Nuclear Family – Bitch Flicks

Self-Made Orphan: Why We Cringe When Karen Cooper Snacks on Her Dad

This guest post by Julia Patt appears as part of our theme week on The Terror of Little Girls.

Kyra Schon had exactly one line—“I hurt”—and less than ten minutes of screen time in George Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead. Much of her role consisted of lying supine on a table. Her big scene happened 84 minutes into a 95-minute film. Her character is not a perennial favorite on the creepiest kids in cinema lists. (Although when she does appear, she’s No. 1.) But before Regan MacNeil showed us her infamous head-spinning trick, before Damien took the world’s most sinister tricycle ride, and before Samara hauled herself out of the television and into our nightmares, there was little Karen Cooper, who ate her dad and stabbed her mom with a garden trowel.

It’s impossible to understand Karen without discussing her parents, Harry (Karl Hardman) and Helen (Marilyn Eastman); initially, her family is all that gives her context in Romero’s strange new world. But the Coopers always bothered me in Night of the Living Dead. They didn’t seem to belong. After all, almost half the film passes before they appear. Ben (Duane Jones), our protagonist, has spent a good chunk of screen time securing an abandoned farmhouse against the undead. All the stuff you want a good survivor to do, he does: barricade the doors and windows, look for supplies, and settle the nearly catatonic survivor-girl Barbra (Judith O’Dea) on the sofa. Forty minutes in and we’re all ready to weather the long night of Romero’s undead apocalypse.

And then the Coopers emerge from the cellar snarling with metaphorical significance—i.e., the nuclear family staggers out of the underworld to reassert its importance. We’re what you’re meant to defend, they seem to say. Of course, their presence also highlights the awful truth of any zombie apocalypse film: there are no safe places.

If the dead don’t overrun a stronghold, you will have to deal with the living eventually.

By the way, good luck if the living you have to deal with is Harry Cooper. He’s all the worst characteristics of the patriarchy packaged and amplified: aggressive, entitled, self-centered, oddly petulant, and arrogant. He won’t apologize for not coming up to help, despite hearing Barbra’s screams. Instead, he lashes out at Ben for criticizing him. When the others refuse to join him in the cellar, he throws a temper tantrum. He’ll board up that door and leave them to rot, understand? Moments later, he furiously demands they share the supplies Ben’s scavenged from the house. “We’ve got to have food down there,” Harry blusters. “We’ve got a right.” Helen, his wife, is not much more compelling. Bitter and cynical, she can’t resist poking at her husband’s neuroses:

“That’s important, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“To be right and for everyone else to be wrong.”

We know from just a few lines of dialogue that this is no close-knit couple or loving family, for all that its structure might evoke white picket fences and suburban houses. (Note: it’s unclear where the Coopers come from, but they seem neither rural nor urban.) And in case we miss the point, Helen sums up their situation this way: “We may not enjoy living together. But dying together isn’t going to solve anything.”

The crumbling cement in this relationship is the injured little girl lying on the table downstairs. Her parents are united only on the question of her safety. Unsurprisingly, Karen has no voice or agency of her own. The adults perceive her as entirely helpless— “Maybe it’s shock,” her mother says of her condition. “She can’t possibly take all the racket…” her father objects to bringing her upstairs. She is, they believe, the thing to be protected, shielded from the horror of the events outside. Like the house itself, if they can get her through the night, it will all be OK.

What no one understands in Romero’s first film is, of course, that the undead have already infected Karen. While audiences of Dawn of the Dead and every zombie movie after know that a bite is a death sentence, the characters in Night of the Living Dead haven’t fully realized what they will have to sacrifice. The news reports in the background that families “will have to forgo the dubious comfort of a funeral.” But the problem is much more insidious and frightening: families will have to forgo the comfort of family in order to survive.

It only takes a brief moment of contact for the Coopers to lose Karen. And no amount of hand-holding or parental influence will undo the contamination. While many debate the extent to which Night of the Living Dead is a political allegory, Romero has repeatedly stated he wanted the film to capture the social unrest of the 1960s. Once exposed to the chaos of the world outside, Karen is irrevocably changed. She is about to become part of the danger. Only Ben seems at all cognizant of the fact that she may pose a threat to them. “Who knows what kind of disease those things carry,” he points out when her parents acknowledge that she’s been bitten.

