gabe12301 said:
I am getting really annoyed at horror movies.The characters always make the same idiotic choice to split up,whoever isn't white dies and the girl can't lift anything exceeding 3 grams and trips over every single object in her path.
For me its pretty hard to watch horror movies when the only thoughts going through my head are:Go back to your car theres nothing stopping you. Or Why wont you lock the door!
I always end up on murderer's side because he's the only one who can actually think!
Hmm, well to be honest I think your talking more about horror movie stereotypes than much of an experience with horror movies to be honest. I'm sort of a genere fan and I can say that this trope was never paticularly true. If your actually honest and running into these things it might have something to do with the movies your selecting rather than the genere itself.
If your dealing exclusively within the "teen screams" genere of horror movies you tend to run into this kind of thing a bit more often, but that's in part because they are intentionally trying to cater to expected teen-horror stereotypes than anything, and people saying there was a trope sort of created a trope. Truthfully I think "self aware" horror movies like "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" did more to perpetuate some of the things they claimed were common, than were actually there to begin with.
To put things into perspective, the stereotype is actually not "whoever isn't white dies" it's "the black guy always dies first". Something that I've seen parodied, or commented on in "self aware" movies more than I've actually seen it happen. Technically the biggest enduring stereotype in these movies is that of a "morality play" in which the sinful characters die yet the one character, typically a girl, who doesn't indulge in anything that is wrong, is the one who escapes the terror. This is referred to as "The Final Girl" syndrome and it was somewhat satirized in the first "Evil Dead" movie (before the series became outright comedy with the sequels) where the survivor was actually the most unworthy character of the entire group. A lot of people will talk about Bruce Campbell's "Ash" character making clever one-liners as he bashes monsters, but you can tell a lot of those people never actually saw the first movie to really "get it". Ash was a coward, a weenie, and a moron. He did stupid thing after stupid thing and watched everyone around him die despite them all doing what were the right things. He eventually snapped by basically becoming so afraid that he couldn't be afraid anymore (so to speak). In the end the biggest waste of human life of the entire crew was the one to walk away, and that was the point of the movie when it was intended to stand alone.
It's also interesting to note that even during the time period of the "classic" horror movies like "A Nightmare On Elm Street", exacty the kind of movies those trops allegedly apply to, the characters actually make a concerted effort to stay together but can't due to what they are up against. It's also notworthy that when the entire "dream warriors" storyline got moving "Kincaid" who was the black character is one of the only survivors, although he admittedly DOES die at the beginning of the next movie in the series.
-
The thing to remember is that horror has a number of sub-generes to it, and while rife with stereotypes (no denying that) some accusations of the genere as a whole are more fair than others. A lot of the issues also come from bad directing and script writing as well, for example the whole "let's split up" thing can either be stupid, or make common sense depending on the movie, and what the characters are supposed to know at the time.
The issue of helplessness of women in horror movies is a mixed bag through the years, it all comes down to the type of characters being represented in the movie. Some do indeed trip or are incapable of doing much that requires physical effort, but then again there are a lot of girls like that in real life. As a counterpoint however, the typical survivor of a horror movie is the "nice girl" who is also ultimatly the one who does the smartest and/or coolest things in order to survive the end of the movie and walk away. That's a stereotype you can't forget about in making a lot of these arguements.
One can also point to movies going back decades that were exactly the opposite. "Alien" and it's sequels (but especially the first one) are horror movies, and Ripley has been one of the defining strong female characters for a while. You also have recent movies like "The Descent" and it's sequel which feature a group of female thrill seekers winding up in a cave full of your basic Morlocks and fighting them off with spelunking gear in some rather brutal and claustrophobic fight scenes.
-
Just some comments, you might not agree with me, but it will hopefully give you some things to think about.
(Bit redundant but Cookie for the OBVIOUS reference)
