Little Girls – Bitch Flicks

‘The Bad Seed’: Mother and Daughter, Autonomy Through Violence

In no way does this piece condone violence or 8-year-old serial killers. We all know that’s wrong and our mothers taught us better than that. But really, what’s the harm in a female character with autonomy and direction?

This is a guest post by Andrea Betanzos.

Once upon a time, I took a course in film school about horror films and learned that Leatherface’s chainsaw, Jason’s machete, and every other male killer’s choice of weapon were simply metaphors for their dicks.

When it slowly dawned on all of us (my classmates and I) that this was the central analysis our professor was looking for us to make, I’m sure our assignments must have been pretty interesting to read.

Horror and sci-fi seem to be the few genres where the actions of women stem from their own wills. In order to be the “final girl,” a woman must want to survive, must find it in herself to reject the role of caretaker, and find a way to fight. To be lethal, a woman must chase a singular idea, must view the road to her objectives as necessary and in no way compromise what’s hers.

In other words, there are less garage tools involved.

Before “Hit Girl” in 2010’s Kick-Ass and “Esther” in 2009’s Orphan, there was 8-year-old Rhoda Penmark, (the amazing Patty McCormack), the central character in Marvin Leroy’s classic The Bad Seed.

Let me clarify, we’re talking about the classier 1954 version of the film.

Not the 1985 one. Or the Lifetime one.

The golden child

Adapted from the novel written by William March, The Bad Seed was made during the imposed Hays Code in Hollywood. Despite the limitations the Code placed on the story and what could actually be shown onscreen, the strength still lies in the ruthlessness of Rhoda’s sociopathic evil.

The only child of Christine (portrayed by Nancy Kelly) and Kenneth (William Hopper), Rhoda lives the idyllic childhood. Christine is a homemaker and the daughter of an esteemed crime writer, Richard Bravo. Col. Kenneth Penmark is an absent father who dotes on Rhoda and is on military leave for most of the film. The family lives in a picturesque suburb, renting an apartment from nosy landlord, Monica and an even nosier caretaker, Leroy.

With blonde pigtails, a perfect curtsy and charming smile, Rhoda is a pristine and well-behaved child. Her bedroom is always tidy, her chores are always done, and her speech is impeccable. However, beneath Rhoda’s immaculate exterior lies a boiling rage.

When Claude Daigle (Rhoda’s fellow classmate) beats her in a penmanship contest, and soon thereafter dies under suspicious circumstances, Rhoda’s true character is revealed. Her apathy towards his death is potent. The conviction with which she believes the award belongs to her is unsettling, considering that most children can barely decide what they want for Christmas. You rarely see this kind of devotion in adults, but at 8 years old, Rhoda not only possesses it, she owns it. Christine attempts to defend Rhoda unto everyone, as any mother would. Yet we watch her resolve crumble slowly, as she comes to the horrifying realization that her daughter is indeed, a murderer.

Almost every horror film does a fantastic job in blaming mom for birthing such fine human beings, (1980’s Friday the 13th, 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby), and this film is no different. Evil originates from a lineage of women. There is a legacy of murderesses, beginning with Bessie Denker, a notorious serial killer and Christine’s mother. Christine herself, who goes to great lengths to make Rhoda disappear. And last but not least, sweet Rhoda, who takes the reign and really puts everyone to shame with her prolific slew of murders.

Yes, the film is campy. Yes, it seems like Christine is always a few seconds from crying in every single scene. Yes, there’s so much overacting that it makes you eye-roll at the most inappropriate moments. But the relationship between Christine and Rhoda is fascinating, akin to Carrie and Margaret White in 1976’s Carrie. The constant push and pull. The way in which mother and daughter are both destructive and protective towards one another. The dualities of violence found within each Christine and Rhoda, how they intersect and compliment one another, give the film its complexity and nuance.

