Little Girls in Horror Films: Setting the Stage for Female Double Standards

Little girls are often what we associate with innocence. Girls are said to be born out of “sugar, spice, and everything nice,” which attaches a stigma to women from birth that is unrealistic. Society is conditioned to believe this ridiculous myth, which changes the way we value little girls over little boys.

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

Horror films frequently utilize little girls as a “go-to” scare tactic.  As the sound disappears in a dark and spooky house covered in cobwebs and shadows, a little girl’s laugh or even a song will echo throughout the halls.  The contrast of something so seemingly innocent found in a dark and uninviting environment has been used for decades.  Whether it’s the iconic and eerie request of the Grady sisters asking Danny Torrance to play forever (and ever, and ever, and ever) in The Shining, or the innocent announcement of “They’re Heeeeere” from little Carol Anne Freeling in Poltergeist, little girls are as much of a scaring staple as a shrieking cat or a set of wailing violins.  While there are the exceptions like Damien in The Omen or Barto in The Unborn, for the large part, little girls are used much more frequently in killer kid/child possession/child ghost films.  In the same breath, the safety of little girls is valued far more than the safety of little boys.  This double standard shown with little girls in horror films perpetuates the idea that women, regardless of age, are constantly in a state of conflict.

Grady Sisters
Grady Sisters

 

Little girls are often what we associate with innocence.  Girls are said to be born out of “sugar, spice, and everything nice,” which attaches a stigma to women from birth that is unrealistic.  Society is conditioned to believe this ridiculous myth, which changes the way we value little girls over little boys.  When little girls in horror films aren’t used as demons/ghosts/killers/etc. and instead exist as just human, the importance of their survival is much greater than any other character.  Referring back to Carol Anne Freeling in the Poltergeist franchise, the entire film is centered on protecting and saving her.  Carol Anne’s brother, Robbie, arguably endures the more traumatic events in the film, but the focus still remains on Carol Anne.  Yes, Robbie’s trees, gravity, his own toys, and his bedroom are torturing and “taken” by the spirits in the house, but the entire focus stays on protecting Carol Anne.  Never mind the years of therapy Robbie may require to help him after the tree outside of his room tried to kill him, we still only care about Carol Anne simply because as a little girl, we feel that she constantly needs protecting.

Even when little girls are presented as the villains, we still care more about their survival than little boys.  The Swedish vampire hit, Let The Right One In, shows Eli, a vampire girl around the same appearing age as her male counterpart, Oskar.  Eli is capable of taking care of herself (and proves it throughout the course of the film) while Oskar is frequently bullied and shown as weak and in need of protection every step of the way.  However, Eli’s survival is the one we focus on the most.  Whether it’s aggravation towards her helper, Hakan, and his insolence that has now put her safety in jeopardy, or the fact an angry townsperson is hot on her trail to kill her, we sympathize with Oskar’s bullying, but we don’t invest in his safety quite like we do Eli’s. We expect Oskar to “deal” with his issues like he always had done before, but with Eli, we constantly want those around her to “save” her, even though she could do it on her own if she chose.

Insidious
Insidious

 

In Wes Craven’s The People Under the Stairs, we also witness intersectionality at play. Poindexter “Fool” Williams, is a young African-American boy trapped in a house of horrors.  While he appears to be about the same age as the Caucasian girl, Alice Robeson, we value her safety far more than we do Fool’s.  From the get-go, Fool is presented as almost deserving to be in trouble because he’s a poor Black child, and the angelically white Alice is stuck living in a home with abusive parents.  The threat from “Mommy and Daddy” Robeson is much greater toward Fool, but we still shift our focus toward Alice and sense a greater sense of distress towards her survival.  Fool is presented as not only a troublemaking youth, but also as the undisputed hero of the film.  We believe that this poor Black child is capable enough of making it out alive because “he should be used to survival” while we see Alice as weak and with a lack of “street smarts.”  It’s a tragic truth, but this sort of value on the young white female is something that is commonly reflected in the way the media portrays lost children (aka: missing white woman syndrome).

Orphan
Orphan

 

At the same time, despite our value of the lives of little girls over just about anyone else in a horror film, girls are used overwhelmingly more than boys as a source of “evil” in horror films.  Cathy’s Curse, The Exorcist, Silent Hill, The Bad Seed, The Ring, The Shining, Orphan, Night of the Living Dead, Alice Sweet Alice, The Last Exorcism, The Amityville Horror, Case 39, and countless other films have all portrayed little girls as the perfect vessel for pure, unadulterated evil.  We are terrified of these evil little girls, but at the same time, we feel like they need to be protected over anyone else.  These conflicting ideals are the very start of the double standards that women endure over the course of their lives.

