The Final Girl by Carol J. Clover

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for each role are equal and even. In terms of the analysis above I don’t think Sally is a typical final girl as same as Carol said.

However, Sally still has some relative character with the “final girl”. She is friendly and kind. When she noticed that her friends might be lost she was trying to look for them. Compared with her peer girl she wasn’t going to have sex with other guys, at least no swimming. Since this movie hasn’t mention too much about if Sally is a pure and virtuous girl, we cannot certainly say how she is. Besides Sally in this movie we can also realize the male was killed in seconds, but female suffered much more abuse than the other two females. That is the relative conception as Carol said before.

To contrast with the Texas Chain Saw Massacre I think it is hard to say whether the female protagonist in Martyrs (Anna) fits the role of typical “final girl” or not.

First of all, Anna is alive at the end. But she is left to be alive and still be imprisoned. I don’t think those people coming from the religion origination will let her die in the following days. They will try to keep her life and find out what she sees.

In addition, Anna is a good and pure girl and wholeheartedly loves with her ​​friend Lucie. Though she later discovered Lucie killed a lot of people, she still accompanies her. Once she noticed that someone alive in the basement she did not hesitate to save her. When Anna saw the mistress of the house was still alive, she secretly wanted to save her as well. Someone would think that Anna does not trust Lucie and betray her. In fact, in my opinion, Anna is not wrong: when she did not go by personal experience about Lucie’s suffering, no one can fully believe and receive Lucie’s pain and hatred, which is why, when Anna was tortured by the organization they gradually merged to rely on each other. I have doubts that the complexity of the relationship between Anna and Lucie, besides the interdependence and friendship if there is any extremely special feeling. Since there is a scene in the movie that Anna wanted to kiss Lucie but was refused, so this kiss might point out the different relationship between Anna and Lucie.

The last but not least, even though it is not about sexual abuse during the whole movie, but they do treat her as a girl. Because only pure girl have the ability to see the other world when they are dying, so only girl can be the witness. Before the man tore off Anna’s skin he sheared her cloth first, we know it is nothing about sexuality but we did see the naked body of a girl.

For the above reasons I hold the opinion it is hard to say if Anna is the final girl or not. The movie Martyrs is so difference from other horror movies, it is not just a simple sense of horror movies, but with the color of religion inside. Those abusers looked no difference from other people, but they were doing the heinous offense under the most normal even glossy surface.

Since according to the Carol’s “Final Girl” I think there are three most important points to fit the role of a typical final girl. The first character is pure and chaste. If I keep it simple it should be “no sex, no drug, and no drink”. The second one she should be alive. The final girl means the only one who survived, so she must be alive. The last one is on the girl’s abuse and slash there should be gender issues involved. Since the final girl should have at least those three characters, in my opinion, Sally is not a typical final girl and Anna is too complex to be regarded as a typical final girl.

After talking about the Carol’s analysis of horror movie, I would like to movie forward to today’s film culture, the horror film as one of the major movie genre, its popularity is no less than other types of movies. Meanwhile, the study found that women usually appear as an important role in most horror movies to meet the needs of the narrative, and they play victimizers and victims of terror role in different movie.

Overview of horror movies in the world today, we find that not only the European and American horror film, or a Japanese horror film, even in recent years, but also the rise of Korean horror films, female characters occupy the important position in the film is general but not a individual phenomenon. They are either threatened by terrorist attacks, or manufacture of shocking terrorist attacks, but always "act as the main victim to meet identify villain narrative purpose." 2004 British science fiction authoritative journal "SFX" selected the 20 best horror film in the history of horror films and the American Top Ten "American Film Studies" enumerated and suspense thriller. More than half movies have an important female role inside. This data is a reflection of this phenomenon. In fact, no matter female act as a "threat" or "threatened", they are the victim which uses to meet the terrorist purport or stimulate the pleasure to watch.

Works Cited

Clover, Carol J. Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film in Misogyny, Misandry,

and Misanthropy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Print.

Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Print.

Andrew Teaches. "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film" by Carol J. Clover.

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CdMScott. Is the Final Girl an Excuse? Web. 5 May 2006.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York:

Routledge, 1993. Print.