In contrast, the sadomasochistic teen horror films kill off the sexually active ‘bad’ girls, allowing only the non-sexual ‘good’ girls to survive. But these good girls become, as if in compensation, remarkably active, to the point of appropriating phallic power to themselves. It is as if this phallic power is granted so long as it is rigorously separated from phallic or any other sort of pleasure. For these pleasures spell sure death in this genre.
This paragraph comes from page eight of Linda Williams’s Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess, in which she discusses three genres of film in terms of the female body and excess. Pornography, horror, and melodrama are all genres that employ the idea of excess to create “gross” images, often using the female body to do so. In this paragraph, Williams discusses the horror film and the sexualization of the female body.
All three genres do not shy away from female sexualization and dominant male patriarchal point of views, most obvious in pornography and less so in melodrama. Horror is the genre that perhaps stands its ground in the middle – often sexualizing females but doing so in a way that is less apparent than pornography and therefore more ignored. Williams points out the sexualization of females in the horror film, and the fact that that apparent succumbing to a pleasure that all beings can experience is not acceptable for females – hence, the “killing off.” While they are allowed to exhibit sexuality, the dominant male gaze deems this female sexual autonomy as something to be crushed – as something that is a threat. This allows the “non-sexual ‘good’ girls to survive.”
As she states, the good girls appropriate “phallic power” once the “bad” girl is gone. The good girls who do not act on sexual inhibitions or any other excess pleasure of the sort gain “phallic power” – this just meaning that while they are still women, the power they are granted stemmed from the crushing of something that male domination deemed frighteningly inappropriate. They are still women, but through this backhanded grant of power, they really might as well be men. They were created out of the male gaze. They are still grossly influenced and sculpted out of what the dominant male finds acceptable. The female can pick either phallic or “any other sort of pleasure.” But any other pleasures “spell sure death in this genre.”
– Olivia Roberts
__Horror film__ 
Great observation and dissection of the sexualization in these three genres, I just wanted to add some other information I gained from the William’s reading. The females or final girls in slasher films are also emasculated with a gender neutral name like Laurie or Ripley. Their sexual inhibitions gain them the status of good girl, as you mentioned, which is later expressed when they “penetrate” or kill the killer. These aspects of the final girl also help the viewer move through this female/male space of identification. The final girl becomes masculine by the end of the film by overpowering the killer, and the killer is emasculated by the end. The sexual energy navigates through the story, we identify with a “male” killer in one scene and a “female” protagonist in the other until the change at the end. (At least that’s what I understood from Clover and Williams).
Mariamor Pazos
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