People Under the Stairs
People Under the Stairs

 

Compare this to a film like Insidious, where the focus is on little boys, we still don’t invest in their safety.  The son, Dalton, is transported into an otherworldly land, but the greatest sense of conflict occurs when the father, an adult, goes in after him.  It’s almost as if we don’t care about boys until they become men, but we only care about women when they’re little.

The film Orphan is particularly interesting in that it shows a little girl as evil–a little girl as the ultimate object needing protection–and a little boy as someone we completely ignore.  Esther, a deranged child adopted by a loving family with two existing children, plays the villain in this film.  The existing daughter, Max, is a deaf girl about the age of 4, and her brother Daniel is closer to Esther’s age at 10-12.  While Daniel is immediately skeptical of Esther, he is written off as being a pain-in-the-ass prepubescent boy, while Max is shown as the perfect daughter, loving and trusting…the way little girls SHOULD be.  However, when Esther is revealed to be the personification of evil that she is, our focus shifts to protecting Max.  Esther literally tries to set Daniel on fire and burn him alive, but we still fear for Max’s safety on a much higher level when Esther turns her attention to Max.  Why? Because she’s a little girl, and little girls need saving.

Poltergeist
Poltergeist

 

Once childhood is over, these little girls grow up into other tropes and female archetypes that continue the path of double standards: the mother or the killer, the slut or the prude, the dumb blonde, or the geeky brunette.  Women in horror films aren’t allowed to simply “be,” but instead are constantly being pushed into eerily specific archetypal boxes.  This practice starts in the young representation of children and follows us for the rest of our lives.  Art really does imitate life, regardless of how depressing the outcomes may be.

 


BJ Colangelo is the woman behind the keyboard for Day of the Woman: A blog for the feminine side of fear and a contributing writer for Icons of Fright. She’s been published in books, magazines, numerous online publications, all while frantically applying for day jobs. She’s a recovering former child beauty queen and a die-hard horror fanatic. You can follow her on Twitter at @BJColangelo.

 

 

Call For Writers: The Terror of Little Girls

The films that depict terrifying little girls are acting out the deep-seated fear of the loss of our culture’s goodness and purity, virginity and innocence. There’s also a collective discomfort surrounding the fact that little girls become women, and that womanhood is unpredictable and uncontrollable. Little girls in films like ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘The Bad Seed’ embody a premature, preternatural womanhood that is powerful, sexual, and taboo.

Call-for-Writers-e1385943740501

Our theme week for November 2014 will be The Terror of Little Girls (see Leigh Kolb’s “The Terror of Little Girls: Social Anxiety About Women in Horrifying Girlhood” at Bitch Flicks).

Both the horror and thriller genres are rife with terrifying little girls. Sometimes these girl children are possessed by malevolent spirits. Sometimes they’re changelings or aliens, impersonating sweet, innocent beloved daughters. Other times, they’re ambiguous ghosts, haunting our protagonists for justice or revenge, and sometimes they’re just sociopaths who murder and torment their victims.

Scary children are certainly a prolific trope, articulating our culture’s fear of the loss of innocence as well as the unknowable, even alien, qualities of children. However, when we examine why the trope of creepy little girls is so prominent, we’re presented with an even more complex psychology. Little girls embody all that is good and pure; they are innocence and vulnerability. They are viewed separately from women because they symbolize all the potential that our culture embeds in the ideal of womanhood.

The films that depict terrifying little girls are acting out the deep-seated fear of the loss of our culture’s goodness and purity, virginity and innocence. There’s also a collective discomfort surrounding the fact that little girls become women and that womanhood is unpredictable and uncontrollable. Little girls in films like The Exorcist and The Bad Seed embody a premature, preternatural womanhood that is powerful, sexual, and taboo. And they must be stopped, killed if necessary, to neutralize their threat. The logic: though we can’t truly stop little girls from growing up into those subversive creatures known as women, we can engage in the futile fantasy that destroys them before that happens time and time again.

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, Nov.  21 by midnight.

The Exorcist

Case 39

Night of the Living Dead

The Ring

Supernatural

Children of the Corn

The Addams Family

Phone

Village of the Damned

The Sixth Sense

The Children

The Shining

Alice, Sweet Alice

Silent Hill

The Brood

Orphan

The Bad Seed

Interview with the Vampire

Let the Right One In

Let Me In

The Omen IV: The Awakening