a child, or wanting Claudia, specifically; it’s about wanting another thing to control and another avenue to control what he already has. We find out later in the film that what he’s done is forbidden – that vampires generally feel it’s wrong to create something that can’t survive on its own; a creature that will be trapped with you through its dependency.
Claudia is never allowed to become an adult and, since she and Louis are both victimized by Lestat, they form an emotionally incestuous bond that’s based on his taking care of her, and her being (sort of) his wife. She’s afraid that he’s going to leave her; he feels guilty about what will happen if he tries to strike out on his own.
In the end, Louis finds a new boyfriend, who murders Claudia in order to have Louis to himself and, at that point, Louis realizes that he can’t spend the rest of eternity taking care of people – whether it’s Lestat, or Claudia, or this new guy – and he decides to go live by himself, at which point he discovers that that possibility is not as terrible as he imagined.
“They’re vampires!” certainly adds an extra layer of interest to the story, and creates lots of opportunities for gory, stylized violence, but it’s the all-too-boring, all-too-common human dynamic beneath it that makes the vampire stuff worthwhile. It’s a story that spans centuries and uses fantastical elements like, “Look, this child can never grow up!” to touch on deeper reflections about dysfunctional relationships, boundaries, and self-esteem. The fact that it snuck the idea of two gay/bisexual men raising a child together into popular culture is just an added bonus.
Jordan revisits some of the same themes in his less well-known but more political vampire movie, Byzantium (2012), written by Moira Buffini.
Some vampires are made in a cave
More in-your-face than Interview with the Vampire, Byzantium tells the story of Clara and Eleanor Webb (Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan), a vampire mother and daughter on the run from others of their kind who want to kill them.
Most of the story takes place in the present day, but flashbacks slowly reveal the tale of how Clara (who is Eleanor’s biological mother as well as her vampire!mother) was forced into a life of prostitution by a misogynist naval officer, Captain Ruthven, and later stole the map to immortality from him.
The way we get this information is really ham-fisted, and it’s lacking in any kind of subtlety or emotional weight, but the idea is important. Ruthven comes by the map in the first place because local Nice Guy, Darvell, who thinks of himself as a good person, invites Ruthven to join his Secret Special Amazing Fraternity of Super Cool Dudes, knowing that Ruthven viciously destroyed Clara’s life. He feels sorry for her, but the idea that Ruthven is responsible for doing this to her is in no way incompatible, for him, with the idea that Ruthven is the kind of guy you’d want to be blood brothers with for eternity.
When Clara steals the map to the supernatural cave that turns people into vampires (just go with it), Darvell gets pissed-off and tells her that she ruined everything by becoming the first female vampire. She’s forbidden from turning anyone else, but, when Ruthven attacks Eleanor as revenge for Clara stealing his map, Clara brings Eleanor to the cave and makes her a vampire, too. Nice Guy Darvell spends the next two hundred years trying to kill them because they wrecked his super special brotherhood.
Along the way to driving home this point about women’s equality, Byzantium also explores the uncomfortable dynamic between Clara and Eleanor, where they’re more like sisters than parent and child – partly owing to the fact that Clara was so young when she gave birth to Eleanor – and the uncomfortable way in which Clara keeps resorting to prostitution as a way of making money. (This is maybe the only vampire movie where the vampires are not somehow rich, and you can easily trace it to the lack of opportunity they’ve had as women).
In the end – spoiler, spoiler – Darvell finally figures out that he’s being an asshole, and Clara figures out that Eleanor needs to have her own life rather than being a project for Clara to work on.
Byzantium is not a subtle movie, but it’s interesting in that it uses the long life of vampires to trace the social position that women have held in Western culture, over the past 200 years. When we first meet Clara, she isn’t even treated as a person – in fact, she steals personhood from a group of men, and passes it onto her daughter, making her public enemy number one. Flash forward to the present, and it’s ridiculous to suggest that Clara and Eleanor aren’t people – so ridiculous that even Darvell comes around to the idea, in the end.
It’s a very different narrative about vampirism than the one where male aristocrats get to hang out being rich and good-looking, luring women toward them in some kind of magical thrall. It’s a narrative that takes into account that the world looks different depending on whether you’re standing on top, or getting your face stomped in, down below.
Whereas Interview with the Vampire has a more general message that isn’t specifically about being gay, and casually pulls in gay characters, Byzantium is much more overtly political, and much more about articulating an experience that is specifically female. Both approaches are interesting, and both offer something more than “They’re vampires!” to steer the story.
Interview with the Vampire and Byzantium are both movies that use their supernatural elements as a springboard for exploring social and psychological content that’s relevant to the world we live in. Rather than using real-life issues as window-dressing (True Blood), or being purely escapist (Twilight, Dracula), Neil Jordan’s vampire movies (and the source works they’re based on) show how you can re-imagine the vampire in different, less superficial ways, based on what kind of analogy you’re trying to make.
We’re living in a time of vampire saturation, but it’s a (blood) well that doesn’t actually have to run dry. As long as “vampire” is tied to something more than having fangs, I’ll keep watching these movies forever.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.
My sister and fellow Bitch Flicks contributor, Angelina Rodriguez, and I live tweeted our viewing of ‘Lyle.’ We loved actress Gaby Hoffman’s big, beautiful brows and the gap between her two front teeth (these two traits are strong in our own family). Leah often wears ratty, mismatched pajamas, and very few of the characters have styled hair. Overall, we appreciated how real and unmade-up the film’s stars were.
I was excited to review female-directed (Stewart Thorndike‘s) Lyle, a FREE streaming independent film and a reboot of (pedophile) Roman Polanski’s classic film Rosemary’s Baby. Like Rosemary’s Baby, Lyle stars a pregnant woman who becomes more suspicious and more isolated every day, fearing a conspiracy to harm her unborn child. Unlike Rosemary’s Baby, Lyle‘s lead character Leah (Gaby Hoffman) is a lesbian, and her first-born daughter, Lyle, dies under mysterious circumstances. Though billed as a horror movie (and, in some inexplicable cases, a horror comedy), Lyle is more of a psychological thriller than anything, dissecting the ways in which Leah deals with grief, loss, pregnancy, and motherhood as well as paranoia, aggression, fear, and alienation.
My sister and fellow Bitch Flicks contributor, Angelina Rodriguez, and I live tweeted our viewing of Lyle, using the hashtag #LyleMovie. Aside from being really fun, it also helped us home in on the successes and shortcomings of the film. First of all, we loved actress Gaby Hoffman’s big, beautiful brows and the gap between her two front teeth (these two traits are strong in our own family). Leah often wears ratty, mismatched pajamas, and very few of the characters have styled hair. Overall, we appreciated how real and unmade-up the film’s stars were.
Gaby Hoffman and her furrowed, glorious brows.
The cast of the film is almost entirely made-up of women. Only one primary character is male, and he’s a Black man. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is for this jaded feminist reviewer to see a cast comprised of groups that media traditionally under-represents!
The downside of a ratio like this, though, is that all Leah’s persecutors (real and imagined) are other women. Most notably, her partner, June, played by Ingrid Jungermann (the creator and star of the lesbian web series F to 7th). Leah and June mostly have a non-affection relationship with little to no physical contact. June is portrayed as an inconsiderate, perhaps murderous partner who may or may not be using Leah. If June is, in fact, using Leah and her baby-making abilities, is June even actually gay, or is that part of the ruse? I don’t like that I found myself questioning the veracity of a character’s sexuality, and it seemed that Lyle encouraged this suspicion.
June and Leah’s fleeting moment of intimacy
The film also may have been advancing a weird, regressive perspective on motherhood, as even the poster declares, “A mother should protect her child.” Leah does little other than exist as a pregnant woman. Her identity outside of her status as “mother” is largely unknown to us. Lyle seemed to be seeking to normalize lesbianism through the notion of the nuclear family. For instance, the couple moves into a fancy apartment to accommodate their expanding family. Leah stays at home while June works late hours, and June is constantly gaslighting her pregnant partner. It’s all very traditional and falls within the existing heteronormative paradigm.
A pregnant Leah runs down the street, begging for help
On the positive side, we have a self-advocating heroine who is intelligent, clever, and stands up for herself. She never gives into those who seek to erase her fears and her accusations of foul play. Leah is strong and self-preserving (while protecting her unborn child) until the end. Having a hugely pregnant heroine with bushy hair and eyebrows is a beautiful thing. Having the climactic final showdown take place in the birthing room is also seriously badass. Though I didn’t love the implications that could be read into some of the themes in Lyle, it’s moving in the right direction. This is a free, independent horror film starring lesbians that doesn’t seek to exploit their sexuality for the male gaze. It’s very existence is a triumph. Plus, it’s fun to watch.
Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. Her short story “The Woman Who Fell in Love with a Mermaid” was published in Germ Magazine. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
The ‘Scream’ franchise, after all, is about the women. It could be argued that most horror movies are about the women; female victims make for easy targets and garner more of a reaction from the audience. But ‘Scream’ was one of the first mainstream horrors to advocate for equal-opportunity killing: where the men are as fair game as the girls, and two out of the seven killers have been women. More than that, they’ve been the masterminds of the whole operation; using the clueless and fame-hungry men as pawns in their bloody chess game.
Scream 4 marked the most recent installment of the horror franchise, which ended in much the same similar way as the past three chapters.
The killer comes back from the dead, gun-wielding Gale Weathers fires a bullet, and central scream queen Sidney Prescott gets the last laugh, with fellow original Woodsboro survivor Dewey fumbling around on the sidelines.
