Final girl

File:Lauriestrodeblue.PNG

Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, the final girl of Halloween.

The final girl is a horror film (particularly slasher film) trope that specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in dozens of films, including The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Alien, Halloween, Scream, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Clover suggests that in these films, the viewer begins by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experiences a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.

History

The final girl is typically sexually unavailable or virginal, avoiding the vices of the victims (sex, narcotic usage, etc.). She sometimes has a unisex name (e.g. Teddy, Billie, Georgie, Sidney). Occasionally the Final Girl will have a shared history with the killer. The final girl is the "investigating consciousness" of the film, moving the narrative forward and as such, she exhibits intelligence, curiosity, and vigilance.

One of the basic premises of Clover’s theory is that audience identification is unstable and fluid across gender lines, particularly in the case of the slasher film. During the final girl’s confrontation with the killer, Clover argues, she becomes masculinized through "phallic appropriation" by taking up a weapon, such as a knife or chainsaw, against the killer. Conversely, Clover points out that the villain of slasher films is often a male whose masculinity, and sexuality more generally, are in crisis. Examples would include Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, or Billy and Stu from Wes Craven's satirical horror film Scream. Clover points to this gender fluidity as demonstrating the impact of feminism in popular culture.

The phenomenon of the male audience having to identify with a young female character in an ostensibly male-oriented genre, usually associated with sadistic voyeurism, raises interesting questions about the nature of slasher films and their relationship with feminism. Clover argues that for a film to be successful, although the Final Girl is masculinized, it is necessary for this surviving character to be female, because she must experience abject terror, and many viewers would reject a film that showed abject terror on the part of a male. The terror has a purpose, in that the female is 'purged' if she survives, of undesirable characteristics, such as relentless pursuit of pleasure in her own right. An interesting feature of the genre is the 'punishment' of beauty and sexual availability.

The film Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) explains and talks extensively about this popular horror film trope (although in the film, it is referred to as "survivor girl"), even using it as a major plot device.

Hypotetical descent

The final girl seems to be mostly WASP: she bears a British last name and is played by a fair white actress (often the actress herself bears a British or at least a German or Dutch last name). That is demonstrated by the following table:

FILM	SUB-GENRE	CHARACTER'S NAME	SURNAME ORIGIN	MEANING	ACTRESS' NAME	SURNAME ORIGIN	MEANING
28 DAYS LATER	sci-fi	?	English		Harris	English
ALIEN saga	sci-fi	Ripley	English		Weaver	English
ALIEN VERSUS PREDATOR	sci-fi	Woods	Afro-american		Lathan	Afro-american
BLACK CHRISTMAS	slasher	Bradford	English		Hussey	she's born in Argentina but it seems English
BLOB, THE	sci-fi	Penny	English		Smith	English
CARRIE	supernatural	Snell	Dutch	more frequently spelt "Snel"=swift	Irving	English
CHERRY FALLS	slasher	Marken	maybe German or Dutch or also English	if Dutch or German=marches	Murphy	Irish
CRAFT, THE	supernatural	Bailey	English		Tunney	English
CUJO	thriller	Trenton	English		Wallace-Stone	Scottish-English	Wallace=of Celtic descent
CURSED	slasher	Myers	English		Ricci	Italian	curly hair
FINAL DESTINATION	slasher/supernatural	Rivers	English		Larter	English
FINAL DESTINATION 2	slasher/supernatural	Corman	English		Cook	English
FINAL DESTINATION 3	slasher/supernatural	Christensen	Danish	Christian's son	Winstead	English
FRIGHTENERS	slasher/parody	Linski	Polish		Alvarado	Spanish
FRIDAY THE 13TH	slasher	Hardy	English		King	English
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 2	slasher	Field	English		Steel	English
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 3	slasher	Higgins	English		Kimmell	English
GLASS HOUSE, THE	thriller	Baker	English		Sobieski	Polish
GOTHICA	thriller	Grey	Afro-american		Berry	French	Berry is a France's historical region
GRUDGE, THE	supernatural	Davies	Welsh	Celtic original form: Dafys	Gellar	Jewish
HALLOWEEN original saga	slasher	Strode/Myers	English		Lee Curtis	English
HALLOWEEN remakes	slasher	Strode/Myers	English		Compton	English	her mother is Mexican
HOUSE OF WAX	slasher	Jones	Welsh		Cuthbert	English
HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL	slasher	Wolfe	English		Larter	English
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER saga	slasher	James	English		Hewitt	English
JASON X	slasher	?	English		Doig	English
JEEPERS CREEPERS	slasher	Jenners	English		Philips	English
JOY RIDE	thriller	?			Sobieski	Polish
LEPRECHAUN	slasher/supernatural	Reding	English		Aniston	Greek (original name was Anastassakis)
NIGHTMARE saga	slasher/supernatural	Thompson	English		Langenkamp	German	long tree-nursery
NIGHTMARE 6	slasher/supernatural	Burroughs	English		Zane	English
OCTANE	thriller	Wilson	English		Marsden Barton	English	(Mischa Barton's complete name is "Mischa Anne Marsden Barton", and both Marsden and Barton are English family name)
PITCH BLACK	sci-fi	Fry	English		Mitchell	English
PROM NIGHT, THE	slasher	Hammond	Scottish		Lee Curtis	English
PULSE	slasher	Webber	German	more frequently spelt "Webber"=weaver	Bell	English	(Kristen Bell is of Irish and Polish descent)
RETURN OF THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, THE	slasher	?			Zellweger	Swiss	in German possibly means "from the cell way"
RING, THE saga	slasher/supernatural	Keller	German	cellar	Watts	English
RIPPER	slasher	Keller	German	cellar	Cook	English
SAW	gore	Young	English		Smith	English
SCREAM saga	slasher/parody	Prescott	English		Campbell	Scottish	Celtic original form: Caimbeul
SLEEPY HOLLOW	supernatural	Van Tassel	Dutch	from Tassel	Ricci	Italian	curly hair
TERROR TRAIN	slasher	Maxwell	English		Lee Curtis	English
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE	slasher	Hardesty	Irish		Burns	Scottish	brooklets
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE (remake)	slasher	?			Biel	German	Biel is a town in Switzerland
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2, THE	slasher	Brock	English		Williams	Welsh	original Celtic form: Guillimh
URBAN LEGEND	slasher	Simon	English		Witt	Dutch	white
WISHMASTER	slasher/supernatural	Amberson	English		Lauren	English
WRONG TURN	slasher	Burlingame	English		Dushku	Albanian

