Women in Horror Week – Page 2

‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ ‘Prevenge,’ and the Evils of the Trump Administration

Alice Lowe’s ‘Prevenge’ is in some ways a modernized version of ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’ … Throughout the course of history, and especially in Trump’s America, baby always comes first. Our government cares more about fetuses than it does about living, breathing women. This chills me to the core more than a scary movie ever could.

This guest post written by Lindsay Pugh appears as part of our theme week on Women in Horror. | Spoilers ahead.

[Trigger warning: discussion of rape and sexual assault]

Whether completely alone or with a partner standing by, pregnancy is one of the most terrifying and bizarre events to happen in real life. Of course, women are expected to handle it with aplomb and joy. “Oh, you mean my entire body is going to change and then if all goes well, another human being is going to rip through my vagina, hopefully only causing minimal tearing? Fantastic! Sign me up!”

As a woman in 2017, there’s plenty to be afraid of: increased attacks on abortion, unrelenting attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, rape culture and the normalization of sexual assault (“Grab ‘em by the pussy.”), etc. The litany of bullshit is horrific and interminable. How can anyone make a horror film that will scare women when real life has turned into a waking nightmare? Easy. Throw pregnancy into the mix; take all those standard fears and concerns and amplify them. Two films that do a great job portraying these atrocities are Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and Alice Lowe’s Prevenge (2016).

I hate to give Polanski, creepy Keebler Elf and sexual predator extraordinaire, credit, but Rosemary’s Baby is one of my all-time favorite horror films and feminist as fuck. It makes me feel a little better to know that his screenplay is nearly identical to Ira Levin’s novel, so it’s not like Polanski is responsible for any of the genius plotting or characterizations.

In order to truly grasp the brilliance of Rosemary’s Baby, let’s quickly review the atrocities Rosemary (Mia Farrow) has to endure, from the sex before conception to her post-birth satanic cult discovery. First, it’s important to note that Rosemary’s pregnancy is the product of rape. Even though she’s been drugged c/o Minnie’s (Ruth Gordon) chocolate mousse, Rosemary is cognizant enough to realize, “This is no dream! This is really happening.” (Although even if she wasn’t cognizant, the fact is she was unable to consent.) The morning after her rape, Guy (John Cassavetes) tries to gaslight Rosemary by apologizing for the scratches on her body and telling her they only had sex when she was blacked out because he didn’t want to miss “baby night.” Rosemary is tense and suspicious for days, but those feelings are eventually eclipsed when a phone call from her doctor confirms her pregnancy. Instead of focusing on the traumatic conception, Rosemary diverts her attention to scheduling doctor’s appointments and spreading the joyous news.

Unfortunately, Rosemary’s happiness wanes when her body begins to change. In order to combat her feelings of unease, Guy, Minnie, and Roman (Sidney Blackmer) concoct a plan to ensure that no matter how bad her symptoms become, Rosemary never believes they’re abnormal. Dr. Sapirstein (Ralph Bellamy) tells Rosemary not to ask any questions or listen to advice from friends or books. Instead of taking vitamins, she’s to drink one of Minnie’s herbal concoctions every day. Rosemary wants what’s best for her baby, so she listens to the doctor, even as she becomes scarily gaunt. She knows something is wrong, but the people closest to her have done a great job of convincing her she’s paranoid and can’t trust her own instincts.

Throughout the film, Rosemary vacillates between trusting her intuition and dismissing it because she wants what’s best for the baby and doesn’t always trust herself to provide it. At several points, she tries to take control of her situation, but external forces usually convince her she’s made the wrong call. By effectively gaslighting her, Guy and the Castevets have ensured that Rosemary no longer trusts her own body or motherly intuition. At the end of the film, when Rosemary decides to embrace her role even though her child is a fucking demon, it’s a total act of rebellion. These people have taken away her sanity, her health, and nine months of her life, but they won’t take away her baby. Even though this situation isn’t what she signed up for, she’s on board for lack of a better option.

Even with a wanted baby, pregnancy can be a terrifying situation full of unknown elements. Alice Lowe had this in mind, that “pregnancy is an alien experience,” while making Prevenge. Without the power to ask questions and make informed decisions, a beautiful, exciting life event could easily turn into a waking nightmare full of anxiety and dread. The Trump administration wants to make Rosemary’s Baby a reality. Something is wrong with your pregnancy and you need to terminate it in order to avoid a lifetime of pain for yourself and your child? Too bad. You must carry the pregnancy to term and deal with the ramifications alone. Your pregnancy is the result of rape and you’re unable to deal with the psychological trauma? Or you simply don’t want to be pregnant? I hope you have the time, money, patience, and strength to deal with abortion restrictions like mandatory waiting periods, forced ultrasounds, TRAP laws, personhood laws, insurance and funding limitations, 20-week bans, forced counseling, and ideological shaming that you’re likely to encounter depending your state. And restrictions to abortion access disproportionately impact women in poverty, women of color, and women living in rural areas.