Fifteen years after the original, it is still unbelievable as to how Dewey is on the police force, Gale is still a ball-busting rogue sleuth, albeit with a lot more Botox than the last time we saw her, and Sidney has finally wiped that weepy-eyed look off her face and is kicking ass and taking names.
In the first installment, Sidney is an ineffectual twit who berates horror movie starlets for “running up the stairs when they should be going out the front door” when, only moments later, she does exactly the same thing!
But as I watched each movie, I slowly started to root for Sid. Not only was she dealing with the fallout of her mother’s death and the wrongful allegation against Cotton Weary for the crime in the first film, but she was also dealing with a rat of a boyfriend, Billy, friends, high school and trying not to crumble under the pressure of it all. So I’ll cut her a break.
In the second film, Sidney undergoes remarkable growth due, in part, to going off to college, but the audience can see in the way Sidney carries herself that she believes the murders are over. Oh, how wrong she was! I especially love the final scene in Scream 2, with Sidney outsmarting (one of) the killer(s), Mrs. Loomis, with the help of Cotton. Gale’s there, too, holding on til the bitter end.
The Scream franchise, after all, is about the women. It could be argued that most horror movies are about the women; female victims make for easy targets and garner more of a reaction from the audience. But Scream was one of the first mainstream horrors to advocate for equal-opportunity killing: where the men are as fair game as the girls, and two out of the seven killers have been women. More than that, they’ve been the masterminds of the whole operation; using the clueless and fame-hungry men as pawns in their bloody chess game.
Ashley Smith in “Final Girl(s) Power: Scream”, writes of not only Sidney, but Gale and Dewey, staring death in the face:
“The success of the narrative is predicated now on not an individual woman, extraordinary and significantly boyish, but on the cooperation of two women who together stab, shoot and electrocute the two killers into oblivion. This moment is also notable because it is one of the many instances in Scream that utilizes very self-referential language, not only does it rework the figure of the Final Girl, it talks about itself reworking the figure of the Final Girl. This moment is an example of how the film explicitly works on behalf of the female spectator. Sydney/Campbell is speaking for and speaking as one of the girls in the horror audience who want to see active female characters fighting for each other, and significantly not even bound by a sentimentalised friendship.”
Sidney and Gale start out as sworn enemies (as murdered bestie Tatum Riley says after Sidney punches Gale: “‘I’ll send you a copy.’ Bam! Bitch went down! Sid: super bitch! You’re so cool!”), but I suppose bonding over the murders of pretty much everyone you know will solidify your connection, whether or not it’s one of mutual affection for each other, or mutual hatred for the killer(s).
And then there’s Dewey. He’s a funny character and David Arquette plays him to perfection, but the sum of his survival involves him always arriving to the party 10 seconds late and missing all the action. Sure, he’s been stabbed a few times, but he’s more of the token surviving male than a fully well-rounded character. As Smith writes, “the text allows for powerful and active female figures [that] it compensates [for] with weak, ineffective male ones.”
Before Scream, to survive as a “final girl” you had to be a virgin. This works well for high school victims, as a lot of high school students are virgins. And hey, this is the movies, so so what if it doesn’t reflect real life?
Rose McGowen as Tatum in Scream
The first Scream begins with Sidney as a virgin, but in the height of the killings, she throws caution her virginity to the wind and has sex with Billy. In any other horror film, this would mean she dies. (Casey Becker, Drew Barrymore’s character, and her boyfriend, Steve, die in the opening scene, as does Tatum, girlfriend of Stu, later on in the movie in the doggy-door scene, above. You might imagine these kids to be non-virgins, as they’re in seemingly committed, loving relationships, but this is never directly addressed.) But Scream, being the “meta-text” that it is, takes a page out of Buffy’s book, and the non-virgin fights to live another day.
Drew Barrymore as Casey in Scream
But the exemplar of a strong female character in Scream is Gale. She’s not only a ball-busting, high-powered tabloid journalist who fights to see an innocent man go free but, as I mentioned above, she’s always the last one standing, alongside reluctant partner-in-crime Sidney.
In Scream 4, she’s a struggling stay-at-home novelist with writer’s block, so when Sidney—and the subsequent murders—return to Woodsboro, she jumps at the chance to help with the investigations. Dewey, and his lovesick underling Deputy Judy, don’t want her interfering with the case, so Gale goes rogue.
It is Gale who uncovers most of the developments in the case, including who the killer is. And, according to Melissa Lafsky at The Awl, she’s breaking a lot of other ground, too :
“She [Courteney Cox] slashes her way out of the 40-something female stereotype, and takes over this movie with a flick of her scorn-ready… brow. Let’s face it: Few film archetypes are more brutal than the ‘older woman in a horror movie’—either you’re the psycho nutcase… or you’re the pathetic victim… And no matter what, you’re ALWAYS an obsessive mother.
Courtney Cox as Gale Weathers in Scream 4
“Cox pulls off a pretty impressive coup, upstaging not only the cute flouncing teens, but also her 15-years-younger self. Her character—now successful, childless(!), and utterly bored with the ‘middle-aged wife’ role—shrugs off all orders to ‘stay out of it’ and leaps back into the murderous fray, husbands, younger blondes and kitchen knives be damned. She takes nothing for granted, and thinks not a second about sneaking into dark corners to catch homicidal fruitcakes (and bitch is 47!!!). While Arquette and Campbell slide into their ’90s cliché groove, Cox reinvents and one-ups, kicking this meta-fest to life and providing the only sexy thing onscreen, gelatinous lips and all. Gale Weathers is shrewd, aggressive, cunning, but never heartless; despite it all, she still loves that stupefied ass clown Dewey. And she does it all while sporting a better ass than the 20-somethings. And… she doesn’t even have to die for it!”
You go, Gale!
Scarlett Harris is a Melbourne, Australia-based freelance writer and blogger at The Scarlett Woman, where she muses about feminism, social issues, and pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter.
‘The Lost Boys’ is a classic 1980s vampire flick directed by Joel Schumacher. It is as famous for its soundtrack as it is for its content. The entire film in fact is exemplified in its main theme–“Cry Little Sister,” by G Tom Mac–from the typical horror themed sections to its classic 80s rock moments down to its choral moments. These sections sum up the film almost perfectly.
This guest post by Bethany Ainsworth-Coles appears as part of our theme week on Movie Soundtracks.
Spoilers Ahead
The Lost Boysis a classic 1980s vampire flick directed by Joel Schumacher. It is as famous for its soundtrack as it is for its content. The entire film in fact is exemplified in its main theme–“Cry Little Sister,” by G Tom Mac–from the typical horror themed sections to its classic 80s rock moments down to its choral moments. These sections sum up the film almost perfectly.
The film itself seems pretty simple; Lucy (and her two sons Michael [Jason Patric] and Sam [Corey Haim] move to Santa Carla to live with Lucy’s dad in Santa Carla. However, Michael falls in with a bad crowd and is seduced into being a vampire by David (Keifer Sutherland), the pack’s leader. There is of course more to it than this (a pair of vampire hunters, a small child, and a generic love interest), but that’s the main gist.
The vampire teens
“Cry Little Sister” links to this film perfectly, the way only the best movie themes do. I’m organizing this article in three subtitled sections, which employ quotes from “Cry Little Sister” in relation to parts in the film.
“Love Is With Your Brother”–Homoeroticism and Forgotten Women
In an article about The Lost Boys it would be a travesty to dare forget the amounts of male bonding and homoerotic tension. The vampires and their culture in particular is shown in this light with the androgynous (and gorgeous) David, the supposed leader of the gang as they steal and kill people to feed. He also seduces Michael into drinking the blood, thus beginning his transformation into a vampire. This is an interesting twist on the female seductress trope as seen in most vampire movies. This twist is best summed up Jeff Allard in his review: “Typically (especially today in our Twilight world), either Michael or David would’ve been written as a girl but in The Lost Boys you’ve got a male bringing another male into the fold.”
This is certainly true if we look at typical vampire stories–e.g. Edward turns Bella in Twilight, Dracula turns Lucy Westernra in Dracula, etc. The victim is often the woman and is seen as weak and inferior; by subverting this, Schumacher includes not only an equal playing field but also huge amounts of sexual tension. Especially as in most vampire novels, films etc. the transformation into vampire is often treated incredibly sexually. While this isn’t the first time a man has turned a man into vampire (Anne Rice’s Interview With a Vampire, which is also homoerotic) it is a very interesting occurrence that should not be avoided. David even takes him to his first feed on human blood.
Michael (Jason Patric) looking lovely
The women throughout this are mainly forgotten and depicted in two major roles: the sister or the mother. All the boys share a bond shown throughout the film. Through the vampires themselves, who are the “sons” of Max (Edward Hermann), to the actual brothers of The Frogs (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) and of course are main brothers Sam and Michael. Most of the story revolves around Michael’s betrayal of Sam from trying to attack him when the first gets too great. Sam chooses to help him and save him from the Frogs’ vampire killing obsession. This is shown equally in the song “Cry Little Sister” with “love is with your brother,” which repeated several times throughout the song, reinforcing its importance in the piece.
“The Masquerade, Strangers Will Come”–Broken Families
Whilst brotherhood may be a strong point in the film, families themselves are not shown to be as sturdy. Lucy has had a messy divorce, which is the reason she and her boys have moved to Santa Carla. They themselves despite their non-functional new lives get along well and cracks only appear when Lucy dates Max and Michael becomes half vampire. However, this family is not the most interesting of the families. It’s not even the Frog family, who we only see very briefly as a whole unit.