Until the end of the film, Karen remains what she seems: a sick little girl. She dies and rises amidst the chaos of the house being overrun by the undead. After a struggle, Ben shoots Harry, who went for his gun. Harry stumbles down to the cellar and staggers towards his little girl, hand outstretched in what should be a touching scene between parent and child. The next time we see the two of them, Karen crouches over her father—now dead or unconscious— a handful of meat in her hands and his blood on her lips. She does not need his affection, but she will take sustenance from him.

Undead Karen takes a bite out of dear old Dad

Helen finds them this way and, having drawn Karen’s attention, backs into a corner, horrified. Karen advances and then stabs her mother with a garden trowel in an almost surreal, Hitchcockian sequence. Helen is helpless against her undead daughter. All she can say is “baby,” which Karen does not acknowledge or recognize. Her murder of her mother is ultra-violent; she deals several blows to Helen’s abdomen, thus destroying the origin of her own life.

Romero’s living dead regularly use tools

The film and the scene disturbed audiences to no end, and Karen Cooper has become one of the iconic images of Romero’s films. As said, her moment is brief. Yet, it sticks with us. If we compare Karen to the other women in the film, she initially does not seem unlike Barbra, who is mostly helpless and overwhelmed. She must depend on the others for her survival; alone, she wouldn’t make it. Predictably, these young women are fragile, delicate, and need protection. They are not meant for the horrors outside the house.

This appears to be true up until Karen’s point of resurrection. Where Barbra is devoured, Karen is transformed. Unlike her parents, who are trying to hold onto the old social norms, or Ben, who will do anything to survive, Karen joins the restless mob of the undead. Not consciously or willfully, it’s true, but the end result is the same. Although briefly a victim, she becomes the monster and destroys the remains of her family. She cements her status as a member of the undead by consuming her father and increases their numbers by murdering her mother. These two acts definitively separate her from humanity. She neither wants nor needs the shelter of the family unit.

What’s subversive about Karen Cooper, then, is that she doesn’t just die. In the eyes of society, a good, innocent little girl would simply perish when she encounters something so monstrous. Instead, she joins it. Embodied in her, the new generation does not save us or give us hope. Rather, they become part of the chaos. And no amount of reasoning or pleading will sway them.

Julia Patt is a writer from Maryland. She also edits 7×20, a journal of twitter literature, and is a regular contributor to the Tate Street High Society literary blog. Follow her on twitter: https://twitter.com/chidorme

The Notion of “Forever and Ever and Ever” in ‘The Amityville Horror’ and ‘The Shining’

The nightmare that Jack and George share signifies their innate fear—the possibility of destroying the family they, as men, have built.

This guest post by Rachel Wortherley appears as part of our theme week on Demon and Spirit Possession.

Two families in search of fresh start move into new homes: the Torrance family to the “Overlook Hotel” in Denver, Colorado, and the Lutz family to a beautiful Dutch-Colonial home in Amityville, New York. Unbeknownst to them, they will encounter horror in the form of demons and evil spirits attempting to destroy their “traditional” family dynamic.

Stuart Rosenberg’s The Amityville Horror and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining focus on the prospect of renewal. Rosenberg’s film focuses on newlyweds George and Kathy Lutz (Josh Brolin and Margot Kidder) as they move into a new home with their three children and dog, Harry. There is one catch. The home’s previous inhabitants (two parents and their children) were killed by their son and brother. Audiences were also being presented a “tweaked” version of the nuclear family being that George is the children’s stepfather. It is noted that they have only recently begun to call him “George” rather than “Mr. Lutz.” George’s wish is for them to address him as “Dad.” The new marriage and their determination to make new memories inside a tainted house is George and Kathy’s attempt at growing closer as a family.

