Blog 8

Because it is almost Halloween, and because something that I read in my textbook got in my craw, I want to talk about slasher flicks this week. You know what a slasher flick is don't you? Crazed, usually masked, clearly sexually repressed, psycho stalks and then slashes every teenager in sight except for one girl who had the good sense to not have premarital relations with her nitwit boyfriend who was probably a victim of masked guy? Yeah, like Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. Well, my Women's Study textbook calls these out for their depictions of violence against women. I say, watch again with an open mind. These movies are not victimizing women, no they are celebrating them. Slasher flicks should be required watching for any Women's Studies student.

Let us use young Nancy from the original Nightmare on Elm Street as our archetype. Nancy is a parent's wet dream. She is a good girl, doesn't cause trouble for her dad the cop and doesn't call her mother out for her excessive drinking and whoring about town. She has a hunky boyfriend and a slutty best friend, both of whom are dispatched by Freddy the friendly neighborhood killer in short order. But not our Nancy. Nancy figures out, on her own, who Freddy is, what he is doing in the local teenagers' dreams, and comes up with the plan to defeat him, again on her own. Nancy realizes that she alone has the power to defeat the evil that is Freddy; and through brute strength, well thought out and placed booby traps, and shear deductive reasoning she does just that. She does it so well that Wes Craven brings her back 2 more times to do the same thing. Now, maybe I am biased because I love these movies, but I think that this makes Nancy, and all of the other "Final Girls" (a term coined by Nancy Clover) feminist icons and not the subject of derision that the authors of my text want us to see them as.


So, it is almost Halloween. Go rent a handful of slasher flicks and see for yourself. Nancy, Laurie, Sidney, Ellen, and Sally are just waiting to prove me right. And as long as directors and writers keep coming up with new psycho killers to scare the crap out of us, we will be treated to more feminist icons just like them, who use their wits and strength to defeat evil.