Misogyny in slasher films and horror in general

This is a whale of a topic, but I do have a--well, maybe not "simple" but at least "formulatable"--question to begin with: did the ultra-misogynistic seventies cinema (and television) rise in direct backlash to seventies feminism?

Would you say there's no connection at all; some connection; a whole lot of connection?

Whale, indeed!

This seems like an empirical question that I am not sufficiently versed in cinema history to answer. I hope someone else can.

>2 sparemethecensor:

I was reading various articles about slasher films and a comment on one implied that it's generally understood/academically argued that there is a connection. I presume there's a ton of writing on the topic but have no idea what the "general" opinion might be.

Personally I'm not well acquainted with this cinema although I have seen some--in fact, what made me wonder was completing (just the other day) the German Edgar Wallace series and seeing for the first time the last two films made in Italian co-production (an important point given the features of Italian giallo tradition).

While the 1960s Edgar Wallace Krimis (not to be confused with Anglo TV productions, btw) were thoroughly sexist and stereotypical in their treatment of female characters, the last two (made in 1972) are notable for amping the gratuitous nudity, gore and blatant misogyny by orders of magnitude. In the sixties EW Rialto films women were passive, ornamental, screamed a lot, and were totally useless in action (unless they happened to be villains), but their demise wasn't, in general, unduly lingered over and female and male victims usually died in the same way.

In one of the Italian coproductions, not only is there copious female nudity (underage, because the action takes place around a Catholic girl school--with, incidentally, just the ONE female teacher!, lol), but the victims (these same girls) are attacked by (spoiler for gore and triggering) stabbing their vaginas with a long knife--we see these scenes on two occasions and in flashbacks. In another scene, possibly the crassest I've ever seen (but then I'm not used to this), the police inspector answers a father's question about whether his daughter had been raped (as well as murdered) by showing him an X-ray of her abdomen and upper legs, with the knife's blade lodged way up in her uterus.

With that, clearly we're out of the relatively benign sixties completely. There is no limit to what can be done to women, and shown to be done.

>3 LolaWalser: LolaWalser "While the 1960s Edgar Wallace Krimis (not to be confused with Anglo TV productions, btw) were thoroughly sexist and stereotypical in their treatment of female characters, the last two (made in 1972) are notable for amping the gratuitous nudity, gore and blatant misogyny by orders of magnitude."

That's an interesting point - the later German/Italian Edgar Wallace films (and a small number supposedly based on novels by EW's son Bryan Edgar Wallace) were the genesis of the Italian Giallo horror-mystery genre. The worst of these became absolutely notorious for their misogynistic treatment of female characters. Lucio Fulci was perhaps the director most often accused of this.

This doesn't really answer the question, I know. I'm generally deeply uncomfortable with censorship but do find this type of film deeply disturbing on many levels.

I think there is an extent to which filmmakers in the seventies were getting used to a new environment where censorship was either much looser or lacking altogether. For much of the decade filmmakers of all types, but especially genre and exploitation producers, were getting used to being able to film pretty well anything they wanted. This led to some scenes and entire films which reflect quite unpleasant attitudes.

My gut feeling is that they represented attitudes that were already there, but were unable to find such explicit outlets before.

>4 IanFryer:

Are you familiar with the Rialto movies?! I'd love to have a few in English versions, especially the one with Robert Morley (Das Geheimniss der weissen Nonne). Christopher Lee, I think, spoke German in the ones he appeared in--can't think at the moment of other British actors... Oh, I'll take this to the Gothic group--the trappings of the stories at least warrant the inclusion (all those castles! mad monks! damsels in distress etc.)

>5 IanFryer:

My gut feeling is that they represented attitudes that were already there, but were unable to find such explicit outlets before.

I have/had that same feeling--catching up with a lot of old stuff on the internet and DVD in the last 4-5 years, it becomes very noticeable how over the decades certain things changed, thresholds moved. Sexual liberation, ironically, brought negative as well as positive changes.

I think we can say, at a minimum, that cultural misogyny is evident in some degree in all periods of the medium (on stage and behind the stage, in terms of themes, representation, employment, hierarchies etc.) but gets expressed according to the then-prevailing standards.