The Shining also begins similarly. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a schoolteacher turned writer, moves with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd), to the “Overlook Hotel” where he is hired as the winter caretaker. While this is Jack’s opportunity to write in solitude, it is also an opportunity for their family to start anew–at least in the eyes of Wendy. Wendy reveals to Danny’s pediatrician that Jack, a recovering alcoholic, accidentally dislocated Danny’s shoulder in an attempt to pull him away from ruining important school paperwork. This unfortunate incident prompts Jack to quit drinking. As a result, Wendy forgives him and attributes it to being “just one of those things.” While the Lutz family in Amityville wants to create new memories, the Torrances want to erase their pasts. However, the memories within the walls of their respective households become imbued in the minds of the families, leading to madness and terror.

It should be noted that children and fathers appear to be greatly affected by the supernatural beings in their homes. Because of the innocence of children, the spirits readily reveal themselves. For example, seven-year old Amy Lutz in Amityville is seen conversing and playing with “Jody,” her imaginary friend who lives in the house. There is one pivotal moment when Amy sings “Jesus loves me” as her and Jody’s chairs rock back and forth. This suggests that the spirit is not evil, but in search of a companion. Jody also wants Amy to stay in the house “forever and ever,” presumably in the same ghostly state that Jody has taken. While Amy’s brush with the afterlife is playful and innocent, the same cannot be said for Danny Torrance.

Danny is a seven-year old boy who has the capability described as “shining.” He has terrifying premonitions and can telepathically communicate with others who “shine,” specifically the hotel chef, Dick Hallorann, who enlightens Danny to their capabilities. Danny’s gift materializes in the form of his imaginary friend Tony who Danny describes as “the little boy who lives in my mouth.” Tony appears to be a being that fosters Danny’s gifts, yet encourages him to conceal it from others, for fear of no one believing him. When Danny’s first premonition of blood cascading through the hallways of the Overlook Hotel occurs, Danny is unable to remember. Tony also appears when Danny is attacked by the demonic figure of the woman in the bathtub in the forbidden “Room 237.” It is also Tony who communicates the infamous word, “redrum” (murder spelled backward) to Danny to warn his mother of the pending murder that Jack wants to inflict upon their family, as well as the gruesome murders from the past. Wendy recalls that Tony made his first appearance after Danny’s incident with Jack. This suggests that Tony exists as a source of protection for Danny to shield his innocent consciousness.

While these otherworldly figures engage with children in a mild manner or as a scare tactic, they react entirely different with the fathers in the respective films. Rage and violent behavior are triggered within George and Jack. George, who desperately wanted the children to call him “Dad,” exclaims that Kathy needs to “discipline her children.” George’s physical appearance goes from strong to sickly. He sweats profusely, incessantly chops wood, and neglects work. The process of George’s descent into madness is a slower process whereas Jack’s descent appears to occur immediately. He also appears angrier than George. Kubrick goes from a casual scene when Wendy brings Jack breakfast in bed and he jokes about the ghosts in the hotel to a penultimate scene where Jack rages at her to never disturb him when he writes. This further suggests that while Jack wants to be with his family, he does not want to be “with” them. Sane Jack in the beginning of the film looks forward to the isolation of a large, empty hotel, yet this is impossible because his family is present.

The distance between Jack, his wife, and child is noticeable before his descent. Jack has minimal scenes with Danny and when sharing scenes, Danny is glued to Wendy. Jack barely interacts with him apart from instilling fear into Danny while in a trance-like state. In this scene, he simultaneously assures Danny that he would never hurt him while leering at him in a murderous manner. In comparison to George and Kathy’s marital bliss and passionate love scenes, Jack and Wendy appear too casual with each other. They almost seem like strangers. There is a sense that Wendy distrusts Jack. A scene that supports this occurs when Jack, screaming and crying in his sleep, awakens from a nightmare in which he murders and chops Wendy and Danny into pieces with an axe. As Wendy comforts him, a disheveled and traumatized Danny walks in with bruises on his neck–bruises inflicted by the ghostly woman in room 237. Remembering Jack’s drunken rage three years prior, Wendy immediately accuses him of abusing Danny.

