Women In Horror Movies: The Landscape Of The Ordinary Violence Against Women

In our culture women are seen as smaller, weaker, and less intelligent that men. Thus creating the idea that men should dominate women. Horror movies such as the movie Scream, perpetuate these societal ideas by justifying violence against women by making it her fault, by using women as sex objects then afflict violence of them, and by having a “final girl” that has a one on one battle in the end. At the end of the movie Scream Billy tells Sidney that he was the one that killed her mother. His motive was that she slept with his father, causing his mother to walk out on him. The blame in this situation is put on Sidney’s mother. It was her fault she was a “whore,” she got herself killed. Billy did not blame his father for his mother walking out on him even though he slept with Sidney’s mother. This justification for Sidney’s mother’s death perpetuates the idea that women can be to blame after being physically abused and/or raped. In “The Landscape of the Ordinary Violence Against Women” by Dworkin, she explains that after being raped women find a way to blame themselves for the attack and that in cases of marital rape juries almost always side with the offender because they find a way to make it the woman’s fault (Dworkin 64). This justification of violence against women is dangerous for
In “Rape: The All-American Crime”, Griffin states that, “…many men appear to take sexual pleasure from nearly all forms of violence.” (Griffin 514). So horror movies that have women shown in sexual ways then connect them to violence, according to Griffin would turn most men on. Given horror movies the same effect as pornography. The only difference being that the horror movies give the mean the idea that being violent towards women is “sexy” rather than