Can We Kill the Final Girl Trope Already?
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- Опубліковано 31 жов 2021
- Listen, we've all heard about the final girl. I was into the idea too, but I think we got the idea already! Plus, does anyone else know that they would probably be the first person to d1e in a horror movie anyway? Like I would not survive. So what about the girl that d1es first in the horror movie? Justice for the mean bimbo character! Or the butch character! Or anyone that's not the final girl! Also this video took forever to edit and I was hoping to have it uploaded before actual Halloween day, but you know how it goes. Hope you like it!
the tomboy figure, gender expression, and the media that portrays them | Shanspeare
• the tomboy figure, gen...
Articles
Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film | Carol J. Clover
users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/parano...
The "Final Girl," a key part of every great slasher movie by Alex Abad-Santos
www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015...
In Defense Of Lady-Terrorizing Horror Movies by Anna North
jezebel.com/in-defense-of-lad...
Blood, Bodies and Binaries: Tr@ns Women in Horror
fourteeneastmag.com/index.php/...
A Love Letter to the Girls Who D1e First in Horror Films
electricliterature.com/a-love...
The History and Transformation of the Final Girl
filmschoolrejects.com/final-g...
The "Final Girl," a key part of every great slasher movie, explained
www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015...
Proof These (Infuriating) Horror Movie Tropes Are Changing
www.refinery29.com/en-us/2017...
A Timeline of Tr@nsgender Horror
aninjusticemag.com/a-timeline...
Music: www.purple-planet.com - Фільми й анімація
"Is being stupid and mean and hot a crime?" If so, lock me up 🤣
SO TRUE BESTIE
the way you posted this gem and with such stunning timing too - i’m in the process of producing a short horror comedy about a girl who always dies first and is getting absolutely tired of it. our minds, mandeep, OUR MINDS💗
OMG wait that sounds incredible actually I can't wait to see it 🥺💞 And YES literally our minds...we are so powerful 👩❤️💋👩
Omggg I loved the concept, what is the name of the short?
Please don't kill me mr ghost face, I wanna be in the sequel!
and then she wasn't 😔💔
I like that you pointed out that final girls are indeed feminine, something i've never really thought about, cause they've always be in my mind assossiated with tom boys but the way this video framed it made me look at it differently! really greay analysis
Yeah I used to think the same way! I feel like that's just how most media sets it up for us too tbh 🤔
Clover makes some very interesting observations about slasher films and horror in general but her analysis of them can get very bizarre and is mostly completely unfounded, it's a bit disappointing her take on the genre is one of the few popular ones. It's really refreshing to hear a different take on the stuff she talks about.
Yeah reading her writing for the first time after hearing so much about her ideas was pretty disappointing honestly! I feel like popular culture kind of ran with some her ideas without really digging deeper into them (probably another reason she refuses to talk about the final girl in interviews honestly 💀) But anyway thank you! I'm glad you liked this video 🥰💖
Stunning essay as aways!! I never understood why final girls were ever considered tomboys because, honestly, they literally look like every female protagonist in a christian romance movie I've ever laid my eyes on, lmao
I'm really glad you paid particular attention to intersex and trans people, too. Everyone else identifies with slasher villains because of some novelty, quirky reason. I had to identify with them because they're the only ones who are unabashedly queer on the screen :,^D funny how being the Bad Person TM frees you to "act out" the parts of you that everyone else deems unwanted.
Thank you for bringing up the Butch archetype in horror media :’) someday I hope there’s a good horror movie where we live lmaoo amazing video as always!
literally there better be a good horror movie with butch characters that live until the end soon or i'm gonna riot 💆🏽♀️
I'm a gnc lesbian, and I really appreciate you pointing out how any women who are too butch/masc/gnc are punished for it because I don't think it's discussed enough. I agree with you that they're punished because they disrupt the status quo, but I also wonder how much of it is a holdover from the Hays Code, at least in American movies.
