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The Final Girl with Lyn Broyles
158 Plays3 years ago
In this finale of Artloween, we are joined by the very best Final Girl a horror film could ask for. Lyn Broyles is a writer and academic whose focuses include the intersection of gender and horror in film. She talks with us about the inherent queerness within the horror genre and the trope of the final girl.
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Transcript
Introduction to Guest and Themes
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, hello, and welcome to our pop talk. I'm Gianna. And I'm Bianca. Gianna, it is our last episode of Art Luene, and for the finale, we have the best final girl a horror movie could ever ask for. In this episode, we are joined by Lynn Broyles, who will be discussing the inherent queerness of the horror genre and the trope of the final girl.
00:00:26
Speaker
So grab your sacrificial bestie and let's our pot talk. Hello, hello. Happy almost Halloween, Gianna.
Gianna's Move and Halloween Memories
00:00:39
Speaker
Almost Halloween. Yay. Bianca.
00:00:43
Speaker
Well, I'm more concerned about your Halloween plans after what you just told me. Well, I was saying that I am moving to Boston three days from now, which is wild. So for Halloween, Andrew was like, oh, we should go to Salem for Halloween. And like, that sounds fun, but that sounds like a lot.
00:01:08
Speaker
I don't know like it sounds really fun, but awesome kind of scared like what if I don't know it sounds super spooky. That's like the most spooktastic town you could possibly go to for Halloween and as a novice Halloween
00:01:24
Speaker
participant in the spooky, spooky Halloween stuff. If we could just go to some rich houses and go trick or treating, I'd be all about that, but I feel like it's going to be spooky. What is there to do in Salem? Have you looked it up? Is it more cute? Oh, Salem things, black cats, hocus pocus. Yeah, we went to Salem actually almost a year ago, but we went at the very beginning of November.
00:01:53
Speaker
actually we were in Salem we were having breakfast when the election was decided and all of a sudden Andrew and I are eating our breakfast and like
00:02:02
Speaker
people start honking their horns. There was like cheering in the streets. We were like, holy shit. And then like our phones started blowing up. And so we were in Salem when it was officially called for Joe Biden. Yeah, the Dums put like a little spooky spice on the election. It was like the, you know, like the week after like, you know, Halloween or whatever.
00:02:26
Speaker
Maybe two weeks after Halloween. So we we didn't get to go to the witch museum. But there's a witch museum we saw like Sabrina statue. We went to like the downtown area and we just went to all the shops and that's kind of like an all year thing for Salem is kind of like
00:02:44
Speaker
spooky novelty shops and things like that. So we just we just popped around the town. And then we went over to Cambridge later in the afternoon. But in the morning, yeah, we just we just walked around. So we weren't there for like height spooky season. But I feel like going on Halloween night, I'm like, whoa, I don't know. It sounds super scary.
00:03:05
Speaker
But actually, they are playing like a few days before Halloween. They're playing Hocus Pocus in Boston Common and like on the lawn and I'm really excited for that. That'd be fun. That sounds nice. Go do that. Yeah, I'm super excited. But I do want to do, I told Andrew I want to go dancing. I want to go to like a Halloween.
00:03:25
Speaker
ball. That sounds fun because the last Halloween that we had out was in OKC and you and I went as Alexis and David and we went to the throwback bar in Oklahoma City. Do you remember that? We went dancing. It was so fun and there was that guy dressed up as the cowboy. Woody. There was someone dressed up as Woody. Do you remember that?
00:03:52
Speaker
We went to a throwback bar. That plate, the speakeasy, the speakeasy. Oh, you know what? Weren't those on different nights because we did haunt the zoo and that's when like Wayne Coyne was dressed up as like a caterpillar. And then we did a lot of Halloween stuff. Yeah, we did, which is really happy because that was the last party that I threw. It was my Halloween party. And then we did haunt the zoo. And then you're right. Then we ended up doing that throwback speakeasy. Yeah.
00:04:22
Speaker
Oh my god. We went out with a bang and we didn't even know it. Oh my god.
00:04:27
Speaker
God, I've got to go. I need to go out. And I think what bums me out the most is, I don't know, I feel like Halloween is our sister thing. I know that we're just dipping our toe into the horror world or the horror genre. But I just feel like our little dynamic duo costumes are so cute. I don't get the same energy when I do them with Theven. It doesn't make as much sense when I
00:04:55
Speaker
No, I know because I was telling Andrew as excited as I am to spend Halloween with him. I was like, can we go out? Can we go out? And he was like, I don't know. I was like, Gianna would go out. If we were together this year, what would our dynamic duo costume be? Oh, that's a really good question. Ooh. I don't know. What's something that, like,
00:05:21
Speaker
because we didn't dress up last year, obviously. So I feel like we have two years of content. Oh, oh, wait, I feel like rain on me would be a great costume. That's what I was gonna say. Yeah, we were gonna do Ariana and Kaga.
00:05:33
Speaker
But I feel like I could totally wear that to the concert. I feel like I could wear that any day. Ariana Gaga would be a really good one. Chromatica Vibes would be a good costume. I feel like a cute metal suit. If we got a cute little girl gang together, we could go as the different tribes of Chromatica. God damn it. I would obviously be rain on me, sad girl central station, all aboard. I feel like I would be stupid love. Yeah, because you're so stupid.
00:06:05
Speaker
Thanks for that one. That would be a good costume. Any other ideas? I know this isn't good content, but I feel like I remember it had a good idea a while ago and then it escaped my brain probably because I was depressed that it wasn't going to be a thing. We had talked about- Why don't you and Theban fly up to Boston? Could you do that?
00:06:29
Speaker
It's very intriguing, but Theban and I are going to Hot Springs, Arkansas next week and just to
00:06:39
Speaker
chill the fuck out, which would be super nice, but hot springs. Just fly up here instead. Well, there's this gangster museum that I'm very intrigued by that apparently hot springs has. It's like I'm going to go hit up this gangster museum and I'll report back, so I have plans. I'm sorry. Okay, fine. It's okay.