Lucy and her family at the end
It has to be Max and the boys. Max is the head vampire but has lost control of his boys and is longing to find them a mother, a role he thinks Lucy would be just perfect for. He does genuinely love his boys though, especially when as he walks into the house the final time he sees David’s body.
However, this twisted family image also encapsulates the portrayal of women. During this film, both Star and Lucy take on maternal roles. Lucy, of course, is already a mother, and Star looks after Laddy (the child half vampire). They are both shown to be manipulated by the vampires into becoming family members and helping the group.
“Thou Shall Not Fall”–Innocence Lost
“Cry Little Sister” features a large section of choral vocals repeating religious-type phrases sung by what sounds like children. These are used to great effect during the final scene, where David is impaled and killed by Michael. During this section, once he is impaled, his face slowly regresses back to a child and how he was before he was turned into a vampire thus showing him as an innocent young boy rather than a dead monster. David’s death accompanied by “Cry Little Sister’s” faded choral section singing “thou shall not die” gives the audience just a glimpse of who he was before Max transformed him, probably like Michael against his will. The audience is presented with the horrible truth that David and all the vampires were just missing children shunned by their leader. In death for both David and Marko (Alex Winter, who is the first to be killed and youngest of the boys) they are taken back to being lost children.
David looks noticeably younger
“Cry Little Sister” is the perfect song for a fantastic horror movie. Whilst the movie certainly isn’t flawless, it really is an excellent take on the vampire genre (plus who in their right mind doesn’t like teen vampire with cool hair, leather jackets and motorbikes who lives in an abandoned hotel?). They are living the twisted teenage dream and the soundtrack portrays that perfectly.
Recommended reading: Boomer Beefcake and Bonding’s analysis of subtext in The Lost Boys
Bethany Ainsworth-Coles is a young writer from England who enjoys overanalyzing things and watching films. She tweets over at https://twitter.com/wierdbuthatsok.
I recently began watching ‘American Horror Story’ on Netflix to see what all the hullaballoo was about, and I quickly became a die-hard fan of the series. I’ve heard some feminist criticism that popular television’s rape trope is abused and unnecessary. Many viewers find rape scenes more difficult to endure than the goriest and bloodiest of murder scenes in film and on TV. ‘AHS’ depicts rape in each of its three seasons (season four: “Freak Show” begins in October of this year), and I’ve been trying to make some sense of these scenes: all very different, yet centered around the idea that rape is its own horror, worse than murder. Sexual violence in film has always been controversial, in part because it works as an acknowledgment of something so many victims are afraid to share or discuss, even with other victims. ‘AHS’s handful of rape scenes reference gender roles, mental illness, and identity politics, and do in fact have a place in the storylines in which we find ourselves so invested.
I recently began watching American Horror Story on Netflix to see what all the hullaballoo was about, and I quickly became a die-hard fan of the series. I’ve heard some feminist criticism that popular television’s rape trope is abused and unnecessary. Many viewers find rape scenes more difficult to endure than the goriest and bloodiest of murder scenes in film and on TV. AHS depicts rape in each of its three seasons (season four: “Freak Show” begins in October of this year), and I’ve been trying to make some sense of these scenes: all very different, yet centered around the idea that rape is its own horror, worse than murder. Sexual violence in film has always been controversial, in part because it works as an acknowledgment of something so many victims are afraid to share or discuss, even with other victims. AHS’s handful of rape scenes reference gender roles, mental illness, and identity politics, and do in fact have a place in the storylines in which we find ourselves so invested.
We frequently discover rape in the horror genre for obvious reasons, and the well-known rape-revenge narrative (I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left) is present on AHS, as well. While this marker of feminist feedback surfaces in the series, the show also works to introduce the rare female-on-male rape scene (a game-changer, for sure–see Descent) along with some very disturbing mommy issues.
AHS addresses all of our darkest fears, but the good news is that horror actually helps us to deal with our personal fears because it gives them shape and helps us to rationalize our feelings, thus unshackling us from the unknown and destroying our dread in the process. The moment something mysterious is given a name, its spell over us is broken, and we’re free to discover something else that goes bump in the night. Girls and women are told that rape is the worst thing that can happen to us (“He could have killed you…or worse”), and it’s no surprise that we find it in every season of AHS thus far, so I think it’s worthwhile to consider how the show constructs these unnerving scenes and to assess our response to them.
AHS offers the recurring theme of characters’ pasts catching up to them, reminding us that we can’t outrun the tragic mistakes we’ve made; Ben impregnates his young mistress in “Murder House,” Anne Frank recognizes Dr. Arden as an ex-Nazi in “Asylum,” and Fiona spends eternity in a farmhouse with the Axe Man for being such a wicked bitch in “Coven.” It would only make sense that the show’s rapists pay for their crimes, and this is our reward for watching some very problematic and complex rapes for three seasons.
In season one, “Murder House,” Vivien (Connie Britton) is raped by “the Rubber Man,” who is a stranger to us for a few episodes, until we discover that he’s actually Tate. The well-intentioned Ben finally forces him to admit that he raped his wife and fathered one of Vivien’s twin boys. Obviously, Tate is troubled; he shoots up his school, killing several students, and also sets his stepfather on fire, which permanently disfigures him, but we root for him anyway–not simply because female fans are in love with Evan Peters’ charm and good looks, but because we want to believe that deep down Tate is a good guy who loves Violet. It’s also significant that Tate dons the creepy rubber suit when he kills and rapes; in this way, Tate forfeits any identity associated with the costume, as if an idea were assaulting and impregnating Vivien, rather than a teenage boy.
We see Tate’s potential to become a good person when he’s with Violet.
Plenty of innocent people are injured and killed throughout the series: the eerie yet lovable Addy is hit and killed by a car in “Murder House,” Grace is savagely killed with an axe by Alma in “Asylum,” and Nan is drowned in a bathtub by Fiona (cinematic goddess Jessica Lange) and Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett) in “Coven” precisely because she is “innocent,” and the guilty parties always seem to pay for their crimes, in one form or another. For example, the mentally disabled Nan (the lovely and talented Jamie Brewer has Down Syndrome in real life) is sacrificed to Papa Legba (a sort of voodoo Boogie Man) as an innocent, but Fiona explains, “She killed the neighbor, but the bitch had it coming,” an example of the show’s signature black humor and also our willingness as viewers to play judge, jury, and executioner as we watch the addictive carnage of AHS. After all, the oh-so-devout neighbor did kill her husband and son both, magnifying the hypocrisy we often encounter in seemingly the most pious of individuals. Whether we’ll admit that we gain some joy and satisfaction from watching this horrid lady drink bleach and die determines what kind of viewers and people we happen to be.
I think one of the themes AHS wishes to convey is that none of us are entirely innocent…or evil for that matter. “Original sin” runs rampant throughout season two, “Asylum,” where many scenes are structured around religion and humanity’s treatment of God as deity, concept, and man’s invention. In this season, Lana is chained to a bed and raped by Dr. Thredson, a man she trusted and confided in before he abducts her. Because of his deep-seated abandonment issues with his mother, he declares, “Baby needs colostrum” and begins “nursing” from the helpless Lana. Since colostrum is the first milk produced during pregnancy, this sentiment is deeply symbolic, as the nourishment ensures bonding between mom and baby. Lana’s rape serves as a catalyst for her journalistic career and bestselling memoir, and she ultimately kills the product and evidence of the crime: her estranged son, who’s just as whacked out as his father.
At times, Lana tries to appeal to the doctor’s obsession with his mother, in order to escape.
After an exorcism is performed on a patient, of course Satan chooses the most innocent and pious resident at Briarcliff Manor: Sister Mary Eunice; yet, we’re not prepared to watch her rape the good-hearted Monsignor. An important current discussion surrounding rape culture is how any woman can overpower a man, and this scene utilizes the binary of good and evil to build on that reality. This scene also works well because the Monsignor seems to be fighting biology, trying desperately to resist what he really wants–sex with a beautiful woman, the very thing God tells him he must resist at all cost. Fittingly, the Monsignor is the one to finally rid Briarcliff of the evil spirit by throwing the sister down to the ground level, killing her (symbolism, much?!). This rape, then, is the climax of the devil’s reign at Briarcliff before he’s sent back to hell. When a strange little girl is abandoned at Briarcliff, Sister explains, “All I ever wanted was for people to like me.” Her possession story can be seen as the Sister gaining some control and self-confidence in both her personal life and her duties at the mental hospital, but sacrificing her virtue in the process. Sister Jude (Jessica Lange) tells her, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, Sister, but it’s a decided improvement,” alerting us to the idea that we can find evil more appealing than righteousness.
Sister Mary Eunice tells the Monsignor, “Your body disagrees with you.” When he tries to explain, “I gave my body to Christ,” she counters, “What has he given to you?”
In season three, “Coven,” we find the rape-revenge narrative when Madison is gang-raped at a frat party in New Orleans. There’s some obvious foreshadowing when she tells a boy to get her a drink and asks him if he wants to be her slave. Within rape culture, Madison’s assault can be seen as “putting her in her place.” When the boys flee the party, she uses her powers to flip their bus and not only kill everyone onboard but break their bodies into pieces. Probably the only kind thing she does throughout season three, Madison helps Zoe to put Kyle (Evan Peters) back together using the body parts of his frat brothers. Madison says, “We take the best boy parts, attach them to Kyle’s head, and build the perfect boyfriend.” The grotesque objectification of the male body (in death, no less) is oddly refreshing. Kyle’s heart, soul, and mind are still intact after he regains his senses, and he eventually falls in love with Zoe.
Madison tells Zoe that Kyle is still “kind of cute,” even when he’s in a thousand pieces in a morgue.
