I meant they've never been a significant demographic in horror viewers. No, women want to see mystery movies, romance, comedies, drama, and musicals, and that's it. I've done research on this. Women don't make up a significant number of viewers for any genre except romance, comedy, mystery/suspense, drama, and musicals. All the other genres: action, war, horror, westerns, martial arts, sports films, exploitation movies, sci-fi, adventure, etc. have generally never been catered toward women because women do not watch those movies in large numbers enough to justify catering toward them. Women watch romance, comedy, mystery/suspense, drama, and musicals in large numbers and watch other genres in small numbers. Fact.
Show me your research, otherwise it's here-say.
The reason why you, and Hollywood, thinks women don't enjoy seeing horror, action or sci-fi is because women are routinely marginalized in those genres. Aside from horror, those genres usually involve males as the lead characters and the women are usually uninteresting or not important. It's just like how Hollywood doesn't make movies targeting blacks, although the below average Tyler Perry movies usually make well over their money back because he is the only person targeting that group.
I think the topic of this thread is even proof that, if action/western/sci-fi/adventure movies all suddenly starred women as the leads and the men were marginalized or completely useless, the men who love those genres would gradually stop watching them or be extremely hesitant to see one. Of course women aren't going to interested in those genres. It's a total boys club just like romantic comedies and a lot of dramas are reserved for women.
Horror, however, is different because women make up the majority of leading characters in the genre so more and more women are warming up to the genre. If they made a really good horror flick, even one with your standards, but had a female lead who wins in the end and targeted to women I bet that flick would do well. Unlike the recent Jennifer's Body, which totally ignored potential female viewers (as well as sucking hard).
On the other hand, thanks to perceived gender roles, a grown man running for his life or being put in a weak position is distasteful to a general audience. Both men and women have trouble root for a weak male character. American audiences don't like vulnerable male characters. A man is only allowed to cry if his wife or child is murdered. He has to be a tough badass otherwise audiences will hate him (the Goth guy in Joy Ride 2, anyone?)
No, you don't have to care about the victim. Why should I have to care about the victim just because she's female? I watch horror movies for other things: characterization, suspense, shock, psychological motives of the characters, good pacing, directing, and acting... See, this is why I pull the elitist card, you simply do not know good horror. You don't have to openly admit it. You've proven it with your posts.
You're contradicting yourself. What's the point of the filmmaker putting good characterization and suspense in if we don't care about the characters? That's called a bad movie. I've never once heard someone talk about how they loved a movie and
didn't care about the characters. You're making no sense at all!
The way you're coming off as, you just want to see people get hacked up and that's it. You really don't care about any of the stuff you claim to care about. You just want to see the gore, which is fine, but don't lie and act like you're
really all about the characterization and acting. Next thing you'll tell me you watch porno for the sets and camera angles.
Rarely can you have good characters, suspense, pacing and all that good stuff and a bunch of characters you don't care about. Name me one classic horror film, or just one good horror film period where we don't care about
somebody. It doesn't have to be a female. Females just tend to warrant more sympathy from the audience. But look at Frankenstein. He was a horrible misunderstood monster, but we cared about him even though he killed a little girl.
In Halloween we want Laurie to be okay. We care if she gets killed, otherwise what's the point of watching? Carrie is technically the bad guy in Carrie, but we care about her because of how badly the other kids treat her and how horrible her mother is to her. We're worried what's going to happen to Rosemary when she has her baby. Those movies don't work if we don't fear for at least
somebody. Even in the Saw movies where we barely get to know some of the people, you see a person in one of those traps and you want to see them get out (unless the character is set up to be a jerk, in which case we cheer their deaths!)
If we don't care about the main character the movie sucks. Period. Watch The Grudge 3. Great example. The lead girl is a total idiot that gets everybody killed. Who cares if she dies or not? We don't care about her!
You have no grasp or understanding of how movies in general work if you don't understand this. If the audience doesn't care about somebody, ie the main character, they won't care period. Yes, there are some people that just watch horror for the blood or action for the bullets, but they're a small group. You need to care about somebody or it's pointless.
And once again, you've proven my point: you don't know what a horror movie is. Just put a fragile woman in shorts running from a big monster and it's a horror movie?
It makes a horror movie, but I didn't say it makes a good one. If a movie has shootouts and car chases, it's an action movie. But if the action has no meaning or the movie has no substance then it's a bad action movie.
Going back to what this thread was really about before you hijacked it, the point of horror movies is to scare the audience. How do you scare an audience? You show them something scary. Monsters. Giant guys with big knives or a chainsaw. Who're going to be their victims? Everyone, of course. But you will notice men's deaths tend to be faster. Women's deaths tend to be drawn out. Why? Because a woman's death will always weigh higher than man's.