Rosemary’s Baby is as relevant today as it was forty-nine years ago. Like Guy Woodhouse, the Trump administration uses women as pawns and attempts to stave off rebellion by gaslighting, discrediting, isolating, and emotionally manipulating them.

Prevenge is in some ways a modernized version of Rosemary’s Baby. Ruth (Alice Lowe) is a widow, convinced something is wrong with her pregnancy but told by her midwife (Jo Hartley) that she needs to stay positive and listen to her instincts. The midwife tells Ruth, “Baby knows what to do. Baby will tell you what to do.” The only problem is that Ruth’s baby tells her to kill people, not to relax and eat some Cheetos dipped in clam chowder. With influences ranging from the Greek Furies, to American Psycho and Taxi Driver, Lowe “wanted to show a powerful pregnant woman,” which counters how pregnant women are traditionally depicted or viewed as frail.

During her pregnancy, Ruth is even more isolated than Rosemary. She lives out of hotel rooms, has no friends, and only interacts with her midwife and people she plans on killing. The bond with her unborn baby is the sole one we’re privy to and it’s obviously very twisted. Even when we finally see a flashback of her deceased husband, it’s of his death and not their time together.

While we often hear the midwife voice concern for the baby, we never hear her ask Ruth how she’s doing. Even after she looks through Ruth’s paperwork and realizes that her partner is dead, she doesn’t feign sympathy. She essentially tells Ruth to suck it up and remain positive because her negative energy won’t do anything to help the baby. This is the conversation she has with Ruth after realizing she’s a single mother:

Midwife: It’s very important to let the past stay in the past. It’s just nature’s way.
Ruth: I think nature’s a bit of a cunt, though, don’t you?
Midwife: Oh, negativity’s not good for the baby’s spirit, really.
Ruth: Do you think?
Midwife: Yes. I think it’s good to try to stay positive.

Ruth is clearly struggling with mental health issues and needs someone to step in and help her, but no one gives a shit about her problems; her job is to serve the baby and as long as she’s following through, there’s no cause for concern. As soon as Ruth becomes a mother, her grief and depression are non-issues to those around her because the baby comes first. Throughout the course of history, and especially in Trump’s America, baby always comes first. Our government cares more about fetuses than it does about living, breathing women. This chills me to the core more than a scary movie ever could.

Ruth and Rosemary both try to do what they think is best, but are swayed by outside influence. Ruth’s midwife tells her to listen to the baby; Dr. Sapirstein tells Rosemary to listen to him. No one tells either of these women to listen to themselves — to trust their bodies, experience, or intuition. Women are not to be trusted in any capacity, in any situation. Ruth knows that something isn’t right, that her pregnancy and mental state are abnormal. But she squashes these feelings, listens to her “baby,” and continues to kill people. Rosemary fights like hell at the end of the movie and tries to tell anyone who will listen that there’s a conspiracy against her, but she’s branded as “crazy” and immediately dismissed.

This Halloween, what’s keeping me up at night isn’t fiction; it’s real life. It’s the possibility of a 20-week abortion ban and the knowledge that I live in a country where women aren’t valued or trusted — where a majority of white women would rather have Donald Trump represent their interests than Hillary Clinton. I watch films like Prevenge and Rosemary’s Baby because I want to remind myself to stay vigilant. In 1979, Loretta Lynn said, “We’ve come a long way, baby,” but these films remind me we haven’t come far enough.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Rosemary’s Baby: Marriage Can Be Terrifying

The “Blurred Lines” of Body Horror and Rape Culture

Rosemary’s Baby: Who Possesses the Pregnant Woman’s Body

Recommended Reading:

Woman in Revolt on Prevenge

Refinery29’s Interview with Alice Lowe: The Pregnant Serial Killer Movie Taking a Knife to Stereotypes on Film

The Most Cursed Hit Movie Ever Made by Rosemary Counter

Lindsay Pugh runs Woman in Revolt, an intersectional feminist film blog that focuses on female directors in television and film. She is a self-described militant feminist and can be found wandering the streets of Ann Arbor wearing a leather jacket adorned with “Fuck Paul Ryan” pins and shaking her fist at the patriarchy.