Madison’s tight dress, celeb status, and rude treatment of a random frat guy all point to the possibility of victim blaming, but the witch doesn’t let the young men live long enough to point the finger at her. Their quick exit and attack on the innocent Kyle, however, are enough to confirm their guilt, or rather the acknowledgement that a crime had in fact been committed that night. Madison’s magical powers and ability to turn over the huge bus with a swipe of her hand are reflections of a feminist fantasy: an eye for an eye. This rape takes place early on in the series both to convey Madison’s metaphysical powers and to remind us that despite this alliance with the occult, she can still be the target of a sexual assault. We likely find ourselves joyful that these young boys die in a gruesome way after what they do to Madison. Here, the witch archetype is presented as a source of feminine power and feminist vengeance. The moral of “Coven”: Don’t piss off a witch.
A reflection of real-life headlines, the boys film the attack using their cell phones.
Another female-on-male rape takes place when Zoe visits one of Madison’s rapists in the hospital. We may be hesitant to view this as a rape scene since Zoe is a woman raping an unconscious man. Some critics may even say that the crime couldn’t possibly be rape because of course he would “want it” if he were conscious, but we should be careful not to default to that logic, because it’s the same logic used by rapists in victim blaming. Although this doesn’t seem an act of violence, Zoe rapes the boy because she has discovered that any man she sleeps with soon dies (vagina dentata, anyone?). I suppose this rule doesn’t apply to Kyle since, in a sense, he’s already dead.
Zoe tells us, “Since I’ll never be able to experience real love, I might as well put this curse to some use.”
Indeed, retribution is at work on AHS. We discover that the college-aged Kyle is chronically molested by his mother, and we’re surely cheering when he bludgeons her to death with a lamp. Evan Peters gives a stellar performance in every season of AHS thus far, and acts as an ally when he attempts to stop his frat brothers from raping Madison. While AHS clearly depicts the rape-revenge storyline in “Asylum” and “Coven,” “Murder House” offers a slightly different representation of rape. When Vivien is raped by a ghost, she’s unable to completely make sense of the situation until she becomes a ghost herself after dying in childbirth. And even after Ben forces Tate to admit all the wrongs he’s committed in both life and death, Tate is not granted any forgiveness or reprieve; rather, he’s banished by Violet, who he claims is “everything he wants.” Funny enough, what Vivien wants most–a functional family and a new baby–is partially achieved via several acts of violence: her rape, Violet’s suicide, and Ben’s scorned mistress hanging him above the stairs. In fact, the family’s last name “Harmon” sounds a lot like the word “harmony.”
Vivien thinks it’s her husband Ben (Dylan McDermott) inside the rubber suit.
Biology dictates that we avoid the grotesque, the disturbing, and the bizarre, while AHS pleads with us to confront the demons and monsters around and within us, unveiling the reality that we are capable of the same evils we meet throughout the series. We can learn something from the unbelieving nun, the bible-thumping murderer next door, the ironically retarded clairvoyant: not only are appearances deceiving, but if we continue to construct our own realities from them, it will inevitably bite us in the ass.
Rape sequences are supposed to be horrifying and unsettling, and it’s important to examine how we watch rape and why its inclusion in film and television is not meant to demoralize us or assault our senses, but rather to make us think. Other than the obvious crimes of rape and murder, the show investigates adultery, the gross abuse of power, heresy in its many forms, and betrayal; in fact, there are so many knives sticking out of characters’ backs throughout each season, we’re uncertain who is going to be next. The rapists we meet on AHS inevitably pay for what they’ve done, rendering the series a feminist work and a platform for further discussion of what scares us the most and how we navigate that fear.
Jenny has a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at Alvernia University. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.
Like most horror films, prom horror is about teenage girls and what they chose to do with their bodies. As a culture, it’s a topic we find truly terrifying.
We’re taught to think of prom night is an important moment, as a signifier for burgeoning, barely contained sexuality and transformation. It’s the night good girls become bad girls, shy girls reveal their hidden confidence, and ugly girls shed their glasses or comb their hair and look almost beautiful, imperceptible from their peers.
Like most horror films, prom horror is about teenage girls and what they chose to do with their bodies. As a culture, it’s a topic we find truly terrifying.
We’re taught to think of prom night is an important moment, as a signifier for burgeoning, barely contained sexuality and transformation. It’s the night good girls become bad girls, shy girls reveal their hidden confidence and ugly girls shed their glasses or comb their hair and look almost beautiful, imperceptible from their peers. Prom is also held up as a sort of pre-wedding, “the night” where a couple must have special sex in a fancy hotel room with roses on the bed and special lingerie, and the night when “good girls” decide to lose their virginity. It’s as close as we have to a coming of age ceremony, like a young woman’s first menstruation or first sexual encounter, prom night is a milestone where she can be said to change from girl to woman. In the slasherProm Night, it’s no coincidence that the high-schoolers face the killer’s vengeance on this particular night, when they enter adulthood and are finally old enough to face the consequences of their actions.
Before the pig blood is dropped on her, Carrie feels her dreams have come true.
In the three Carrie films, Carrie White’s first period comes just ahead of her senior prom, and along with it, the full bloom of her telekinetic powers. Her prom also awakens her repressed sexuality, as Carrie admires her body in her prom dress, displaying the tops of her breasts, which her mother has taught her are shameful “dirty pillows” she must always cover, for the first time. In the 2013 remake, Carrie’s delight in her power is also tied to her sexuality as she makes slightly orgasmic facial expressions when using them.
Part of the extreme resentment, Chris, Carrie’s chief tormenter, shows toward her, can be seen as stemming from jealousy of Carrie’s excitement about prom and with it, sex. For Carrie, these things come to mean rebellion and at least initially, in preparing for prom, are empowering for her. Meanwhile, Chris, in the original 1976 film at least, appears to treat sex as a chore. What appears to turn her on, is her hatred of Carrie; she licks her lips before releasing the bucket of blood and talks about Carrie while fooling around with her boyfriend.
Besides the whole telekinetic powers thing, the part of Carrie that has always seemed unrealistic to me is that Carrie, a girl who has been tormented and abused by her classmates her whole life, even goes to prom. It’s always been slightly unbelievable that she would accept Tommy’s invitation without insisting it had to be the set up for a trick. But maybe she believes in what pop culture has always told us about prom night, that it has transformational powers, a strange magic that could make one the most popular boys in school ask out an outcast and end up really liking her upon getting to know her, that all her classmates could see the change in her and honestly vote her prom queen. After all, visually she does transform. She’s beautiful in her new dress, everyone is shown admiring her and as she gains control over her powers, she has become much more confident. With the final show of her telekinetic revenge from the stage, abused Carrie transforms into something monstrous, but understandable. On prom night, she gains her autonomy and reveals and revels in her adulthood.
Lola and Brent pose for twisted prom photos.
Likewise, in The Loved Ones, a 2009 Australian film, a shy, quiet outcast (Robin McLeavy) reveals her true self on prom night. In the beginning of the film, she asks her crush, Brent (Xavier Samuel), to the prom, and is rejected. At school, she appears awkward and weird, and is never really an option for Brent, who has a conventionally attractive, sexually confident girlfriend. Horror arrives when Brent is kidnapped by Lola and her father, and learns that they have been regularly kidnapping teenage boys in search of “the one” for her. Lola’s father has set up a prom night for her in their own house, including a spinning disco ball, showers of glitter, and her favorite song on the stereo, and within it, she is powerful and frightening, a monstrous creature who tortures Brent and believes that on prom night, this may make him love her.
Horror films can also play on our culture’s fear of sex as an act that can change a good girl into a bad girl, by showing a virgin literally turn into a insatiable succubus after her first time. Prom Night 2: Hello Mary Lou follows Vicki (Wendy Lyon), a virginal sweetheart nominated from Prom Queen at her high school, who becomes possessed by the spirit of dead 1957 Prom Queen, Mary Lou (Lisa Schrage). Like Carrie, Vicki’s sexuality is repressed by her religious mother, who refuses to buy her a new dress for prom, as she finds them inappropriately sexual.
“Bad girl” Mary Lou was killed after being named prom queen in 1957
Though it’s a horror film and she goes on a murderous rampage, we are meant to understand Mary Lou is a “bad girl” when she is shown confessing her sexual exploits to a priest and refusing to repent for them. Instead, she leaves her phone number in the confessional, and writes, “For a good time, call Mary Lou.”
Using Vicki’s body, she lures students to her death by promising sex and in gratuitous one scene, chases a rival through the locker room, completely nude and attempts to seduce her. All of Mary Lou’s villainy is tinged by her equally villainous sexuality, including one scene where she, within Vicki’s body, gives Vicki’s father a passionate kiss.
Vicki is an innocent young girl who Mary Lou uses to reap her revenge
The rituals of prom night–getting dressing and applying makeup in front of the mirror, posing for pictures, crowning of the prom queen, and the first slow dance–are familiar enough as cultural markers that horror movies can illicit a strong response by perverting them. Prom horror typically lulls viewers into complacency before everything turns dark, by playing some of these traditional markers straight and suggesting the film is merely a happy story of prom night as wish fulfillment. Lola and Brent’s story is intercut with scenes of the more realistic, wish-fulfillment prom night experienced by his best friend. Similarly, the 2008 remake of Prom Night led up to the big night with scenes of the young characters excitedly getting their hair done, trying on their dresses and sticking their heads out of the limo’s sunroof, all set to bright poppy music. In The Loved Ones, Lola and her father force their captives though a series of twisted prom night rituals, where they eat dinner together, dance under the disco ball, pose from pictures, and are crowned prom king and queen, only through all this, Brent’s feet are nailed to the floor and the prom photos display him more like a trophy than a date, with Lola’s initials carved across his chest. Early on, Lola’s moment of transformation is perverted, as while she changes into her perfect prom dress, she tells her father to stay and he watches, lustful from the door.
