How does Horror movies represent gender?

 To answer the question of how women are represented in horrors, we, as a class, went through three films progressively become more recent. These were Halloween made in 1979, then The Shining made in 1982 and finally Eden Lake made in 2008. Examining different dated films allowed us to see the overall representation of women as opposed to just a certain era in time.

We looked at various roles of the females in order to analyse whether or not they're being viewed in an stereotypical way or not.

We had a look at the four stereotypical features of females which are Domestic, Consumer, Sexual and Familial.
We noticed while looking in these that in the film Halloween there is sexual representation of the characters Annie and Lynda as Annie spills something on her top and takes it off so she's revealing her bra and walking around in rather than finding something else to cover herself up with. With Lynda we see her and her boyfriend have sex and when he walks in the room, which is actually Mike Myers, she reveals her breasts in order to 'seduce' him which is just making her look sexual. The other role taken on it the Domestic role which Laurie, the main character, takes on as she, although still in school, babysits which backs up the domestic position as even though at a young age she's still looking after kids. There are few examples of the Familial role, such as Annie who is the daughter of the Sheriff, and also Judith who is Michael Myers actually sister, although Judith is only seen very breifly at the start so it's hard to decide whether she fits into this role.

The Shining shows examples of the Domestic, Familial and slightly Sexual roles. Firstly they show features of Wendy, the main/final girl, to be very domestic in that even though she's not in their original home she stills takes on the cooking and other roles which fall under the domestic category. She is also seen with a Familial role as she is Jack's, the antagonist, wife and Danny's, the boy, mother. There is a slightly representation of sexuality with the ghost that appear in the room Jack enters (room 237) as there is a beautiful woman naked and Jack is in amazment of her beauty and that she's naked. However, we didn't decide whether it is a representation of the Sexual role as she turns into an old women all wrinkly and, as rude as it is, disgusting. So it's as if it's a trick to those who view women as Sexual by drawing them in then showing this old woman.

Finally, Eden Lake creates Jenny, the main/final girl, a Domestic role as it shows her as a primary school teacher which could imply she's good at looking after the young. She is also looking at by the yobs in her bikini creating a sexual role, and also her and her boyfriend have sex in a tent, although that would give them both a sexual role. However, Jenny is not the only women in the film represented by these roles. There is a woman in a cafe who's taking care of Steve, main guy, and Jenny's orders for breakfast giving her the Domestic 'food sorting' role. She, like many others towards the end, are seen in a Familial way, all having their own families and when she's in the cafe she says "not my boys" suggesting her children giving her the familial role.

Another important factor of the representations of gender in a horror is the visability of the genders. The visability could have a pragmatical meaning of the importance of the gender. So if there are less females then this may be seen as a dominant male movie, and vise versa.

In Halloween, even though Laurie is the main character, in terms of roughly who's main and 'important' in the film, there is roughly about the same amount of each gender in the movie. Creating a half and half representation of gender, which then rules out the stereotypical 'inferior' view of the female.

When it came to The Shining there is a clear dominance of male 'main roles' as there is roughly 2 women that speak in the movie and much more males and has a ratio of about 60:40. This then backs up the stereotypical view of the female by having them appear less in the film.

In Eden Lake, although Jenny is clearly important and is viewed by the audience a lot throughout the film, it shows a substantial difference in the male to female ratio as it has a large amount of males, approximately 8-10 relatively main characters, whereas there are limited females, approximately 3-4, showing a large dominance in males visability.

The male gaze is also an important factor in these films and links in with the Sexual role. The male gaze represents women to be identified or objectified. Identifying someone means you're giving them an actualy identity suggesting they exist and are important, where as objectifying suggest they're just 'objects' to look at.

In Halloween the main protagonist, Laurie, isn't viewed by the gaze at all. Infact she's the complete opposite, with a mixed gendered name, barely any make up, worries about forgetting one of her revision books from school suggesting she does her studies, and her overall appearance isn't particularly fancy and revealing making her identified. Although, it balances out at the objectify both Annie and Lynda. They view Lynda when she's in a bra by the 'monster' watching her through a window. Annie is objectified by her boyfriend, so we think, by looking at her reveal her breasts to 'seduce' him suggestng that she has to by using her sexual features.

The Shining mainly Identifys the women in it, for example Wendy isn't seen as sexual throughout the whole film and is just viewed by identification as she has an important role being the final girl and looking after Danny through the whole film. There are no scenes of objectification of Wendy in the movie. There is an objectification of the ghost in the bath showing her sexual features, although as explained earlier this could be viewed as a trick to the viewer who gets drawn in as she transforms and it makes the viewed disgusted and question the objectification.
Eden Lake only shows one shot of objectification, and this is towards Jenny the main character. The youths are looking at her on the beach sunbathing in a bikini. However the fact that she's the main character and eventually turns into a monster by murdering herself actually identifies her and overpowers the initial objectification.

There is also another way to find a conclusion to this question, and that is by analysing the actually narrative of the moive and the relevance of the characters.
For example in Halloween  there is a death tole of 5, being 3 females and 2 males. However, apart from one character that dies, the rest are related to sexual antics. Whereas the final girl, Laurie, seems to have a reluctance to this and gets shy about minor things compared to sex such as asking a boy to dance that she gets embarrased by. However she survives, potentially saying the smart, innocent and well behaved characters survive and slightly 'curupt' characters, for having sex before marriage and drinking alot etc. will be killed.
The Shining is a hard film to talk about, because there is a death tole of 3 females and 2 male, however all 3 of the females are already dead and are ghosts. So effectively two males die in the movie and no females as the dead ones are already dead and aren't linked into the 'current' narrative story of Jack's family, apart from he see's them suggesting his pyhscological problems.. Also another point is that the main and final character it a female and the male main character, Jack, dies.
In Eden Lake 2 females die, whereas 4 males die making it less stereotypical. However, looking more close ot the movie, there are 3 females and 8 males. So almost all the females die and half of the males. So there is actually no really a reactionary sexual agenda in Eden Lake, as the final girl dies anyway.


As expected there was a large mixed view of these three movies and there representations of genders in the movie. As, for example, The Shining doesn't objectify the female from the male gaze, however it does give Wendy a domestic and Familial role. In Halloween it does objectify the majority of females in the movie and makes them have domestic roles, so this does follow the stereotypical view of women. Finally Eden Lake has a limited amount of females in the movie, however it doesn't really objectify the females, only for a short time but Jenny is the final character and turns into a monster so it equals out.