Love your videos and all your hot takes! Keep up the amazing work! If you get the chance, I recommend Cabin in the Woods. It's a great satire of horror tropes imo, and I think it does a pretty interesting deconstruction of the final girl trope
im interested in reading more about the "final girl" trope. personally when watching horror, i prefer the relief that comes with an ending where someone makes it out alive, but its definitely led to a lot of formulaic movies. if you have more thoughts about "the descent" id love to hear them! i watched it for the first time not long ago
yeah if i ever come across anything more interesting i'll def share!
"is being stupid mean and hot such a crime?" put it on my tombstone
I was dying during the freud section! great video mandeep!
i love any chance to laugh and dance on freud's grave ❤
Brb, penning my horror movie called "The Bitch and The Slut". They both survive and then they get married. (I would 100% die first in a horror movie. and that would be mostly because I cannot be bothered to do things like run and/or fight.)
I haven't looked into whether or not there's been anything written about it, but the Final Girl is very ~not like other girls~ in a way that I think a lot of us were taught to emulate as teens. Maybe it's different now for the youths, but I know that being a teenage in the early 00s, the Final Girl very much met the criteria of what I'd learned to think of as cool. Feminine, but didn't try. Hot, but doesn't seem to know it (or the movie pretends that she isn't). Friendly to people, but not a pushover. Like you said, it's this particular ideal of femininity that's always a tightrope between too much and not enough.
Omg not even kidding I am WAITING for the perfect b*tch x bimbo horror romcomedy movie 😩💖 Also yeah I think you're right, the Final Girl and the "Not Like Other Girls" girlies are always trying to embody this very specific brand of femininity that just is not attainable
We can’t kill that trope because girls work well as main characters in horror movies
Loooove your video 💖 !!! Really made me look at the final girl in a new way and they movie you mentioned the descents wow it seems even better with the original ending and completely leaves you with a different feeling at the end of the movie !!!
I also think those weapon choices besides being graphic and do lots of damage without killing fast are so household they add that extra layer of "scary" like, "did you know a drill could do THAT?" and they are easy weapons that gives the victim a chance to escape, sometimes with a lovely gruesome wound to be dealing with for the rest of the film(or as long as they live)
thank you tiffany for recommending this channel! i LOVE it so far, also i love supporting fellow desi people especially in the commentary space
Mandeep you've given us another banger once again! i love that you brought up the annoying "phallic" connection to chainsaws and weapons because that never sat right with me
it's the same thing when people are like "pillars that hold up buildings are phallic" but it's like what else would hold up buildings??? 😭 it's just a shape!
The descent and the multiple endings. The complexity of her "friend" having a heavily implied affair then the immediately loses her husband and daughter in a car accident. Oh yeah then lost underground wtf
I always learn sooo much with your videos.
Cool to see a more modern interpretation on these classic tropes, I feel like tropes and how they relate to queerness is not talked about enough and its cool to see someone talking about it in a critical way, rather than just brushing it off as a product of the time.
oh thank you! this is so nice to read :^) ❤
Mandeep u literally inspired a script idea....thank u ❤
OMG YES IM SO EXCITED ❤💖❤💖
OMFG I LOVE YOUR CHANNEL YOU'RE SO DAMN UNDERRATED WTF-
your voice is so soothing and this video was super interesting horror is my fave genre ^-^
thank you! im glad you like it :^)
Great video (as always & obviously ). i really the concept of a "masc chick". Stellar work, thanks for all,
thank you! 💖
It's like the took the criticism as a must have trope guideline to write a horror story, like Hero of A Thousand faces.
Your videos are so freaking good
thank you omg 🤧💖💖
Actually about the axe, according to author Valerie Estelle Frankel in her Heroine's Journey book, the axe (especially the Labrys axe) is a yonic symbol (shaped like a cocoon, another feminine symbol) and is associated with the harvest goddess Cybele.
oh wow so further reinforcing that anything can mean anything 💆🏽♀️
great video!! ngl was cheering in my mind with the Freud portion of the video, I'm sick and tired of freudian readings, everything is phallic, like no, it's not...that's a knife dont worry about it
Good video! The only thing I take exception to is the assertion that Ellen Ripley was in her underwear for “most of the movie,” when she was only in her undies for about 5 minutes. It definitely (and unnecessarily) served to reinforce her femininity, though.