Otis forces Riley to be his prom date
2008’s Otis is a similar type of captive prom date film. In it, a pedophilic serial killer (Bostin Christopher) kidnaps a teenage girl, Riley (Ashley Johnson) and forces her to play the role of the girl who rejected him in high school and help him reenact the prom he dreamed of. Through the film, he drags her though a prom tableau set up in his basement: a girly bedroom where he calls to ask her out, a car where he forces her to pleasure him and finally a dance floor where he holds the actual prom. Otis is influenced by an idea of what a classic, even cookie cutter prom should be. In his prom-fantasy, he dates a blonde cheerleader, drives a classic car and is even named prom king.
It’s interesting that pink dresses are so common in these films. Carrie’s homemade prom dress is pale pink, all the better to show off the pig blood stains. Mary Lou’s dress in the 50s is pink, as is the cookie cutter dress Otis buys for Riley. In The Loved Ones, pink is Lola’s power color and her room is full of it. Both the paper crown and the prom dress her father buys her are bright, stinging pink, that nearly glows. Pink is a traditionally girly color, one that signifies childhood and innocence, and it’s no coincidence that the chief wish fulfillment prom film is called Pretty in Pink.
Lola’s prom dress allows her to transform
As a signifier of adulthood, prom night also suggests a dismissal of childish things, shortly after, there will be graduation, maybe college, and the graduating class will move out of their childhood rooms. In a disturbing scene in Hello Mary Lou, a possessed Vicki, all dolled up for prom, sits atop the pastel colored rocking horse in her bedroom, as it comes alive, with a twisted, demonic face, red eyes and an outstretched tongue. Likewise, Lola perverts her dolls and stuffed animals by setting them in sexual positions, showing the uncomfortable melding of childhood and adulthood in her mind.
On prom night, a possessed Vicki plays with her childhood rocking horse
That these girls chose pink dress also suggests their purity is slightly tarnished or that their dresses are white that has been diluted by blood. Moreover, it suggests a junior or training wedding.
Like a wedding, prom night is characterized by patriarchal rituals that make a father responsible for his daughter’s sexuality. In pop culture, fathers joke about having to lock up their daughter on prom night and worry about them getting pregnant or secretly giving birth in the bathroom. It’s the first time they are asked to see their daughters as sexual beings and trust them to be grown-ups going out into the world.
In typical prom rituals, a father meets his daughter’s date when he comes to pick her up and in shaking his hand, symbolically hands her over to him. Otis goes as far as to call Riley’s father, once he already has her held hostage, to ask for his permission to take her out. In The Loved Ones, Lola’s incestuous desire for her father helps paint her as monstrous. As they dance together, she tells him she can’t be satisfied with any of the teenage boys they have kidnapped because he is the only one for her.
Moreover, though the characters in these prom horror stories arrive with a date, they tend to leave alone, as if abandoned after sex, for a “walk of shame” the morning after. In Otis, Riley escapes, still in her prom dress, while The Loved Ones ends with a morning after chase sequence through the outback between Lola and Brent and his girlfriend. In this last fight, Lola appears to lose both her strength and confidence, as if depleted by her prom night. Likewise, after leaving the school gym, Carrie enacts more brutal wrath on her long walk home. In all versions, she walks alone through the town, as if possessed, until she arrives home for her final confrontation with her mother, her final symbolic shift into adulthood.
Carrie transforms a walk of shame into something triumphant
A culture’s horror stories have always reflected what they finds terrifying, by exaggerating it and moving it into allegorical contexts. To some extent, this has always included female sexuality, from the fear of liberated women in Dracula to the virgin/whore dichotomy of the slasher film, and probably always will. Prom continues to resonate as, displayed by last year’s Carrie remake. Although the film has its problems, the basic storyline continues to be as relevant today as it was in the 70s. Prom Horror will likely continue to crop up every few years, shaded by whatever trend in their teenagers’ lives are frightening adults at the time, like the use of cyber bullying in Carrie.
Though the core idea of story–a young woman’s fear and uncertainty of what is happening to her body during pregnancy–is timeless, the execution of the remake is fairly dated. In the original, Rosemary is a naive housewife, yet she still manages to be tougher and emerges a more fully realized character than the remake’s Rosemary who stops struggling and pretty much does what she’s told once she becomes pregnant.
Film Poster for Rosemary’s Baby (2014)
On one hand, the rational behind NBC’s two-night miniseries of Rosemary’s Babyis clear. Take a best-selling event novel, the type everyone was reading and talking about at dinner parties in 1967, and make it into event television. Along with the network’s recent live production of The Sound of Musicand upcoming live musicals and limited series on the other networks, it’s an attempt to bring audience back to live TV viewing, commercials and all.
But Rosemary’s Baby, based on Roman Polanski’s 1968 film, itself based on the novel by Ira Levin (also author of The Stepford Wives), is a strange choice for a miniseries. There aren’t a lot of plot points in the story; basically young couple Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse move in next door to an older couple who quickly grow fond of them; after a night of dark hallucinations she can barely remember, Rosemary becomes pregnant, and goes through a difficult pregnancy where she loses weight and craves raw meat and awakens after giving birth to discover the baby is the antichrist and that earlier she was raped by the devil.
As a result, the story is stretched thin over a four-hour runtime and many new and ultimately pointless plots are added in, along with increased gore and violence in comparison to the original film. Perhaps the choice of story was influenced by the recent popularity of horror TV programs, like American Horror Story and Hannibal.
The miniseries also carries the baggage of its association with Polanski, an old friend of the miniseries’ director Agnieszka Holland. Though the original film is commonly accepted as a masterpiece, many critics, Hollywood players, and viewers have spoken on their desire to boycott his work (through just as many have spoken out in his support) due to his sexual abuse of a child. Choosing Rosemary’s Baby out of all the classic films available to remake suggests at least a tacit approval of Polanski and Holland had even planned to give him a cameo role, though scheduling didn’t work out.
Rosemary is told her pregnancy is making her look like a zombie
In interviews, Holland has mentioned her desire to portray Rosemary’s Baby from a “post-feminist” standpoint and to make the character stronger and more active. Postnatal and prenatal depression are important to her adaptation, where horror is derived from the nature of pregnancy where, as she says, Rosemary is “dependent on the people who decide, instead of her, what to do with her body.”
To modernize the story, 2014’s Rosemary (Zoe Saldana) is a former ballet dancer used to be being the primary breadwinner, while her husband Guy (Patrick J. Adams) struggles to write a novel. After a devastating miscarriage, the couple leaves New York for Paris, where Guy will take a one-year teaching job at the Sorbonne and attempt to support her while she recovers from the trauma.
Though the core idea of story–a young woman’s fear and uncertainty of what is happening to her body during pregnancy–is timeless, the execution of the remake is fairly dated. In the original, Rosemary, played by Mia Farrow, is a naive housewife who spends her days decorating her apartment and buoying her husband’s acting ambitions, yet she still manages to be tougher and emerges a more fully realized character than the remake’s Rosemary who stops struggling and pretty much does what she’s told once she becomes pregnant. The casting of action star Saldana as Rosemary suggests the character is meant to be strong, independent women who takes control of her own life.
And at first, she appears to be. In part one, there’s even an action sequence where Rosemary chases a man who stole her purse and gets called brave by a cop. For a while, she acts as an amateur detective, attempting to investigate the disappearance of the couple who lived in her apartment previously, who appear to have met a tragic end; however, throughout part two, which chronicles her pregnancy, she floats around, quiet and weak, allowing her husband, neighbors and doctors to tell her how to take care of herself, ceding her investigation to a police detective and a friend.
In the original, the true star of the story is Rosemary’s increasing paranoia and the suspense and darkness that manage to permeate the film despite most of action taking place indoors in brightly lit rooms. The miniseries could have given Rosemary more agency without changing her actions too greatly if it brought viewers deeper into her mind and dreams; despite the title and her near constant presence onscreen, for most of the second half, it’s difficult to intuit what Rosemary is thinking.
Rosemary’s investigation falls away after she becomes pregnant
With the internet as a resource for medical information, it would be very easy for 2014’s Rosemary to research the herbs in a drink she’s given and the host of prenatal conditions her doctor claims are perfectly normal. Though doctors in both versions tell her not to read pregnancy books or ask her friends about their experiences, it’s difficult to believe a modern-day woman would agree to stay so ignorant about her own body, accept chastisement for daring to question her doctor’s medical advice and refuse to consult friends, mommy blogs or even WebMD on her condition. It’s believable enough in the 60s, an era when men were expected to know more about women’s bodies than they did. It recalls a conversation in an episode of Masters of Sex, set around the same time, where a group of women agreed that they found the very idea of a female gynecologist creepy. The addition of an earlier to miscarriage to the plot appears to be an attempt to take this into account, suggesting Rosemary put up with the pain because she is determined to have a heathy baby this time and do everything her doctor tells her that maybe she didn’t do last time.
The choice of Paris as a setting appeals to the city’s place in the North American cultural imagination as the seat of old world sophistication and mystery. The move may also be an attempt to isolate the characters in a strange city where they don’t know the language, but this is idea is quickly abandoned. In an early scene, Rosemary complains that it’s difficult to be at a party where everyone is speaking French, but the partygoers realize this and quickly switch to English, which they default to for the rest of the series.