Watch the news. A man goes missing, not that big a news story. Pretty young girl goes missing? National news. Why? Because people fear for women, especially pretty young women, more than men.
That's a fact. You might be apathetic to someone's suffering, but when it comes to horror movies, if your goal is to scare the audience, the best way to hook them is to put a child or young defenseless woman in danger.
A woman running form a monster inspires more fear than a man. Like I said, there are great movies like Jaws or The Thing with all guys, but they're few in comparison. There could be more, but horror is doing just fine with female protagonists.
All you have to do is have a pretty girl running from a monster and it's horror, huh? How about this: all you have to do is have a muscular guy with a gun shooting bad guys and it's action, right?
I already covered this, but you just referenced most of the horror and action movies from the late 70s and 80s.
All you have to do is have soldiers sitting in foxholes, dodging bullets and it's a war movie. And all you need is a ninja with nunchucks and you've got a kung-fu flick. Riiiiiiiiight. You don't know jack. Get off the computer, please.
And according to you, all you need is gore to make a horror movie without caring about any of the characters that get killed.
BTW, I noticed you haven't taken me up on any of my challenges. I'll get off the computer and declare you the king of horror if you can name at least 5 horror films universally accepted as good or classic that has all the stuff like characterization, etc, and in which we don't care about the lead character. Also, if your 5 movies don't involve women in danger as a scare tactic I'll give you extra points.
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jtfriday2000
15 years ago
Show me your research, otherwise it's here-say.
The reason why you, and Hollywood, thinks women don't enjoy seeing horror, action or sci-fi is because women are routinely marginalized in those genres. Aside from horror, those genres usually involve males as the lead characters and the women are usually uninteresting or not important. It's just like how Hollywood doesn't make movies targeting blacks, although the below average Tyler Perry movies usually make well over their money back because he is the only person targeting that group.
Show me your research too, otherwise it's here-say as well.
All right, stop for a minute. Forget we're talking about genre films, but genre fiction in general like horror, war, sports, westerns, adventure, romance, etc. in book form. When was the last time you went to your local Barnes and Noble or Borders and looked at the gender of the authors writing fiction? A huge number of authors writing literary fiction, romance, and poetry are women, while a huge number of genre fiction authors of war, sports, westerns, etc. are men. Why is that? I'll tell you why: women are interested in literary fiction, romance, and poetry in huge numbers, while interested in the other genres in small numbers. Did you know there once was a time when male authors dominated all genres of fiction, even romance? But now women authors dominate romance novels. I urge you to go to your local bookstore and check out the new fiction section. You'll notice the majority of new authors in literary fiction and romance are females, but in the other genres are males. There is nothing whatsoever stopping women from taking over war, sports, and western fiction, like they have romance.
My argument is this: if women really cared about these genres like they care about romance and literary fiction, they would start making a significant contribution to the other genres in the same way they are contributing to poetry and romance. I googled, "women read more than men" and according to a huge variety of credible sources women do read more than men. So what's to stop them from reading genres that have traditionally been targeted at males (like war, sports, and even comic books), and start becoming prominent writers in these genres and changing the way westerns, sports, adventure, and spy fiction is produced.
Getting back to horror films, I just have this question: if, according to you, more women watch horror films than men, why do they show few (if any) horror movies on television channels with a huge female viewership like Lifetime, Oxygen, TNT, or Hallmark Channel? They show more horror on Spike TV in one week than on Oxygen and Lifetime shows in a month combined. So if female horror fans outnumber male horror fans, why don't they show more horror movies on channels with a significant female viewership?
BTW, I noticed you haven't taken me up on any of my challenges. I'll get off the computer and declare you the king of horror if you can name at least 5 horror films universally accepted as good or classic that has all the stuff like characterization, etc, and in which we don't care about the lead character. Also, if your 5 movies don't involve women in danger as a scare tactic I'll give you extra points.
BTW, you made valid points in your other responses. You were definitely correct about characterization and liking a film. I didn't mean to type that characters aren't important, I meant something else but it's too complicated for me to explain. So I'll admit you made good arguments. But I can give you five good horror flicks that don't feature women in danger as a scare tactic:
1. An American Werewolf in London
2. John Carpenter's The Thing
3. Predator
4. Dog Soldiers
5. Frankenstein (1931)
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C.S.Wood
15 years ago
Show me your research too, otherwise it's here-say as well.
As much as I hate to rely on IMDb's ratings, I think they speak for themselves. Although I already established more men vote on here, the women that vote obviously like horror flicks too. Go to a movie theater in a densely populated area and go see a horror movie opening weekend. You're bound to see groups of girls. They'll be the ones getting scared even when there's nothing scary going on.
