American Horror Stereotype

Horror is notorious for objectifying women.

Every cult classic features a moment of spine-tingling dramatic irony: we all know the bad guy’s in the basement, so why is that dumb girl going down there alone to investigate a weird noise?

Scary movies seem to render women powerless — usually the killed, rarely the killer.

A brief survey conducted by the Huffington Post revealed that more than 60 percent of first victims in horror films are women. Typically young, beautiful and sexualized, scary-movie chicks are cast as the prey, the kitten targeted by curiosity’s knife.

Until, that is, the premiere of “American Horror Story.”

Marketed as an “erotic thriller,” with an overwhelmingly female cast, this wildly popular series was on a crash course with gender expectations in horror media from the start.

The large volume of female sexuality at the beginning of the first series left me feeling a little tricked and unsettled. All the archetypes were present: the temptress, the virgin, the victim, the mother and even the crazy ex-girlfriend.

But upon closer examination, and as the plot unraveled, these mistresses and murderesses were developed into richly layered representations that bore more resemblance to real women than anyone I’d seen on “Pretty Little Liars” or “Gossip Girl.”

They experience love, compassion, lust, loss, hatred, envy, empathy, vengeance, victimization, condescension, respect, failure and triumph. They represent the whole spectrum of human nature like pleats on an open fan.

All of this feminine commentary reaches a frenzied pitch in Series 3, “Coven,” in which creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk explore the time-honored tradition of societal fear toward women with power through — what else? — witches.

Set against the backdrop of New Orleans, voodoo and witch hunts, Murphy and Falchuk criticize our fear of fierce females by enforcing the myth rather than debunking it. These women are fierce.

The plot twist is that these women are also shamelessly real. They embody the yins and yangs of human nature complicated by classically feminine issues like infertility, virginity, body image and loss of youth.

Now, AHS is no “Jennifer’s Body.” Female characters that devour their male victims like wickedly seductive harpies in blood-red lingerie are the opposite of empowerment. These Morticias simply fuel the Maneater stereotype, the Rizzo to the basement-searching Sandy.  

The female characters aren’’t overwhelmingly weak or overwhelmingly strong.

They get attacked, raped, abused, manipulated, tortured and often murdered. But they also pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get the last laugh.

Madeline Davies, a feminist blogger frequently published on Jezebel, sang these witches’ praises in a January post: “(The women of AHS) are the kinds of women who, when punched in the face, will spit out a bloody tooth and throw a punch of their own. I’m not watching because I like to see them brutalized. I am watching because I like to see them fight back.”

The women of “American Horror Story” have a complicated tale to tell. Some of them are young, some old, some married, some single. Virgins, mothers, seductresses, villains, nurturers and cold-blooded killers. No matter their role, they begin to redeem the horror genre by bearing a striking resemblance to everyday life despite their supernatural backdrop.

Sometimes they side with the angels, sometimes with the demons, but always — ironically — with reality.

­— sbkissel@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Sarah Kissel on Twitter @QueSarahSarah_.