The original’s Castevets, Roman and Minnie (Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon), an elderly Manhattan couple, are replaced by Roman and Margaux Castevets (Jason Isaacs and Carole Bouquet), much younger, urbane Parisians, whose relationship with the Woodhouses is suspicious from the very beginning. Much of the appeal of the Castavets in the original was the supposed harmlessness–yes, they were noisy and eccentric, but no one would ever suspect that a couple of kindly grandparent figures were satanists. But it’s hard to understand why the Woodhouses originally trust the 2014 Castavets, who impose themselves into the lives of a young couple they barely know, to the point of offering them a lavish apartment for free and inviting them to fetish parties.
Roman lounges in the trappings of his extreme wealth
More and more, it seems that our tendency when viewing modern movies is to be suspicious of the characters who seem the most trustworthy; charming, handsome psychopaths have become the norm. Perhaps that was the thinking behind the change, that it would be too easy to immediately suspect something was off about sweet old folks, better to do away with suspense all together and attempt to seduce viewers with glamour, foreign accents, and wealth. The things we yearn for, grow jealous of and thus, can be truly terrified of.
Despite its too-long runtime, the miniseries manages to feel rushed. By sticking too faithfully to the 1968 film, intriguing original plot lines are left no room to develop and seem pointless. We never find out why the building’s superintendent walks around on all fours like a dog or delve into the relationships between Guy and Margaux and between Guy and Rosemary’s friend Julia. There’s also the odd inclusion of multiple kisses between Rosemary and Margaux, which are linked to Margaux’s satanic ritual and suggest lesbianism goes hand-in-hand with devil worship. The miniseries gives a needlessly complicated solution to the mystery of the missing couple and the devil’s identity, suggesting Roman is also the devil, an immortal named Steven Mercato and maybe even Rosemary’s cat.
The Devil appears infrequently in the form of Steven Mercato
Moreover, because the miniseries is structured so that Rosemary is only pregnant in the second half, much of the original’s prolonged post-birth scenes are eliminated. This leads the story to rush through the last act, taking away a great deal of the strength and refusal to submit that the character displayed in these scenes.
Though Holland has spoken of her feminist intentions and Rosemary’s powerlessness is obvious, it’s unclear from the miniseries that Holland is making is a feminist statement about it. There’s a lot of material to explore in the story that Holland easily use make this point, but ignores. In both versions, Rosemary is shocked to find that her husband supposedly had sex with her while she was unconscious. She quickly moves on and it’s never acknowledged that even in the version of the night’s events that Rosemary accepts, the child was conceived through martial rape. In addition, the original attempts to explain Rosemary’s meekness through references to her strict Catholic upbringing; no attempts are made in the miniseries to suggest such a background for Saldana’s Rosemary. Instead, the only mention of religion in the miniseries is the dead woman’s Coptic Christian faith.
There’s also a clear feminist idea in the basic plot, which suggests that women are often discredited and called crazy because of the functions of their bodies, commonly seem in the idea that periods make women too irrational to take leadership roles or in the idea of “pregnancy brain” as explored in recent sitcoms. When Rosemary suggests that something is wrong in her pregnancy and her neighbors are witches, she’s dismissed as being delusional and experiencing pre-partum psychosis. When, in the original, Rosemary says she can hear the baby crying next door, it’s dismissed as post-partum depression. Holland appears uninterested in this theme, as she told the New York Times, “We’re not sure if it really doesn’t happen inside her head.”
Rosemary accepts the devil-baby as her child
Holland could be suggesting that the story is meant to be allegorical. In the miniseries, Guy says he is surprised he is still able to find Rosemary attractive, though he refers to his decision to let the devil rape her. This statement recalls a woman’s fear that pregnancy will make her unattractive to her partner or cause her to be seen as an incubator. Rosemary’s discovery that the baby is the son of the devil and her desire to hurt him could refer to post-partum depression. However, if these are attempts at allegory, they are unclear and appears half-hearted.
I think the most interesting element of the story for a modern viewer should be the relationship between the Woodhouses. There was nothing special about their relationship at the start; they were young, attractive and constantly about to tear each other’s clothes off, but never had the chemistry, shared interests or inside jokes that would make the eventual deterioration of their partnership compelling. Guy is a secret sexist masquerading as a modern equalitarian man; early on his suggestion to Rosemary that he wants to support her for awhile seems innocent, but in light of his betrayal of her later, suggests he may have felt emasculated by her earnings. He wants to be a famous writer, but when he’s stalled by writer’s block, he’s easily convinced to sell his wife and her reproductive capabilities as if they were his property. Rosemary becomes a victim without ever being given a choice. Rosemary’s only choices come after the birth when she decides to help raise her child, suggesting that her maternal love has a stronger hold over her than anger over her abuse or fear of her son’s satanic paternity. The couple are each vulnerable to gender roles–Rosemary’s role as a parent and Guy’s career ambitions are their weaknesses.
Rosemary and Guy never have an appealing or convincing relationship
It is often difficult to read media with explicitly sexist set-ups; the original story probably attempted to expose Guy’s betrayal and the view of Rosemary as his property by the other characters for its negative connotations, but the film’s refusal to do anything extreme or subversive (What if instead, Rosemary was the ambitious one who made the deal, or the couple decided on it together? What if she found out what had been done to her midway through the story and was allowed to struggle with it? Or if she obsessively researched her pregnancy and was dismissed as a hypochondriac? What if Rosemary’s pregnancy blog became a media sensation, or the Castavets shepherded Rosemary through fertility treatments?) in its modernization, suggests the filmmakers did not truly grasp the sexism inherent in the plot. Instead, by limiting her agency and sticking her in a retro-gender role, they merely create a passive tragedy of a meek young woman’s abuse at the hands of her husband and friends.
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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.
Tip to showrunners: WE KNOW you can kill anyone off. We’ve been watching TV the last ten years. It is not that shocking anymore, and not even remotely surprising when it is a woman or person of color on the chopping block. Some cast members are more expendable than others, and it’s easy to guess who you think they are. Please stop sacrificing representation on the altar of high drama.
Hettienne Park as Beverly Katz
[Spoilers for all the aired episodes of Hannibal ahoy! Yar!]
Hannibal is a show about serial killers, so it’s no shock there’s a high body count. And it isn’t the usual death parade of butchered women that crime thrillers often present. Sady Doyle wrote that Hannibal “takes on the serial-killer cop procedural—one of the most irredeemably woman-hating genres on TV—from a feminist perspective.” Crime shows so often depict women as victims, and victims as bodies. (I’ve long been fascinated by the concept of struggling actresses getting the “break” of playing a cold, naked corpse on a medical examiner’s table, and their families excitedly tuning in to see her silently horizontal in blue-gray makeup, functioning essentially as a prop.)
Hannibal has flipped this archetype. The vast majority of the nameless victims, often naked, usually incorporated into inventively macabre art installations, have been men.
Equal-opportunity artful display of dead bodies.
But women are certainly not spared from violence on this gruesome show: the twist is that Hannibal‘s female victims have mostly been strongly developed as characters before being dispatched. The most devastating deaths on the show have all been women: last season’s long-time-coming murder of Abigail Hobbes, perhaps the only person we’ve seen Hannibal kill with any reluctance, and this season’s huge loss of FBI Agent Beverly Katz.
Even the one-off characters we’ve seen murdered (or at least victimized) have been given complex characterization over the course of their episode, for example the Cotard delusion-suffering Georgia Madchen (Ellen Muth), or Anna Chulmsky’s Clarice Starling stand-in Miriam Lass (recently revealed to be alive, although deeply damaged).
Kacey Rohl as Abigail Hobbs
Because the female victims on Hannibal are well-written, sympathetic, and interesting, the audience grieves for them. They are not merely dramatic beats to generate manpain for the dude heroes. (Will Graham nevertheless suffers epic amounts of manpain. This is his design.)
Hannibal clearly takes the murder of women seriously, and uses it as a source of dramatic pathos, not titillation. But an unfortunate consequence of this pattern is that midway through the second season, only one female character in the regular cast remains: Caroline Dhavernas’s Alana Bloom. And she’s a love interest for both Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter (which is not to say she’s been weakly characterized, but does seem to explain her survival).
Last woman standing: Alana Bloom
Hannibal is also running low on women in the recurring cast. Gillian Anderson’s Bedelia Du Maurier exited early in the second season, and the amoral journalist Freddie Lounds (one of several male characters from Thomas Harris’s novels that series developer Bryan Fuller rewrote as female) has only made brief appearances in two episodes this year.
The loss of Hettienne Park as Beverly Katz is particularly devastating, and not only because she was one of the precious stereotype-defying women of color on network TV. Katz’s sardonic sense of humor provided some much-needed comic relief, and her warm friendship with Will was perhaps one of the only psychologically sound relationships presented in the entire series.
Will Graham and Beverly Katz
And yes, it is immensely frustrating that when the powers that be decide someone important “needs to die” to up the stakes or prove “anyone is expendable” for that someone to be, yet again, a woman of color. (Tip to showrunners: WE KNOW you can kill anyone off. We’ve been watching TV the last ten years. It is not that shocking anymore, and not even remotely surprising when it is a woman or person of color on the chopping block. Some cast members are more expendable than others, and it’s easy to guess who you think they are. Please stop sacrificing representation on the altar of high drama.)
So while Hannibal has a refreshingly compassionate narrative approach to the murder of women (which is a phrase I never imagined I’d write), they’ve got to cool it with killing off the ladies in the cast. And they need to replenish the ranks with more well-crafted female characters, and they’re going to have to stay alive for a while. Because right now we’ve got too many dicks on the dance floor.