00:07:03
Speaker
former PA, Ms. Audrey Kaminsky is actually coming to visit me in Boston. Wait, when? What? Yeah, next week. That girl is bopping around. Let me tell you. Audrey Kaminsky is the green of bopping, which is why we love her so much. So she's going to New York to Boston then? Yes, she's coming to visit me. She's going to be my first visitor in the city.
00:07:29
Speaker
Happy for you guys. Yeah, so we'll go out instead. Okay. Whatever. Fuck. While you're at your gangster museum. Yeah, while I'm at my fucking gangster museum in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas.
00:07:47
Speaker
What happened with that? It was on the list of towards attraction. I'm down for it. I think there's also some spooky tour of some kind of historical site. I really hope it's a really bad one though. I really want to go to a bad one that's like, look at your reflection in the mirror. And then a little guy pops up. You know what I mean? It's like, ooh. That sounds scary. The man in the mirror. You know what I mean?
00:08:17
Speaker
Do you get the vibe I'm trying to express? Yeah, I think so. I have a mental image.
Lynn Broyles: Expertise in Horror Films
00:08:24
Speaker
Well, Bianca, as excellent as this intro was, should we introduce our special guest today? We are actually super, super excited that she's here today. Truly, we can guarantee you that our special guest is a million times better than this intro was. So if you're here for Lynn, you're going to get way better content than you just did these past eight minutes or something.
00:08:46
Speaker
Lynn Broyles is a writer and academic whose focus includes the intersection of gender and horror in film. So we are going to take a little break and when we come back we will be joined by the fantastic Lynn Broyles.
00:09:29
Speaker
All right, everybody. Welcome back. Hello, Lynn. Thank you so much for being here. Hi, thank you guys for having me. Happy, happy October. Happy spooky season. Happy spooky season. Love to see it. Happy Art Leween. We are truly ending Art Leween on such a good note. So we are so excited that you're here. So Lynn, can you introduce yourself to the art pop tarts for us?
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, my name's Lynn Broyles. I got my master's in film with a focus on horror movies and gender studies, particularly feminist horror theory. I met Bianca when we were studying together, we had a few classes together, and she invited me to come on and talk about some scary movies and how it intersects with gender and feminist theory.
00:10:25
Speaker
I love it. I just need everyone listening to know that Lynn is the reason that I've been able to
00:10:32
Speaker
appreciate and start watching scary movies. One of my very best friends loves horror movies. On her birthday, I wouldn't even go see a horror movie with her because I was too scared on her birthday. Ever since I met Lynn, I just feel like I have such a greater appreciation for it. I feel like I can tackle this upfront kind of scariness that I have with this real deep
00:10:57
Speaker
interests for actually what's happening here. Also, what a badass thing to say. I study feminist horror films. That's just so cool. Can you talk a little bit about your work on horror films and how did you get started working in this area?
00:11:13
Speaker
Yeah, totally. Well, first of all, I'm incredibly honored, and I must correct you. I'm actually a huge scaredy cat. That's so good for us to know. What you're telling us is that there's hope for us. Oh, definitely, definitely. I watch a lot of stuff through my hands. Yes, so lots of gory stuff is difficult for me.
00:11:38
Speaker
Yeah, I love horror. I've always loved horror. I've always found it very visceral. I've always had a visceral reaction to it. It's the thrill of being scared, but also just kind of
00:11:54
Speaker
feeling it in your body in a way that's also exciting in that way. I remember very clearly one of my first horror memories is watching the movie The Lost Boys with my mom and getting very freaked out, but I was also, could not look away. So it was always kind of taboo and something that I was intrigued by but also repelled by, which is,
00:12:22
Speaker
I think a big appeal of horror is the grotesque and a way to look at something horrific and then appreciate it or find beauty within it. So when I was in undergrad, I got my bachelor's in creative writing with a focus in poetry. So I did start writing a lot of horror poems.
00:12:44
Speaker
Poetry collection at the end of undergrad was the final girl poetry series. So I had a poem for a lot of different final girls, like one poem for each girl. And then I started going into the film realm and
00:13:01
Speaker
I did some work where I wrote a thesis about Wes Craven's Final Girls and kind of how they have evolved and how they mirrored the waves of feminism from the last house on the left in the 70s which was very like
00:13:17
Speaker
gritty to the Nightmare on Elm Street in the 80s and Scream in the 90s going like second wave and third wave feminism. And then I decided that was my main interest and I went to grad school, got my master's and I will say maybe not the most taken seriously.
00:13:38
Speaker
subjects in graduate school, horror films, still to this day it's not considered maybe the most highbrow of art, and I understand why, but I do think there's really nothing like it. You find such
00:13:54
Speaker
great catharsis and empowerment through this genre, maybe in unexpected ways, and especially for women, I think. I think it can be a very, very powerful genre for reclaiming feminine power. Yeah, it's really interesting to hear you say, I was kind of taken aback when you said that.
00:14:16
Speaker
It was difficult for you to kind of gain that respect in grad school through your topic of choice because although then I compare what we're doing here at ArtPop Talk when you know we're trying to talk about these everyday experiences and how they are relatable to
00:14:32
Speaker
art and that low brow genre feel so artistic to us, the more that we dive into it and the more that we've been analyzing this month. But as you will take us through, there is so much to dive into. So we're going to prove all those people wrong from your grad class. Oh, definitely. I know I already have follow-up questions about one point you made, so I'm excited. Oh, please hit me with that.