Rhoda and Christine illustrate two types of violence: one which is carried out maliciously, meant to harm those around her in the pursuit of her desires. The second is violence toward oneself, meant to protect the world, and transform her into martyr to erase a lineage that is destructive. It could very well be said that Christine represents our “final girl,” who must protect herself to survive. Rhoda is the monster, the Jason and Leatherface without the garage tools.

For this film, these two types of violence are incapable of existing without the other. They feed and sustain one another. Rhoda is birthed by said lineage of evil and learns how to take control of her abilities to get what she wants. She is for better or worse, driven and unapologetic in fighting for what’s hers. In a terrible way (i.e. not recommended to anyone!), Rhoda finds autonomy through deciding what role each person plays in her life. If they’ve wronged her, they have no place in her life. Throughout the course of the film, she only learns how to be more decisive in what she wants in needs. Rhoda learns how to manipulate situations in her favor. Let’s be clear though: if we weren’t talking about murder, this would be otherwise be admirable!

A feminist killer?

Christine’s arc is much more different, as she begins the story as fiercely protective of Rhoda. She is proud of her daughter’s perfection and proud to be her mother. Even when the first inklings of Rhoda’s behavior come to light, her maternal instinct to overrules reason. Regardless of how dangerous Rhoda is, Christine is still charmed by her daughter and in total disbelief that she could be capable of being evil. Yet when Christine actually witnesses one of Rhoda’s murders, she uses that same fervor to find strength and protect others from Rhoda. Yes, “final girls” must often reject the role of caretaker in order to protect themselves. In this case, it’s especially pronounced given that Christine must reject the role of mother. However, the real difference in this feminized violence is how Christine handles it. Rather than blame outward, she holds herself responsible for what she has created and tries to kill herself, but not without trying to kill Rhoda first.

Not Flintstones vitamins

Rhoda’s conviction has to lead her toward destroying others and Christine’s toward destroying herself.

Although both depictions are incredibly diverse and rarely juxtaposed, part of the problem is that there is no “in between”. The film almost hints that women are too emotional to make a careful decision and when they do; it can become too calculating and may deviate to cruelty. The extremes of each type of violence are just that, extremes. Yes, its unfortunate that each woman in The Bad Seed finds power and control through some pretty evil deeds. In no way does this piece condone violence or 8-year-old serial killers. We all know that’s wrong and our mothers taught us better than that. But really, what’s the harm in a female character with autonomy and direction?

Sorry not sorry

Andrea Betanzos likes dessert before dinner, strong coffee, feminism, and very good films.

Lena Dunham, Slenderman, and the Terror of ‘Girls’

This is a guest post by Scarlett Harris.

An episode of Law & Order: SVU from earlier this month fictionalized yet another “ripped from the headlines” story–this time the Slenderman murders in which two pre-teen girls stabbed their friend in an attempt to summon the mythic Slenderman.

For those not familiar with Slenderman, he is a tall, thin character in a black suit with a featureless face spawned from a “creepypasta” (online, easily shareable fiction) meme from 2009, making him one of the first urban legends of the modern age. In the May 2014 attempted murder, the perpetrators gave the reason for their attack as wanting to become “proxies” or “acolytes” for Slenderman.

Many a think piece (this one by Rebecca Traister is perhaps the most tempered) and news story were spawned in the wake of the crime, puzzled by young women being so obsessively violent toward one another. You’ll notice that similar arguments are rarely made when boys behave badly toward other boys.

Also in the news of late are the allegations that Lena Dunham molested her younger sister Grace after writing in her recently released memoir Not That Kind of Girl that she would bribe her sister for her affections—“anything a sexual predator might do to woo a suburban girl”—masturbate in the bed she shared with her, and inspected her infant vagina (it later turned out Grace had stuffed pebbles up there) because that was “within the spectrum of things I did.”

I don’t really have a strong opinion about these allegations; I think it’s clear that Lena didn’t molest her sister, who doesn’t identify as a victim. I also think, as Roxane Gay, amongst others, wrote, that Dunham has boundary issues and isn’t always the best at acknowledging her white privilege and where she may have fucked up.