Robin Hitchcock is an American writer who is now afraid of mushrooms in the wild.
‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ is vampire romance for grown-ups. It’s the rare vampire film that tries to convey what it would actually mean to live for centuries, questioning the world around you and turning your nose up at everything human and mortal. The titular lovers here are shadowy figures lurking just on the edge of history, indulging in a tortured and eternal love, more believable and sexual than any of the recent rash of tween vampire lore.
The film poster for Only Lovers Left Alive
Only Lovers Left Alive is vampire romance for grown-ups. It’s the rare vampire film that tries to convey what it would actually mean to live for centuries, questioning the world around you and turning your nose up at everything human and mortal. The story spins out in an intoxicating swirl of music and high-culture; at the centre of it, a couple who can’t live without each other but don’t live together any longer. The titular lovers are shadowy figures lurking just on the edge of history, indulging in a tortured and eternal love, more believable and sexual than any of the recent rash of tween vampire lore.
The film takes ideas we’ve seen in films like Interview with a Vampire , Let The Right One In and Byzantium, and adds commentary on our modern world. What would an elegant immortal being who’s seen it all think of our quick consumer culture and digital devices that allow us to feel to connected to people continents away.
Plus, answers to the question many have wondered. What would vampires think of iPhones? Of Techno-music and videos on Youtube?
Sure to be a cult fav, Only Lovers Left Alive is dark and decadent, saturated by haunting rock music and an unshakeable air of impending danger. Indie-hero Jim Jarmusch wrote and directed this vampire tale, pumped full of wry, intelligent humor and some delightfully silly historical references with a stylized production as rich and decadent as it’s story. The Palm d’Or nominated film chronicles the reunion Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton), beautiful vampires who have been lovers for centuries and married several times. Recently, they have been living apart: him in a crumbling house on the outskirts of Detroit, her, swathed in silks in Tangiers.
A picture taken of Adam and Eve the third time they got married. Eve remarks: “We looked so young”
Adam is your basic emo-rocker. He’s got the long, unwashed hair, shirts unbuttoned to his navel and the distaste selling out, but underneath, he has the face and sickly-sexual comportment of a romantic poet. Isolated in a town where no one seems to live anymore, he spends his days playing guitar and composing music he isn’t ready to show anyone. He only leaves his home to procure blood for a local hospital, where he struggles to control his thirst around bleeding patients. He relies on Ian (Anton Yelchin) to do errands, bringing him instruments and keeping the fans away. As the story begins, he is considering killing himself and asks Ian to bring him a wooden bullet.
Meanwhile, Eve is an ultra-sophisticated vaguely European jet-setter, drawn to exotic locals and excited by life. While Adam has his music, Eve has literature. In a scene any book lover would adore, she packs suitcases full of books for a visit to Detroit. She gazes over the texts, some medieval with woodcut illustrations, some in ancient languages, some modern, her faces enraptured at the beauty she sees. Her close confidant is Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt), the real author of Shakespeare’s plays, he keeps a picture of the bard on his wall to throw knives at.
It’s hard to imagine better actors for the lead roles. Swinton and Hiddleston both appear uncanny and otherworldly, in appearance, in the way they carry themselves and in the way they find they inhabit the film’s world, that they seem like members of some unknown species that includes only each other. Swinton in particular has never looks less human, she wanders around Tangiers like some strange white unicorn trying to take on human form.
It is perhaps too on the nose that they are Adam and Eve, but the names highlight the connection between them. They have a mystical connection that draw them to each other, highlighted by Adam playing guitar in Detroit while Eve dances in Tangiers as if she can hear it. Though they are not the first man and woman, through history they seem to be the only couple that always endures, their relationship only thing that will live on as empires come and go.
Adam and Eve look like an ordinary couple, happy to be together
Adam and Eve are well-developed, each with their own separate but intertwining lives, passions and histories. They seem remarkably real for centuries old vampires, You can easily imagine them roaming around in the dark corners of a dying city. Though they live separate lives much of time, there is a magnetism that pulls them together when they reunite, seeming as if they each want to consume the other, breathe in their air and connect by running their hands along each other’s bodies just to experiences and remember each other. Their intimacy is tasteful and personal, suggesting that on top of sexual attraction, they just want to be near each other and as content to lie beside each other nude as they are to play chess together and eat blood popsicles.
It’s a very romantic tale, both in the modern sense and in poetic tradition. For all his protests, Adam is a romantic hero, lost in a desolate wasteland that mirrors the ravages of his soul. He has isolated himself in the dying city of Detroit, whose loss of the auto industry has made it a virtual ghost town. When Eve visits, he takes her on a tour of its wilderness, showing her where people used to live, taking her to an old gilded theatre falling into ruins. At home, his wall is covered in photographs and portraits of the dead luminaries he has known, so he can never forgot the temporary nature of human life, passing him by.
He is disillusioned with musicians and his old heroes, the scientists, dead and destroyed by the cultures around them. He sees science as destroying human lives, contaminating water with chemicals and blood with diseases and long ago stopped considering himself part of this humanity. He calls humans zombies and decides he can’t be around them anymore, disgusted by their fears of their own imaginations.
Eve is the light to Adam’s darkness, all in white while he’s always in black, yet remains a realistic character because of implied darkness of her own. Swinton plays Eve like an ethereal vision who can’t escape the weight on her shoulders, she always seems struggling to stay afloat. It is this weight and her passionate love for culture, the books she reads through while packing, the Shakespeare volume she sighs after finishing and the rapturous dancing and yen to explore, that keeps her from being a mere servant to Adam’s moods. Eve is so well in synch with the world, that she has slight psychic senses, able to intuit the age of a guitar just by touching it and maintaining a deep connection to the moon. She believes in living and experiencing as much as possible of each era that passes by. THough she is implied to be older than Adam, she is still able to appreciate lie and wax poetic about the lights and color, the dancing and friendship that are all part of the experience.
From her point of view, Adam’s depression is a waste, so she devotes herself to bringing him back into the world, reassuring him that even if the world is destroyed for humans, they’ll still be around. She resents that he treats her like a part in his story, a means to the end, rather than a real person to rely on when in times of need. She feels taken for granted like, he sees her as another one of the transitory zombies who will come into his life and leave it. Despite the specific references to thing like immortality, it’s not unlike the typical conversation between an ordinary couple in any other movies. The supernatural elements added to what is essentially a woman trying to help her depressed partner, serve to make the story larger in scope, more evocative of gothic conventions and tortured love and dangerous.
Adam examines a guitar, showcasing his passion for music
Jarmusch skillfully integrates modern technology into their ageless world experienced as just another culture’s momentary trends. He also includes references to both modern pop culture and ancient history without either seeming shoehorned in. Eve is as taken in with Jack White and David Foster Wallace as Mary Shelley and Marlowe’s ghostwritten Shakespeare plays, while Adam’s doctor disguise includes name tags like “ Dr. Faust ” and “ Dr. Caligari”.
Eve notes all the things she has been through and survived, the different cultures that seemed dangerous that she has watched die around her. She considers modern times no different, an age that any other, with its transitory values that will end and tries to enjoy our technology as part of the experience of this time and place. While Adam uses retro pieces of equipment and hooks his phone up to an ancient TV to talk, Eve is comfortable speaking on her iPhone’s Facetime and interacting with the outside world to make travel arrangements for the pair.
For all his speeches denigrating humanity, Adam has all too human concerns. He is attached to his possessions and secretive about his music, worried about it getting out before it’s ready. As a rock musician, his entire lifestyle and tortured-rocker identity is supported by human fans, ones who his complains about and just wants to leave him alone. While ethereal Eve believes in traveling light and replacing anything tangible, Adam is of the world and tied to his possessions.
After feeding on Ian, Ava’s teeth are extended, making her look monstrous
About midway through and after a lot of anticipation, as Adam, Eve and Marlowe all had dreams about her, Eve’s sister Ava (a spacey-fairy Mia Wasikowska) arrives at Adam’s house decked out like a 60s groupie. Party girl Ava is invasive and impolite, entering uninvited, forcing her way into their dreams and into their house and to Adam’s annoyance, listening to his music without permission. There is a genuine big brother-little sister relationship between Ava and Adam, and as old as she is, she’s a teenager out to have fun, even if it means intruding on an important moment between the couple. She bounces around, jumping on the bed where the couple is sleeping, as if she is their child.
In addition, Ava is an even stronger force than Eve at drawing Adam out of himself. In one scene, Ava is enjoying a TV show that depicts Dracula dancing on psychedelic backdrops. While Eve comes and watches it with her, Adam, perpetually brooding turns off the TV and spoils their fun. In one hilarious moment, the women try to get Adam to go to a club with them. Though Adam insists he is not going to go, the next scene shows the three vamps in dark sunglasses at a hipster bar. Though meant as a joke here, his brooding can become unintentionally humorous at times.
After the night out, Ava bites Ian, killing him and destroying much of Adam’s prized possessions. Ava’s feeding off Ian is played as a clear metaphor for sex, based on the language she uses: “I didn’t mean to do it, but he was so cute. I couldn’t help myself.” It’s suggested that Ava is wild and unable to control her sexuality, and with that it mind it’s a little uncomfortable that she is berated for it. Unlike Adam and Eve, who have figured out ways of constraint, subsisting through hospitals and Marlowe’s connections, she refuses to live by a set of rules and is punished for it when Adam kicks her out of the house.
