The Myth of the Final Girl

One of the first things I’d like to address is the “Final Girl.”  Many critics have dealt with this subject (it seems to be one of the only things anyone has to talk about when it comes to slashers), most of them parrot the same misguided interpretations that were spawned by the likes of Carol Clover and Vera Dika back in the early 1980s, when slashers were first recognized as a genre.

The old criticism works like this:  The Final Girl is virginal.  She possesses matriarchal attributes that conflict with modern, feminist objections to motherhood being a mandatory role for women.  She doesn’t do drugs, doesn’t drink.  She’s basically a church girl and that affords her the power to thwart the killer (or, at least, survive until someone else can help her).  Criticism of the Final Girl has fueled overall criticism of the genre, claiming it is a conservative genre (this misinterpretation was even embraced by Ralph Reed, who once called John Carpenter’s Halloween the greatest film ever made).

I’m not going to go into whether or not these films are conservative.  At least, not today.  When we look at the early wave (1974-1981), it’s very difficult to convince anyone capable of critical thinking that these are across-the-board conservative narratives.  For this first post, I would rather address the conception of the original Final Girls—from Jess (Olivia Hussey), in Black Christmas, to Pam MacDonald (Vicky Dawson), in The Prowler—the last major slasher released in 1981.

The contention that the Final Girl is “pure,” or virginal, does not hold up well when compared to the evidence.  In Black Christmas, arguably the first real slasher, all the women exhibit post-feminist traits—they cuss, they drink, they smoke weed, and they like sex.  The Final Girl, Jess, is actually pregnant and in the process of convincing her boyfriend to go along with her decision to get an abortion.  Now, I’m not a doctor or anything, but I think once a woman is carrying a child in her womb, she’s going to have a tough time convincing anyone she’s a virgin.  Add the abortion to the mix, and you’ve got one extremely hip young woman.  The ink on Roe v. Wade was still wet when Black Christmas was filmed.  What separates Jess from the other girls in her house is, quite simply, she’s a tad more intelligent than the rest of them.

The same can be said for Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), often referred to (erroneously) as the original Final Girl (Halloween).  Laurie isn’t quite as “advanced” as Jess.  She’s still in high school.  Is it a horrible crime that she might still be a virgin at seventeen?  No matter, because nowhere in the film is it suggested that she is a virgin.  While smoking a joint on the way to her babysitting gig (Hello, marijuana! Not exactly the sort of thing a “pure” little girl does!), she reveals to her friend Annie  (Nancy Loomis) that she likes Ben Tramer.  While this may be stated in high school terms (“likes,” verus “lusts after”), the implication is that she wants to get down with Mr. Tramer at the dance and, possibly, after the dance.  She is the Final Girl attributed with “motherly” traits feminist critics find so reprehensible.  Paying careful attention to the film reveals, however, that she is actually the only responsible adult in the film.  This hardly warrants the charge that she may be exhibiting old fashioned mother-like behavior.  Someone in the movie needs to stop Michael Myers.  Even the good Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) requires a signal sent by Laurie (telling the kids to go down the street to a neighbor’s house) before he can try to save the day.  The only criticism I would have of Laurie Strode is that she does require someone to show up with a (useless) gun.  Other than that, I don’t see her as all that different from her friends who end up dead.

Jamie Lee Curtis would go on to help jumpstart the genre by starring in two Canadian-made slashers released in 1980—Prom Night and Terror Train.  In both films, she is a party girl.  Her survival hinges on her intelligence, nothing else.  One aspect of early slasher criticism, however, could apply to her character Alana, from Terror Train.  One of the more moronic theories set forth by Carol Clover is the notion that the Final Girl is masculine.  For evidence, she suggests that all the early Final Girls had masculine names and physical attributes.  The killer, she says, possesses more feminine traits (see Clover’s sex-drenched book, Men, Women, and Chainsaws, for more whacky fantasies designed to reduce the horror genre to nothing more than an ongoing insult to women, perpetrated by repressed filmmakers).  Thus, you have Alana, a women with a man’s haircut and variation on the name Alan, facing off against Kenny Hampson (Derek MacKinnon), the most effeminate villain ever put on screen.  This is, however, one film in the genre.  These attributes are not repeated in other films of the first wave.

Alice (Adrienne King), from the original Friday the 13^th, is a great example of a Final Girl who meets none of the early critic’s expectations.  First of all, Alice is a woman’s name.  The character in the film is actually involved with two of the males at the camp.  When asked if she wants to accompany some of the men to check on the generator, she declines (a “masculine” woman would be all over such a task).  She drinks beer, smokes pot, and plays strip Monopoly.  Words that come to my mind when thinking about a woman like Alice: Fun, adventurous, feminine, intelligent.  Notice how the word “pure” didn’t make my list.  Alice is the first Final Girl to kick the shit out of the killer on her own.  I believe she, more than the Jamie Lee Curtis Final Girls, set the standard for the golden age slashers.

If we accept 1981 as the true end of the golden age, a quick rundown of the Final Girls in the slashers released that year will reveal more similarities with Alice, from Friday the 13^th, than the virginal, old-fashioned girl critics would prefer these women acted like.  The first example comes from My Bloody Valentine.  Sarah (Lori Hallier)—not a very masculine name, oh by the way—juggles two men throughout the film.  She’s sexy and confident and intelligent enough to survive the massacre.  Then there’s Ginny (Amy Steel), from Friday the 13^th part 2 (possibly the best slasher of that year).  The filmmakers make no attempt to portray her as virginal.  She carries on what looks to be a healthy relationship with a man and demonstrates astute awareness of the killer’s psychological foibles when she convinces him that she is his mother.  In The Prowler, the Final Girl works with a police officer she obviously has the hots for (she gets jealous when he dances with another woman).

Of course, there are exceptions to all rules—the folks who made Happy Birthday to Me named their Final Girl Virginia (oh, weren’t they just clever?).  The criticism had already started to creep into our collective consciousness by then, so it makes sense that some filmmakers would adhere to the criticism like sheep, just as the general public continues to do so when discussing these films.  Happy Birthday to Me is an oddball anyway, considering the producers and distributors tried to market the film as a thriller instead of a slasher.  And then there’s the hideous attempt to completely subvert the genre by having a Final Boy instead of a Final Girl (The Burning).  But these films are exceptions, and a look at their box office performances reveals that audiences didn’t buy it.  By taking away the power of the Final Girl (making that character male, or mocking her by playing along with the critics’ misconceptions), these filmmakers pulled the rug from what should be considered a positive, post-feminist genre of horror. 

The Final Girl, ultimately, represents strength and intelligence.  I’ve yet to meet a feminist who would argue that those aren’t desirable traits for any woman to possess.

Photos courtesy of Paramount Studios, Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures (Sony), and A-Film Home Entertainment