But I think what scared people the most about Dunham’s unabashed confessions is that it prescribes a curiosity and sexuality to children that adults would like to forget. Radhika Sanghani, writing in Daily Life, interviewed child psychologist Dr. Rachel Andrews, about the wider reaction to possible sexual experimentation by young girls. Andrews says, “It’s ‘just one of those things that boys do.’ But you might see a lot of girls who might have their hands down their pants and that be more questioned as to whether it’s normal. In fact it’s quite common. You might notice girls in a high chair rhythmically rubbing against the front of it.”

I remember as a 5-year-old I would mash the smooth plastic between my Barbies and Kens’ legs together and incessantly sing the song “Let’s Talk About Sex” (OK, the chorus; I wasn’t as adept as remembering rap lyrics as I am now!) with my male bestie during quiet time at school. And as many a female writer, tweeter and Tumblr(er?) has pointed out in the wake of all this, exploring our own and others’ bodies is a natural part of childhood. Doctors and nurses or mommies and daddies, anyone?

As we grow older, we start to understand social codes that tell us we should nip this curiosity in the bud and instead be ashamed of our bodies and hide them away. Even in the presence of a monogamous significant other (because sharing it with more than one person is also frowned upon), our bodies should be shrouded by bras, strategically placed sheets and minimal lighting, as Hollywood teaches us. Even in the scarily progressive (for the time) Sex & the City, which showed women frankly talking to each other about sex, Carrie and Charlotte shielded their bodies much of the time with underwear and bedding. In Dunham’s Girls, some of the characters show frightening sides of their sexualities whilst the actresses who chose to remain clothed mirror this by showing equally frightening sides of their personalities. Whilst, like Not That Kind of Girl, the show has some privilege problems to work through, Girls has been revolutionary because it’s not afraid to portray young women as many of them are: people that can sometimes be scary in their cluelessness, narcissism and humanity.

By contrast, we all know there’s nothing more terrifying than women who’ve got their shit together, especially those who don’t fit the conventional mold like the Dunhams. For example, Dunham’s mother’s reaction to Lena finding pebbles in Grace’s vagina was a rational one. She didn’t freak out or get angry or shame her daughters, which no doubt contributed to Dunham’s unabashed comfort in sharing her body and her thoughts with the world. As Dr. Andrews continues, “To have a big reaction about [children exploring their bodies], certainly a child could then go on to think there’s something wrong with them and what they’re doing… It can have an adverse effect.”

In order to keep producing these girls that terrify the status quo, more adults need to take that position and not freak out when they catch their children—and particularly their girls—doing things they apparently shouldn’t. It’s only once we start adding adult meaning to children’s actions that they couldn’t possibly fathom that they start to take a sinister shape. It’s more likely that Dunham’s childhood actions were ones of curiosity than predation. And in today’s internet age, satisfying that curiosity has never been easier, as seen with the Slenderman attempted murder. In addition to understanding that children will start to search for things online that’d make your grandma blush, we also need to discuss them rationally, without shame and guide them to make informed decisions. Otherwise we keep producing literally terrifying girls to match our literally terrifying boys.

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.

Wednesday Addams, Smasher of the Patriarchy

She’s not nice, she’s not fragile, she’s not kind or sweet or even vaguely pleasant. She’s mean and angry and cynical and disaffected and sarcastic and snide and everything I wanted to be as a child. She’s also an intersectional feminist. And a little girl. She’s the best.

Wednesday Addams, as played by Christina Ricci in Addams Family Values — Wednesday Addams, as played by Christina Ricci in *Addams Family Values*

This cross-post by Deborah Pless previously appeared at her blog, Kiss My Wonder Woman, and appears as part of our theme week on The Terror of Little Girls. Cross-posted with permission.

What does it mean to be a little girl? There’s so much cultural baggage associated with female childhood. On the one hand, little girls are pure and innocent and needing of protection. They’re the emotional backdrop of a thousand action movies – the father must get home and save his darling little girl. On the other hand, little girls are threatening. They’re creepy. They’re the demons of a thousand horror movies – the family unit must save itself from the imprecations of a terrifying little girl who wants to destroy them.