According this table's results,

• in 14 non-slasher horror movies, there are 64% (9 in number) Final Girls with English surname, 21% (3) with Germanic or Celtic surname and 14% (2: Alien vs Predator and Gothica) with Afro-American descent.
• in 31 slasher movies (counting also parodical-slashers and supernatural-slashers), there are 71% (22 in number) Final Girls with English surname, 25% (8) with Germanic or Celtic surname and 3% (one only: The Frighteners' Lucy Linski) other, a Pole (Slavic) family name. Moreover The Frighteners is more a parodic horror than a straight slasher and the true protagonist is not the Final Girl but the male hero, who is played by Michael J. Fox and his last name is the very English Bannister.

Here are listed 47 films with a Final Girl but of 6 Final Girl I have not their last name.

Examples of final girls

Before the release of Alien 3 Clover identified Ellen Ripley, from the Alien franchise, as a final girl. Elizabeth Ezra continues this analysis for Alien Resurrection, arguing that by definition both Ripley and Annalee Call must be final girls, further arguing that Call is the "next generation of Clover's Final Girl". Call, in Ezra's view, exhibts traits that fit Clover's definition of a final girl, namely that she is boyish, having a short masculine-style haircut, and that she is characterized by (in Clover's words) "smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters, and sexual reluctance" being a ship's mechanic who rejects the sexual advances made by male characters on the ship. Ezra notes, however, that this identification of Call as a final girl is marred by the fact that she is not a human being, but an android.

Christine Cornea disputes the idea that Ripley is a final girl, contrasting Clover's analysis of the character with that of Barbara Creed, who presents Ripley as "the reassuring face of womanhood". Cornea does not accept either Clover's or Creed's views on Ripley. Whilst she accepts Clover's general thesis of the final girl trope, she argues that Ripley does not follow the conventions of the slasher film, as Alien follows the different conventions of the science fiction film genre. In particular, there is not the foregrounding in Alien, as there is in the slasher film genre, of the character's sexual purity and abstinence relative to the other characters (who would be, in accordance with the final girl trope, killed by the film's monster "because" of this). The science fiction genre that Alien inhabits, according to Cornea, simply lacks this kind of sexual theme in the first place, it not having a place in such "traditional" sci-fi formats.

Laurie Strode (from Halloween I, II, and H20) is another example of a final girl. Tony Williams notes that Clover's image of supposedly progressive final girls are never entirely victorious at the culmination of a film nor do they manage to eschew the male order of things as Clover argues. He holds up Strode as an example of this. She is rescued by a male character, Dr Loomis, at the end of Halloween. He holds up Lila Crane, from Psycho, as another example of a final girl who is saved by a male (Sam, in this case) at the end of the film. On this basis he argues that whilst 1980s horror film heroines were more progressive than those of earlier decades, the gender change is done conservatively, and the final girl trope cannot be regarded as a progressive one "without more thorough investigation".

