Gender and Contemporary Horror in Film

Samantha Holland, Robert Shail, Steven Gerrard

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781787698994
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The horror genre will always remain current because it reflects our anxieties, shining a light onto our worst fears whilst creating worlds defined by darkness. Horror as a genre has always engaged with era-specific societal mores and moral panics, often about isolation or abandonment, changing family values and the role of women. It is often specifically about how gender is constructed in everyday life. Women are commonly defined in horror by their passivity, or monstrosity/sexuality or victimhood - or a mix of the three. At the same time women in horror are forced into psychological and physical torture ending in violent showdowns in which they emerge damaged but triumphant. Bringing together research from a wide range of established and emerging scholars this edited collection provides an insight into how modern horror films portray femininities, sexualities, masculinities, ageing, and other current issues, exploring the use of vampires, zombies, werewolves and ghosts in films made internationally. This volume, one of three by the same editorial team examining the horror genre, focuses on gender and contemporary horror in film, asking questions about how and if representations of gender in horror have changed. In these readings and re-readings, the authors examine developments in films about vampires, zombies, werewolves and ghosts, in films made internationally.

PART I
BODIES

Chapter 1

‘It’s So Easy to Create a Victim’: Subverting Gender Stereotypes in the New French Extremity

Maddi McGillvray

Abstract

The horror genre is and always has been populated by women, who can be seen to be at once both objectified and empowered. Building off the preexisting gender hierarchies and dynamics embedded in the history of horror cinema, this chapter looks at a number of New French Extremity films that assault audiences with unrelenting scenes of violence, torture and self-mutilation, which are performed almost exclusively upon or by women. Although the films of the New French Extremity have been dismissed as exploitative in their representations of wounded and suffering female bodies, their narratives also offer internal criticisms of the misogynistic portals of victimhood that are prevalent in the genre. Through a close analysis of the films Inside (Bustillo & Maury, 2007) (French title: À L’intérieur) and Martyrs (Laugier, 2008), this chapter will examine how both films deviate from the male monster/female victim dichotomy. Although the women of these films may start off vulnerable, they take charge of their situations, while also compacting the nature of feminine identity.

Keywords New French extremity; French cinema; female victimhood; female protagonists; female agency; women in horror

Man endures pain as an undeserved punishment; woman accepts it as a natural heritage.

– Anonymous

The female victim has been a reoccurring cinematic image since the development of the medium. Not only has the female form become the conventional site of pain and suffering in film, but this correlation has also become particularly quintessential in the horror genre. Linda Williams notes this in ‘Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess’ (1991), arguing that genres such as horror, pornography, and melodrama hinge on the spectacle of a sexually saturated and victimized female body (Williams, 1991). Women have been at the centre of the horror genre since its origins (Dani, 2017). They are the last ones standing at the end, hunted and slaughtered by psychopathic killers, haunted and/or possessed, give birth to the monsters of such films, and in some rarer cases, they are even the monsters themselves. Nevertheless, misogynistic depictions of women have frequently appeared within the horror genre since its emergence. Starting with Le Manoir du Diable (Méliès, 1896), which is often cited as the first horror film, and continuing until today, the presence of gendered specific violence has been a recognizable trope throughout the history of horror cinema.

Despite such narratives, horror is one of cinema’s most consistently popular and lucrative genres (Prince, 2004). Not only is horror experiencing what many are calling its ‘golden age’ with the critical success of films like Get Out (Peele, 2017), It (Muschietti, 2017), and Hereditary (Aster, 2018), but the popularity of television shows such as The Walking Dead (2010–present) and American Horror Story (2011–present) also suggests that horror and images of violence and gore have become normalized elements of our media and viewing culture. As a result, more is required in order to shock and stimulate today’s audiences. The last decade has seen the birth of extreme cinema, which is defined in the Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies as, ‘a group of films that challenge codes of censorship and social mores, especially through explicit depictions of sex and violence, including rape and torture’ (Kuhn & Westwell, 2012). This trend has not only seeped its way onto North American screens, but has also gained prominence among international markets as well. For instance, in North America, torture porn films such as Saw (Wan, 2004) and Hostel (Roth, 2005) have become contemporary franchises comparable to the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street series. Similarly, so-called ‘Asia Extreme’ films including Audition (Miike, 1999), Ichi the Killer (Miike, 2001) and Oldboy (Park, 2003), as well as ‘European Extreme’ shockers such as A Serbian Film (Spasojevic, 2010) and the American co-production The Human Centipede (Six, 2009), have also gained prominence in the global film market (Jennings, 2008, p. 5).