And then there’s Wednesday Addams. She’s another thing entirely.

Wednesday Addams was the hero of my childhood. She was little girl who looked sort of like me, who was pasty and awkward, but who took no crap from anyone. Who defended her right to self-determination with a vengeance if needed. Who spoke up for those who weren’t given a voice. Who set fire to her enemies. I’m not saying it was healthy or tame, but she was my favorite character as a child. In a lot of ways, she still is.

Wednesday and her nemesis Amanda (Mercedes McNab)

The Addams Family movies of the early 90s (The Addams Family and Addams Family Values) were the kind of movies that never really made sense logically, but somehow worked all the same. They were loose on plot and big on tone, with outlandish storylines pretty much just there so that the actual Addams family had something to react to.

The movies were like extended improv sessions, where we stuck the Addams family members in weird situations and got to watch how they reacted. See Gomez and Morticia go to parent teacher meetings! Watch Wednesday and Pugsley at summer camp! What’s an Addams family wedding like? A birthday party?

The point of the movies was never the plot, but rather the experience of the characters in contrast to the world around them, and as long as you remember that, the movies hold up very well. They’re still fun and weird and kooky and occasionally deeply disturbing. They’re still deeply ridiculous. And Wednesday is still really, really threatening.

That’s right, threatening. Part of why I loved these movies so much as a kid was because Wednesday, far from being a delicate flower, or even playing second fiddle to her brother, is arguably the most dangerous character in the whole story. She has a sense of apathy and morbid misery mixed in with a violent streak and superhuman strength. She’s very threatening. Especially to everyone she views as, well, a threat.

Wednesday’s first impression of summer camp

Now, admittedly, most of this is coming from Addams Family Values. While I really do enjoy The Addams Family, it’s not until the second movie that Wednesday’s character really crystallizes, and there’s a good reason for that. Simply put, in the second movie, she’s at precisely the right age to perfectly subvert our expectations of girlhood.

In Family Values, Wednesday is directly prepubescent–a tween, if that were ever an appropriate word to apply to her. She’s just on the cusp of developing hormonal urges, secondary sexual characteristics, and a more formed idea about who she herself will be as an adult. But, she is still a child, so she still occupies that cultural space of supposed innocence and vulnerability. She’s at once both a potentially developed teen, and a fragile child.

The movie addresses this dissonance early on. When Wednesday and Pugsley are dropped off at summer camp – as part of a duplicitous plot to get them out of the way – one of the other moms comes up to Morticia and asks after Wednesday. Morticia responds, “Oh, Wednesday’s at that very special age a girl has just one thing on her mind.”

“Boys?” asks the excited upper-class white woman.

“Homicide.”

The expectation for Wednesday in this movie, at least the expectation of those around her, is that she fit into either one or the other roles of idealized femininity. Either she can be a pure and adorable child, something Wednesday is not naturally inclined towards, or she can be a teenage temptress, something she similarly has little interest in. Throughout the film the camp counselors try to turn Wednesday into a normal child, punishing her with Disney movies and singalongs, while a secondary plot tempts her with the offer of romance, albeit romance with an asthmatic, morbid fellow outcast.

Pugsley (Jimmy Workman), Wednesday, and Joel (David Krumholtz)

It’s telling then that Wednesday eschews both of these options. She flirts with Joel (David Krumholtz), but is very ambiguous about whether or not she wants his attention. While at one point she does say a tearful goodbye to him, using endearments and kissing his cheek I think, later she seems utterly uninterested in his existence, and admits that if someone loved her as much as he implies he does, she would pity him and probably murder him.

So, not so much the icon of seductive femininity. But neither is she a convincing child, because Wednesday possesses a level of awareness about the world and frankly alarming superhuman strength that make it virtually impossible to view her as someone in need of protection. Because she isn’t someone in need of protection. She’s not just virtually unkillable, she’s also unconcerned with her own safety. She’s not afraid, and weirdly that’s much more terrifying.