Although in my observations creature/vampire and ghost films tend play better with women, going back to Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and all those slashers that popped up in the late 90s, young girls were going in droves to those movies.
A huge number of authors writing literary fiction, romance, and poetry are women, while a huge number of genre fiction authors of war, sports, westerns, etc. are men... Did you know there once was a time when male authors dominated all genres of fiction, even romance?
Yes, and once upon a time women weren't allowed to act on stage. All female parts were played by men.
You have to take into account sexism and preconceived notions about men and women alike. Just like you are convinced women don't watch horror movies, lots of men believe women can't write anything outside of romance and in most cases outright refuse to read similar stories written by women.
Not only that, I've also noticed people tend to read this they can relate to, that they can see themselves in. Men tend to write about male leads. Some men are only interested in stories with male leads. Women want to read about women. There hasn't been much of a place for women in genres outside romance, and now horror thanks to "the final girl" character.
But books and movies are two different things. I know far more people that hardly if ever read but watch movies on an almost daily basis.
Getting back to horror films, I just have this question: if, according to you, more women watch horror films than men, why do they show few (if any) horror movies on television channels with a huge female viewership like Lifetime, Oxygen, TNT, or Hallmark Channel? They show more horror on Spike TV in one week than on Oxygen and Lifetime shows in a month combined. So if female horror fans outnumber male horror fans, why don't they show more horror movies on channels with a significant female viewership?
That's easy. They don't know any better. Just like you, a lot of those executives brush off anything targeting women that isn't about romance or domestic violent, but there in lies the hook. Lifetime Channel routinely shows movies about women being abused by men where the woman comes out on top at the end. It's the same basic character arc of a horror film, minus the blood.
Spike shows "guy" movies, which is basically anything that isn't romance or straight drama. But here's a question I meant to ask before.
It's a widely held belief women love romantic comedies and men don't. Then why have there been so many such films where a nerdy or otherwise unattractive guy gets an insanely hot girl and virtually no movies where an unattractive woman gets the guy of her dreams? I'll tell you why. Because women aren't really allowed to write or direct their own movies.
Just like you said, women dominate romance novels. But men still dominate the directing, producing, and much of the writing of romance films. They have even coined the new "bromance" genre with films like I Love You Man so now even guys can watch a romantic comedy without thinking they're watching a romantic comedy.
Men dominate movie making. It's that simple. Look at Catherine Bigelow. She's been considerably good, having directed horror, sci-fi and action. But there are huge gaps in between the years her movies were made. I didn't like Twilight, but the first one was a big hit and directed by a woman. So of course, they hired male directors to do the next two sequels. Mimi Leder did two action movies back to back, Deep Impact being a huge hit. And now? She's directing TV episodes.
There are just too many men doing genre pictures for a woman to have a decent chance.
1. An American Werewolf in London
2. John Carpenter's The Thing
3. Predator
4. Dog Soldiers
5. Frankenstein (1931)
I don't think I can give you Predator and Frankenstein. Although the Predator doesn't chase after her, there's at least one moment where it appears the Predator will kill her because, at that point, we don't know he only kills people with weapons.
In Frankenstein, the death of the little girl is probably the most memorable thing about the movie second only to "It's Alive!". There's a reason why it was a little girl and not a little boy. Granted, Frank doesn't chase her, but up to that point he has been very violent and attacking people. Then he happens upon the girl and the audience's first instinct is to fear for her. But then Frank is nice to her. We are relieved. Then he throws her in river. She drowns. The town comes after him because of it. They would still have if it were a boy, but like I said, girl's deaths are seen as more tragic.
But the fact that you had to reach back to a 1931 movie is telling. Predator, The Thing and AAWIL were all 80s movies. Dog Soldiers is the only decent modern example and it wasn't an American production.
And it's been a while since I've seen AAWIL, but isn't there a few scenes where the werewolf chases and kills a woman? I think she was with a guy that also was killed? Plus don't the cops shoot the werewolf when it looks like it might attack Jenny Agutter's character? I'm gonna have to re-watch that now.
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jtfriday2000
15 years ago
You have to take into account sexism and preconceived notions about men and women alike. Just like you are convinced women don't watch horror movies, lots of men believe women can't write anything outside of romance and in most cases outright refuse to read similar stories written by women.
Not only that, I've also noticed people tend to read this they can relate to, that they can see themselves in. Men tend to write about male leads. Some men are only interested in stories with male leads. Women want to read about women. There hasn't been much of a place for women in genres outside romance, and now horror thanks to "the final girl" character.
But books and movies are two different things. I know far more people that hardly if ever read but watch movies on an almost daily basis.