However, as scholar Erin Jennings states, ‘nowhere is the surge of excess sex and violence in film more apparent than in France’ (Jennings, 2008, p. 6). Artforum critic and programmer James Quandt coined the term ‘New French Extremity’ to describe the growing presence of extreme violence and sexual brutality in French films at the turn of the twenty-first century.¹ Referring to a series of transgressive films by French auteurs such as Gaspar Noé, Claire Denis, Bruno Dumont, and Catherine Breillat, Quandt cites the New French Extremity as, ‘a cinema suddenly determined to break every taboo, to wade in rivers of visceral and spumes of sperm, to fill each frame with flesh, nubile or gnarled, and submit it to all manner of penetration, mutilation, and defilement’ (Quandt, 2004). While Quandt initially wrote about the New French Extremity as an arthouse movement, in the years that followed, the title quickly become synonymous with horror films. Consequently, the New French Extremity has earned a reputation for eliciting excessive reactions from critics and audiences, including mass walkouts, fainting, and vomiting. Despite the vociferous reactions and controversies these films have elicited, they have had an undeniable impact on French cinema, as these films have both flourished nationally and continue to gain popularity beyond French borders.

At the centre of this cycle, as scholar Tim Palmer states, is an emphasis on human sexuality rendered in stark and graphic terms (Palmer, 2006a, 2006b, p. 58). The correlation between sex and violence is not exclusive to the New French Extremity, as France has a unique history of representing such themes in art. The New French Extremity extends a libertine tradition that includes the writings of the Marquis de Sade and the films of Luis Buñuel, which used transgressive depictions of sexual violence to rouse society from its complacency. The New French Extremity’s origins can also be traced back to a long history of violent theatrical performances, including the Grand Guignol – also known as the French Theatre of Horror – from Pigalle, Paris, which featured explicit, stomach-turning portrayals of carnage, sex, and death. More recently, the New French Extremity is also comparable with a wide range of horror subgenres including slasher, rape-revenge, and home invasion narratives. Scholars like Steve Jones and Alexandra West have also traced the relationship between the New French Extremity and torture porn² based on their shared themes of violence. Despite their overt similarities, West makes a point to differentiate the two subgenres by explaining that while similar, ‘[the former] are not violent films, but rather films about violence’ (West, 2016, p. 6). Most influential, however, is the body horror subgenre and the work of Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg.³

Despite its growing popularity among fans of the horror genre, the New French Extremity is not traditionally celebrated among critics and is often criticized for sensationalizing physical and sexual violence. As writer James Walker proclaims, ‘The New French Extremity has no home in modern cinema, that much is clear. Speculation of the New French Extremity transforming into a European Extremity, and a subsequent new breed of horror movies altogether is an idea nothing short of farfetched in my mind’ (Walker, 2013). Quandt is also among many who consider this display of sex and violence to be of little substance, summarizing this group of films as, ‘aggressiveness that is really a grandiose form of passivity’ (Quandt, 2004). Palmer also sheds light on the condemning attitudes towards the New French Extremity claiming, ‘Contemporary French cinema is today catalysing a new wave of controversy. In particular, a part of recent French films that deal frankly and graphically with corporeal transgressions has provoked an international scrutiny at times bordering on hysteria’ (Palmer, 2006a, 2006b, p. 171). These unfavourable critiques are problematic because as Jennings posits, ‘issues of gender and representation are almost never discussed, as critics often become too engrossed in the spectacles of violence to imagine anything else going on’ (Jennings, 2008, p. 6). My chapter will therefore address this gap in literature by examining the potential feminist implications of two of the most popular titles to emerge out of the New French Extremity catologue: Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury’s Inside (2007) (original French title: À L’intérieur) and Pascale Laugier’s Martyrs (2008).⁴

In the New French Extremity, severe acts of violence are commonly inflicted upon women. In some cases, these are even performed by the female characters themselves. As a result, the New French Extremity often provokes fierce responses, leading some to claim that they are just spectacles of sexism. For instance, in an online review of Martyrs R.J. Sayer posted a comment claiming, ‘MARTYRS is a FASCIST film. A MISOGYNIST, FASCIST film’ (Hall, 2008). Inside and Martyrs both push the limits of obscenity and present dizzying images of violence performed upon the female body. What is specific to these two films are their particular representations of victimhood, which explicitly centre upon the wounded and suffering female body. Through a close textual analysis of Inside and Martyrs, my discussion will demonstrate that while collectively these films are preoccupied with female suffering, their narratives also offer internal criticisms of the misogynistic portals of victimhood that are prevalent in the genre. The violence performed on or by the women of these films is not pleasurable nor is it designed to excite the spectator. Rather, these works can be understood as pushing the limit of what the female body can tolerate in order to situate the female protagonists in a position of power to overwhelm and consume patriarchy.