Wednesday isn’t scared of what might happen to her, she’s only afraid of being forced to submit to cultural standards she doesn’t agree with. She’s perfectly willing to risk life and limb (hers and other people’s), but she’s terrified of Disney movies. I would say that if she fears anything, it’s becoming normal.

And that’s a powerful message. The idea that the biggest thing we have to fear is not abnormality but the loss of what makes us distinct. It’s especially poignant coming from Wednesday, because what makes her distinct is so, well, distinctive. As Joel says when Wednesday asks if he’ll ever forget her, “How could I? You’re too weird.”

But let’s bring all of this back around again: how is Wednesday Addams a smasher of the patriarchy? Because she uses this discomfort around her, the fact that adults and her peers have absolutely no way to categorize her and her place in society, to sabotage them. She uses her place as a “child” to speak truth to power, and as a “woman” to make them uncomfortable. I mean, the best example of this, and my favorite moment of the movie, is when Wednesday destroys the camp’s end of summer play.

Wednesday as Pocahontas in the camp play

The play is horrible, a mawkish retelling of the first Thanksgiving that somehow manages to be more offensive than usual. The main character is Sarah Miller, played by Wednesday’s blonde camper nemesis, Amanda, and Sarah Miller goes on long speeches about how superior Western culture is, before admitting Pocahontas, played by Wednesday, and her tribe – played by all of the other camp outcasts.

Wednesday plays along with the script for a few lines, and then takes it on a rapid detour:

“Wait, we can not break bread with you. You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides, and you will play golf. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will have stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They said do not trust the pilgrims. And especially do not trust Sarah Miller. For all these reasons I have decided to scalp you and burn your village to the ground.”

Which they then proceed to do.

Now, this speech is wonderful because it so directly confronts all of the assumptions made earlier in the play, and because it speaks up on behalf of those who are being misrepresented, even though they are not there to defend themselves.* But it’s also wonderful because it’s the kind of thing that only a child could say. Specifically a little girl. I mean, if a boy said that, can’t you imagine the camp directors just picking him up and dragging him off the stage? If a teenage girl were to say it, she would be ruining something for children. If an adult said it, well they wouldn’t be given the opportunity would they?

Wednesday is the only character in the film who can make that speech, and it’s all the more powerful for how it subverts their expectations of her. It’s also worth noting that this speech is followed by a strong reversal. Wednesday, Pugsley, Joel, and the other camp outcasts (who are notably children of color and differing abilities) overthrow the camp leadership, burn the campgrounds, and are actually seen roasting their camp directors on a spit.

The idea of course being that if you’re not afraid of anything, then you can accomplish pretty much whatever you set your mind to. Wednesday isn’t afraid of repercussions or bodily harm, and she has the assurance that her family will support her no matter what, so she’s emboldened to act out. She smashes the patriarchy, literally, and she can get away with it because she’s a little kid. No one’s expecting it. Arguably by this point in the movie they really should be, but they’re not.

I’m not saying Wednesday is perfect. She isn’t. She’s still a very privileged white girl from an unusual but still pretty standard background. She hails from a nuclear family and has never known want or hunger (except maybe voluntarily because she’s weird).

But that’s honestly OK. She’s a slightly problematic representation of intersectional feminism, but at least she is a representation of intersectional feminism. And, even better, she’s an unapologetically outspoken dissenter. She’s sure of who she is and what the world ought to be, and she’s perfectly comfortable telling everyone that–with a smirk and a sneer and a withering glance.

Hell yes, Wednesday Addams is smashing the patriarchy by not conforming to social expectations, being a creeptastic little girl, and inviting you to join her. Right on.

*Arguably one of the only big criticisms that can be made of this movie from a thematic standpoint is that this speech is given by Wednesday, an upper-class white girl, rather than an actual Native American, but it would be hard to change that in the narrative without drastically changing the story, and I think it’s worth having someone say it at least. Still, worth noting, the upper-class white privileged girl really doesn’t speak for everyone.