All the Rage: Women-Led and Women-Centric Horror Film Festivals

“They just assume I’m an actress. They would never assume that I directed it or made the film myself.” That’s the assumption that women-centric horror film festivals intend to quash. They’re also, as Women in Horror Film Festival (WIHFF) co-director and filmmaker Samantha Kolesnik said, a growing platform for “equal representation” in all aspects of film production.

This guest post written by Sonia Lupher appears as part of our theme week on Women in Horror.

“What film are you with?” If you ever find yourself at an independent horror film festival, this is a question you will likely be asked by fellow attendees. At least, this is the question you want to be asked. But, as many women mentioned at the first annual Women in Horror Film Festival (WIHFF) in Peachtree City, Georgia last September, when you attend a general horror film festival as a woman, you’re more likely to be asked, “What part do you play?” Producer-writer-director and Sick Chick Flicks Film Festival founder Christine Parker told me, “They just assume I’m an actress. They would never assume that I directed it or made the film myself.”

That’s the assumption that women-centric horror film festivals intend to quash. They’re also, as WIHFF co-director and filmmaker Samantha Kolesnik said, a growing platform for “equal representation” in all aspects of film production. The Women in Horror Film Festival is just one of a handful of film festivals devoted to women in horror film production that has sprung up in the last few years in the wake of Women in Horror Month, an initiative founded in 2010 by Hannah Neurotica of the Ax Wound Film Festival. WIHFF, unlike many other film festivals, accepts films helmed by men as long as there are women in three or more creative roles: producer, director, writer, lead talent, composer, SFX artist, editor, production designer, and/or cinematography. This is because, as Kolesnik and WIHFF co-founder and filmmaker Vanessa Ionta Wright point out, the festival strives to shed light on the role of women across all areas of horror film production.

Some of the WIHFF award winners pose with festival directors Samantha Kolesnik and Vanessa Ionta Wright (bottom row, first and fourth from left).

Indeed, WIHFF showcased tons of incredible shorts and features from women directors across the globe, such as Norma Vila’s Jules D. (Spain), Aislínn Clarke’s Childer (Ireland), and Mia’kate Russell’s Liz Drives (Australia). Canadian directing-duo Jen and Sylvia Soska were also in attendance as invited guests, sharing tips and dropping hints about their upcoming remake of David Cronenberg’s Rabid. But among the non-director stars of the festival were Melissa Lyons, who penned and co-produced Alfred J. Hemlock, Jennifer Trudrung, who wrote/produced/starred in audience favorite Unbearing, and Ruin Me editor/producer/co-writer Trysta Bissett. The primary goal of WIHFF, as Kolesnik and Wright made clear, is to offer inclusive networking for women and their male allies in horror while showcasing the impressive work they are already undertaking.

This latter goal is shared by a handful of other festivals around the world. Neurotica, who co-runs the Ax Wound Film Festival with Ashlee Blackwell (who also founded Graveyard Shift Sisters, a site devoted to Black women in horror) and Miki Hickel, is very vocal about the importance of seeing other women in horror film production for budding filmmakers. The upcoming festival, which will feature film screenings, panels, and workshops (including a workshop on crowdfunding led by filmmaker Christina Raia), strives to get more horror-inclined women behind the camera. Neurotica is firm on the non-competitive atmosphere of the film festival, describing the mission of Ax Wound as one of collaboration and support. As a result, Ax Wound does not give awards. “There is so much competition among women in this field. It’s brutal,” Neurotica wrote. “The only way we can change that is by working together, hiring each other, and networking. Ax Wound provides a safe space which we hope brings women together rather than set up hierarchies.”

Ax Wound Film Festival’s 2016 Filmmaker Panel Hosted by Jay Kay of Horror Happens Radio

The Sick Chick Flicks Film Festival (October 28-29) was developed by Christine Parker alongside her production company of the same name with the underlying intention of making it clear to women that they can make films too. As director/writer/producer Lynne Hansen (whose zombie-comedy Chomp has played at dozens of film festivals, including WIHFF) told me, it was not until she saw another woman direct a film that she realized (“way too late”) she could do it too. Film festivals play a large role in getting female filmmakers in the public eye and, in turn, inspiring other women to make their own films. Through her production company, Parker strives to teach women filmmakers the nitty-gritty aspects of filmmaking, to “foster and show them how to do lights and how to do sound,” so they can go on to make their own films. Sick Chick Flicks Film Festival is, in turn, a platform to get these films to audiences.

