Depictions of violence towards women in ‘Halloween’

still the initial praise heaped upon Halloween for Its portrayal of a previously unheard of strong distaff character may exact been premature due to the almost unclimbable criticisms heaped upon It by the second wave feminists at the conviction. Despite attempting otherwise, the claim, and the horror genre as a whole, have been misguided In bringing what the auditory intelligence Is to perceive as strong fe young-begetting(prenominal) character to the screen. Although years have passed since its stolon release in 1978 Halloween can still be visualiseed by many as misogynistic and over equalized.Presenting a negative out look on women, judging them based on gender as well as showing them single as sex quarrys and devaluing their worth. We atomic number 18 introduced touch Carpenters film Halloween through a subjective point of view killing of a boyish muliebrity, a young woman, who without the directors intended perception of events, has d unity nobody to deserve such treatment. Throughout the opening scenes of this film we can sense the disapproval and contempt for the cozy actions that two Lane and her boyfriend argon partaking in, and while they are both equal participating parties.We watch as Michael allows the male to leave cultivate in the stairs and out of the house unhurt before continuing upstairs to murder his male of tier to is be applauded for exercising his sexuality only the female who should pride herself up her virtue deserves to be punished for it. This gender inequality is only further apply when we follow Michael upstairs to his sisters bedroom with a knife, we see him turn his doubtfulness towards to bed as if to verify that she has in fact defiled herself before crook certify and stabbing her multiple times.This behavior of Judging women much more(prenominal) than harshly is prevalent throughout history, where the actions of a man would be taken much more lightly then if the same action had been undertaken b y their female counter part, even in young children we are taught to view assertive women as bossy and assertive men as confident. watching the rest of the movie we are shown several scenes where the mans behavior is over looked in favor of inflicting military unit creation upon women. Pulling up to the mental conception Dry. Loomis is allowed to exit the simple machine unharmed by Michael, even thoughMichael would have had 15 years worth of reasons to use the opportunity to attack him, while the young nurse is subject to his terrifying harassment before she manages to escape the car herself. Another such scene occurs after Michael has taken his first dupe. In this scene he does kill Bob but does so pronto and only his association with Lynda, we are made well aware of the fact that upstairs Lynda is his primary target and this is proven by the lengths he goes to to bilk her before slowly killing her.What we are left to gather from these scenes of violence macrocosm inflicted upon women is that the inequality between genders is prevalent enough to influence a 7 year old boys decision to murder his older sister and develop his view of women in the incoming. It seems to be a common theme in slashes films to submit women in compromising or sexual positions some or during their time of death, this over equalization of women and their bodies portray them as objects to be view, coveted, confided, or in the case of Halloween, murdered.With Michael Myers world 7 at the time of his first murder it would be hard to attach any grade of sexual impulse to his desire to murder is sister, but we are understandably shown a connection throughout the film between the au naturel(p)ness of women and his desire to murder them. His sister, being the first was completely naked in bird-scarer of a mirror at the time of her death, Annie and Lynda, while not naked during their deaths, had both been depicted in various states of undress in the sequences lead-in up to th em.While of course up until the climax of the film it would seem that both Annie and Lynda had avoided being completely nude on screen however we are then shown that both of the lady friendfriends had been stripped down stormed and left for Laurie to find. In Linda Williams seek When the Woman Looks, she writes that there is not that much difference between an object of desire and an object of horror as far as the male look is concerned (Williams).It seems that in slashes films it is not enough to simply show women being murdered on screen, they must sexuality the act by having the women be naked at the time or be stripped down after the fact and displayed for the audience under the guise of Michael Myers perverse pleasures. Of course the act of equalizing the deaths of these women is not solely because halls symbol of the knife, as wielded by Michael, could be used as a means to expend his own sexual frustration upon these women, by means of the thrusting of the knife and the sub sequent subtle of their flesh.Although this point is disputed specifically in chant Clovers Men, Women, and Chainsaws where in tin can Carpenter is quoted saying, They the critics completely missed the boat there, I think. Because if you turn it around, the one misfire who is the most sexually uptight Just keeps stabbing the guy rope with a long knife, shes the most sexually frustrated. Shes the nee who killed him. Not because shes a virgin, but because all that repressed energy starts coming out. She uses all those phallic symbols on the guy (Clover).A fair point to be sure but calling Laurie out on her own repressed sexual urges in no way diminishes the perversity of the acts of violence undertaken by Michael in the first four murders in this film, but actually Just verifies the fact that Michael does indeed express his own sexual frustration through these over murders. nevertheless more, by looking at this film we see violence being inflicted upon women ND only women, we m ust draw the conclusion that simply being feminine is enough to warrant your death in a slashes film. Feminine in these movies often being synonymous with weak. It is a tried and true verbal expression of horror film to present women in a negative light, as the victim, simply a plot device used when seeking to deform as large a body count as possible. However it has been argued in recent literature that Halloween presents the audience with a female victim that forces the audiences identification to shift to that of the female victim and begin relating to Laurie as a throng feminine character.Once again referencing the works of Carol Clover, she writes that Halloween, in course of study with the second wave feminist movement, marks the beginning of a more positive portrayal of women in horror films. Given the drift between Texas chain Saw and Halloween from passive to active defensive it is no ramp that films following Halloween present Final Girls who not only clamber back bu t do so with ferocity. (Clover).We are being told that the closing girl presents the audience with an empowered female figure, but we must now take a look at the scenes which present Laurie as the final girl who ferociously fights back, or perhaps more importantly the scenes leading up to them, for it isnt until Laurie exchanges her feminine attributes for masculine ones, by arming herself and actively seeking to fight back, that she manages to gain the upper hand and become a serious brat herself.Through the film we are shown woman after woman being mindlessly slaughtered simply for the crime of being women and it isnt until the audience no longer views the final girl as feminine do they find themselves able to relate her and goes she pull ahead the right to survive the horrors being inflicted upon her. The slashes film resolves it either through eliminating the woman (earlier victims) or reconstituting her as masculine(fall girl). (Clover) We are not given a final girl we are told from the beginning that the weak female deserves what is being done to her and the only one worthy of avoiding causality is the female who is the embodiment of masculine traits. Halloween fails to depict women any better then its predecessors in the westerly point in women in horror cinema, perhaps it planted the seeds of thought in the erectors which followed flush toilet Carpenter that women could be more then what they have been for the past decades.Fortunately we generally tend to see the poor portrayal of women in most of the western horror film and do have many European films to look to which often have women shown as the killer and predominant threat which is bracing to see. We must hope to see the trend continue in future slashes film where we see women continuing to fight back against the years of mistreatment and misrepresentation. Bibliography Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chain Saws Gender in the Modern Horror Film.