Deborah Pless runs Kiss My Wonder Woman and works as a freelance writer and editor in Western Washington when she’s not busy camping out at the movies or watching too much TV. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr just as long as you like feminist rants, an obsession with superheroes, and sandwiches.

The Terror of Little Girls: Social Anxiety About Women in Horrifying Girlhood

Horror films have a long-standing tradition of commenting on the social fears and anxieties of their time.

Another universally recognized truth of horror is that scary children are terrifying–especially little girls.

While an analysis of “creepy children” in horror films usually proclaims that they are providing commentary on a loss of innocence, and it would make sense that a little girl is the “ultimate” in innocence, it can’t be that simple. We wouldn’t be so shaken to the core by possessed, haunted, violent little girls if we were simply supposed to be longing for innocent times of yesteryear.

Instead, these little girls embody society’s growing fears of female power and independence. Fearing a young girl is the antithesis of what we are taught–stories of missing, kidnapped or sexually abused girls (at least white girls) get far more news coverage and mass sympathy than stories of boy victims. Little girls are innocent victims and need protection.

In the Victorian era, the ideal female was supposed to be pale, fainting-prone and home-bound. Feminist literary icons Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar write about this nineteenth-century ideal in The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women:

“At its most extreme, this nineteenth-century ideal of the frail, even sickly female ultimately led to the glorification of the dead or dying woman. The most fruitful subject for literature, announced the American romancer Edgar Allan Poe in 1846, is ‘the death… of a beautiful woman’… But while dead women were fascinating, dying girl-children were even more enthralling… These episodes seem to bring to the surface an extraordinary imperative that underlay much of the nineteenth-century ideology of femininity: in one way or another, woman must be ‘killed’ into passivity for her to acquiesce in what Rousseau and others considered her duty of self-abnegation ‘relative to men.'”

The feminine “ideal” (and its relation to literature) coincided with women beginning the long fight for suffrage and individual rights. It’s no surprise, then, that men wanted to symbolically kill off the woman so she could fulfill her ultimate passive role. There was something comforting about this to audiences.

Rhoda Penmark will not lose to a boy. Or anyone else.

Fast forward to the 1950s and 60s, and the modern horror genre as we know it emerged and began evolving into something that provided social commentary while playing on audiences’ deepest fears (the “other,” invasion, demonic possession, nuclear mutations and the end of the world).

We know that horror films have always been rife with puritanical punishment/reward for promiscuous women/virgins (the “Final Girl” trope), and violence toward women or women needing to be rescued are common themes. These themes comfort audiences, and confirm their need to keep women subjugated in their proper place. It’s no coincidence that the 50s and 60s were seeing sweeping social change in America (the Pill, changing divorce laws, resurgence of the ERA, a lead-up to Roe v. Wade).

Terrifying little girls also make their debut in this era. Their mere presence in these films spoke not only to audiences’ fears of children losing innocence, but also the intense fear that little girls–not yet even women–would have the power to overthrow men. These girl children of a generation of women beginning a new fight for rights were terrifying–these girls would grow up knowing they could have power.

The Bad Seed‘s Rhoda Penmark (played by Patty McCormack in the 1956 film), genetically predisposed to be a sociopath, murders a classmate and the janitor who suspects her. Her classmate–a boy–beats her in a penmanship contest, and she beats him to death with her tap shoes. A little girl, in competition with a boy, loses, and kills. While in the novel Rhoda gets away with her crimes, the Hays Code commanded that the film version “punished” her for her crimes and she’s struck by lightning. It’s revealed that Rhoda’s sociopathic tendencies come from her maternal grandmother, a serial killer. This notion of female murderous rage, passed down through generations and claiming boys/men as its victim, certainly reflects social fear at the time.