00:15:01
Speaker
Well, I'm just thinking about like, I wonder if like times are a change in because of the context of like get out and films like that that are like gaining this kind of like Oscar buzz. So I hope that there's like light at the end of the tunnel for horror genres. And I know we have a question about that evolving kind of theme of characters later on, but as a genre, I hope that some creatives are really bringing it into a new light
00:15:31
Speaker
I think it is. I definitely think so. There's been a recent coining of the term of transcendental horror, which is kind of the A24 elevated horror of Ari Aster with Midsummer and Hereditary, where it's a very art house. It's very cerebral and psychological, very beautiful and well made. So I do think it is kind of rising above the B-movie schlock
00:16:00
Speaker
that it has been considered for so long. But I also think that the B movie schlock has its own charm and its own beauty and its own value. But I think that's kind of the beauty of horror is that it contains multitudes in that way.
00:16:16
Speaker
in that it can be so many different things and can be interpreted in so many different ways. Yeah. It's funny that you mentioned A24, because earlier this month, I actually, you know, made a joke about A24 and how like, Oh, it's so underground, you know, you probably never heard of it. And I, I feel like that's part of the reason why I was so taken aback by saying that by you saying your your fellow peers, your colleagues were, you know, having a hard time with you talking about the subject of horror and feminism, because
00:16:46
Speaker
that schlock and that B movie history is something that's so important because we can truly try to recreate those aesthetics but we're never really going to get that back and that history back which is why it's so important and which is why A24 can only like attempt to kind of capture that.
00:17:03
Speaker
It's true. It's so true. So let's just go ahead and get into it. So my first question for you, many real life associations with horror films are based on this societal fear and these preconceived ideas about gender.
Explaining the Final Girl Trope
00:17:20
Speaker
So we think it's going to be helpful to start out our conversation about the character in horror films that historically drive the narrative.
00:17:27
Speaker
So can you please define the trope of the final girl and these, I should say, and the investigative consciousness that this character possesses to help drive those narratives? So the final girl is kind of, I've described her as a feminist folk hero. She is an archetype that, as her name suggests, she's the survivor. She is the only one that survives
00:17:53
Speaker
the massacre of the slasher film. And it usually does lend itself pretty much exclusively to slasher films. You can have a female protagonist who is the main character of a horror film. You can see like Silence of the Lambs, but I wouldn't call Jodie Foster a final girl in that film. But it was defined really by Carol Clover in her book, Men, Women and Chainsaws,
00:18:21
Speaker
which is kind of the seminal text for feminist horror film theory. But the final girl is she is kind of the atypical woman in the film. She's not overtly sexual. She's not
00:18:38
Speaker
a stereotype in the way that many of the other female characters are. You could see something like Halloween, the original Halloween. We have Jamie Lee Curtis, who is quiet. She's very meek and shy. She dresses very conservatively. She doesn't want to kiss boys. She wants to stay in on Halloween and just babysit and do her job and be a good girl while her friends are, you know,
00:19:06
Speaker
sleeping around smoking pot drinking beer and that's kind of the typical final girl is the girl that you wouldn't expect to step up to live to fight back so she's really typified as the woman who is forced by trauma to
00:19:29
Speaker
come into her own and to find her own inner strength in that way. I like to think of the final girl as symbolizing the literalization of gender-based trauma. Like there is a man coming to get you and you have to survive that.
00:19:45
Speaker
which I think is unfortunately an extremely common experience that women have. Just we can look at, you know, the Me Too movement has exposed a lot of this, but I think even before that, women
00:20:03
Speaker
either we ourselves or we know someone who has had experiences being assaulted, surviving abuse, these terrible, terrible gender-based experiences that are usually at the hands of a masculine figure, a man. So that is almost a universal experience for women.
00:20:25
Speaker
is encountering the threatening male figure. So that's like putting our experience on screen. We kind of live a horror movie in that way sometimes. Fear is constant in womanhood almost. It's like a first language sometimes. And so seeing that
00:20:50
Speaker
visualized on screen I think is incredibly powerful because it's the woman who survived at a cost. We very rarely see in anything else a woman fighting to survive and winning. So I think it's a very powerful figure, especially for women who are survivors of abuse who are, you know, trying to survive in a world that doesn't always make it easy.
00:21:20
Speaker
Yeah, this is I feel like I'm getting emotional already just because even though we have this like this idea of kind of me to being something on a very like grand scale, I suppose, like it's very heightened in our in our culture as it should be. But this is also let that fear that you're talking about that almost every single woman experiences is like a very real everyday type of encounter. It's not this like grandiose
00:21:50
Speaker
experience that you're watching on the news. It's something that happens every single day. Women are taught when you walk to your car, carry your keys in your pocket a certain way, have pepper spray on you. There's a very real fear every time I walk home at night alone, and that's just built into my experience living in my gender. I really love that you're already opening this with... It's an extremely powerful thing just to hear your words.
00:22:20
Speaker
horror on film is not that heightened experience that only happens in movies. It's very real.
00:22:30
Speaker
and an everyday kind of thing. And Bianca too, just kind of piggybacking off of that everydayness that we experience. Lynn, I'm also curious to hear just your thoughts about Scream. I think that is such like an interesting example in terms of the final girl.
00:22:50
Speaker
she she lives to be tortured the franchise continues for her to drive this plot as you were just describing. And I was actually unaware that they were making a new Scream movie and it is going to be released here pretty soon. But you know, we have our girl Sydney, is it Prescott? And in the trailer,
00:23:14
Speaker
someone's calling her and he's like you have a gun and she's like I'm Sydney you know bucking Prescott of course I have a gun so Bianca describing your language like of course we have our prepper spare of course we're carrying our keys a certain way um and she truly lives to to be traumatized and now this new generation she has to help oversee this this new killing spree that is that's so fascinating because uh scream is
00:23:41
Speaker
And Sydney in particular is probably my favorite final girl. I think she's so rich and very, very rarely do you get an opportunity to track a character like that throughout her development, throughout the years. And it's a Scream franchise is one that does allow us to do that. And that line stood out to me particularly, I almost started crying when I saw the trailer when she said, of course I have that.
