changing representations of femaninity

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/moor0605/everydaylife/2008/08/women_in_horror.html
The first true slasher film is widely acknowledged to be Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece about a psychotic killer of women who is obsessed with his own mother (Psycho). In all films following, the phallic knife used as the standard method of murder speaks volumes about the symbolic punishment for these women. Because most of these females are shown early in the movie as sexually active, they are guaranteed to die first (Thornton 238). The fear of a sexually independent woman is revealed through her death, when the male killer thrusts his knife into her, taking away her sexual power through the symbolic rape of her body. “Horror is cultural apparatus for keeping the sexually active woman in her place��? (Badley 102). With the knife’s penetration, the sexually frustrated male serial killer is taking away all of the woman’s sexuality and showing his power. In the majority of slasher films, this formula of the male killer targeting female victims is used to repress women and take away any power they may have had, thereby making them non-threatening to men because they hold no sexual control (Freeland 185). Male sexuality can then be shown through the act of murder, since most killers in slasher films are sexually repressed themselves (Freeland 187). Only through penetration and murder can these men find sexual freedom.
The women in slasher films are often objectified and shown as nothing more than sex objects. For example, in the Friday the 13^th series, many of the women are seen half clothed and hyper-sexualized, taking away the audience’s ability to sympathize with them because they are seen as less valuable. The plot of the films takes place at a summer camp, which makes the women easy targets to be picked off by the killer, who wants revenge after drowning as a boy because the camp counselors were not watching him (Friday the 13^th). The full rage of the murderer comes out most strongly in the cases of the females because of the inadequacy he feels as a male (Clover 32). Classic slasher films usually show a direct cause and effect link between sex and death, with murder serving as a symbolic punishment for any kind of immoral intercourse. “Killing those who seek or engage in unauthorized sex amounts to a generic imperative of the slasher film��? (Clover 34). The symbolism illustrates a kind of unconscious moral lesson to the viewer that if he or she strays from the path of good behavior, the result could be death.