(But I do wonder whether something new isn't being created with the "explicit" approach... It's hard to see how, say, Siegfried Schürenberg leering over the nude photos of his secretary (who is a jolly obliging girl always ready with a smile at a pat of her bottom) is the same thing as the intro to a later movie in which we zoom straight on to naked female breasts and watch them getting stabbed a dozen times, to the victim's deafening screams. Btw, isn't that a significant inversion of the approach in Psycho?--the focus isn't on the knife and the girl's screaming head--her fear--anymore, but on the sexually arousing body.)

I have family in Germany, so I usually pick up some of the Railto films when visiting. My copy of Das Geheimniss der weissen Nonne is in German only, but it was an English co-production (hence people like Stewart Granger in the cast, who was popular in both countries), called The Tygon Factor in England.

I have developed a healthy scepticism for the last 60s/early 70s permissiveness, as it seems to me to have given men license to leer at women with very little offered in return, at least at that stage. Actresses I've spoken to who were starting their career in this era have told me of the pressures they faced from producers to get naked for the camera.

The sudden appearance of female nudity in the public sphere faced very little backlash compared to the liberation struggles of people of colour, women, gays or Transgender people. The latter is an especially interesting example, as trans people found themselves being written out of LGBT history despite Trans people of colour being largely responsible for the Stonewall riots.

The point about Psycho is an excellent one - do you mind if I borrow it for something I'm writing? The example you give strikes me, in terms of cultural misogyny, similar to some examples of 'Good Girl Art' in crime novels from the 50s onwards. Often a woman on the cover will be clearly at the point of being murdered, but the dictates of the male gaze insist that we concentrate on exposed cleavage or a bra strap.

>7 IanFryer:

The point about Psycho is an excellent one - do you mind if I borrow it for something I'm writing?

Please do, glad to be of help!

the dictates of the male gaze insist that we concentrate on exposed cleavage or a bra strap.

I think the lawyerly "Cui bono?" is always an excellent question to ask in these matters. ;) It doesn't take an expert to notice the "strange" traditional propensity in all visual media for depicting the female figure. Or great intelligence to conclude that the come-hitherness of the subject isn't addressed to women (although it does convey other messages to them, of course) or gay men.

I can't tell myself whether there is a significant preference for showing a shapely woman, the more naked the better, in situations where she's victimised, or whether the frequency of such imagery is "just" some side-effect of the thrill of violence meeting the will to sexually objectify women.

I know of a slasher movie that feminists would like -- I'm sure there are many. This one came recommended by a feminist to a girl in my group of schoolfriends. The girl was tall and homely and dateless, so of course she became a feminist too,

The rental she brought to us was called I Spit On Your Grave. It's about a woman who is raped by men. Then she gets revenge on each one by stalking them and killing them. In one scene, she lures a man into a tub, presumably for sex, then she cuts his testicles off. The screams were deafening while she sat in the next room listening nonchalantly. Doing her nails, I think.

I assume this would pass the feminist seal of approval.

""strange" traditional propensity in all visual media for depicting the female figure""

Would you consider Michelangelo's David a "strange propensity" or is it only female nudity you prudishly & puritanically have a problem with?

>10 barney67: It's all about context, Barney.

This isn't an original thought of mine, but it's notable that it's far easier to get a scene of a knife entering a woman's breast past the censor than a scene of someone caressing said breast.

I Spit on Your Grave (the original version, which I saw years ago - haven't seen the remake) is, from memory, a really strange film in terms of its tone. It's a horror movie spin on Ingmar Bergman's 1960 classic The Virgin Spring. It's certainly more interesting than the standard slasher movie.

I'll leave your views on feminists alone, if that's alright by you.

I saw the original and didn't care for it, but then I was never a fan of horror movies.

"it's far easier to get a scene of a knife entering a woman's breast past the censor than a scene of someone caressing said breast."

How do you know? How would a claim like that be determined?

>11 IanFryer:

I Spit on Your Grave (the original version

It's on my "to watch" list, with relatively low priority (rape is a tough subject for me), but yes, it's not, from everything I heard about it, a slasher movie (not that the troll who introduced it is interested in or capable of a genuine discussion).

Interesting what you say about Bergman, I don't think I've heard of that association before. I rate Virgin spring highly (like Bergman a lot, in general), but it's been many years since I saw it last, it's always a soul-wrencher and I've become more sensitive to violence over the years.

I remind the sensitive poster that personal attacks violate the TOS, aside from other obvious disadvantages.

I guess it depends on how you define "slasher movies." There certainly is a lot of slashing. I wonder if you will find the movie acceptable because it's a woman doing the slashing in revenge for rape, revenge being one of the cornerstones of feminism.