Hor-Whore: Slut Shaming in Slasher Films
Olivia Thorne
The ‘Final Girl’ of the slasher genre is a well-known, arguably cliché cinematic trope. Among the most notable are Scream’s Sydney Prescott, Halloween’s Laurie Strode and Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Sally Hardesty. So, what makes a ‘Final Girl’? Is it athletic ability, a keen eye for suspicious behaviour, or just dumb luck? To reach a conclusion, it is necessary to explore what separates the Final Girl from their doomed female counterparts.
These unlucky female characters, usually friends of the Final Girl, are often portrayed as promiscuous and exuding a sexuality that the protagonist does not. So, what function do they serve? There is arguably an ideological reason why these women must be violently killed, which involves the issue of female morality.
As such, I will refer to these women as the ‘Fallen Girls’. This term recalls the Madonna-Whore complex at play here: the notion that women fall into two categories – pure and impure – based on their sexual conduct. The ways in which women use their bodies have captivated men’s fears for centuries, creating a dichotomy that can be seen as early as that between Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus. According to this ideology, a sexually liberated woman is sinful and therefore deserves punishment. This reckoning culminates in the brutal butchering of the Fallen Girl, while the Final Girl lives to see the end credits.
An archetypal Fallen Girl is Lynda van der Klok, the “totally!” flirtatious friend of Laurie Strode. It is immediately apparent that Lynda’s life revolves around her appearance and her boyfriend. This stark contrast to the studious and responsible Laurie serves to accentuate the protagonist’s virtue from her first appearance.
Nowhere does she achieve this more perfectly than in her final few moments on screen. While Laurie is studying and babysitting, Lynda is drinking beer and having sex with her boyfriend across the street. Minutes before her death, Lynda seals her narrative fate by dropping the bed sheets and exposing herself. The road between the two women becomes a dividing line, signifying their dichotomy: slut versus mother, Fallen Girl versus Final Girl.
Like Lynda, Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Fallen Girl, Pam, endures a longer and more brutal death than her boyfriend, Kirk. Pam and Sally are dressed to fit their opposing archetypes: while Sally wears jeans and a modest T-shirt, Pam sports a low-cut, backless top with a pair of revealing red shorts. For those familiar with horror cinema, their costumes predict which of the two will meet a bloody end.
The way in which The Fallen Girl is killed usually differs to that of her boyfriend and is often strangely erotic. In most cases, the boyfriend dies first in a violent yet swift manner. In contrast, the Fallen Girl’s death is savoured and marked by gratuitous violence. A prime example of this is Kirk’s death and Pam’s.
While Kurt receives a blow to the head from Leatherface, it is his disappearance that leads Pam to her demise. The entire ordeal is enjoyed by the killer and the camera, from the suggestively low angles of her entrance to the house and the suspension of her body from the meat hook, putting her on display with her breasts barely confined by her top.
Such is the way Lynda is killed in Halloween when she is surprised by Michael while waiting for her boyfriend in bed, unaware of his ghostly sheet hiding his identity. Like Leatherface pinning Pam on his hook, Michael exhibits a cruel relish in toying with Lynda – an experience her male lover was spared from. This leads to another fate bestowed upon the Fallen Girl: to die without dignity. While Lynda is recounting her sexual escapades to Laurie, Michael strangles her with the telephone cord. Not only is this a much slower death than her boyfriend faced, but it becomes a sickeningly comical moment in which Laurie mistakes her squeals for help as moans of pleasure. This not only undermines the tragedy of the situation but also directly aligns Lynda’s fate with her sexuality.
Like Michael and Leatherface, Scream’s ‘Ghostface’ takes sadistic pleasure in his treatment of Tatum. Wearing a top that accentuates her nipples and a tight mini skirt, Tatum enters the basement garage to fetch more beer. Following the same rules as Lynda’s death in Halloween, immoral vices such as sex and alcohol lead to a butchering for women in the horror genre. Thus, after a flirtatious exchange with ‘Mr Ghostface’, she realises that the man in the mask is the killer when she is brutally slain. While attempting to escape through the cat flap, Ghostface elevates the garage door, leaving Tatum with her lower half trapped. We become painfully aware that her breasts are too large for her to slip back through, resulting in her neck being crushed by the top of the garage door. Like Lynda, Tatum’s final moments emphasise her sexuality, paralleling her fate with her promiscuity. The erotic tone of the Fallen Girl’s murder sets her apart from other victims and positions her as the antithesis to the Final Girl.
The blueprint of the Fallen Girl versus the Final Girl raises the question of whether villains like Michael, Leatherface, and Ghostface are admonitory, puritanical figures who reserve their wrath for women who recognise and embrace their sexuality. Therefore, are these horror films inherently misogynistic? Perhaps contemporary franchises such as Scream have begun a movement away from these archetypes by confronting the ‘rules’ established by their predecessors. Despite this, Scream also adheres to them. Is it possible for slasher films to escape from the misogynistic tropes on which they are built?
The final indignity occurs in the discovery of their corpses. In Lynda’s case, she has been shoved into the wardrobe. Her robe is unfastened, exposing her, while her mouth is open with a cross-eyed expression that seems almost orgasmic. Similarly, Pam is found in the freezer. Leatherface sees her corpse hanging from the box and tosses her back in as though she were a jumper drooping from a drawer. Even in death, the Fallen Girl is denied the dignity afforded to her male counterparts.
In more recent years, the Scream franchise both confronted and perpetuated these horror tropes. In the first film, Tatum can be assigned the role of the Fallen Girl. Not only does she embody the archetype with her seductive demeanour contrasting with Sydney’s, but her death is also the most degrading of all.
