Is Pearl going to liberate me from the patriarchy?? With her red lips and axe, it’s hard to see why not.
Slashers are the backbone of the horror genre – films like Scream, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, and Final Destination are all well-known and infamous examples of the medium. And in some sense, slashers are self-aware that they’re a part of the horror genre; they’re in a position that allows them to justify using gore as a medium to channel other “morally violating” themes. This pattern is typical of counterculture, where controversial opinions are aired out in support of something “alternative;” something shocking to the mainstream. Nirvana and American Psycho are all examples of counterculture media critiquing society through the production of “shocking” content.
Slashers themselves exist as a niche section of horror – which in of itself is typically viewed as counterculture. In brick and mortar definitions, the term “slasher” refers to a subgenre of horror films typically involving a violent psychopath stalking and murdering a group of people, usually pretty brutally. They have a killer, lots of victims, and violence. Many slashers are overwhelmingly brutal and sadistic. For example, Terrifier and Terrifier 2 are known to be problematically gross and distasteful in acts of harm directed at women. A more common term used to refer to this is “torture porn;” a phrase spearheaded by the surge of Saw movies that refers to gruesome body horror with a cheap concept (think; two men tied in a room and one has to cut his leg off in vivid shots or else he dies). This goes hand-in sexual violence where torture is the central theme. As said by paper “Lady and the Vamp” by Ashley Wellman, Michele Bisaccia Meitl & Patrick Kinkade,
Female killers were most commonly portrayed having sex, heroes were most sexually dressed, and actual/potential victims were brutalized and killed most for their sexualization. These messages reinforce ideas of gender roles, stereotypes, and relationship expectations by punishing female sexualization and demonizing female sex. Issues of violence against women, toxic masculinity, rape culture, and the normalization of combining violence and sex are discussed as significant concerns.
Yet, we’re beginning to see a change in misogynistic violence frontlined in these slasher films. With counterculture, the aforementioned “problematic” themes are deliberately presented alongside empowering ones to further magnify the misogynistic issues of slasher films past. In this vein, recent slashers, namely Pearl and Scream 6, have become, for lack of a better term, girlbossified.
Though the original Scream was built off of the very notion of challenging film tropes, the most ubiquitous complaint in general for horror movies is the portrayal of female characters as usually the “weaklings” or stupid bimbos. Slashers have always been the subject of scrutiny based on the fact that they seem to perpetuate stereotypes of the hysterical woman that screams, naked and clutching a towel, in the bathroom as a masked killer stabs her repeatedly (a la Psycho). In the present day, though, that’s not really the case. The “final girl” trope especially has changed. First coined by Carol Clover in her 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, the final girl refers to the last girl standing at the end of a horror movie, especially a slasher. Clover states,
“These films are designed to align spectators not with the male tormentor, but with the female victim — the ‘final girl’ — who finally defeats her oppressor.”
However, the final girl, though she may appear so, is not truly feminist. She’s androgynous and “not like other girls.” She can have a unisex name like Sidney (helping male viewers identify with her easier) or a shared history with the killer. She is smart, curious, and won’t walk into the dark basement alone. Viewers would reject a film with a vulnerable male, yet they still must connect and identify with the character, therefore, we see a very androgynous ‘female’ character. The final girl is without gender, and is only given the privilege to survive in order to relate to male audiences.
But past examples of final girls deviate from modern iterations. Get Out features a final girl who’s a mom who cares for her family more than anything. The VVitch also has the token final girl. Yet she is the one who reclaims her power at the end; she makes a deal with Satan, sheds her white clothes (a symbol for her innocence) and is able to experience her own kind of freedom. Lastly, final girl Maxine in X is complex and self-aware, gender and sex are ingrained in her personality but she doesn’t follow the monolithic formula for the final girl; she’s not innocent, shy about sex, and not androgynous.
This begs the question of whether these slasher writers are consciously trying to create a narrative that empowers women, or if the themes are a result of something else. This backed the trend of female rage, female manipulators, and ‘femcels’ in media. The concept of female rage in horror is not new, as seen in films like Possession, Gone Girl, and Black Swan. These characters have become figureheads for the unhinged, mentally unstable female horror lead that has inadvertently become a trendy online caricature over the past few years. The craze around the film has mainly been attributed to the lead character, Pearl herself. She goes on a monologue about the idea of being “perfect” with quotes such as “’I’m a failure. I’m not pretty or naturally pleasant, or friendly. I’m not smart, or funny, or confident.” She is seamlessly easy to relate to and in that same vein, easy to idolize.
Sure, this means that there are more “strong” woman characters in film, but does that inherently make the film feminist? Is it feminist or empowering to have strong female characters that simultaneously chase men with an axe demanding “Why did you leave me!” or could we have a Legally Blonde scenario here, that something presented as “feminist” was just the result of trying to get male validation in the first place, and that an “autonomous” act was really not autonomous at all.
Ultimately, I think the potential feminist themes in movies such as Pearl are indirect. Slashers are not inherently a feminist subgenre. Slashers are following a trend that appeals to us, and if the latest thing is the female manipulator, then that is what they will capitalise off of.
Slashers are feeding us the girlbossification of these characters because it appeals to us. Pearl is emotionally unstable, reflects relatable quirks (like her distrust of her helicopter mom), and above all, her look is both instantly identifiable and “chic.” Pearl checks off all the how-to-build-a-trendy-female-character boxes that media such as the novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation have created and popularized in recent years. If it’s in, it will sell.
They aren’t inherently feminist, and they don’t want to be. It is not a global moment: it is a trend. A girlboss-femcel-femalemanipulator killer such as Pearl seems to be the next meal hand-fed to us. And it’s very easy to digest.