00:24:06
Speaker
Because it's badass, but it's also terribly sad, but it's also empowering. It's true. Yeah, it is true. It hits dangerously close in a very subtle way, and maybe in particular that only women or certain types of people are aware of those types. Just with that little line, they can connect to that in that.
00:24:29
Speaker
very freaky, horrible, and sad way. Yeah, and like Bianca said earlier, I'm not sure if people who aren't living their lives daily as women walking to their car
00:24:45
Speaker
Am I going to run into my scary ex-boyfriend today? All that stuff. I don't know if people who don't live that experience realize how real it is in some of these films. Just like how raw it can be. Yeah. So linking the introduction and the conclusion of a Final Girl journey, which is interesting as you're talking about with Sydney because now we're getting this
00:25:13
Speaker
another extension of that.
Survival and Power Dynamics in Horror Films
00:25:16
Speaker
Why is it important to understand how the final girl is presented to us, the audience, and its connection to that male gaze? And why is the final girl given that privilege to survive?
00:25:29
Speaker
So unfortunately, that's kind of the problematic nature of the final girl is her virginal value. Her virginity is what gives her value in a lot of these films. She hasn't sullied herself with sex or drugs or
00:25:50
Speaker
alcohol. She hasn't committed the sin of living. So she's often virginal tomboyish. That's another thing. Clover talks a lot about cross gender identification. So it's been presumed for a long, long time that the main audience for these films would be teenage boys.
00:26:13
Speaker
I don't know if that's completely true, but I believe her point was that it would be easier for teen boys to identify with maybe more of an androgynous girl rather than a very feminine girl.
00:26:30
Speaker
But Sydney is a great example of this. They actually call it out in the screen explicitly. Stu, Matthew Willard, amazing thespian. You had sex, now you have to die explicitly. Sydney is the mold breaker, I think, because not only does she lose her virginity, which is, you know, considered the ultimate sin,
00:26:55
Speaker
but she loses it to the killer, spoiler, who is her boyfriend. So it's kind of the ultimate sin. It's like, I'm not only going to give myself over to a man, I'm going to give myself over to the man who is trying to hurt me and those I love. So when it comes to the male gaze, I'm going to kind of give a Laura Mulvey 101. Yes. So Laura Mulvey, this amazing feminist film theorist, she really
00:27:25
Speaker
wrote the seminal piece on gaze theory. She characterized the camera as like the masculine gaze. So the audience is inhabiting a male viewer. And every woman on screen is shown as a pleasure object. So they are shot as an object to bring us visual pleasure.
00:27:50
Speaker
So you can see this in a lot of films, women are shot from the feet up, they are shot from the breasts down. There's a lot of objectification, focusing on the body, sexualization, and the men in the films are very much the point of view characters. The women are to be looked at, the men are to look, basically.
00:28:16
Speaker
Um, a lot of this has to do with Freudian psychoanalysis, which I've always been extremely suspicious of, especially. I think it's incredibly backwards and, uh, uh, has a lot to do with a gender binary that I think were passed. Um, but I do think, uh,
00:28:37
Speaker
Slasher movies in particular are working a lot in psychoanalysis and you can see a lot of that evidence on screen. So I do think it's useful, but we need to be questioning it. So female victims are often portrayed voyeuristically. So they're seen undressing through a window.
00:28:57
Speaker
the viewer are inhabiting the perspective of the killer. There's a lot of like shaky cam and you hear kind of like, like heavy breathing. So it's really like wrestling in the bushes. Yes, yes. There's a lot of like putting you in the shoes of the killer who is usually a very scary man who is watching a girl and dress and like, you know,
00:29:21
Speaker
You're watching her have sex. They're looked at. They're seen as sexual objects by the male gaze of a killer and the audience. So the killer and the audience are being collapsed into one.
00:29:33
Speaker
But the final girl, I think, is unique because she is the one that does the looking. She, you can see in Halloween and Scream, she's the one who notices the thing that's off. She notices Michael Myers across the street. Who is that? Well, everyone else is very, in their own world, self-absorbed. So she notices the stranger in the dark. She looks back and she seizes the gaze, which I think is,
00:30:02
Speaker
so powerful. It's like, actually, I'm looking at you. You're not looking at me. And it reminded me of this incredible Agnes Varda quote, which is, I consider kind of an antidote to like the male fantasies, male fantasies, Margaret Atwood quote. And it's, it's Agnes Varda says, the first feminist gesture is to say, okay, they're looking at me, but I'm looking at them.
00:30:27
Speaker
the act of deciding to look, of deciding that the world is not defined by how people see me, but how I see them. So I think that's kind of the ethos of the final girl in terms of gaze theory, in that she's reclaiming the gaze as well as reclaiming her power. I think it's really interesting to hear you talk about the construction of the final girl in terms of how she looks and how she acts. And in doing some readings from Carol Clover,
00:30:58
Speaker
And kind of going back to your original demographic saying this was earlier on, maybe our primary audience was teen boys. I'll know that we know that it has evolved since then, but there has to be this careful construction of our, if you want to call her a victim.