Sick Chick Flicks Film Festival director Christine Parker stands in front of the marquee for the 2016 festival.

In addition to WIHFF, Ax Wound, and Sick Chick Flicks, North America is home to several other film festivals featuring the work of women in horror production, while the international scene is no less rich. These festivals include:

Etheria Film Night, which takes place in June, is an annual one-night event in Hollywood organized by Heidi Honeycutt, Stacy Pippi Hammon, and Kayley Viteo.
The Bloody Mary Film Festival, focused on Canadian female-helmed films and organized by Laura DiGirolamo and Krista Dzialoszynski, will hold its second festival from November 30-December 1st in Toronto.
Stranger With My Face, an annual festival founded in 2012 by Briony Kidd and Rebecca Thomson, takes place in Hobart, Tasmania. Stranger With My Face is celebrated as a leading genre event and also hosts the 48-hour Tasploitation Challenge and the Tasmanian Gothic Short Script Challenge.
The Final Girls Berlin Film Festival, founded by Elinor Lewy, Lara Mandelbrot, and Sara Neidorf, saw its second year in June 2017.
Scream Queen Filmfest Tokyo, founded in 2013 by Mai Nakanishi who programs and runs “the only female-centric genre film festival in Asia.”

The sheer number, not to mention the raging success, of women-centric horror film festivals demonstrates the ongoing momentum of women in horror film production and the opportunities that these festivals offer to them. What makes these festivals fundamentally different from genre film festivals at large? “I would dare anybody to look up different festivals’ past winners and finalists and tally up the statistics – see how many of these films are directed by women, written by women, how many have special effects artists that were women and how many times there was just one woman on the team,” Kolesnik said. It’s about showcasing the impressive work that women are doing in the genre, offering collaboration opportunities, and ensuring that the presence of women in horror filmmaking remains strong. Visibility, equal opportunity, and demonstrating the grit women bring to horror are what these film festivals are all about.

First image features film stills from Paralysis, Ruin Me, Chomp, and Unbearing. Second image courtesy of Women in Horror Film Festival. Third image courtesy of Ax Wound Film Festival. Fourth image courtesy of Sick Chicks Flicks Film Festival.

Sonia Lupher is originally from the Pacific Northwest, but moved east to pursue a doctoral degree in the Film Studies program at the University of Pittsburgh. She is fulfilling her lifelong dream of watching movies for a living, and especially loves horror movies directed by women. You can follow her on Twitter @SoniaLupher.

‘Raw’ and Coming of Age via Cannibalism

What writer/director Julia Ducournau does with ‘Raw’ is use the traditional tropes of body horror to tell the story of one young woman’s awakening. … It’s frightening and disturbing, as coming of age often is. … By filtering this all-too-common struggle through the extreme lens of cannibalism, Ducournau highlights the absurdity inherent in how women’s bodies and desires are policed.

This guest post written by Lee Jutton appears as part of our theme week on Women in Horror. | Spoilers ahead.

Women are constantly fighting for control of their bodies. This is not an exaggeration, however extreme it may sound. One’s body is the most personal and precious possession one has — literally the only one we are born with — and yet, if you are a woman, it is also the most policed. Society tells us that women’s bodies must remain pure and virginal in order to be deemed desirable. Men in government aspire to limit our access to healthcare despite expecting our bodies to constantly churn out babies; they want to take away our birth control, but they also don’t want us to get abortions. We’re shamed into starving ourselves to get in shape for bikini season while men’s beer-bellied “dad bods” are glorified in the same media that shove those unattainable ideals down our throats.

In a world where women’s urges are so obsessively monitored and shamed by society, it’s no surprise that in pop culture, there is no shortage of stories of women rebelling against these attempts at control — often in extreme ways. In Han Kang’s Man Booker International Prize-winning novella The Vegetarian, a South Korean housewife is so traumatized by a bloody nightmare that she abruptly stops eating meat. Despite being shamed (and subject to abusive attempts at force-feeding) by her family and treated like an outcast by society, Yeong-hye holds fast to her desires and refuses to eat meat. Even when she is hospitalized and appears to be wasting away to those around her, she is more at peace and in control of her body than she ever had been previously. Why does a woman like Yeong-hye have to essentially cast off her human body in order to prevent others from telling her what to do with it? Why do women need to go to such lengths to prove their autonomy?

