Sex, Violence, and Girls in Pink Dresses: Thoughts on Prom Horror Flicks

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 slasher Prom 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
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
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
“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
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
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
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
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
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.

 

See also at Bitch Flicks: Prom and Female Sexual Desire in Pretty in Pink and The Loved Ones

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Elizabeth Kiy is a Canadian writer and journalist living in Toronto, Ontario.

Prom and Female Sexual Desire in ‘Pretty in Pink’ and ‘The Loved Ones’

In this piece we focus on prom as a densifying trope for teenage female sexual desire in many cultural representations (think of ‘Carrie,’ ‘She’s All That,’ ‘My-So-Called Life,’ or ‘Glee,’ to name just a few). We are doing so by complementing John Hughes’ rather classic romantic-comedy and “Brat Pack” movie ‘Pretty in Pink’ with the horror/torture movie with comedy elements ‘The Loved Ones’ directed by Sean Byrne – two examples of female desire as imagined by male writers.

This is a guest post by Ingrid Bettwieser and Steffen Loick for our Representations of Female Sexual Desire week.

Girls want relationships, boys want sex. The notion that adolescent girls don’t act on their own sexual desires (and just look sexy) still seems to be a prevailing cultural organizing principle perpetuated by many media illustrations. For us the concept of “Prom” brings together – in a pop-cultural genealogy – diffuse notions of (predominantly) heterosexual teenage desire, depictions of romantic love and binary coupling combined with teen-horrors of social exclusion, acknowledgement and coming-of-age. Prom epitomizes the time and place where sexual subjects/objects of desire are ordered normatively. Individual freedom (not to go to prom but fall out of the place of acknowledgement) and social force (go to prom but subject to normalizing scripts) are negotiated accordingly.

In this piece we focus on prom as a densifying trope for teenage female sexual desire in many cultural representations (think of Carrie, She’s All That, My-So-Called Life, or Glee to name just a few). We are doing so by complementing John Hughes’ rather classic romantic-comedy and “Brat Pack”-movie Pretty in Pink (1986) with the horror/torture movie with comedy elements The Loved Ones (2009) directed by Sean Byrne – two examples of female desire as imagined by male writers.

Pretty in Pink: Prom and female heterosexual desire economized

In Pretty in Pink we follow Andie Walsh, a white working class high school student, whose symbolic entrance into upper class is negotiated in a romantic Cinderella narrative. As the story unfolds it becomes evident that Andie is motivated by economic desire that she can only satisfy through a makeover. In this process she turns from quite independent but socially marginalized teenager to coupled with a “richie” but silenced.

Due to a scholarship Andie attends a private high school and falls for yuppie Blane. The two start dating despite Andie’s geekish best friend Duckie (also a so called “mutant” e.g. working class member), who follows her around quite intrusively and whose love for her is unrequited since she doesn’t show any romantic interest in him. Duckie even warns Andie of the potential sexual motives Blane might have: “He is gonna use your ass and gonna throw you away!” But regardless of any peer skepticism, Andie assumes that hating people because of their money would be some kind of reversed injustice.

Pretty in Pink: Duckie is no object of Andie’s desire
Duckie is no object of Andie’s desire

 

After a disastrous date, where Blane’s rich friends humiliated Andie at a party, Blane asks Andie to go to prom with him. This important question leaves Andie utterly speechless and she kisses Blane right away in front of his BMW. Only as soon as she enters her house she screams out loud and tells her father, “I can’t believe it happened!” As if Andie is not entitled to have sexual feelings on her own, she uses a passive voice without seeming to be involved in any action. Being asked to prom and the couple’s first kiss intermingle to a single event that alludes to the sexualization of prom.

But in due course Blane stops answering Andie’s calls and freezes her off because of peer pressure and out of his own doubt in the relationship. After dramatic events, Andie decides to go to prom nonetheless to prove that “they didn’t break” her. Moreover Andie bonds with her elder friend Iona, a strong and creative record store manager, who advises Andie to go to prom in the first place when she questions the necessity of it being a “stupid tradition.” Iona stresses it would be essential in later life: “It was the worst, but it’s supposed to be, you know, you have to go.”