00:31:15
Speaker
because we also have to root for her she has to be like likable but also realistic she can't be like frail she has to be tough therefore like her maybe like non binary like clothing comes in handy for that like it's so it's crazy to me and just reading about like the construction of the the appearance of the final girl is just so heavily scrutinized so we can like her mm hmm definitely she has to kind of
00:31:45
Speaker
be the most neutral character, but also the most extraordinary character. She has to be better than everyone, but also more capable than everyone of like, yeah. Yeah. Great point. And on the kind of flip side too, it's interesting to hear you talk about this, this neutrality of the final girl and then how there always seems to be this friend group like this
00:32:11
Speaker
group of girls and this group of guys and the girls you were talking about, you know, like their sexual beings, they're proud of their sexuality, they're drinking or smoking. But on the other hand, we also have this like heightened sense of masculinity, not just in the
00:32:26
Speaker
the killer itself, but we kind of have this like athletic mean boy or this, you know, this like, this like very toxic masculinity that's not coming from the killer. So that's interesting to kind of the way you put the final girl in the middle on like this kind of polar scale is really interesting to see and just like the viewpoint of those
00:32:50
Speaker
i don't know opposites i guess yeah it's almost like caricatures of gender like here are the different extremes of gender that we can think of here's what like the most masculine man or the most feminine man
00:33:06
Speaker
if we have like you know a nerd or I guess a gay stereotype which you do see in some of these films but it is kind of the most obvious gender stereotypes that you see and then you have her who is more complicated and more nuanced and that's kind of her superpower is that she transcends that and she gets to be a full person
00:33:31
Speaker
That's one of the things that I am experiencing. And I was actually talking to Bianca about this the other day, I've been watching you on Netflix, it's a, you know, show I've been following since the beginning. But I've kind of been annoyed lately at these like heightened or obvious like gender portrayals, you know, you have the stereotypical yoga moms, but the way in which those characters are written, their dialogue is just so heavily exaggerated with like the
00:33:58
Speaker
hashtag blessed language that's you know, like thrown in there that is just so heightened that I just am kind of over it because it feels like that kind of dialogue is also becoming extremely saturated in maybe someone who is our final girl, but those attributes like that, that kind of special power that she has also leads to her undoing as well. So that was kind of like one of the twists that this series puts on those like
00:34:23
Speaker
heightened dynamics. I gotta watch season three. That's interesting. I've been scared to watch, to be honest. Oh really? It looks a little triggering.
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah, I wasn't as big of a fan of season three as I was like the first season. I think that was my favorite. But it's because these characters in this environment that Joe kind of finds himself in, he's surrounded by these like same exaggerated like stereotypical people. You have like the masculine guy, you have like, you know, the token gay friend and you know, all these different like people like really privileged. The spoiled rich girl.
00:35:05
Speaker
Yeah. But it's kind of fun to watch them be killed. That's kind of half the fun of slasher movies, too. That's really funny. I hadn't really thought of that. But I'm always like, oh, you're annoying. OK, you won't last very long. That's OK. Well, it's really interesting, though, though. I guess maybe I like the third season more than I thought, but surprisingly,
00:35:30
Speaker
those really annoying people that typically Joe kills. Some of them survive in this last season, which is a little different. We'll mix up. We'll mix up. I'll have to check this out. Joe's keeping it interesting for us. So let's keep going. Let's talk about the development of the final girl.
Evolving Horror: Queer Representation and Modern Changes
00:35:50
Speaker
How does a final girl trope
00:35:52
Speaker
change over time, I guess from its original context to a contemporary context. And how does that lead to the development of specific horror genres you just mentioned, slasher movies?
00:36:05
Speaker
And I guess with more female and non-binary filmmakers directing horror films, we will also hopefully see a final girl who ticks all these right boxes and actually survives this monster. And more importantly, she survives the deadly sequel, which if she's allowed to survive, it's only to come back to be killed.
00:36:27
Speaker
But that's also, as you described, why scream is such a special genre for us. So I do hope that, and I guess you can let us know if we're ever going to see that queer example of a final girl or if she already does exist. Oh, I have some good ones to let you guys in on.
00:36:47
Speaker
have found some great queer final girls recently. So I would say it did start, the final girl did begin, I think, with Lori Strode in Halloween. She's kind of the typified signature final girl, although before that we did have
00:37:06
Speaker
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has an amazing final girl that often gets overlooked. And we also had like Black Christmas, which is kind of an early proto slasher set in a sorority house. There is a lot of female characters.
00:37:21
Speaker
But I would say there's been a trend towards adopting masculine violence and kind of more of an emphasis on fighting back and revenge that I find very interesting. To go back to Scream, the urtext that we're using here today, there is a moment at the very end where Sydney, in order to win,
00:37:45
Speaker
puts on the mask, puts on the outfit, uses the voice changer, and kind of adopts that masculinity and adopts that persona of masculine violence to triumph over the people menacing her, which I think is very interesting. She kind of assumes that identity of the person who is trying to hurt her so terribly. And I think that's something I've been seeing recurring is
00:38:15
Speaker
the willingness to kind of go all the way and hit back and to use that masculine violence against them. And then we run into these kind of ideas of, okay, is the final girl just as bad? That kind of stuff. Are we using violence against men in this way that is justified? And so that gets into some really interesting narrative questions of these films.
00:38:40
Speaker
I would say modern horror is also exploring trauma very, very well.
00:38:48
Speaker
There's the newest Halloween film. Well, Halloween Kills is the newest one. It came out like last week. But I would say the 2018 one with Jamie Lee Curtis was maybe accidentally an extremely profound movie about PTSD and being a woman who survived trauma.
00:39:11
Speaker
because it's examining what is it like for this woman to have lived her entire life with this overwhelming fear that this is going to happen again. And we also see in, I believe, Scream 3, which is not a very good movie, but it has a really, really interesting, almost like very beautiful moment where Sydney is working for a
00:39:35
Speaker
like women's help hotline like that's what she does in that movie is like she answers phone calls from women who are being abused or who are in bad situations and so it's so it it's very interesting to me those films that do connect it so explicitly to real life women's trauma and like saying that this is
00:40:01
Speaker
This is something that happens. This isn't just in the movies. Women experience this and this is we're not just kind of let's go on to the next sequel and pretend that nothing happened. So I do think exploring trauma is really interesting and I would love to see more of that in.