Amazing video once again!
thank you 🥰
i just happened to stumble across ur channel and i loveeeee ur vids but also ure very funny, keep up the good content
awww thank you so much! i will try 😌💞
I've always found it so annoying when people likened murder in horror to sexuality wrt the "phallic weapon" in horror analysis. like okay maybe consider *YOURE* the one making it all about the men??
Anyways, great video! on top of your analysis of what makes an ideal final girl, it made me think of your other video about romanticizing women's suffering in media. Audiences *want* to see the final girl suffer before she triumphs, which yeah makes the win feel earned but it's interesting that even if the narrative deems them more "deserving" of life than their less acceptably feminine counterparts, they still must be bloodied and bruised to be an acceptable final girl. There is just so much weirdness with this trope coming from all angles
thank this gave me my final point on my research essay due in 2 days
Over here cuz of Tiffany Ferg's small channel shout out, love this video!
me: almost never watches horror movies
also me: time to watch 9823 different analyses of them!
"look how mousy and virginal and brunette she is" took me out
I think in some cases I could see an argument that the weapon of choice is a phallic symbol in certain movies, but usually you'll see the weirdest shit called that. Gives me reylo flashbacks for sure.
i discovered this video now but this is very good and interesting insight 💜
The freudian phallic weapon shit always annoyed me, because pointy weapons efficiently cause bloody mess.
What would even be a yonic weapon a rock to smash a head or like piano wire or is that phallic. Freud had issues
the only thing i could thing of was maybe xena's chakhram? but even then it's like the blade is what's deadly, not the opening 😭
@@cherrybepsi now I'm thinking about wonder woman's origins and the lasso rope
@@Aishyo Omg a lasso! Maybe if you choked someone with it 🤔 Also yea wonder woman's bdsm dominatrix origins lmaooo
a guillotine lmao
Tatum wasn’t the first girl to die in SCREAM. It was Casey Becker. From the opening scene
I don't recall sorry
@@cherrybepsiDon't sweat it, they are still two sides of the same coin. Casey was even listed in call to a new girl as the dumb blonde with the big breast that gets...you know what by ghostface. The opening is not to really be considered as part of the rest of the narrative.
Happy diwali in advance lmao 💖
thank you, you too! 💖
Your editing on freud… it’s what he deserves
👀 you're right. I see where youre going with this.
Rlly excellent vid
A super well done video!!! Can I ask what movies all the characters are from at 5:28? I knew lex from avp in the bottom right
Yes! That's Sunita Mani and Sarita Choudhury from Evil Eye in the top left, Naomie Harris in 28 Days Later in the top right, and ofc Sanaa Lathan as Alexa from AvP on bottom right. Dominique Jackson in the bottom left is from Pose, which is not a horror movie, but I put her in just cuz I like her 😋
Kinda figured Tatum was a victim of the Vasquez/strong woman and Drew was the first victim pushed because “how dare she reject a guy”, but damn this was stuff I never noticed. Great video.
revolutionary girl utena made a cameo but you fail to mention the equal masterpiece movie The Final Girls smh 🙄💅💅 no but great video i loved it!
what movie or show is the very first clip from?
the only truly phallic knife ive seen in a slasher is in knife+heart but thats because its quite literally a switchblade in a dildo
okay decided im going to binge all of your content and then declare my college major in media analysis (jk) (kinda)
Kill the final girl troupe... and let the final GAY troupe take life.
YEA FREUD IS FULL OF S***!!! Subscribed just for that already
I hate this trope. And i think it goes beyond horror movies.
I think , aside from the director's sexual/moral fantasy , there is a more global psychological reason why female are always the last one standing.
Every show tries to be dary , provocative and also progressive but never adress the way we share different feeling depending on the sex of the characters which makes the former attempts very hypocritical and shallow...
Men are cannon fodder , women must survive . Unless it's a villain , people are still reluctant to kill all females . It somehow creates an unease feeling. Same thing with kids. It's like a bad ending .
This is also emphasized when we portray females villains as victims of society / a male villain boss , as if it was sexist or unconceivable for a female to be bad by herself.
