Male Roles Vs. Female Roles in Fiction: Discussion/Analysis/Troperwank

I think you should remove samara because she is a ghost, not a murder with a knife or something like that, she is a very diferent game that other villians.

and people like dream warriors? I find cheesy and to some point more a parody of freedy kruger than a good horror movie.

And with "hack writing" I said stuff like people separating, the slaher villian having off screen transportation(I mean when Jason debut in MKX it was a power, Jason just walk in one side of the screen to apear him the opponent) and so on, at some point is the plot is handicaping the villian so the final girl can win.

Is not surprising horror start just rooting for the monster because it become "the gore show were the monster kill chararter until it dies by the final girl)".

I mean I don't really root for the slasher villains in general, I think the only time I'd ever do that was if the people they killed were MAJOR Asshole Victims deliberately instead of Unintentionally Unsympathetic or just boring.

Is not rooting int hat "I consider him the moral right in the movie" but more of movies are based on hos tis villian kill people so the movie become more about him doing so than the people in it.

the monster is the protagonist here, see it as superhero movies in reverse so to speak.

There's a good argument that Slasher movies where you root for the protagonists are Survival Horror.

http://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2012/12/slasher-horror-vs-survival-horror.html

Not at all because I made it.

The thing with Slasher movies (and franchise horror movies in general) is that they tend to be built around the killer in a similar way that superhero movies are built around the superhero. Jason has his hockey mask and machete, Freddy has his stripped shirt and claws, Michael Myers has the blank mask and blue jumpsuit, e.t.c. They're distinctive characters around whom the entire universe of the film seemingly spin.

By contrast, the victims are regular, interchangeable people who often fulfill coinciding archetypes with completely different people in the sequels. So they're bland, regular people.

Slasher movies (and franchise horror movies in general) could be said to be a dark version of superhero stories in that sense, where the masked superhuman stands out from regular society by way of extraordinary feats (often of physical strength) and following his own moral code unperturbed by the burdens of life. Hence why Split followed the route of having a Supervillain origin story framed as a slasher/psychological horror movie and worked incredibly well for it.

I suppose the exist bias (conscious or not) regarding the aforementioned "extraordinary feats (often of physical strength)" is the key as to why there's such a gender inbalance in slashers and superheroes, i.e most people figure these Implacable Man feats of physical strength cannot be replicated by women, so while Jason can rip through a solid brick wall like it's paper as any regular male can do), women can't, ergo a female Jason can't either (which is all the more amusing in light of the original Vorhees killer being his mom).

It's interesting to note that the Slasher's more intellectual "parent genre", the Italian Giallo films actually had comparatively more films with female killers involved. Named in spoilers because knowing this spoils the films: Like Argento's Deep Red, The Stendthal Syndrome, and Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace, e.t.c).

I've always been kind of surprised Hellraiser hasn't used female Cenobites more often given that A) one of the OG Cenobites in the first film (and one of the most intimidating among their ranks) is female B) they're heavily sexualized BSDM-esque creatures. It sounds like a no-brainer for a horror franchise trying to revitalize itself.

For the matter of female slashers, you could also point out that even People of Color are rare sights in the slasher role (the big four of the slasher villains tend to be Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, and Leatherface. They're all white men). Tony Todd was partially inspired to do Candyman because he thought it'd be interesting to portray a role so few black people get to play, plus his concept of having a "Phantom of the Opera" of his own.

Amusingly, the Hatchet films have:

• Robert Englund
• Tony Todd
• Kane Hodder
• Danielle Harris (Halloween sequels)

They're kind of a Royal Rumble of slasher homages

Like I said, another reason slasher are male is because they were inspared by seria killer, almost all of them are men and build around of men pathologies in general.

Is kinda like expecting Woman mass shooters.

Ehhhh, that may be reading too much into it. Because there's plenty of female monsters and villains but slashers are a specific subtrope of horror movies.

Weirdly, just the other day I did point out that female serial killers were actually very common but they targeted the elderly, children, and men they're involved ith as a general rule.

Female serial killers also generally stuck with stuff like poison. They also tend to go after people they know or are in their care, like family members or patients and such. Female serial killers don't usually "hunt" or stalk victims the way male serial killers do. What they do is work their way into a position of trust to surround themselves with potential victims they can kill at their leisure.

Edited by M84 on Oct 24th 2019 at 10:17:44 PM

It's why I was back and forth on putting Anne Wilkes (Misery) on the list because she's certainly a realistic portrayal of a female serial killer. Arguably the most realistic in popular fiction—but she's not really a slasher.

And she was a serial killer, it just wasn't her pet author.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 24th 2019 at 7:18:56 AM

There was one particularly creepy nurse, Jane Toppan, who enjoyed poisoning patients and lying down next to them as they slowly died. She even outright admitted that her life's ambition was to kill more helpless people than anyone else.

I can't actually recall any other works aside from Misery that feature this kind of female serial killer. I suspect it's because the subject matter is something a lot of people really don't want to think about. Probably has something to do with the way female serial killers subvert the "traditional" female caregiver roles in the most horrific way possible.

Edited by M84 on Oct 24th 2019 at 10:32:01 PM

The hyena of auchwitz would be a good one, she watch as people die in the camps and aparently got sexual gratification for it.....pretty nasty.

I read Misery and I will said she is the closet thing to a female jason, specially in the book were she is pretty fucking strong and brutal, specially as she kill two police and how she surive everything paul does to him.

He is right, she is almost a goddess.