In her debut feature film, French writer-director Julia Ducournau covers themes similar to those in The Vegetarian, but reverse-engineers them for maximum shock and awe. Instead of telling the story of a woman deciding to give up meat, Raw chronicles what happens when a lifelong vegetarian discovers an animalistic desire to consume raw meat during a hazing ritual at veterinary school. What follows is an intensely visceral, gore-filled saga of one young woman taking control of her body and her urges, however unacceptable they may seem to the rest of the world. In an interview with Women and Hollywood, Ducournau said she “wanted the audience to feel empathy for a character that is becoming a monster in their eyes.” While you might not be able to comprehend the nature of protagonist Justine’s desires, you cannot help but sympathize with her struggle to balance what her body wants with what is expected of it by others.

Justine, played by the suitably wide-eyed and coltish young actress Garance Marillier, comes from a family of ~~strict~~ vegetarian veterinarians. She plans to follow in the family tradition by joining her older sister, Alexia (Ella Rumpf), at the same veterinary school that their parents both attended. While Alexia is a bit of a wild child, Justine is a quiet, albeit passionate, prodigy. She comes to the vet school more prepared for her studies than the vast majority of the students around her, including her roommate Adrien (Rabah Naït Oufella). What Justine isn’t prepared for, however, are the extreme hazing rituals forced upon the “rookies” by the older students, including Alexia. These include being forced to sing along with strange songs, having buckets of blood poured over them for a class photo, and — in the moment that changes everything for Justine — being pressured into eating raw rabbit kidneys. Justine initially refuses, citing her family’s vegetarianism and asking Alexia to back her up. When Alexia denies her claims and eats one of the kidneys right in front of her, Justine doesn’t feel as though she has any choice but to follow suit or be shunned by the rest of the school. She’s nearly sick, but she does it nonetheless.

Soon, Justine finds herself plagued with a raw red rash on most of her body. The school doctor chalks it up to food poisoning, despite Justine mentioning that she also feels ravenously hungry all the time. Justine takes the cream prescribed by the doctor; she also starts stealing hamburgers from the cafeteria and eating late-night shawarma with Adrien. But these seemingly normal cravings — which could be chalked up to a girl discovering that once she is free from her parents’ overwhelming and possibly stifling influence, she actually likes different things than them — turn extreme quickly; gnawing on raw chicken in the middle of the night extreme; lusting after the body of her gay roommate until she gets a nosebleed extreme. But all of this pales in comparison to the moment when Alexia accidentally cuts off part of her finger in a freak scissors accident and Justine picks it up and starts eating it.

This incredibly unsettling scene is skillfully played for maximum impact by Ducournau, from the frantic and electric turn that Jim Williams’ musical score takes to Marillier’s intense performance, in which one can see her visibly struggling with her desire to taste human flesh and her knowledge that what she wants to do is wrong. The scene then takes a delightful yet disturbing comic turn when Alexia wakes up from her faint to stare agape at her younger sister as she nibbles on a part of her body. You can’t help but laugh, both as an attempt to ease discomfort with what is happening and also because what’s happening is pretty damn funny.

It turns out Alexia is subject to the same strange urges as Justine, going so far as to cause a car crash on a deserted road just to provide both sisters with a couple of corpses to feast on. In her own twisted way, this is Alexia’s idea of being a supportive and understanding sister. Yet while Alexia has no qualms about wanting to eat human flesh, Justine flees, unable to come to terms with what her body wants. As the film progresses, Justine continues to struggle, vacillating between allowing herself to succumb to her desires while also fighting to contain them. In no scene is this better visualized than when Justine’s overwhelming lust for Adrien results in her losing her virginity to him and, when she climaxes, sinking her teeth into her own arm after Adrien refuses to let her bite him. As blood oozes out, Justine grows visibly relaxed. Tasting flesh, even her own, seems more satisfying than sex for her.

By the end of the film, Alexia’s uninhibited actions have resulted in tragedy and she’s hospitalized, after which Justine learns from her father that their mother is subject to the same urges. “You’ll find a way to control it,” her father says in an attempt to comfort Justine about this distressing family trait, but his words elicit only deep choking sobs from his youngest daughter. In the end, who is more free? Is it Alexia, trapped in an institution but with nothing left to hide, or Justine, out in the real world but forced to keep such a large part of herself a secret?