As a result, Jack retreats in anger to the hotel bar where he encounters the ghost of Lloyd, the bartender. There he is satiated by alcohol while commiserating to Lloyd the complications of his marriage, specifically Wendy’s inability to forgive him for something that occurred “three goddamn years ago.” Unspoken anger and resentment clouds their marriage. In Amityville, George has the same nightmare and confesses it in tears to Kathy. The nightmare that Jack and George share signifies their innate fear—the possibility of destroying the family they, as men, have built.

The Lutz family manages to escape physically unscathed in the aftermath of their battle with the forces embedded within their house, whereas Wendy and Danny are the only two who escape their haunted home. A murderous Jack, wielding an axe, attempts to find his wife and son and ultimately succumbs to the bitter cold of Denver. Wendy is officially a single mother to Danny. However, a photograph from the Overlook Hotel in the 1920s depicts a smiling Jack with partygoers. He has found his new family.

Stuart Rosenberg’s The Amityville Horror (1979) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) are films that are released around the same time as family-centric films; specifically films that deal with the subject of divorce and single parenting. In Robert Benton’s 1979 film, Kramer vs. Kramer, audiences witness how a single father deals with raising his son in the absence of a mother, almost losing his child to the mother, and the mother ultimately granting him full custody. The parents also become civil toward each other. Audiences who are rooting for the father, played by the likeable Dustin Hoffman, gain a sense of satisfaction in the end. Meanwhile in its predecessor, Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman (1978), we watch how Jill Clayburgh’s character deals with a multitude of events: her husband divorcing her for a younger woman, teaching her teenage daughter to feel empowered, and having to start her dating life from scratch. While these images were progressive in its time, audiences were not shown the other perspective; the sometimes horrific nature of broken homes.

In Rosenberg and Kubrick’s respective films, outside forces attempt to help keep the nuclear family alive. In Amityville this materializes in the form of Father Delaney, who attempts to warn them about the house, yet is quelled by being struck mute and blind by the supernatural forces. This is reminiscent of the Catholic Church’s strict laws against divorce in favor of marriage counseling. In The Shining Dick Hallorann acts as a guardian to Danny. He comes to their rescue only to be cut down by Jack’s axe. Outsiders are not allowed to interfere. The family must deal with the uncomfortable and painful feelings within their household, as well as the aftermath. There lies the true test and the meaning of “forever and ever” as a family.

Rachel Wortherley is a graduate of Iona College in New Rochelle, New York and holds a Master of Arts degree in English. Her downtime consists of devouring copious amounts of literature, television shows, and films. She hopes to gain a doctorate in English literature and become a professional screenwriter.

‘Lyle’ is a Lesbian Take on ‘Rosemary’s Baby’? Yes Please!

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.

Written by Amanda Rodriguez.

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 big, beautiful brows. — 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 & Leah's fleeting intimacy — 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.

Sex, Love, and Coercion in ‘The Americans’

The tension of the spy antics in ‘The Americans’ really gets my heart racing in the climax of most episodes. Besides that phenomenon, though, there’s another aspect of this show that puts me on edge: I cannot tell if I think the way that ‘The Americans’ portrays sexual and romantic relationships is progressive, or, for lack of a better term, creepy and abusive.

This is a guest post by Joseph Jobes as part of our Representations of Female Sexual Desire week.

There is something about the experience of watching The Americans that I find really uncomfortable. I don’t mean this in a negative way, it is kind of the appeal of the show, but the tension of the spy antics really gets my heart racing in the climax of most episodes. Besides that phenomenon, though, there’s another aspect of this show that puts me on edge: I cannot tell if I think the way that The Americans portrays sexual and romantic relationships is progressive way, or, for lack of a better term, creepy and abusive.

Here’s what I mean by this: Many critics have proposed that the appeal of the show is not in its espionage storyline, but rather in the marriage dynamics between Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings. This is true; the romance between the two is certainly just as tense and dynamic as the “adventures” that they are going on in the week’s episode. What makes me unsettled about it, though, is that their marriage is very hard to define. Elizabeth and Phillip are sleeper KGB agents, and their marriage was an arranged front to make them seem more traditionally American (mom, dad, son, daughter). What is so unsettling about this is not the fact that it is an “arranged marriage,” but that they have to pretend it was not.