00:40:20
Speaker
and more Final Girl representation. Coming to the queer and sexually open Final Girls, we have some amazing ones. The Fear Street trilogy that came out this summer on Netflix. We have a lesbian Final Girl and the entire
00:40:40
Speaker
of all three movies revolves around a lesbian relationship. And it's done with, you know, grace and respect. I would say that one is a great, great starting point for queer final girls. The most recent remake of the slumber party massacre movie that came on sci-fi channel
00:41:04
Speaker
That one also has a queer final girl and that's interesting because it's taking the subtext from the original film which was written by a lesbian. If you look at it and you read it that way you can definitely tell that most of the women that in that film that came out in the early 80s are coded as lesbians but this new remake is making that text which is very interesting. So we do definitely have
00:41:32
Speaker
lesbian final girls. We also, the question about gay male or non-binary representation in terms of final girls or final boys or final enbies, I guess, that's something that I do think is lacking. I think the final girl is a very specifically
00:41:56
Speaker
feminine character. It is about women's trauma. It is about gendered trauma. But I also think that horror is inherently queer. It's about the return and the revenge of the repressed. It is about transgression and queerness go hand in hand.
00:42:14
Speaker
We have camp sensibility like you guys have discussed with your past few episodes. Vampires are a very, very queer figure. I think transgression, horror, and queerness, they all go hand in hand. So I do think there could be places to expand in terms of representation in horror, definitely, but I do think we are seeing much, much more.
00:42:42
Speaker
your idea about horror in general being like inherently queer is also just a really interesting concept in thinking about the other and I think that anyone who feels othered can equate themselves in a in a horror in the horror genre and I think even though it may feel like a stereotypical example but I think it's
00:43:04
Speaker
going to become canon in the genre. I mentioned at the beginning, but get out. That might be an example of kind of a final boy. And maybe we're not necessarily talking about queerness, but talking about blackness and talking about this figure that is clearly othered and was sought out because he is othered. So I'm not sure how that would fit into how that might fit into this idea about queerness, but othering I think is
00:43:33
Speaker
certainly present, and maybe they just go hand in hand. That's so true. Yeah, I think it is all about the fear of the other. It's about social fears. That's why I think horror can be used to explore women's issues, can be used to such fascinating extent to explore social issues.
00:43:59
Speaker
But yeah, when I was in undergrad, I took a horror class and I talked about the return of the repressed and that kind of being the nexus of horror is that this monster is something that we've tried to ignore. It's something that we've tried to sweep under the rug and it's coming back and it will not be ignored until we defeat it. And that could be queerness, it could be racism, it could be violence.
00:44:26
Speaker
So I do think it is the other is the ultimate enemy in horror, but it also is showcasing the other in a way that other genres do not. Yeah. And maybe I don't know if you watched Lovecraft Country.
00:44:43
Speaker
But that's here. I feel like all of the examples you just gave are kind of like all of them are featured within that series overall. Like we have monstrosity, we have racism, we have gender dynamics. Like every single episode seems to take like a different genre of horror and kind of mishmashes it into
00:45:02
Speaker
into different ways. So part of the reason that horror is discussed amongst feminists is that these grotesque stories or stories that examine repressed fears about gender can be traced back to folklore and fairy tales.
00:45:18
Speaker
And you had mentioned to us that these legends are something that peaked your current interest. So can you elaborate on some of those stories? Oh, yes, yes, totally. So I became fascinated with this British author named Angela Carter. She
00:45:36
Speaker
wrote primarily in the 1970s through the 90s, and then she passed away. But she wrote a lot of feminist reimaginings of fairy tales, which I find fascinating. But she is most famous perhaps for her story, The Bloody Chamber, which is a retelling of the French folktale Bluebeard. Are you guys familiar with that?
00:46:04
Speaker
Okay, so I was reminded because I was listening a few weeks ago and you guys were talking about bridal horror, which is fascinating. And I loved hearing about all those different traditions and like bobbing for apples coming from being scared you're not going to get a man. I'm just like trying not to be like, Oh my gosh, like Lynn listen to our podcast.
00:46:27
Speaker
It was great. It was so fascinating. So Bluebeard is about a girl who is kind of married off to an older, distinguished, mysterious gentleman. She goes to his beautiful castle by the sea and he gives her a ring of keys and he says, okay, here are all the keys to all the rooms in the castle, but do not use this key. This is the one key you cannot use
00:46:52
Speaker
this goes to the basement or the dungeon, whatever, whatever they said in the 1400. And of course she does, and she's like, okay, well, I'm gonna go down to the dungeon. She opens it up and all of his previous wives are hanging around the walls, all of their corpses. And so she escapes, well, she escapes in Angela Carter's version.
00:47:16
Speaker
But so that's kind of a cautionary tale about You don't know the man you're marrying You're kind of marrying a stranger. You're a young impressionable woman with No means and no power to kind of get out of that situation. So I think that that's a really really powerful Retelling I also love love love love
00:47:41
Speaker
her short story, The Company of Wolves, which is a little Red Riding Hood retelling. And there is a beautiful, surreal, and very magical realism film adaptation by Neil Jordan, who went on to do the other psychoanalytical monster movie, Interview with the Vampire. But The Company of Wolves is about a young girl who
00:48:10
Speaker
becomes basically Little Red Riding Hood and it's all these different tales about werewolves and instead of kind of the traditional werewolf being a masculine entity
00:48:22
Speaker
it's like male sexuality, it is kind of puberty and coming into your masculine sexuality in that way, violent sexuality, instead it is about female sexuality and getting your period and coming into your body as a woman and learning to make decisions for yourself and deciding to
00:48:47
Speaker
stray from the path instead of going to grandma's house and it's I cannot recommend that movie enough. It is a beautiful film.
Fairy Tales and Feminist Horror Retellings
00:48:57
Speaker
But that is such a fascinating take on the Little Red Riding Hood story, which as we all know it
00:49:07
Speaker
is a cautionary tale. It's saying, you know, don't trust strangers, don't go off the path, obey your elders. And this is saying, you know, actually, maybe that's not true. Maybe you have the power within you. And there is a more recent film called Ginger Snaps, which is another take on the werewolf legend, which is
00:49:32
Speaker
explicitly about getting your period. So you become a werewolf when you get your period. So there are some really fascinating
00:49:42
Speaker
takes on these, some would say, misogynist cautionary tales for women to kind of keep in your place, which they echo the rules for surviving a horror movie, like in Scream, where he's like, hey, don't drink, don't have sex, don't do this. If you don't do that, you'll be a good girl.