As Justine starts giving in to her desires, gobbling raw meat and ogling Adrien’s shirtless torso, she becomes more confident. The quiet, meek student who seemed to be trying to disappear into her oversized sweaters starts projecting an aura of boldness. Donning her sister’s slinky cocktail dress to writhe in front of her bedroom mirror and smear lipstick seductively across her mouth, Justine is vastly more comfortable with her body as a cannibal than she was as a virginal vegetarian.

In showing us Justine starting to blossom, is Ducournau condoning cannibalism and condemning vegetarianism? Absolutely not. What she does with Raw is use the traditional tropes of body horror to tell the story of one young woman’s awakening. The obvious youth of her lead actress (Marillier was born in 1998) makes her message hit all the harder. It’s frightening and disturbing, as coming of age often is. Watching your body change and awaken to new desires is scary enough; dealing with the constant messages from society that everything you’re dealing with is somehow wrong is even worse. By filtering this all-too-common struggle through the extreme lens of cannibalism, Ducournau highlights the absurdity inherent in how women’s bodies and desires are policed.

Lee Jutton has directed short films starring a killer toaster, a killer Christmas tree, and a not-killer leopard. Currently a staff writer at Film Inquiry, her writing has also appeared in publications such as Bitch Flicks, Bitch: A Feminist Response to Pop Culture, TV Fanatic, and Just Press Play. You can follow her on Twitter @leiladaisyj for more opinions on movies, pictures of cats, and ramblings on German soccer.

Call for Writers: Women in Horror

Our theme week for October 2017 will be Women in Horror. Horror films have long been analyzed and critiqued for both their feminist and misogynist themes… With so many women protagonists and explorations of primal emotions, there is a lot to unpack regarding gender and horror.

Our theme week for October 2017 will be Women in Horror.

Evelyn Wang at Broadly declared that we are currently in a “golden age of women-directed horror,” what with the recent releases of films such as Raw, Prevenge, The Love Witch, The Lure, XX, The Babadook, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Honeymoon, and The Invitation. Rolling Stone‘s Phoebe Reilly discussed “the rise of the modern female horror filmmaker” and Vogue‘s Taylor Antrim wrote about “the rise of the women-only horror films.” Women have directed horror films for decades, not to mention written horror novels and short stories, but we are certainly seeing more attention paid to women directors of horror lately. Women directors bring their unique perspectives and experiences to the lens of the horror genre. While women have certainly made tremendous strides in horror, we would love to see even more women-directed films, as well as more horror films directed by women of color and queer women.

The film industry as a whole suffers from a lack of gender parity both on- and off-screen. Only 32% of speaking film characters are women in the top 100 domestic grossing films in 2015. Critics, scholars, and writers use these statistics and the Bechdel-Wallace Test to measure the systemic inequality of women in film. But in horror films, we not only see many women directors but more women characters as well. Beth Younger reported that “horror is the only film genre where women appear and speak as often as men.” In horror, women are both victims and survivors. We hope this trend continues and more horror films (and films in all genres) feature more complex women characters and protagonists, especially more women of color, queer women, and women with disabilities.

Horror films have long been analyzed and critiqued for both their feminist and misogynist themes: strong female characters; gender roles; female sexuality; violence; the “male gaze,” coined by Laura Mulvey; violence against women; the “monstrous-feminine,” coined by Barbara Creed; and tropes such as the femme fatale, the damsel in distress, and the “final girl,” coined by Carol J. Clover. With so many women protagonists and explorations of primal emotions, there is a lot to unpack regarding gender and horror.

For this month’s theme week, we want you to explore the role of women in horror films. How does the film (or films) portray women? Why do you love (or not love) women in horror films? What gender norms and tropes are reinforced or challenged? How does the film’s depiction of gender intersect with its depiction of race, sexual orientation, class, age, and disability? How are people of color, LGBTQ characters, older characters, and characters with disabilities portrayed? How do the messages in many horror films reinforce or subvert notions of femininity and masculinity? How does the film exploit and objectify or empower their female characters? Are the film’s female characters allowed their own narrative arcs? How do the women in horror films assert their agency? What are your thoughts on the horror genre’s themes such as fear, survival, bodily autonomy, reproduction, possession, and revenge? Why are we now seeing a surge of women-centric and women-directed horror films? How can we encourage and support more women filmmakers in horror?

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

We accept both original pieces and cross-posts. 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, please 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 submissions is Sunday, October 29, 2017 by midnight Eastern Time.

Carrie

Halloween

Alien

The Invitation

Get Out

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Ginger Snaps

The Girl with All the Gifts

The Love Witch

Trouble Every Day

It Follows