Faking emotions in 'The Americans' — Faking it in *The Americans*

Really, what The Americans is about is faking emotions, and how, through faking those emotions, one can produce authentic experiences, for better or worse. This is best exemplified in episode six from the first season (also, we are going to focus the plot discussion here on the first seven or so episodes, which form the first big story arc of the show). In the sixth episode, Phillip and Elizabeth are captured and tortured, with the captors trying to get them to give up information on the KGB. At the end of the scene, they realize that the man interrogating them is KGB, not CIA; their agency was worried they may have defected, since they have found out that there is a Russian double agent.

Before this, Elizabeth had told their higher-ups that Phillip was thinking about defecting. In the pilot episode, the couple realizes that their new neighbor is an FBI agent, and Phillip thinks that the FBI knows who they are. He suggests they pro-actively switch sides. This is a huge source of tension between him and Elizabeth, who is a much more devoted spy. After they leave the interrogation room in episode six, Phillip realizes Elizabeth must have shared his concerns with their boss, and he confronts her about it. Her response is, “You like it here too much!” This is exactly what I want to talk about. Phillip’s job as a sleeper agent is to seem American, and not just complacently American, but actively American. Of course when he started, Phillip was loyal to the Russian cause, but now by pretending to be a patriotic American and by raising American kids in an American house, Phillip has gone past his original intent. By him “performing” as an American, he has become an American.

This is really problematic to me as related to the sexual relationships in the show. Again, remember that when Elizabeth and Phillip first came to America they were young spies, willingly faking a marriage in order to advance the cause of their country. It would be a different situation if they had ended up falling in love due to their shared goal, but that is not the case. Elizabeth reminds Phillip, and the audience, multiple times in the first few episodes that “it never really happened” for them; they never really had the romantic connection that they had to force for so long. This is expanded upon when Phillip finds out that Elizabeth has had an affair with Gregory Thomas, which upsets him. After their fight, Elizabeth tells her husband she is beginning to feel actual love for him for the first time in two decades.

The next few episodes show the Jennings being a romantic, sexually active husband-and-wife. Though it may seem that they are finally having an open, consensual relationship, I fear something else could be at play here. If Phillip can act American for so long that he becomes American, can Elizabeth have acted like a loving wife so long that she has truly become one? To put it in another way, is her desire and affection for her husband now authentic, or just a learned routine? And, assuming it is as genuine as she claims it is, is it troubling that this emotion had to come from a forced place? If she had not had to live with Phillip for so long, and pretend that she loved him, would she have ever grown a real love for him? It seems troubling to celebrate that Elizabeth has finally accepted the situation she is being forced into; yet as viewers, we want our two protagonists to love each other.

I think there are two separate ways to read their relationship, and I do not know that I am satisfied with either. The first is to view the Jennings as a sort of “odd couple,” a duo forced together out of peculiar circumstances that is now finally learning to live with each other and accept one another’s differences. This is a pretty standard romantic plot, but I think it is a little too easy. The second option is that we are watching the story of two people who have essentially brainwashed themselves into loving each other, and now are fighting to protect and reify the very facade they had created. This reading seems too harsh, though, as Elizabeth and Phillip do seem to share real love in a few scenes. The complexity of their relationship, and the blurred lines between real and forced desire is what makes The Americans such a complex show. Even when things are going great for the couple, I am never completely satisfied with Elizabeth and Phillip’s situation. At best, they are a man and woman who are trying to “make it work,” and at worst, they are two people forced to pretend to love someone they view as a complete stranger. All of this, mixed with the very well done espionage/thriller storylines, makes for very enjoyable, tense television.

Joseph Jobes is a graduate student pursuing his MA in English Literature at Kutztown University. His research interests include depictions of gender, sexuality, race, and class in postcolonial and postmodern texts. Besides reading and writing about literature, Joseph also writes criticism and commentary on cigars, pipes, and the hobby in general.

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

This is a guest review by Allison Maria Rodriguez.

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

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

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

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

The American family, weird and creepy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stephanie is her own hero

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

Stephanie and Susan, happy without the “American Dream”

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

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

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