The only final girl I’m attached to, is Sydney. The final scream must have Stu come because and him run off and get away, and Sidney living
tbh the only final girl I wanted to see get clipped is Sydney
I'm wondering if you don't have a Patreon anymore ? I was watching your essay on Jennifer's Body and, at the end, when you mention you had one (at min. 24:04), with a Patreon exclusive called "why I hate Stephen King" - and, as a "Stephen King skeptic" myself, I immediately wanted to subscribe to you to watch it. But, when clicking the link, it seems like your Patreon account isn't active anymore...?
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The audio quality is really muffled
Yeah I know right :( let me know if you're able to get me a mic
Omg they’re almost all blonde
yeah but we can just pretend
Tangentially related b/c you cited it w/in the first few minutes, but I consider Cabin in the Woods a guilty pleasure. But tbh it really does irritate me that they merely comedically comment on the cliche horror tropes such as the first girl and the final girl while ultimately indulging in them. The way the characters are set up in the first act is infinitely more interesting than the tropes they're reduced to, so much so that it just feels so dull and lifeless when the characters are forced to enact the rules of horror. Dana had an affair w/ her professor and Jules was pre-med! She's in a committed relationship & wasn't even a real blonde. I really liked that, I thought they were gonna do something with it, but they did not. The half-hearted "see how dumb it is that these potentially interesting & varied characters are reduced to pure ritual" falls flat b/c the archetypes of horror are rote. Like... You're not being groundbreaking or deconstructive by just having boring scenes in your movie we've seen before. I wish we could get a real horror movie that feels actually invested in dissecting the beats and archetypes of the slasher. Particularly as a (futchy) woc, the leads in these movies are almost always white, I feel like approaching the intersection of identity would be cool if we got a lead of color in a movie like these! It could be thought-provoking to interrogate. For instance, (light-skinned) east asian women are fetishized in this infantalized "demure" way that I think parallels the fetishization of the final girl purity. However, would an asian american woc lead be accepted as a quintessential "american girl" final girl ideal when the perception of asians in america are as the perpetual foreigner or invader? I'm only proposing questions and no answers, but I just wish we could get more media that thinks about these things! Or maybe it already exists & i'm just missing out. Anyway, great video, personally i'm a little tired of the final girl obsession. Give our messy first girls some love!
I actually originally had a part where I talked about how disappointing cabin in the woods was as a "self aware" commentary but I ended up cutting cuz it didnt fit well w the rest of the video 💔 But yea I feel you completely! It also felt like they were almost still punishing Jules bc they put the "dumbing" pheromones in her blonde hair dye (rather than her shampoo or something) almost like they're saying "this is what you get for caring so much about your looks, bimbo"
I found this on Tumblr searching up video essays! This is so well edited and the breadth of clips and examples you use are breathtaking. This must’ve taken forever to make. I love so much that you explore how racist and sexist the Final Girl trope is, the trope is so problematic. The moments where you talked about your personal experiences were so well said. It’s so shit that often the depictions of the villains in horror films (and in general) are extremely ableist and transphobic. You speak so amazingly on the subject of the Final Girl. I also love the way you engage and critique academic essays on the topic. You disagree with Carol J. Clover so well and add nuance to it beautifully. Thank you for disagreeing with the phallic weapon argument and calling Freud shit. Also, that’s so cool you pushed back against Clover’s argument that Final Girls are genderless. I've read her before and I really disagree with her. I agree with your great articulation final girls are conventionally attractive but not too feminine or "full of themselves" and meet sexist personality standards of “good girls”. Horror movies really punish “vanity”, self-confidence and being loud or assertive. Overall, I adored this video essay! It’s so engaging to watch. Adore that you mention queer coding of a character. Your voice is also really nice to listen to, and I love how conversational it is. Love that you linked Shanspeare! Your final argument is great. Have subscribed!
Disagree with you in some parts but respect
Boost
"Can we stop doing X?" The answer is always no. People won't stop. The onus ends up being on us to choose what we consume better, rather than to hope that creators choose better.
it's a figure of speech to grab attention babe, dont stress too much
What zombie base ball players
Honestly it’s about time we got a trans main character in a slasher flick
oh huh looks like i hate the horror genre now