The Horror Genre and it's Representation of Women

Halloween, 1978, was and still is one of the most well known ‘slasher’ films around and modern film directors still give a nod to it, effectively recreating the same scenes with different characters. The male:female ratio within the film is at around 1:1 taking into account the main characters only which is progressive as the ratio is usually around 2:1 in films made within the same decade. The main character, Laurie, is a female which seems to abide by the gender stereotypical roles of a female, being domestic and caring towards her siblings and friends alike.



However, she does not follow the same route of other female characters within the film who, compared to Laurie, seem very immature and very sexually Promiscuous. Her friends, Annie and Lynda, are shown as overly promiscuous and consistently drinking alcohol. These characters proceed to be brutally condemned by the film which seems to have a sexually reactionary agenda, punishing anyone seen to be partaking in any ‘sinful’ acts. The first scene of this movie even includes this ‘punishment’ of sexual behaviour where a promiscuous girl is slain with her boyfriend through a POV shot of the killer, Michael Myers.

This girls later turns out to be Michael Myers’ sister that he has brutally murdered, but apparently with no motive (as pointed out by the Doctor in the film), even though coincidentally the majority of murders in the film have a link to sexual activity. The POV shots from Michael Myers later continue in the scene where Annie is killed as she tries to be sexually provocative towards the killer, believing it is her boyfriend mistakenly. This could be playing with the theory of the ‘Male Gaze’ as the male proportion of the films target audience is huge and would therefore help to please them.



The male stereotypes are also within this film, with the ‘men at work’ ideology being directly fed by the older males within the film being doctors and sheriffs, and the young man a very sexually active alcohol drinker. This man obviously gets killed within the film. The androgynous nature of Laurie within the film suggests that the stereotypical representations are not there and suggesting that the film is progressive in that way. The androgynous image and behaviour of Laurie creates a blur between the two boundaries of male and female and her part as the ‘final girl’ in the film almost mutes the progressive nature of the film. The death ratio of females to males is around 2:3 placing the murders of the females to be blamed purely on their sexual activity as the director does not give Michael Myers a motive for these murders. All-in-all Halloween does follow the gender stereotypical representations throughout the film, with exception to the androgynous character Laurie who is being consistently recreated in other slasher films.