Editors: Eileen Peng and Alloe Mak

(CW: Mention of Rape and SA)

Is Pearl going to liberate me from the patriarchy??

Slashers are the backbone of the horror genre – Scream, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Final Destination – they are all well-known and infamous examples. Admittedly, I might have watched them to be contrarian—to say “I love watching things that are gross and gory because I’m special!” But above all, I do genuinely find slashers interesting to watch; some of them have horrible special effects, they all have tropes, and the old ones are glaringly misogynistic.

Slashers are self-aware that they’re a part of the horror genre; they’re in a position that allows them to justify using gore as a medium to channel other themes into the film that are more “morally violating.” One usually sees this pattern in typical counterculture as more controversial opinions are easier to be aired out because it supports the overall movement of something “alternative,”—something that’s shocking to the mainstream. Nirvana, Beserk, American Psycho—these counterculture mediums that inevitably result as a commodity (due to capitalist realism), point to an incubation of the production of “shocking” content. It’s not really groundbreaking to say that a lot of slashers (I’m thinking of Terrifier!) love to incorporate female mutilation, sexual assault, or rape as a part of the gore, alongside beheadings and stabbings. These movies are obviously popular, and so this disturbing content goes hand-in-hand with the societal counterculture; the shock hence becomes the product.

The term “slasher” refers to a genre of film, that, according to the first Google search of it, refers to a “subgenre of horror films involving a violent psychopath stalking and murdering a group of people, usually by use of bladed tools.” In my opinion, they’re also infamously sexist (as touched on in the last paragraph). I’ve seen arguments saying this is a misconception; that slashers only seem to be shrouded in violence against women. But, regardless, this is changing too. With counterculture, the aforementioned “problematic” themes can be presented alongside empowering ones. For instance, Nirvana’s “Rape Me” (a song with lyrics that, yeah, correlate to the title) on the surface level is very shocking and appalling but isn’t literal, instead creating a commentary on a topic that otherwise is not openly talked about. In this vein, recent slashers, namely Pearl and Scream 6, have become girlbossified. Though the word seems silly, I think it accurately represents what’s happening.

Let’s compare old to new. I remember walking out of Scream 6 immediately turning to my friend beside me, mentioning to him was how cool the female lead was. Though the original Scream was built off of the very notion of challenging film tropes, I remember it to be frustrating that, in general for horror movies, female characters are usually the “weaklings.” This frustration is somewhat ubiquitous among slasher critiques, and slashers have always been the subject of scrutiny based on the fact that they seem to perpetuate stereotypes of the hysterical woman that screams, naked and clutching a towel, in the bathroom as a masked killer stabs her repeatedly (and yes, we all immediately thought of Psycho). In the present day, though, that’s not really the case. The “final girl” trope (where there is only one girl left alive to confront the killer) has seemed to evolve into something deeper. Recent movies have changed the role of women in movies, and even Terrifier 2 features a strong female character that fights a killer psycho clown.

Sure, this means that there are more “strong” woman characters in film, but does that inherently make the film feminist? Is it feminist or empowering to have strong female characters that simultaneously chase men with an axe demanding “Why did you leave me!” or could we have a Legally Blonde scenario here, that something presented as “feminist” was just the result of trying to get male validation in the first place, and that an “autonomous” act was really not autonomous at all. In Legally Blonde, the main character Elle had the original incentive to go to Harvard Law School was to get back at her ex-boyfriend. The entire scenario hinged, once again, on a woman wanting to prove herself to a man. What’s to say that that’s not what’s happening in the case of recent horror movies? Is the concept of strong women in slashers just an attempt to appeal to the other men outside or inside the film?

The Idol, the new HBO show, presents an interesting case that can be applied to many slashers. It’s a contradictory show in that it simultaneously sexualizes the female lead, Jocelyn, under the pretense that she’s being empowered. She wants to do a nude shoot because her body, her choice, which makes sense: she’s trying to stand up for her autonomy. But then, Sam Levinson, the director, goes on to emphasise her nudity in a manner that’s very male-gazey and vindictive; the show features scene after scene where Jocelyn is filmed in the nightrobe for no apparent reason.

Yet, it could also be not what’s empowering but rather what sticks. This begs the question of whether these slasher writers are consciously trying to create a narrative that empowers women, or if the themes are a result of something else. The craze around Pearl when it came out was attributed to the lead character, Pearl herself. This backed the trend of female rage, female manipulators, and ‘femcels’ in media. The female rage concept has been utilized for a long time, from the embracement of the female leads in Possession and Black Swan, and it’s definitely not new to point out that the unhinged, mentally unstable girl has become a caricature insofar to say that she’s seamlessly psychoanalytically identifiable for female viewers; “she’s so me.”

A smart movie will reflect how society feels at the time. It might turn heuristics around to become “edgy” or emphasize it to become an icon like Citizen Kane, but the hyperfixation on the usage of women in slashers has become very girlbossified. Pearl is the latest example of this: she checks off all the how-to-build-a-trendy-female-character boxes that media such as the novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation have created. She’s emotionally unstable, reflects relatable quirks (like her distrust of her helicopter mom), and above all, she’s aesthetic. Mia Goth has a memorable look that reflects onto her character, leading to people dressing up as Pearl for Halloween or creating Pearl-inspired lookbooks. The harnessing of female characters in slashers has taken the form of this trend.

In general, feminist media, as a term, gets thrown around a lot (for instance, for the Barbie movie, but that’ll be for a future article): there’s a feminist book, a feminist play, a feminist art piece, or a feminist movie. But ultimately, I think the potential feminist themes in movies such as Pearl are indirect. Slashers are not inherently a feminist subgenre. It’s a subgenre rooted in misogyny and the changes of theme are based on pure trends.

To make a movie feminist, there must be a radical reevaluation of what feminist themes mean. Being “made by a woman” or having a lead female character does not simply qualify a movie as inherently feminist, just as much as diversity casting doesn’t mean a movie is not racist. A feminist movie exists on its own merit of equality away from the show—it works towards the education about social inequalities between men and women. By interchanging the word “feminist” with terms such as “strong female lead,” we diminish the meaning of feminism. Further, we must also consider the aspect of exploitation or the role the male gaze plays in these films, as slashers are notorious for sexualizing women.

Thus, we can’t say that just because something appears “empowering” for women means it’s feminist. We can run every slasher through the Bechdel Test and I still probably won’t be convinced it’s feminist. But there’s a lot at play here, as the narrative of slashers does seem to be changing. However, slashers are part of a counterculture, as many of them find success with having a shock or trend value. A feminist story isn’t necessarily the one they are telling; rather, a story they are telling could just be one they think is popular and so happens to be lazily empowering.

Slashers are feeding us the girlbossification of these characters because it appeals to us. They aren’t inherently feminist, and they don’t want to be. Though it’s possible some slashers could be feminist, in totality, there is not a feminist shift in the common narrative. It is not a global moment: it is a trend. A girlboss-femcel-femalemanipulator killer such as Pearl seems to be the next meal hand-fed to us. And it’s very easy to digest.