That one's a little different since it was a death camp — those people were sent there to die in the first place.

Most female serial killers set themselves up in positions where they are expected to care for other people. And instead they kill them. Think nurses who kill patients in their care, like Annie from Misery who pulled shit like killing infants in a maternity ward.

Edited by M84 on Oct 24th 2019 at 10:52:12 PM

x3 Hitman (2016) had an elusive target like that. She was an elderly woman who was also a serial killer, leaning towards poisons and "accidents" as her MO. Though you don't actually see her committing any crimes; they're told to you during the briefing.

Given the tendency for female villains to be portrayed as relying on sexuality more than their male counterparts a part of me feels like the lack of female Cenobites might be a good thing since it means less examples of the The Vamp in movies.

Of course it would be great if we got more female villains in general who had nothing to do with sexuality and where just as evil and scary as their male peers.

Statistically, serial killers tend to skew white male, but FBI Profiler John Douglas (a.k.a one of the guys who coined the term serial killer) speculates that female serial killers are merely under-reported due bias in the police force being more reluctant to consider women as killers. One example being the Mexican Luchadora and serial killer Juana Barraza, "the old lady killer". Mexican Police took longer than they should to catch her because they were operating on the assumption it was a man disguised as a woman doing the killings, rather than a woman.

There are some cases however of female "hunter" killers. Aileen Quornos of Monster fame is probably the most famous (killed her victims with a revolver). Some more obscure cases involve the "holy shit how is this woman not a slasher villain by now" Clemente Barnabet who killed entire families with axes in apparent dark magic rituals and then promptly left prison never to be heard from again, The Black Widow murders (women murdered vagrants to cash in their insurances), Dana Sue Gray (who strangled/stabbed victims to death), Sheila Labarre (who tortured and killed young men while claiming she was an avenging angel sent to punish them), Susan Monica (kidnapped and murdered the handymen in her farm), e.t.c.

There's an interesting food for thought in that the prevalence of female serial killers using poison while male serial killers favor guns and knives strangely tracks with how women are more likely to commit suicide by poisoning themselves while men are more likely to commit suicide by gun/knife.

I can agree with that in concept. I was pointing out that it surprised me no one seized that opportunity given the franchise's history.

I would be very interested in some focus in the Female Cenobite, though. She's bone-chilling and not particularly more sexualized than the others:

"Perhaps we'd prefer you."

Edited by Gaon on Oct 24th 2019 at 8:23:20 AM

I suppose part of it is that people still can't quite get behind the notion that a woman is even capable of "hunting" other people or physically overpowering them.

Speaking of which, I'm reminded of the movie High Tension, where the twist is that the male slasher villain is actually a delusion and split personality of the protagonist. She is the actual killer.

As for the Hellraiser franchise...eh, I kind of think it went downhill fast after the first two movies.

Edited by M84 on Oct 24th 2019 at 11:23:00 PM

This remins me a story in sandman were one of Dream creation have long escape and have decide to create what can be call a seria killer convention, were diferent killer reunited and talk about themselves, including one panel of female serial killer complaing about she is always despict as the evil nurse, ending with her saying "Im a serial kill and proud of it"

Yeah, Sandman is a great comic, you should read it.

The only hunter female slasher I can think of is the Huntress from the aforementioned Dead By Daylight. You also have the Stalker from Dead By Daylight's sister game Deathgarden Blood Harvest.

Beyond that they are extremly rare. The Siberian from Worm also may qualify as she is a serial killer supervillian in that setting that hunts people.

Edited by Wispy on Oct 24th 2019 at 9:07:06 AM

The Siberian is really a mental projection created by a man, though, IIRC. Granted, it’s been a while since I read Worm and I skimmed the later bits.

Edited by Galadriel on Oct 24th 2019 at 12:37:21 PM

The Serial Killer Convention in Sandman is also funny because you missed out on an even further joke in that.

The lady you quoted said, "I hate the fact female serial killers are always depicted as evil nurses and black widows! I'm a serial killer and proud of it."

But the joke had her sit down next to an...evil nurse and black widow who were going to speak next.

That was such a true-to-life Comic Con moment. :)

• Jennifer from Jennifer's Body
• Ginger from Ginger Snaps
• Trick or Treet (Anna Paquin's Werewolf character is a fascinating reversal of feminism, womanhood, and sexuality)
• Carrie
• Sill from Species (which is more sex than violence)
• Carmilla and most female vampires based on her
• The Alien Queen (probably the most successful of all female villains is the Aliens—who are all female as far as we know)
• Grendel's Mother (not the Angelina Jolie version)
• The Blair Witch

Carrie's more of a supernatural mass shooter than a serial killer per se.

And the Alien Queen doesn't really operate like a slasher villain. Only the Alien from the first movie did, as did the one from Alien: Isolation.

Edited by M84 on Oct 25th 2019 at 12:52:01 AM

Stephen King has said he has mixed feelings about Carrie (and Rage to a much greater extent) now since he feels like he's helped create the narrative that the shooter is a victim lashing out.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 24th 2019 at 9:50:19 AM

Carrie is intersting in that I feel the old film is superior from the new one.

In the old one she feel like a force of nature, just blowing up stuff as it happen around her, the new one have moving her hand and doing stuff that make her look like a superhero, in fact is kinda dificult not to look the movie and said "Stephen king writing a X men episode".

(In fact, she is pretty much a horror version of Wanda)

And jennifer body is intersting, is pretty much "what if edward cullen was a woman", she is mean to the bone but one cant deny the thing between her and moody.