00:50:06
Speaker
you'll be safe, but that's not guaranteed, right? So there are some really, really fascinating ways that these fairy tales can be re-examined from a feminist lens. You know, there's a she-wolf in your closet and you're here for it.
00:50:23
Speaker
I love that song. I've been bopping to it. I don't know why I feel like that song has resurfaced as of late. I think it's so funny when she goes, I love it. It's the laziest. I'm like, go girl, give us nothing. Come on, Shakira. I know. I'm like, let's be real. What was that? Bianca and I have talked so much about
00:50:46
Speaker
folklore in terms of the visual and we use like quintessential examples of folklore in the feminist sense and red writing hood, I feel like is one of those examples. And so often we see Kiki Smith, our girl, angsty feminist moment, we love it. We see that that wolf and that young girl combo together to where they are read as one. So it's really interesting to just
00:51:16
Speaker
hear those same kind of analysis, but like taking form in just different spaces and different forms of visual media, but also in the written language as well. I think it's so fascinating to hear you talk about just poems in your own written word. I didn't start getting
00:51:35
Speaker
interested in poetry till college where I forced myself to take a creative writing class and just am so forever grateful about it because I always I don't want to say it was dense about poetry but it's just nothing that I really enjoyed and then I started writing like super like angsty like feminist like probably like super cringy
00:51:53
Speaker
poetry or poems, but it really kind of helped me explore my own analysis of my own visual works in a different way. I'm kind of very interested to read some of your poems, Lynn. Oh, my goodness. Well, I would be honored. That would be amazing.
00:52:11
Speaker
I definitely agree. I love writing poems that are interpreting visual images. I think that's fascinating. I love kind of trying to distill a movie into a poem or kind of the feeling a movie gives me into a poem. I love trying to translate one work of art into another and keep the same feeling, I guess.
00:52:39
Speaker
But I'm so glad you you enjoyed it. And I do think I think poetry is very intimidating. And a lot of people think it's very hoity toity and that they can't do it because it's way too intense, I guess. Well, and it's intimidating to when some of these old
00:53:05
Speaker
poems that we're supposed to know about that are important, which is great. And from our female poets, those are really important works of written art that we need to know about, but maybe we're not super connecting with a content. And then the only contemporary feminist poems that we have are people like Rupi Kaur that I'm not the biggest fan of her writing, and it only explores
00:53:32
Speaker
maybe feminist ideals in a super kind of surface level way and I'm trying to write about like super dark and creepy shit and the only like person that I've been taught about is Edgar Allan Poe and this guy lived like thousands of millions of years ago it feels like like I don't have jack shit in common with Edgar Allan Poe.
00:53:54
Speaker
Wait, you haven't married your like 14 year old cousin? I have not. And the only crow I came in contact with was in freaking New Mexico and it was ginormous and I never went back. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Okay.
00:54:09
Speaker
No, I totally get that. I think people are very hesitant to try something when in reality, like all you have to do is please yourself. It all just comes from the heart, like just free writing.
00:54:27
Speaker
I don't know. I find a lot of fulfillment out of creating art just for myself and never showing it to anyone. But I think so often that written word is so important and I was just joking the other day how I use ready-made as a term in my artist statement but
00:54:48
Speaker
if people are clever enough, or maybe it's just a joke that I throw on, because I think I'm funny, it kind of is like a slight surrealism. In a way, I'm using this term because it's historically correct, but taking back readymade from like an angsty feminist perspective, and there's something clever, and there's something witty about it, and I think
00:55:13
Speaker
That's what those written works of art do that you're describing about this genre of film. So Lynn, we went through a lot of stuff today and we are literally just so grateful and honored that you're here with us. But is there anything else that you want to share with us about the horror genre? We did talk about the final girl a lot today, but is there anything that we haven't asked you that you feel the art pop tarts should know about?
Empowerment vs. Misogyny in Horror Films
00:55:41
Speaker
I think just to kind of sum it up, I think horror is full of contradictions. I think it can be misogynistic, it can be hard to watch, it can be uncomfortable. There's some horror that I hate. I cannot do torture porn, I cannot do
00:55:57
Speaker
some of the Eli Roth stuff, some Rob Zombie stuff. It's just not for me. There's misogyny, violence, rape, and female suffering all over the place. However, I also think it's the only place that women are allowed to scream in
00:56:13
Speaker
our culture today, where else are we seeing that? They can fight back and they can win. And I think that's a very important thing to see. It's important to see women suffer and win and survive because it's saying, you can hurt me, you can like give me your best shot, but you're not gonna kill me. Like I'm stronger than you. And I think that's invaluable for some women to see.
00:56:42
Speaker
And I think it's been very, very important for me personally. And it kind of makes me sad when people dismiss horror as, you know, just sexist trash, because it can be, but it can also be a magical, wonderful thing.
00:57:05
Speaker
That was so powerful. The only place where women are allowed to scream, that's really powerful. But I also think that it's hypocritical of anyone to dismiss horror genres in particular when art and culture and all of film disregards women. It's not just something just because women aren't torn to bits and a Nicole Kidman drama doesn't mean that
00:57:34
Speaker
you know, women aren't being abused behind the scenes, you know, like, I think there's something about horror that exposes much of what happens in in creative, artful systems. So that that was super, super powerful. We haven't asked this question in a while. But you know, we're gonna put a little spooky twist on it today. Lynn, what would you put in your flex kit as a final girl?