In 1968, Night of the Living Dead premiered on big screens and has been seen as commenting on racism/the Civil Rights movement, Cold War-era politics and critiquing America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. However, little Karen Cooper’s (Kyra Schon) iconic scene has long disturbed audiences the most. Infected by zombies, she eats her father and impales her mother with a trowel. A horror twist to an Oedipal tale, one could see Karen as living out the gravest fears of those against the women’s movement/second-wave feminism. Possessed by a demon, she eats her father (consumes the patriarchy) and kills her mother (overtaking her mother’s generation with masculine force).

Little Karen Cooper consumes patriarchy and overtakes her mother.

Five years later, Roe v. Wade had been decided (giving women the right to legal first-trimester abortions), the Pill was legal, no-fault divorce was more acceptable and women began flooding the workforce.

Meanwhile, on the big screen, sweet little Regan MacNeil–the daughter of an over-worked, atheist mother–becomes possessed by the devil.

The Exorcist was based on a novel, which itself was based on the exorcism case of a little boy. Of course, the novelist and filmmakers wanted audiences to be disturbed and terrified, so the sex of the possessed protagonist changed (would it be as unsettling if it was a little boy?).

Chris MacNeil, Regan’s mother, goes to great lengths to help her daughter, and resorts to Catholicism when all else has failed. Regan reacts violently to religious symbols, lashes out and kills priests, speaks in a masculine voice and masturbates with a crucifix. This certainly isn’t simply a “demonic possession” horror film, especially since it was written and made into a film at the height of the fight for women’s rights (the Catholic church being an adamant foe to reproductive rights). Only after Regan releases her demon, which possesses a priest (who flings himself out of a window to commit suicide), does she regain her innocence and girlhood.

Tied and bound, Regan haunts and kills men, and reacts violently to religious images.

What her mother and her culture are embracing–atheism, working women, reproductive rights, sexual aggressiveness–can be seen as the “demons” that overcome the innocent girl and kill men (and traditional religion).

These films are have terrified audiences for decades, and for good reason. The musical scores, the direction, the jarring and shocking images–however, they also play to society’s deepest fears about women and feminism. For little girls to be possessed is the ultimate fall.

In 1980, The Shining was released. Yet another film adaptation of a novel (Stanley Kubrick’s treatment of Stephen King’s novel), this film contains two of the creepiest little girls in film history–the Grady girls. The Shining shines a light on crises of masculinity. Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, is a recovering alcoholic who has hurt his son, Danny, in the past. When he takes his wife, Wendy, and son with him to be caretakers of a hotel over a winter, his descent into madness quickly begins. Danny has telepathic abilities, and sees and experiences the hotel’s violent past. As he rides his Big Wheel through the hotel, he stops when he sees two little girls begging him to “Come play with us Danny. Forever.” These girls–dead daughters of Grady, a previous caretaker who killed his family and himself–are trying to pull Danny into their world. Danny sees images of them murdered brutally, and flees in fear. Meanwhile, Jack is struggling with his alcoholism, violence and lack of control of himself and his sensitive wife and child. When he sees Grady, Grady advises him:

“My girls, sir, they didn’t care for the Overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of matches, and tried to burn it down. But I ‘corrected’ them sir. And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, I ‘corrected’ her.”

Danny is confronted with the horror of what men are capable of.

In this aftermath of the women’s movement, Jack (a weak man, resistant to authority) is being haunted and guided by a forceful, dominating masculinity of the past. He’s stuck between the two worlds, and succumbs to violent, domineering alcoholism.

But he loses. Wendy and Danny win.

While his predecessor succeeded in “correcting” his wife and daughters, that time has past.

Here, the flashing memories of the ghosts of the past are terrifying. The Grady girls provide a look into what it is to be “corrected” and dominated.

“Come play with us Danny,” the girls beg, haunting him with the realities of masculine force and dominance.