Lamenting her wasted creative talents, Iona asks Andy in another situation, “I am good in bed, should I be a whore?” It becomes clear that sexual abilities are to remain outside the realm of economic usability. In the course of events Iona goes through a transformation from punkish and outstanding to “mom-ish” in order to progress in her own cross-class relationship. When she is dating a “yuppie” she aligns the criteria for her happiness: “He is so nice, he is employed, he is heterosexual.”

Pretty in Pink: Andie cares for her part-time working father
Andie cares for her part-time working father

 

The desired combination of nice/employed/heterosexual is combined with a degrading of working class masculinities in homophobic modes as inefficient and therefore undesirable throughout the movie–Andie’s father, who hangs around the house during the day, is taken care of by Andie herself as he doesn’t get over the abandonment by her mother; Duckie, who doesn’t seem to be interested in finishing high school is mistaken for a male sex worker in one scene (the character’s sexual orientation/gender is still speculated on as supposedly “effeminate” or “gay”). Iona has an argument with her obviously incapable partner who demands not only house-work and sex but also transportation services and even Blane is “degraded” by his upper class friends as a “faggot” when seen with Andie.

Not so decent Benny and Steff
Not-so-decent Benny and Steff

 

Andie’s sexually decent behavior is contrasted by upper class Benny, who is obviously sexually active and in one scene tells her boyfriend Steff that she would be “one more step away from virginity” for which he labels her a “slut.” Andie’s character, however, doesn’t seem to be sexually motivated at any time and instead rather marked by protestant chastity. Female sexual desire is not absent here; it is told as economized and rationalized desire that can be satisfied through expressive self-entrepreneurship and working – even on a prom dress. Material wealth as represented here is therefore fetishized but corrected in its moral degeneration via Andie’s display of female sexual decency and DIY diligence. In order for her not to be labeled a “slut,” she cannot display sexual agency.

Andie's father gives her a pink prom dress
Andie’s father gives her a pink prom dress

 

In the end Andie creates herself an outfit out of two pink prom dresses–one of them given to her by her father, the other one being her friend Iona’s old dress. After days of working Andie goes to prom alone where she is met by Duckie and they walk in together as friends. As soon as Blane spots Andie he comes along and tells her he would’ve always believed in her whereas she didn’t believe in him. (Which is pretty implausible considering his behavior.) With Duckie’s approval, Andie finally follows Blane to the outside parking lot without many words. The movie ends with their final uniting kiss.

Final kiss
Final kiss

 

Prom and the monstrosity of female sexual desire: The Loved Ones

The Loved Ones (1999) could have been the ultimate feminist revenge-fantasy I have long craved. I imagined the film to be an utopist notion against the always similar plot-narrative of prom night as a heterosexist spectacle of the male desire. The heroine does not transform into a beautiful “swan,” the mandatory happy ending does not occur, and the anticipated couple does not find each other. Instead, a nerd-stereotyped boy experiences in a subplot that the reality of actually going to prom with the female object of desire is sad, awkward, and leaves a hollow feeling.

The film torpedoes the classical structure of the prom night narrative from the beginning: The female main character Lola, who is orchestrated to appear as unimposing and weird in her first scene, asks her crush, the melancholic school-bad boy Brent, to the ball herself. She is active and autonomous and waiting for a boy to ask her seems not to be an option. After Brent rejects her request, she secretly observes him having oral sex with his girlfriend in a car. Lola’s face is rigid and empty. In the next scene we find her sitting in her pink-colored room, gluing Brent’s yearbook-picture into her scrapbook. She even paints a heart around his face. While doing this Lola listens to a song of the singer/songwriter Kasey Chambers, which might become the hymn of the next generation of sad teenage girls: “Am I not pretty enough? Is my heart still broken? […] Why do you see right through me?”

One finally realizes that this self-dramatization as the sad outsider girl is just a performance when her father gives her a pink dress with matching shoes as a present. Unlike in Pretty in Pink, the dress scene takes places in a very early stage of the storyline, but it’s also one of the most important scenes of all. Thrilled Lola tries on the dress in front of her mirror, while her father – whom she tells to stay – watches her from the door. This two-sided lustful action, posing and watching, marks Lola via the insinuation of father-daughter incest, one of the most far-reaching narrative taboos, as sexually monstrous.

