I love watching horror movies during the fall. I think horror is a genre that sometimes holds up a mirror to society in ways that other genres cannot. My favourite horror movies do not rely on excessive blood and gore, forcing viewers to look past the violence to understand the story’s deeper meaning. One thing that I have been thinking about this spooky season is the “Final Girl” genre and whether we can really call it feminist.Â
I remember watching Scream for the first time. I watched it in high school, in my friend’s trailer on Halloween. I remember the thrill of watching Sidney Prescott escape again and again. At the time, I thought this was what feminism was. The woman made it out alive while looking badass, so why wouldn’t that be empowering? Ironically, I came back to this genre while thinking about period pain simulators.
I have always had what I assume is a common thought: wondering how well I would fare if I ever got the chance to try a period pain simulator. Would I take the pain without flinching, or would I find that what I thought was terrible cramping is actually not that bad in comparison? But why, if women consistently report the pain to be so terrible, do we have machines that simulate this pain? After some quick googling, I can only ascertain that they were created because there was some need to prove to men and those who don’t experience periods that they were actually painful. Because if men can’t experience it, why should they believe it? And so, instead of believing women when they speak about it, we decided that we must instead exploit women’s pain for profit. I mean, can you imagine if we had a gunshot wound simulator or a testicular torsion simulator? Imitating someone’s pain for fun is a terrible thing to do.
Funnily enough, this reminds me of the final girl trope. This thing that I decided all my life as being feminist suddenly becomes muc more sinister upon further consideration. Is the only way to create a feminist trope by turning women’s pain into entertainment? Is a woman staggering, covered in blood, really empowering? Or is it just another way to exploit women and call it entertainment. Female protagonists are severely lacking in major Hollywood productions, but surprisingly, they seem quite common in horror movies. From Carrie to Halloween to Nosferatu, horror actually seems like one of the few genres that regularly features female main characters. So why is it that the only genre that we can consistently portray women in is one where they are so often exposed to violence? Connecting this back to the period pain simulator, we do not view women’s pain as a serious problem. It is worth mentioning that this problem is only amplified for women of colour, especially black women. Instead of treating it as a problem, we exploit it and force women to continuously experience pain over and over, while calling it entertainment.
You are not a bad person for enjoying Scream, but I encourage you to think critically about the horror movies that you watch. Is it feminist, or is it exploitative?
If you are interested in reading more on this topic, you can check out this article on the portrayal of women in postmodern horror films: https://cardiffstudentmedia.co.uk/quench/film-tv/scream-queens-and-final-girls/