1.1. Yuletide Terror: Inside (2007)

Inside opens with an image of a foetus inside of a womb. Suddenly, it is disturbed by an outside force, which is revealed to be a car crash involving expectant mother Sarah (Alysson Paradis) and her husband Matthieu (Jean-Baptiste Tabourin), who is killed on impact. The film cuts to several months later where Sarah is spending Christmas Eve alone preparing for an induced birth the next day. Her loved ones all try to support her, but she refuses their offers of help, instead asking her employer Jean-Pierre (François-Régis Marchasson) to drive her to the hospital the following morning. That evening, a mysterious woman credited only as La Femme (Béatrice Dalle) arrives at Sarah’s door asking to use her phone. When Sarah refuses, La Femme announces that she knows Sarah’s name and about the death of her husband. Sarah calls the police who arrange to have a patrol car visit throughout the night. When Sarah falls back to sleep, La Femme appears in her bedroom and tries to remove her unborn baby with scissors. Sarah manages to escape and locks herself in the bathroom, where La Femme torments her throughout the night. When police officers arrive as promised, La Femme answers the door and convinces them that she is Sarah and that everything is fine.⁵ Just as they are about to leave, an officer realizes the woman who answered the door was not pregnant as was described by the dispatcher. They enter the home, but are swiftly murdered one by one by La Femme. In a surprise twist, La Femme reveals that she was in the other car during the accident and lost her unborn child. Desperate to take Sarah’s baby as her own, La Femme performs a caesarean section on Sarah, who dies in the process. The film closes on a chilling image of a badly bruised and burned La Femme, having been successful with the delivery, cradling the newborn in her arms.

Inside begins with a narrative that is common to the horror genre: a woman being hunted by a psychopathic killer. Yet, Bustillo and Maury do not present the typical male aggressor/female victim dichotomy that one might expect. Instead, they deviate from this trope by offering a violent frenzy of female on female violence.⁶ In keeping with the home invasion subgenre, there are several unsettling moments where the audience witnesses La Femme’s figure slip in and out of view of Sarah’s windows without her noticing. La Femme embodies all of the characteristics of a typical horror villain: she hunts and stalks her prey, she torments Sarah with physical and psychological violence, and she even penetrates Sarah’s body with a sharp, phallic weapon. However, to have them delivered by a woman is one of the film’s most subversive achievements (Burton, 2014). In a 2008 interview with Rue Morgue, Bustillo cited his friend’s experience with pregnancy as the inspiration for the film, stating:

A friend of mind was pregnant and I asked myself what a pregnant woman alone at home at night would feel […] My first idea was to have a struggle between the pregnant woman and a serial killer who hunted her to eat her placenta. But it was too basic; like every slasher movie with a fucking bad guy on one side and a poor innocent girl on the other. Changing the sex of the boogyman was more interesting, more original, a struggle for real life. (Andrews, 2008, pp. 16–21)

In having a female perpetrator, Inside not only rejects common horror film conventions, but Bustillo and Maury also dissociate the violence portrayed in the film from the very real and problematic discourse of domestic abuse and male violence against women.

In spite of this, Sarah is by no means a likeable character that the audience could emotionally identify with or perhaps even root for. At first glance, one might want to identify with her in a similar vein as the ‘Final Girl’ (Clover, 1992).⁷ She is the film’s victim-hero and the audience watches her as she repeatedly tries to fight back against La Femme’s attacks; but Sarah is cold and distant throughout the film, preferring to isolate herself from friends and family – as well as the audience. One particularly disturbing moment is when Sarah accidentally kills her mother. Wanting to check up on her daughter before her delivery, Sarah’s mother enters the home to find Jean-Pierre, who has just been convinced that La Femme was Sarah’s mother. Concerned, she runs up the stairs to look for Sarah, who is hiding in the bathroom. Assuming the footsteps belong to La Femme, Sarah blindly stabs the figure behind the door only to realize that it is her mother. Surprisingly, Sarah does not shed a single tear in this heartbreaking moment. In fact, she does not cry for the entirety of the film. Instead, she faintly mutters the word ‘Mommy’ under her breath as she witnesses her mother’s blood spatter across the wall (West, 2016, p. 167). This moment creates a sense of unease for the viewer, as it unclear whether Sarah is in shock or if this moment is indicative of her aloof demeanour.

Bustillo and Maury further emphasize Sarah’s unlikeability by presenting her as a mother who does not want her own child. As West notes, ‘Sarah’s physicality epitomizes the desired mother. She is financially stable, attractive, and gainfully employed. She is exactly the type society desires to be a mother’ (West, 2016, p. 167). Nevertheless, Sarah appears disinterested and even resentful towards her unborn child. Something as routine as a doctor’s visit seems like a nuisance to Sarah, and her pregnant belly merely serves as a haunti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction
• PART I: BODIES
• PART II: BOUNDARIES
• PART III: CAPTIVITY
• Index