Your vintage feminism moment of the day

[seriousfic]

Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel discuss the rise of the slasher movie--and aren't fans.

Now, even as a horror fan, I can't speak for all those movies. Haven't seen 'em, and a lot of those slasher movies were basically cash-ins, like the cheapo monster movies of the 50s (which did use the same exploitative imagery of women, they were just more euphemistic about it. I guess perpetuating rape culture is only bad if you're upfront about it), and they were catering to the basest denominator of the audience... much like Adam Sandler does these days.

The biggest mistake Ebert and Siskel make is literally lumping all R-rated horror movies together (and they appear to be suggesting censorship, as if it's not enough that the horror movies are rated R. What more? An NC-17 for "bad taste"? We all know where that leads). They name-drop The Howling as an anti-woman movie; it's actually a thoughtful, female-led movie that uses lycanthropy as a metaphor for rape in a tasteful, non-exploitative way (as opposed to something like, yes, I Spit On Your Grave, where you get the impression they just want to flash some tits).

Another thing they discount is just how many of these slasher movies have female protagonists. Yes, the Final Girl is usually a virgin--I'll get to that in a moment--but putting aside that baggage, she does get to bag up, fight back, and generally slay the monster in the end. Can you name another genre with as many female protagonists? I know, that's not the be-all and end-all of feminism--rom-coms have as much heroines, and they have just as many sexual stereotypes on average. But it is of note. In fact, I recall that in the early days of Supernatural, one of the criticisms was that the monster of the week format appropriated the plot of a slasher movie and changed it so that instead of being about a Final Girl, two men rode in to save the day. Of course, if anything could take misogyny and add a little sexism on top, it'd be SPN.

Lastly, Ebert and Siskel couldn't have seen this, but nowadays, the horror filmmakers who are nostalgic for the 80s slasher movie explosion are making tributes that *subvert* 'slasher movie morality'. Laudable? Perhaps not. But compare it to the way filmmakers who do tributes to the swashbuckler genre in films like Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, and Star Wars deal with their own genre-specific problems. They usually just straight-up repeat the racism and sexism of their forebears.