So, this has been in the works for quite some time, and now I’m happy to finally announce a brand-spanking new header for the site. If you’re on a mobile device, you may not see it, so here it is (with apologies to desktop users for the duplication):
Particular gratitude is due to the photographer, Klaudia Bałazy, and the models, Gabriela, Julia, Ola, Kasia (who also had the idea for the image), and Magda, all of whom I’m happy to collaborate with in La Folie – Retro Cabaret Show. Thanks all – I think it’s pretty groovy!
The image (at the top of the page – or if you are an e-mail subscriber – click through to check it out) grows out of a cabaret sketch we did for a Halloween performance. The idea of the sketch was to recreate the style of a silent horror film – all women in incongruously elegant gowns (ala The Old Dark House), exploring a creepy old manor by candle light, discovering a shrouded figure, and, fingers trembling, reaching out to reveal his monstrosity (ala Phantom of the Opera), before screaming in a building terror that edges on madness (ala Metropolis) – but funny.
It was a comedy bit after all, and the idea was to both pay homage to the visual sumptuousness of the silent era and to have some fun with the over-the-top-ness of the premise. One woman shrieking in fear might be scary. Four women, one seemingly straight laced husband, and the hideously deformed creature chasing them all sequentially startling each other like classic Scooby Do shtick and then silently shrieking in alarm was hopefully pretty funny.
It was a treat to work on and I think the effect achieved with relatively simple means (LED candles and one technician with a close handheld light source) was stylish, atmospheric, and playful. It is a real pleasure – a delight, you might say – to bring to life even a small idea that really tickles your fancy. And out of it was born a visual concept for this blog that took a few months to finally execute, but with which I’m really happy: five women, in chic dresses, screaming like something out of a classic film.
So, let’s talk about that. Once I finally finished assembling the image, I couldn’t help but notice that gender had been (perhaps inadvertently, but nonetheless, prominently) foregrounded. I mean, it is such a long standing criticism of the genre that it focuses on and fetishizes images of female suffering. Whether or not that critique is totally accurate has been fairly challenged, but perhaps the very fact that I didn’t include any guys – it just wouldn’t have been the iconic look I was after – does imply the persistence of a trend and suggest that it should be discussed.
On one level, this is evident throughout the history of the genre – looking at classic horror cinema from the silent era, the 30s Universal horrors, Val Lewton in the 40s, monster movies of the 50s, up to the slasher boom of the late 70s-80s, and beyond, a woman screaming is just such a central image. For some critics, this is a sign of an inherent misogyny – the viewer is invited to sadistically and vicariously get off on looking from the POV of the masculine threat at his prey. Others perceive a different, but not necessarily less misogynistic, approach – the woman is the endangered protagonist because her gender implies a vulnerability which makes the threat that much scarier – now, vicariously identifying with the female body situates us, the viewers, more as “victims.” Still others defend the trend as pure style or aesthetics (thus opening themselves up to new criticisms of objectification) – Dario Argento once famously said, “I like women, especially beautiful ones…I would much rather watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man.”
And others have read this totally differently. You could certainly take the degree to which the woman is in the middle of the horror narrative as positive; regardless of the reasons for it, compared to the majority of other genres, horror’s number of female protagonists (final girls, scream queens, imperiled ingénues, or what have you) is effectively quite progressive. Sure – women might be centered so that the protagonist can display “weak” traits that are unfairly coded as feminine (fear, hysteria, physical weakness). I’m pretty sure I remember Carol Clover describing how, in the figure of the “final girl,” the audience can have its cake and eat it too, identifying both with her feminized fear and with the moment when she stands up and fights back, taking on what are read as masculinized characteristics (and, of course, striking out with some penetrative sharp phallic object – Freud is all over this stuff).
But I think what this all really speaks to is how unrealistic the “strong” traits coded as masculine are. In a moment of real crisis, I expect most of us are more likely to freeze up, be incapable of acting, and hide in a corner weeping until ugly death comes for us. Exceptionally few would have the chutzpa to really rise as some hyper-masculine action star and lay waste to the threat, whatever it might be. I think these maligned traits, supposedly feminine, may actually be just the most realistic traits for any character to have. Facing true horror, honestly, who wouldn’t scream?
A striking example here is Barbara from Night of the Living Dead. The presentation of her character has oft been denounced as unfair to women. Of all of the figures in the seminal zombie classic, she is particularly useless, spending much of the film either hysterically freaking out or in a state of near catatonia. George Romero even took the criticism to heart and in the 1990 remake, which he wrote but didn’t direct, she was a total badass to make up for it. That’s fine – it’s actually a kind of good movie in its own right – but I think Barbara from the original rings so true. Here’s this young woman who sees her brother killed in front of her, gets chased by some weird madman to a house in the middle of nowhere, and comes to realize that the dead are rising and eating the flesh of the living! If there’s a more appropriate time to snap under the pressure, I can’t think of one and I think that put in her position, more people (men and women) would behave exactly as she does.
So, at the end of the day, sure – it’s impossible to deny that there are social inequities associated with the classic image of the screaming woman, but I think sometimes they are more linked with expectations that unjustly persist in society than with what the picture itself necessarily communicates. For my part, I really love the new image we’ve created here. I think it strikes a balance of terror and playfulness, with a classic cool vibe (and the gender focus is a part of that), celebrating the films themselves and reveling in the horror, while calling for some degree of reflexivity – some work of interpretation. Life is endlessly complicated and we are all probably ultimately unknowable to ourselves, so anything that suggests we take a moment for consideration is worthwhile.
In our sketch, it was finally one of the girls who enters into the house, finds the square jawed, masculine, husband type tied up in the basement, screaming for his life and saves him, before revealing that she’s actually a vampire and biting his throat. The point is that sometimes, you can be all things, having and eating your cake, enjoying the repeating image of the screaming woman and inverting that image to have one save the day, and inverting it once again to make her the monster. All of the aforementioned perspectives can be simultaneously correct – even when they contradict each other. Maybe especially when they do.