Williams also gives several examples of final girls from the Friday the 13th franchise: Alice from Friday the 13th, and the heroines from Part II and Part III. (He observes that Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter does not have a final girl.) He notes that they do not conclude the films wholly victorious, however. The heroines from Parts II and III are catatonic at the ends of the respective films, and Alice survives the monster in the first film only to fall victim to "him" in the second. The final girl in Part III is carried away on a stretcher, calling out for her boyfriend (which Williams argues again undermines the notion of final girls always being victorious). Moreover, Ginny's adoption of the monster's own strategy, in Part II, brings into question whether the final girl image is in fact a wholly positive one.

Buffy Summers, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not an example of a final girl, but rather Joss Whedon's conscious reimagining of the final girl for young female audiences, in the view of Allison McCracken. The pain, fear, and suffering of the final girl are not ascribed to Buffy, but instead given to Angel, a male character.Jason Middleton concurs, observing that there is not the mixed genderization of the Buffy character as there is with a final girl. Although Buffy performs, repeatedly, the final girl's task of finally killing off the monster of the story, Buffy is a cult heroine rather than a final girl. Middleton draws attention to Whedon's explanation of how the Buffy character was conceived: He felt sorry for the character of "'that blond girl' who would always get herself killed" in horror films, and envisioned a "beautiful blond girl" who would walk into an alley, stalked by a monster, and trounce him. In light of this explanation, Middleton argues that the prototype for Buffy, "the beautiful blond girl ... who always gets herself killed", does not fit the final girl mould, since a final girl does not get killed. Moreover, Clover's definition of a final girl as boyish, not sexually attractive, favouring "practical" clothing, and not sexually promiscuous, and often having a unisex name, does not match Buffy. Buffy is a cheerleader, a "beautiful blond", with a name that, Middleton observes, could not be more feminine. She gets, in Middleton's words, to have sex with boys and still kill the monster.

Middleton argues that the closest match to the final girl trope in Buffy is, in fact, the character of Willow Rosenberg. She has the detective-like curiosity ascribed to the trope. She is adept with technology, and thus has the mechnical-mindedness of the trope. She is not as conventionally attractive as Buffy. She (at least in early stories in the series) does not date. And she even has the androgynous name associated with the final girl trope, with many of her fellow characters calling her "Will".

Buffy is, in the words of Jes Battis, "subverting" the final girl trope of B-grade horror films. Mary Celeste Kearney notes that the character of Buffy in the 1992 film precursor to the television series (as well as Louisa Pierce the protagonist in The Next Karate Kid) was limited in its expression of female empowerment on screen, since she learned her combat skills and moral sensibility from an older man, and primarily used her physical powers for the restoration of order, rather than for adjustment of her personal life. Kearney observes that in the middle 1990s, following those two films, the trope of the final girl in horror films was "resurrected, reshaped, and mainstreamed". She points to Sidney Prescott (in Scream I, II, and III) and Julie James (in I Know What You Did Last Summer and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer) as examples of this.

Movies featuring Final Girl

• Halloween
• Friday the 13th
• Psycho
• Silence of the Lambs
• Jeepers Creepers
• Scream
• P2
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• Hellraiser
• Hostel Part 2
• The Hitcher
• Black Christmas
• Final Destination
• The Descent
• The Terminator
• The Reaping
• Resident Evil
• Night of The Living Dead (Remake)

See also

• Feminist film theory

Further reading

• Starks, Lisa S. (2002), "Cinema of Cruelty: Powers of Horror in Julie Taymor's Titus", in Starks, Lisa S.; Lehmann, Courtney (eds.), The Reel Shakespeare, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, pp. 128, 134–136, ISBN 9780838639399, OCLC 49383749 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Ndalianis, Angela (1998-12-01), ""Evil Will Walk Once More": Phantasmagoria—The Stalker Film as Interactive Movie?", in Smith, Greg M. (ed.), On a Silver Platter: CD-ROMs and the Promises of a New Technology, New York University Press, pp. 93–112, ISBN 9780814780817{{citation}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
• Jim Harper (2004). "The Heroine". Legacy of Blood. Critical Vision. pp. 31–39. ISBN 1900486393. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |isbn13= ignored (help)
• Driscoll, Catherine (2002-08-15), "Distraction: Girls and Mass Culture", Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture & Cultural Theory, Columbia University Press, p. 232, ISBN 9780231119122, OCLC 47790838 {{citation}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)

External links

• Demon of the Threshold: The Final Girl Reinterpreted
• Essay: Is the Final Girl an Excuse?
• Teenie Kill & The Final Girl: Gender and the Slasher Film