Representation of Women

After researching on the horror genre, I am now able to address media representations that are present throughout a horror film that I may want to present in my final project. Some of the many different media representations include gender and how women are portrayed. In the majority of horror films, women are usually seen as the weak link, they are usually the victim being attacked, or the ones who give in and allow the monster to take over.

In the film, The Conjuring, a family moves to an old farm house located in Rhode Island in which the family begins to notice weird things happening.  Carolyn then decides to bring in famous paranormal investigators to search the house. In the film, Carolyn is seen as the weak link by the spirit that has conquered their house and therefore the spirit starts to play around with the mother. Carolyn later gets possessed and is now trying to haunt her family after just recently trying to protect them by calling in investigators. This is a prime example of how women are seen as the ones who create the problem because of them being the “weak” ones.  Throughout many films, females are represented by revealing their body, clothing, or looks. An example that shows these representations is Psycho. In this film, a woman is the victim and is killed by a serial killer haunting the town. This woman is portrayed as being very young and pretty which shows that a common representation assessed with horror films is that the good looking, innocent women are always the weak links in the story.

I do not believe that these media representations relating to women are acceptable, although they were in the past. Why can’t women be the strong ones? Why can’t women be the ones that save the situation instead of worsening it? The representations of the women hold no value in the present day as we see many women stepping up in the society. I would not want to retain any of the representations present in horror films due to them not being accurate or correct. In order to challenge these representations, I would make a female be an important, strong character in a film in which finds a solution to the problem occurring and saves herself and many others from a situation.