In this edition of Horror Madness, we explore what makes a final girl and why that matters, as two knowing slasher parodies face off.
In one corner there’s Wes Craven’s Scream:
And in the other we have Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof:
See the introduction and full slate here http://oftenveryvile.ghost.io/introducing-horror-movie-madness/.
I wouldn’t necessarily call either of these filmmakers feminists, exactly. To be clear, I don’t really like calling any artist that - I’m more comfortable thinking of feminism as a tool rather than a label. What I can say is that both men have given some thought to the role women play in horror, in particular in the slasher film. I know for a fact that Wes Craven read Carol Clover. I’m betting Tarantino has read her too. These films are the first of their kind I’ve examined in this series that were fully made in a post-Clover world. I don’t know that there has been a work of film criticism more influential than Men, Women and Chainsaws. Certainly neither of these films could have been made without it.
Clover, of course, was the critic who identified and named the “final girl” as a primary figure of the slasher film. So what is a final girl? Both Scream and Death Proof are about her. Simply, she’s the girl in the horror film who makes it to the end alive, but she’s more than that. She doesn’t make it for no reason - she’s always a little smarter, a little stronger and luckier, than everyone else. What Clover emphasizes is the final girl’s superiority to the other women in the film - she’s the final girl, never the only girl. It’s this that prevents Clover from calling the final girl an unambiguously feminist or empowering figure. She survives, but only in contrast to the other women and girls who don’t. Her strength is set up in contrast to their weakness. Her intelligence is in opposition to their foolishness. Her subversion of gender roles and gender expectations is placed against their hyper-femininity. It’s important to remember the cliched role of sex and in particular sex had by women in the slasher. Other girls have sex, and they get punished. The final girl doesn’t, and she survives. It’s not a coincidence. Characters in Scream even bring that point up, more than once.
Listen, let’s get this out of the way: I don’t like Scream. I think it’s boring, smug, and unscary. Its characters are vapid and irritating, and they’re paper thin - and I don’t think you can blame this on the actors, one of whom gives a great performance in Death Proof. Craven was one of the most talented image makers of his generation of horror guys, but the images here are pretty dull. Ghostface is kind of memorable, but not especially interesting. His gimmick is that he knows a lot about horror movies, but so what? Everyone - or nearly everyone - in this movie knows a lot about horror movies. They talk a lot about horror movies. They barely talk about anything else.
I have a lot of respect for Wes Craven. He’s not my favorite horror auteur, but he’s made some bonafide classics and he deserves his reputation as a master. You can tell he loved this genre, and he respected it. I always get the sense that screenwriter Kevin Williamson, in this film and in others, doesn’t even like it much. He thinks he’s smarter than horror. I’m not sure that horror can be genuinely scary and smug at the same time, and smugness seems to define everything written by Williamson.
Tarantino has his faults, but he’s not smug, and he never thinks he’s too good for the genre he’s playing with. Death Proof is less obvious as a slasher pastiche than Scream is, partially because the characters don’t spend all of their damn time talking about horror movies and how they’re in one now. The characters are savvy, but they all are - including the girls who die. There isn’t just one final girl, either. There are three friends, working together, who take down the villain, and you get the sense that what really saved them was their refusal to be separated or placed in opposition to each other.
There’s no competition among these women. They’re all smart, they’re all interesting. Tarantino is great at action set pieces, and he’s great at building suspense, but more than anything he makes a great hang out movie. He takes so much time in Death Proof just letting women hang out and talk to each other, more than women do in most films by male directors. Tarantino makes you like these girls, the ones who die and the ones who live. You admire the three women who defeat the killer, but that admiration never turns into contempt for the women he killed.
Who cares, really, about any of the people in Scream? You might care about Sidney, I guess, but that’s all. She is, like most final girls, best understood in comparison with everyone else in her film. She’s defined by what she doesn’t do as much as by what she does. It’s hard to know her because we never get to hang out with her. She just learns that she’s in a horror movie, and she has to act like it in order to survive.
Scream is clever, for sure. It’s effectively constructed. Death Proof, though, is smarter and more impressively crafted. It’s a wonder - a horror film that’s warm, that’s full of affection for people and their nerdy interests and their desire to live. The winner is Death Proof.