Starting with the late-70s and 80s slasher films (and the growing Religious Right/Moral Majority in politics), the “Final Girl” reigned supreme, and the promiscuous young woman would perish first. Masculinity (characterized with “monstrous” violence and strength) and femininity became natural enemies. These fights on the big screen mirrored the fights in reality. The Equal Rights Amendment was pushed out of favor and was never ratified, and a growing surge of conservatism and family values began dominating American rhetoric.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, we see a resurgence of the terrifying little girl. This time, she is serving as a warning to single/working/independent/adoptive mothers.

In The Ring (the 2002 American adaptation of a 1998 Japanese film), Rachel Keller (played by Naomi Watts) is a journalist and a single mother. She unknowingly risks her son and his father’s lives by showing them a cursed videotape. A critic noted:

“If she had never entered the public sphere and viewed the cassette in the first place, she would not have inadvertently caused Noah’s death, nor would she have to potentially cause the death of another. Rachel would, perhaps, have been better off staying at home.”

Single motherhood has often been the driving force behind horror plots.

In her investigation into the video, she discovers the twisted, dark past of the video’s subject, Samara, a young girl who started life troubled (her birthmother tried to drown her). She was adopted by a couple, but her adoptive mother suffered from visions and haunting events due to Samara’s powers. They attempted to institutionalize Samara, but eventually the adoptive mother drowns her in a well after Samara cannot be cured of her psychosis. Her adoptive father, Rachel finds, locked Samara in an attic of their barn, and Samara left a clue of the well’s location behind wallpaper. (Bitch Flicks ran an excellent analysis of the yellow wallpaper and the themes of women’s stories in The Ring.)

Samara’s life was punctuated by drowning, which has throughout history been a way for women to commit suicide or be killed (symbolizing both the suffocation of women’s roles and the return to the life-giving waters that women are often associated with). While Rachel “saves” Samara’s corpse and gives her a proper burial, Samara didn’t want that. She rejected Rachel’s motherhood and infects Rachel’s son. Rachel–in her attempts to mother–cannot seem to win.

Rachel “saves” Samara from her watery grave, but she still cannot succeed.

The ambiguous ending suggests that Rachel may indeed save her son, but will have to harm another to do so. This idea of motherly self-sacrifice portrays the one way that Rachel–single, working mother Rachel–can redeem herself. However, the parallel narrative of the dangers of silencing and “locking up” women is loud and clear.

And in 2009’s Orphan, Esther is a violent, overtly sexual orphan from Russia who is adopted by an American family. Esther is “not nearly as innocent as she claims to be,” says the IMDB description. This story certainly plays on the fear of the “other” in adopted little girls (much like The Ring) and how that is realized in the mothers. In this film, Esther is actually an adult “trapped” in a child’s body. The clash of a childish yet adult female (as culturally, little girls are somehow expected to embody adult sexuality and yet be innocent and naïve) again reiterates this fear of little girls with unnatural and unnerving power. The drowning death of Esther, as her adoptive mother and sister flee, shows that Esther must be killed to be subdued. The power of mother is highlighted, yet the film still plays on cultural fears of mothering through international adoptions and the deep, disturbing duality of childhood and adulthood that girls are supposed to embody.

Like Samara, Esther is a deeply disturbed daughter, capable of demonic violence.

In the last 60 years, American culture has seen remarkable change and resistance to that change. Horror films–which portray the very core of society’s fears and anxieties–have reflected the fears of women’s social movements through the faces of terrifying little girls.

While nineteenth-century literature comforted audiences with the trope of a dead, beautiful woman, thus making her passive and frail (of course, we still do this), twentieth and twenty-first century horror films force audiences to come face to face with murderous, demonic, murdered and psychotic little girls to parallel fears of women having economic, reproductive, parenting and marital (or single) power.

Little girls are supposed to be the epitome of all we hold dear–innocent, sweet, submissive and gentle. The Victorian Cult of Girlhood and Womanhood bleeds into the twenty-first century anti-feminist movements, and these qualities are still revered.

Horror films hold a mirror up to these ideals, distorting the images and terrifying viewers in the process. The terror that society feels while looking at these little girls echoes the terror it feels when confronted with changing gender norms and female power.

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Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.