 

The moment of transformation: Lola and her dress
The moment of transformation: Lola and her dress

 

The pink dress simultaneously initiates her transformation: Lola shifts to a bloody prom queen and anti-heroine who acts out sadistic desires in a series of violent acts against Brent’s body. They are all bizarre persiflages of prom rituals. She carves her initials into Brent’s chest, after the obligatory posing and picture-taking and pretends to dance with the enamored boy, whose feet are nailed to the floor while her father showers them in glitter.

Lola experiences lust through torture
Lola experiences lust through torture

 

These tableau viands of violence begin with the annexation of Brent: The drugged and kidnapped boy wakes up wearing a smoking jacket in a kitchen tied to a chair. The room is decorated with balloons, there’s even a disco ball at the ceiling. Lola moves close and injects him something that suppresses his ability to talk. Brent, by the way the actual hero of the story, becomes a victim; he has to remain silent and subject to Lola’s haphazard power. This increases Lola’s lust and her desire to put him at the center of her enactments of torture, pain, and degradation.

A grotesque version of prom night pictures
A grotesque version of prom night pictures

 

Unfortunately this is not about taking revenge for all the rejected high school girls. The film points out clearly that father and daughter have done this before and that especially Lola is a sheer monster. Not because her violence seems to have no boundaries–Lola is finally portrayed as completely monstrous when she becomes less sexually devoted to Brent, who starts to resist her. In the course of them dancing together, she admits to her overwhelmed father: “Your are the prince, that’s why I can’t find what I want. It’s you, it has always been you, Daddy.” The indicated kiss between them is stopped by Brent, who escapes and kills Lola’s father, what finally marks the restoration of sexual normativity and social order respectively.

Monstrous desire: Lola and her father
Monstrous desire: Lola and her father

 

In the end Lola represents abnormity, because she has violently abandoned her family. She not only cut the ties to her mother, like Andie does in Pretty in Pink, she also lobotomized and killed her. Lola’s sexual desire toward her father led to his death by Brent’s hand. When she is eventually killed by Brent and his girlfriend, it seems like the only plausible solution: disappointment. Not only is The Loved Ones not a feminist film, it’s also not a revenge-fantasy or even a film about a cool, crazed, pink female killer. It’s about a path of ordeals of a young man, who finds – after rightfully killing his sexually deviant female torturer – his long lost place in society with a more or less silent girlfriend.

 


Steffen Loick is doing his PhD on the relationship between gender identity and body optimation at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, German. Ingrid Bettwieser just finished school and works as an extracurricular educator at a memorial in Berlin, Germany.

Preview: Prom

You all know that Disney’s latest atrocity teen flick, Prom, is in theatres now, right? For those of us without teenaged girls in our lives, sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the latest flicks–aside from Twilight (H/T to reader Emilie for cluing me in). 
Here’s the official trailer:

I especially enjoy the stereotypical male versus female behavior here, and the cherry on top is, of course, the two young men at the end who misogynistically bond over OMG Women! How do we deal with these creatures?!
I have some problems with the U.S. tradition of prom. Prom is this really odd cultural beast: it’s about gender roles, first and foremost, and it’s this weird space in which teenaged girls are highly sexualized and have their sexuality policed at the same time. Any deviation from heteronormativity is frowned upon–at best–and at worst…well, there are a lot things I could say here. Remember Constance, whose prom was cancelled when she wanted to wear a tux and attend with her girlfriend, and when she won a lawsuit against her Mississippi school, was then cruelly sent to a fake prom? Or look at the U.S. South, where de facto segregation continues to the point that schools just in the past decade have held their very first racially integrated proms? Prom is a divisive ritual in which girls are encouraged to spend outrageous amounts of money (yeah, it’s definitely about class performance, too) on a dress, shoes, hairstyle, nails, etc., and in which teenaged boys rent a tux and buy a corsage. And maybe pitch in on a ridiculous limo, too.
Believe it or not, I was a teenaged girl at one point and even went to prom–twice! And I know that it can be a fun celebration of a transitional time in a young person’s life. But the crass consumerism of it all and the gender norms…well, I’m sure Disney will actually critique those elements, right?