00:58:03
Speaker
Okay, so this was exciting. So I picked a few small objects from different horror movies that I thought might represent different final girls. So I picked Sydney's Voice Changer that she uses at the end of Scream. So it's being used by Billy and Stu. I'm just spoiling these movies all over the place. I've never seen this movie. Oh no, it's used by no one.
00:58:32
Speaker
But it's used by the killers to kind of disguise their voice. And at the end, she uses it to trick them, which I think is very interesting. And at the end, there's a line where they say, oh, be careful. This is the moment when the killer who you think is dead actually jumps up and tries
00:58:54
Speaker
to get you for one last scare and she shoots the guy in the head and says not in my movie. She's like not this is my movie and I think that's the archetypal final girl. She's like this is actually my movie. In Halloween there is a wire hanger that Laurie uses to
00:59:18
Speaker
fight against Michael Myers in the closet, that she kind of blinds him. And I think the image of a woman blinding a man with a wire hanger in 1978 is very loaded. It's like, actually, you're not going to look at me and I'm going to use this very, very symbolic object. So I thought,
00:59:42
Speaker
that just occurred to me today and I was like whoa that's that's a good one um from nightmare on elm street we have nancy she has a little survival guide that she uses to make like a home alone style traps for freddie kruger with like all right this uh
01:00:01
Speaker
light bulb is filled with gunpowder now and it will explode when he turns on light or whatever. But when Johnny Depp asks her, why are you reading this? She goes, what can I say? I'm into survival.
01:00:15
Speaker
And it's like, we can like make a little like sticker like patch and we can like put it on your flux kit with that quote. That would be not in my movie and I'm into survival are like my life. And finally, I'm gonna say a picture of Sally in the back of the pickup truck.
01:00:34
Speaker
from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's the last one of the last images of the film and she's gotten away. Leatherface is like making scary pig noises and like throwing his chainsaw around and she's laughing hysterically.
01:00:50
Speaker
Because she's like, I got you. I beat you. I'm I'm safe now. I got away and it's just this She's completely unhinged. She's completely traumatized, but it's very like the end of midsummer. She's like But I'm here I've survived and you can't get me anymore
01:01:09
Speaker
That is maybe the best answer we've had to the flex kit question. Oh my God. I was kind of worried about that one. That's really, really fucking good. I would buy that flex kit. I would sell that flex kit to women. Yeah, yeah. This is what you would think. It's the hanger for me, especially. You know, when they give women, even I have it, I have
01:01:32
Speaker
pepper sprayer weapons, you know, it's like they market it to women, like you can carry it on your keys, you can put it in your purse, we need like a transportable, like, final girl flex that we can, like a survival kit for women. I keep seeing that little like, portable, like, I don't know, like, stick you can hit people with.
01:01:56
Speaker
Oh, like a baton thing? Yeah, and it's like, it looks like a little like keychain, it's like a little silver thing and then you click it like a pen and it's like, whoop-a-d, like, like ends come out of it, it's like little stick metal stick you get people with.
01:02:13
Speaker
It's so sad that we need that, but I do kind of love the little, the market of tiny weapons. I know. Now it's hard because now I'm just like, that's the vibe. Like now I'm like, oh, wait, is that cute now? Like, do I need this?
01:02:28
Speaker
silver sticks to whack people with. That look like cats with cat ears and you can just stab people with them. Yes, exactly. There's an SNL skid that actually is fucking hilarious and it's like these women put spikes on the small of their back. Have you seen? Yes.
01:02:51
Speaker
When you're in a bar, men will always touch your back and scoot by, and it's like poking devices on their back. I'm into that. Yeah. Oh my God. Because Pete Davidson is in the club, and he's like, ah, my hand. They just filmed him in a club. He wasn't even aware they were in a sketch. It's sad, but true.
01:03:18
Speaker
Lynn, before we let you go, is there anything else you'd like to plug? Have you been working on anything recently? What is coming up for you? Yeah, totally. I actually, I, on a whim, submitted a short story that I wrote to a journal, and so it is being published in Pile Press. It's called Conte Partiro. Fantastic title. I was tackling, like,
01:03:45
Speaker
That is everything. It's actually kind of my own retelling of the Bluebeard story. I love it. I also, I do very rarely kind of video art pieces that I put on my YouTube. The one that I'm proudest of is called Nosferatu Blues. It will come up if you search that on YouTube. And I would like to recommend Kim Petras' Turn Off the Light Halloween album.
01:04:13
Speaker
because I've been bopping to it and it's good for Halloween season. Do you listen to Queen Herbie, Lynn? No. Oh my god, she just put out like a mini, it's like seven songs, but she put out a Queen album and like, Ooh, that's I feel like Queen Herbie and Kim Petra's Halloween together. That sounds
01:04:35
Speaker
That sounds like perfection. It's going on the ghouls night Spotify playlist. Ghouls night. But yeah, that's, that's, that's all for me. Thank you guys so much. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. I love ending. We are ending Art Loeween with the like ultimate final girl, but like,
01:05:02
Speaker
she's like we're final girl like you're not in danger it's just for art movie thank you for letting me talk about this i mean all my friends are so tired of hearing about oh my gosh i cannot wait to have you back i just feel like you know representative apt horror expert anytime anytime i would love it
01:05:25
Speaker
I love it. Well, thank you so much. And Art Pop Tarts, don't forget that you can follow us on all the platforms. We will have to link Lynn's YouTube videos for us for you on our YouTube channel. We'll put it in a little playlist for you guys. We're at Art Pop Talk. Don't forget you can email us at artpoptalk at gmail.com. We have a Buy Me a Coffee account. If you like the content that you heard today, you can donate and we'll keep making up for you. So with that, we will talk to you on Tuesday. Bye, everyone.
01:05:57
Speaker
Art Pop Talk's executive producers are me, Bianca Martucci-Vinc. And me, Gianna Martucci-Vinc. Music and sounds are by Josh Turner and photography is by Adrian Turner. And our graphic designer is Sid Hammond.
01:06:29
Speaker
you