Scenes of the vampires drinking blood are shot similarly to how scenes of drug use are often filmed, with characters rising in the air and come back down, sighs of euphoria on their faces. This comparison makes a lot of sense within the film as the characters appear perpetually strung out, floating around their environs.
Eve enjoys a dose of blood, drugged by the drink
There’s something dream-like and hazy about the film, like the domestic drama at its core, the basic story of a depressed man and his bon vivant wife visited by her annoying sister at an inconvenient time that causes them to reassess their relationship, is filtered through the mind of someone on a bender. Blood and gore function as necessary ephemeral to a vampire tale, but are never fetishized or allowed to become too much of a focus. The film’s end utilizes feeding to solidify their bond as a couple. In the only real horror shot of the film, we see a close-up of Eve with her fangs full extended and her eyes widening, reminding us that these people are monsters.
I can see how someone might dislike the film’s pacing, as it is often slow and full of silences. Short scenes of dialogue are broken up by what seem like music videos, sequences of actors dancing, driving, pacing, wandering around the city, drinking blood and having sex, while Adam’s curls around them. But it works well, for the hazy, hallucinatory tone of the story, more about characters and feelings than plot. Silences and musical scenes give the characters time to breathe and interact on a deeper level than they could easily put into words, making them feel more alive and complete.
However, there is a certain amount of regression in the relationship between Adam and Eve, who often feel like hipster teenagers looking with distain at everyone who isn’t as cool as they are. They think music sounds best on records, refer to everyone else as zombies and have only ever been friends with people who’s names we know from out history books. At times, their namedropping can begin to feel incessant. I suppose it wouldn’t make an interesting story, but why does every immortal character in fiction travel through the important moments in history like Forest Gump?
All put together for a night out, the lovers are glamorous and ethereal
Strangely, there’s no very much that happens in Only Lovers Left Alive. The only real conflict is Adam’s depression and his contempt for the people around them, who we rarely see. The characters’ fear of contaminated blood, previously a mere quirk of their universe, does become a real conflict, but only toward the end, when they is not much time left to explore it. After much warning that Ava’s going to come and something terrible will happen, she visits for a couple night, kills Ian and is kicked out, never to be see again. Adam and Eve panic about how difficult it will be to hide the body, but accomplish the task with ease and are never caught nor in any danger. Marlowe appears only to impart wisdom, gripe about Shakespeare and die (perhaps in poor taste) of AIDS or some other blood borne disease. There’s no giant battle, no mysterious enemy lurking in the shadows, no finagling their way around the cops and keeping their secret. Instead, it’s a lovely atmospheric meditation on romance, the passing of time, and the impermanence of cultures.
Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and freelance journalist living in Toronto, Ontario. She recently graduated from Carleton University where she majored in journalism and minored in film.
A lot of rapes that occur on film and TV are unnecessary and unrealistic while subtly serving to punish the rape victim, to pruriently show the dehumanization of victims (most frequently women), and to trigger audience members who are survivors. A show like ‘Bates Motel’ that so cavalierly uses a tired and painful device in its first episode is definitely not worth my time.
Bates Motel drawing
Written by Amanda Rodriguez Trigger Warning: Rape, Sexual Assault
Since I really liked Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho when I was younger, I decided to give the A&E prequel series Bates Motela try. Despite that the cinematography was rich, the actors were quality, and the atmosphere was a great mix of foreboding while paradoxically retro and contemporary, I was roughly halfway through the first episode when I turned it off and washed my hands of it. What makes me think I can give a worthwhile review of a series that I watched for only 20-30 minutes? A rape occurs in that first episode about halfway in, and I know enough about TV formulas, characterizations, and plotlines to safely determine that this rape was gratuitous. A lot of rapes that occur on film and TV are unnecessary and unrealistic while subtly serving to punish the rape victim, to pruriently show the dehumanization of victims (most frequently women), and to trigger audience members who are survivors. A show like Bates Motel that so cavalierly uses a tired and painful device in its first episode is definitely not worth my time.
The Bates Motel at night
I generally think rating systems, especially Hollywood’s, are for the birds (maybe even the Hitchcockian birds… har, har). The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is a joke with its Catholic priest sitting in on viewings along with its hatred of all things involving female pleasure (check out the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated to learn more about the secret society that is America’s rating board). I’ve been known to gleefully watch trailers, waiting for the rating description only to scoff, mock, and laugh. My personal favorite is still, “Some scenes of teen partying.” However, maybe I wouldn’t mind a system that cued its viewers in a way that, say, the new Swedish rating system does by integrating the now famous Bechdel Test to judge the level of female involvement in a film. If we’re going to be given a heads up about a film or TV show’s content prior to watching it, there should absolutely be a trigger warning system. The number of survivors of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) seems to be growing every day, so the compassionate, responsible thing to do would be to let viewers know if there are scenes of combat violence, sexual assault, child abuse, etc.
Norma Bates is attacked in her home
To give you an idea of the visceral response seeing certain triggering acts on film can cause in someone with PTSD, I’m going to describe to you what happened to me while watching the scene in Bates Motel where Norma Bates was attacked and raped in her home. The former owner of the Bates property, Keith Summers, breaks into the Bates house when Norma is home alone. He attacks her with a knife, brutally beats her, and rapes her. The familiar prickling of my skin and elevated heart rate kicked in when it became clear that Keith was planning to rape Norma. My thoughts were racing; I kept telling myself that she would get away, that she would fuck his shit up because she’s a manipulative murderess, but that didn’t happen. As Keith raped Norma, I found myself in a blind panic, yelling aloud, “STOP! STOP! STOP!” while crawling across the floor to get to the TV to turn it off because I no longer had the motor functions required to walk or use a remote control. After turning off the TV, I sat on the floor, breathing heavily, staring off in a daze. I did housework then, trying to calm down, trying to lift the feeling of dark ooze filling up inside me. After several hours of this, I was lucky enough to have a kind and perceptive friend call me, discern something was wrong, and let me vent about how upsetting and unnecessary the scene was.
Norma cleans up blood.
I ask you, should anyone be forced to go through that? I’ve continued to be bothered by that scene days later and outraged enough to be compelled to write about it. If there had been a warning at the beginning of the episode that it contained scenes of sexual violence, I would’ve been prepared or, more likely, chosen to watch something else.
Despite the fact that I was triggered by this scene, I have thought and thought about it as objectively as possible to discern whether or not the scene did have value, and my conclusion is that Norma’s rape was, in fact, a broad application of a storytelling technique that is overkill. The scene is designed to render Norma helpless and to give justification to her future actions and neuroses. Guess what? Norma was already crazy before she was raped; she may or may not have murdered her husband, and he may or may not have been an abusive asshole. She already had an unhealthily sexual relationship with her son as evinced by her jealousy, possessiveness, and physicality with him. Not only that, but home invasions are traumatic events on their own. Having her home broken into and being beaten and knifed by a man are all enough to give Norma PTSD and to incite dysfunctionality. We already have all the justification for her behavior here without having Norma raped as a cheap plot device.
Bloody Norma Bates
What is the function, then, of having Norma raped? Would this have happened if young Norman, instead, was home alone and Keith had attacked? It’s hard to see Norma’s rape as anything other than bringing a powerful woman low, turning her into an object that is acted upon, divesting her of her status as a subject. I also can’t help but see Norma’s rape as an intended lesson for Norman. After Norma told him he couldn’t go out, Norman climbed out of his window to hangout at a party with some cute girls. Knowing his mother was attacked and raped and he wasn’t around to stop it does more to service the forwarding of Norman’s feelings of responsibility and male protectiveness towards his mother, which I think still would’ve been possible if Norma suffered a home invasion and not a rape. This means Norma’s rape isn’t even about her. Talk about lack of subjectivity.
Norma and Norman after the attack
Norma’s rape is also problematic in the same way that many Hollywood depictions of rape are: they are intensely physically violent. Of course, rapes like that occur, and, of course, strangers rape people they’ve never met, but these things don’t happen with nearly the frequency their coverage by mainstream film and TV would lead us to believe. In addition to Bates Motel, some key examples of these physically brutal rapes are: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Downton Abbey, House of Cards (the rape is described by the survivor…not shown), Leaving Las Vegas, I Spit on Your Grave, and Straw Dogs (a Peckinpah film that caused massive controversy and was banned in the UK because the rape victim actually began to enjoy her rape). The list goes on and on. The problem with rape scenes like these are that they obscure and delegitimize rapes that are perpetuated without physical abuse. As far as the media is concerned, rapes where the victim is beaten are more cut-and-dry. The rape that occurs between friends or a married couple where the victim simply says “no” are apparently more questionable as to whether or not the victim “wanted it.” Depictions of such monstrous acts make it hard to see our fathers, brothers, husbands, and friends as rapists, but, most of the time, that’s who they are, not the psychotic strangers Hollywood would have use believe in.
Norma Bates meets her attacker
This mentality and this refusal to show the true gamut of situations in which rape and sexual assault occur is harmful to survivors. Because their rape didn’t involve slapping and screaming, it takes a long time for many survivors to even acknowledge and accept that they were raped. Many survivors doubt that their claims will be believed. Many survivors’ claims aren’t believed. This allows many perpetrators to go free without any consequences, and because there was no kicking and crying, I suspect many perpetrators don’t even believe that they are rapists. Isn’t that a scary thought? We value nuance and realism in film and TV characterization; why don’t we place the same value on the varied experience of survivors? Rape culture insists that we only see a narrow representation of rape because if we admit that rape occurs in so many different contexts and with so many different circumstances, then we must admit that rape is a pandemic, that survivors are telling the truth, and that we need to do something about it.
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Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
