We look at how the Final Girl & Death by Sex became staples of the horror genre.
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Transcript provided by Youtube:
00:01
name the killer Halloween no come on
00:05
it’s your favorite scary movie remember
00:07
some cliches in horror feel so
00:10
unavoidable that it seems like they must
00:12
have begun with the genre itself but we
00:15
have to thank John Carpenter’s seminal
00:17
1978 classic Halloween for popularizing
00:20
today’s most foundational themes even if
00:23
Carpenter didn’t necessarily intend to
00:25
most notably the final girl trope or the
00:28
idea that only one of the movies females
00:30
can live to the end and death by sex
00:33
related to the final girl which shows
00:35
sexual activity being punished by death
00:38
there are certain rules that one must
00:41
abide by in order to successfully
00:42
survive a horror movie for instance
00:44
number one you can never have sex
00:47
Carroll clover coined the term final
00:49
girl in her book men women and chainsaws
00:52
to describe the female survivor who out
00:54
fights and outlasts the killer for
00:56
clover while slashers like Halloween do
00:59
sexualized violence and present male
01:01
anxieties or desires they also cross
01:03
over the traditional gender binary via
01:06
the final girl who is an intriguing
01:08
union of the masculine and feminine the
01:11
final girl tends to become more
01:12
masculine looking by the end of the film
01:14
she uses a knife or some other
01:16
phallic-shaped tool to stay alive and
01:18
most importantly she’s the only girl in
01:21
the story not obsessed with sex let’s
01:24
look at Jamie Lee Curtis is final girl
01:26
Laurie she’s physically the biggest of
01:28
her friend she’s the only girl who spent
01:30
the night babysitting kids instead of
01:32
getting laid and she eventually fends
01:34
off Michael Myers with a sewing needle
01:36
and a kitchen knife
01:37
she lives while the others die Laurie is
01:39
mocked for her lack of sexual experience
01:41
scared another one
01:44
I always said to make a fabulous Girl
01:46
Scout but in the end virginity is what
01:48
saves her life
01:49
if mainly because she has time to notice
01:51
anything other than sex right so I want
01:53
to see Jamie Lee’s breasts when do we
01:55
see Jamie Brad
01:56
Jamie Lee was always a virgin in horror
01:58
movies she never showed her tits does
02:00
she want legit that’s why she always ups
02:02
wanted to kill in a big chasing with him
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only virgins can do that
02:06
clover argues that by forcing male
02:09
viewers to identify with a typically
02:10
young female the final girl turns the
02:13
voyeuristic male oriented horror genre
02:16
into a feminine experience the sadism of
02:19
identifying with the killer blends with
02:21
the masochism of identifying with the
02:23
victim we first see the final girl
02:25
through the killer’s gaze in cinemas
02:27
usual tradition the female is the
02:29
spectacle while the male is the
02:31
spectator but the final girl reverses
02:33
this clover rights when she assumes the
02:35
active investigating gaze making a
02:38
spectacle of the killer and a spectator
02:40
of herself the gaze becomes at least for
02:42
a while female not all agree that the
02:45
final girl trope is fully progressive
02:47
given that she often has to be saved or
02:49
helped by a man and it’s been often
02:51
imitated in flat cardboard iterations
02:54
that fail to match the complexity of
02:55
clovers analysis Halloween was in the
02:58
first film with a final girl trope the
03:00
Texas Chainsaw Massacre and black
03:02
Christmas both released in 1974 predate
03:05
Halloween but carpenters film made it a
03:07
widespread staple in horror driving it
03:10
home by coupling it with death by sex
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most of Halloween’s murders are
03:13
juxtaposed with sexual acts Bob gets
03:16
killed just after sex
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Linda soon follows and Ann is killed on
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her way to go have sex the film opens
03:22
with young Michael Myers killing his
03:23
sister immediately after she has sex
03:25
Halloween established the suburban
03:28
landscape is a prominent setting for
03:29
slashers mocking the assumed security of
03:32
its smugly uneventful environment and it
03:35
set up a theme of psycho sexual
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obsession which would carry into other
03:38
slasher franchises the slasher genre as
03:41
a whole
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is fueled by the sexual fury but these
03:44
days
03:45
death by sex isn’t localized to horror
03:47
even the James Bond films use it with
03:49
regularity so why punish sex horror
03:53
presents and confronts our deepest fears
03:55
it’s not necessarily saying these people
03:58
deserve to be punished for sex but
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Halloween dramatizes the backlash the
04:02
kids and we fear for what we do John
04:05
Carpenter says he didn’t write Halloween
04:07
with an intentional Christian message
04:08
but horror has deeply embedded Christian
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roots scares are often based on the dark
04:13
fantastic from ghosts to demonic
04:15
possessions the Christian associations
04:18
carry over into subgenres like the
04:20
slasher where an overly durable
04:21
larger-than-life killer punishes teens
04:23
for behavior socially regarded as taboo
04:26
premarital teen sex there’s something
04:29
supernatural about Meyers he survives
04:31
multiple gunshots he’s described as not
04:33
a man and he kills one of the kids
04:35
dressed in a ghost costume carpenter
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also argues that the story is an
04:39
explicitly punishing sexual activity
04:41
saying the other teens are killed
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because they aren’t paying attention for
04:45
carpenter it’s about the revenge of the
04:47
repressed because Myers can’t be sexual
04:50
he kills those who can so you could say
04:52
the film is about the fatal dangers of
04:54
repressing our sexual urges the revenge
04:57
isn’t just against teens being sexual
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it’s also the revenge of the weird kids
05:01
against the normal kids
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Laurie lives on both because she’s as
05:05
repressed as Meyers and because she’s
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also not a normal teen they’re both
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outsiders just on different ends of the
05:11
sanity spectrum whether intentionally or
05:14
not Halloween assured the final girl and
05:16
death by sex into the mainstream despite
05:19
criticisms controversy and conversation
05:21
about the messages they send death by
05:23
sex lives on in an outside horror while
05:25
final girls continue to win and outlast
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[Music]
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you
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video