Why are all the Ghouls Girls?
Close your eyes. Think of one of the most famous ghosts in any horror movie? Please open your eyes. PLEASE! I hope you really didn’t close them because you wouldn’t be able to read these words, nor would you be able to read the tantalizing tidbits I will unravel in this blog post.
Back to my question. What ghost comes to mind when you think of your favorite horror film?
I am betting to say you are picturing a female ghost. Perhaps you thought of Samara from the Ring, Bathsheba from The Conjuring, the morphed old lady ghost making out with Jack Nicholson in The Shining, or folktale legend and star of Urban Legends 3, Bloody Mary. These are a few of the characters off the top of my head, but the list is seemingly endless. The stereotype of The Final Girl and the Madwoman in the Attic are staples in the genre, but whether you realize it or not so is the women as the haunting ghost.
Why are all the horror movies we come to love filled with demonic ghost women? Could it come from the roots of the Gothic tradition of literature? That’s a great question with a multitude of answers.
For starters, the male ghost counterpart is rarely seen as foreboding or malicious. The phantom menace (pun intended) of Candyman and Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street are the exceptions and not the norm. Most males who portray ghosts in films are suave, intelligent, brooding figures such as Patrick Swayze playing Sam Wheat in Ghost or Alan Rickman in Truly, Madly, Deeply.
The female ghost or ghoul tends to be on the opposite side of the spectrum. Women as spirits generally are portrayed as wicked women ready to ensnare men in their devious traps, torture and steal the souls of innocent children, or slice up the young teenagers who summoned them. The women wraith tends to take on one of those three roles.
1) The perverted mother figure exhibiting homicidal and infanticidal tendencies in the place of a nurturing quality. 2) The vengeful spirit looking to enact punishment on those who wronged her during her corporal life- typical a male figure. 3) An older lady seeking to kill the younger protagonists of the film out of jealousy or for the most prized possession of all- their youth.
The first role a women ghost exhibits of the murdering mother can be highlighted in films such as Mama and The Uninvited. The role of the nurturing mother is flipped in the afterlife and women wraiths seek out the innocent youth of the village or town. They may concurrently haunt the dwellings of a house and seek out the children in this house. In some cases, the spirit is only trying to protect the child in their own hellish way. The women ghost was a mother who lost a child or lost a child in childbirth and now seeks out the children nearest to her to allow them her motherly love.
The second role of the female is the vengeful spirit enacting punishment on the individual who wronged her in her life. This type of horror film is more common in Asian cinema. A few of the films exhibiting this theme will be The Ring, Shutter, and The Grudge. The audience learns in The Ring that the main female spirit was left for dead in the well after being abused. Thus, in this type of women ghost film we tend to sympathize with the spirit at the end and they find redemption. Nonetheless, they continue to give us the heebie-jeebies with their sickly pallor and ability to crawl on all fours up walls and out of wells.
The final scenario for the women ghost is the elderly lady – similar to the old haggardly witch – sucking the life out of the beautiful youth. I mentioned the scene from The Shining already, but this example can be exhibited in the film Drag Me to Hell too. The old lady represents the most frightening of all in a society that values youth. Some movies take this notion to the extreme such as The Skeleton Key. A young female caretaker has her spirit ripped from her body and placed into an old woman’s body. Now, the old woman’s spirit resides in a young Kate Hudson’s body and nobody is the wiser!
Many have seen the female as ghost troupe as female empowerment or a type of feminism. Females in the corporeal world must succumb to the pressures of society and the patriarchal culture that permeates our everyday lives. They must be a nurturing mother and a housewife. A female must be obedient to the male perspective in the patriarchal society. Females must live with the double standard of beauty; men age and become silver foxes as females age and become less attractive.
The idea of a vengeful women ghost subverts the corporeal, conventional, passive role of a female as an obedient creature and allows them to act on violent, retributive urges they may have suppressed in life. After death, these women become twisted maleficent forms wishing to change a broken system championed on double standards and inequality.
Although, the positioning of the female as the ghost meant to nurture the child still doesn’t create an entirely egalitarian picture. These films generally position a women ghost against other women in the mortal world battling over a child. The films would still work fine if a female ghost struggled with the uncle or father of a child.
Thus, the female ghost role has a vital place in the horror genre. The themes radiating under the surface of these films could advocate for a more egalitarian world and a pro-feminism message. Yet, they do not quite reach the altruistic goal of pro-feminism. These women ghost horror films pit women against women in traditional female roles and the spirits typically act hyper-violent to achieve their goals instead of through understanding.
All in all, the next frontier for the female ghost horror genre could be to revolutionize the ghost story. Writers can keep the pro-feminism elements but tweak the plot to achieve total equality. A female ghost who does not define herself by the ability to bear children and or the relationships she garners. Who knows where the future of the female ghost story will take us, but if these films are any indication, we are in for a hell of a scare-fest.