It’s Okay to Scream: In Defence of the Weeping Mothers of Horror
Would you survive a horror film?
I like to think I’d be one of the ones to make it out alive — then again, nobody wants to admit their chances of getting hacked apart or possessed by a demon.
If I’m honest? I probably wouldn’t make it. I’d fall into a booby trap, forget to take the safety off my gun, accidentally let a demon possess me or something even more embarrassing. But if I did make it out alive, it would only be because I’d be one of the ones that avoided investigating that noise in the other room or left the party early when the girls pulled out the Ouija board. It isn’t a particularly valiant way to approach victimhood, I know. As I sneaked away from the impending horror, I’d be met with vicious teasing and booing from the audience on the other side of the screen.
Here’s how I know: women in horror only get respect when they fight and win.
In a 2013 interview with the BBC, Stephen King harshly criticized Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining (1980), in part because of Wendy Torrance’s character. “Shelley Duval as Wendy is really one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film,” he said. “She’s basically just there to scream and be stupid.”
Based on the quote and the portrayal of Wendy in the novel, I can only assume that King wanted Wendy to be a strong, silent hero. As the author, he has the authority to make that claim, and I have no interest in explicitly defending Kubrick (given his reputation and the damage The Shining did to Duval) — but the notion that Wendy sets womankind back just because she’s terrified is a ridiculous one.
After all, she survives. Her son survives. It’s impressive, considering she goes head to head with a psychotic husband and a sentient hotel. So what if she’s screaming? I would be, too.
The real misogyny is that audiences will settle for any reason to deride and dislike female characters in horror. If they run, they’re cowardly; if they scream too much, they’re weak; if they’re bloody fighters, they’re a dangerous example for female audiences.
If there’s praise given to women in horror at all, it’s devoted to the last category of women, who are either Final Girls or chilling antagonists. They’ve got a mean streak, or a cool head in the face of danger, or just so happen to know how to swing an axe. Maybe they’re ready to reclaim their life and destiny by slaying everyone in their path.
To be clear, I don’t think the Final Girl trope is a bad one. In fact, I can say with some confidence that I’ll never tire of horror films that end with the victory of a resourceful maiden dressed in white, covered in a gratuitous amount of blood or a midsummer flower crown.
It just becomes too easy to hate women when we only assign worth to the ones that live up to a certain (masculine) standard. When we say that a female character is misogynistic for screaming too much, we enforce the idea that there’s only one acceptable way to exist as a woman — and deny these characters the chance to be human. Casting them aside as overly emotional or weak just because they wail out of grief is criminal for several reasons, but most clearly because it’s often the undiluted humanity that makes these characters so powerful.
Twin Peaks’ (1990-91) Sarah Palmer begins the series by losing her only daughter. Her husband was abusive (possessed or not) for years. He cheated on her with sex workers, drugged her into ignorance — and, worst of all, sexually abused and killed her daughter.
She loved him all the same, and then lost him too. As Agent Cooper tells her that the evil spirit who possessed her husband is gone for good, she laments, “So is everything I loved.” Over the next 25 years Sarah survives, though she doesn’t do much more than that. Her appearances in The Return (2017) are some of the most memorable. She melts down in the grocery store because of the new placement of beef jerky. Her home is a purgatory of her own making. The lights are dim, and she chain-smokes and drinks Bloody Marys as her television plays on a static loop.
There’s hardly anything to celebrate in her survival, but it’s survival all the same. And her portrayal of loss is one I wouldn’t trade for anything.
But often — like in Wendy Torrance’s case — survival is triumphant.
The survival of the MacNeil family in The Exorcist (1973) is one so triumphant it almost feels like a happy ending. In true Catholic fashion, it ends with the triumph of good over evil and the quiet rebirth of a family.
The priests are the heroes of the film, to be sure, and their sacrifice is a tragedy. But Chris MacNeil’s role as a mother shouldn’t be minimized. Throughout the entire film, she fights tooth and nail with doctors who hope to patronize her into compliance. She questions their diagnoses and insists that the last thing she’ll do is send her daughter to an institution just because caring for her is too difficult. Without her, the priests never come. There is no healing. The film ends as Regan is put quietly away, the family torn apart and the victory given to the forces of evil.
If you’re not convinced yet, I’ll rephrase the question I asked above: What would you do if there was an actual, real demon inhabiting your home? What if it had possessed your only family member?
I’m not sure that I’d be brave at all.
And, again, I’d definitely be screaming.
By the way, if Sarah Palmer does get her Final Girl moment, it’s in The Return when she fends off the creep at the bar who verbally assaults and threatens her. She takes her face off to reveal murky depths of grief and bitterness, asks “Do you really want to fuck with this?” and proceeds to bite a fatal chunk from his neck. It’s incredible, if only because it feels like she’s getting her due after years of abuse — and maybe on behalf of all women who’ve ever been cornered by the same kind of abuser in public.
But Sarah is no more empowered there than she was in her purgatory of a home. She looks just as haunted as the man slumps to the floor. The swirling blackness and haunting Cheshire smile that lurks behind her face isn’t a badass in the making or a strong, healthy path forward. It’s debilitating grief culminating in anger that rewards her, and the audience, with mere seconds of self-satisfaction.
And it’s perfectly human. As it should be.
Jillian Cheney is a Brooklyn-based writer who finally overcame her fear of the monsters under the bed and is getting really into horror. She’s written about everything from religion to glass art and recently started a monthly newsletter on culture and fandom.
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