Still using the sexist argument, eh? You still haven't explained why women authors have taken over genres traditionally dominated by males (romance and literary fiction) but not taken over other genres (war, sports, adventure, western, etc.).
You also say "I've also noticed people tend to read this they can relate to, that they can see themselves in". Are you saying women cannot relate to war stories, sport stories, spy stories, and westerns? I think otherwise; I can write stories of all those genres with females based of real people.
Spy stories: I could write about a character based off Krystyna Skarbek. War: I could write about a character based off Lyudmila Pavlichenko. Western: I could base a character off Laura Bullion. Sports: I could write about a character based off Bessie Coleman.
By implying that women cannot relate to these genres you're implying that women haven't made significant contributions in thing like sports, secret agent work, the military, and during the Old American West, which is not true. You're actually being more sexist than me, a guy who is anything but a feminist. Women have tons of sources to relate to and write upon. It's just that they lack the interest to write and read them in large numbers.
It doesn't matter if it's in film or in print form. Both are an entertainment media that tell stories. To blow off my reasoning simply because they are different mediums is preposterous.
That's easy. They don't know any better. Just like you, a lot of those executives brush off anything targeting women that isn't about romance or domestic violent, but there in lies the hook. Lifetime Channel routinely shows movies about women being abused by men where the woman comes out on top at the end. It's the same basic character arc of a horror film, minus the blood.
They don't know any better? You know more than they do? Did you type this with a straight face? If someone wants to know what types of movies appeal to women, who do you think they are going to ask? Are they going to ask a group of highly-paid executives with millions of dollars of research on what women like to watch at their disposal, or are they going to ask some guy who works at a gov't-run video store? Get real. They pay millions of dollars to gather research on this info. You sit behind a desk and count how many people rent movies. Who do you think has done more thorough research here?
It's a widely held belief women love romantic comedies and men don't. Then why have there been so many such films where a nerdy or otherwise unattractive guy gets an insanely hot girl and virtually no movies where an unattractive woman gets the guy of her dreams? I'll tell you why. Because women aren't really allowed to write or direct their own movies.
Just one of the Guys is a movie where an unattractive woman gets the guy of her dreams. I don't consider Drew Barrymore attractive, so I'd say all her movies are where an unattractive woman gets the man of her dreams. I'd say the same for Helen Hunt, Candice Bergman, Bette Midler, and many other famous actresses I consider unattractive or average-looking. They all star as normal women who get the man of their dreams. There are tons of movies like that. The difference is when the roles are reversed, and the guy is trying to get the girl of his dreams, the directors emphasize the guy's nerdiness and the chick's hotness. Sometimes it seems way too forced. They try so hard to make the dude look like the biggest loser in the world while making the chick look like the hottest thing on the planet. When the roles are reversed they tone that stuff down because it's not nice to emphasize the woman's loserness, and they try to make her look clumsy with good qualities.
I don't think I can give you Predator and Frankenstein. Although the Predator doesn't chase after her, there's at least one moment where it appears the Predator will kill her because, at that point, we don't know he only kills people with weapons.
In Frankenstein, the death of the little girl is probably the most memorable thing about the movie second only to "It's Alive!". There's a reason why it was a little girl and not a little boy. Granted, Frank doesn't chase her, but up to that point he has been very violent and attacking people. Then he happens upon the girl and the audience's first instinct is to fear for her. But then Frank is nice to her. We are relieved. Then he throws her in river. She drowns. The town comes after him because of it. They would still have if it were a boy, but like I said, girl's deaths are seen as more tragic.
But the fact that you had to reach back to a 1931 movie is telling. Predator, The Thing and AAWIL were all 80s movies. Dog Soldiers is the only decent modern example and it wasn't an American production.
And it's been a while since I've seen AAWIL, but isn't there a few scenes where the werewolf chases and kills a woman? I think she was with a guy that also was killed? Plus don't the cops shoot the werewolf when it looks like it might attack Jenny Agutter's character? I'm gonna have to re-watch that now.
I knew you were gonna be picky. I knew it. I knew it. When I was typing down my list of 5 I said, "This chode's gonna give some excuse why he can't use some of them just so he can continue arguing". And sure enough you did not disappoint. You chose tiny little nitpicks to refute my claims. Predator and Frankenstein were both horror movies that didn't feature women being chased by a monster throughout. AAWIL featured a scene with a woman with her man getting attacked. That scene was what, less than 2 minutes. So was Jenny's ending scene.
Your argument was that there aren't any decent horror flicks where they don't feature women running from a monster throughout. You asked me to name 5. I did. None of those flicks predominated with scenes of women being scared. Even the Frankenstein child scene wasn't long. All the 5 flicks I put down featured good characterization, great directing, pacing, and story, horror, suspense, and shock, and most featured a bit of gore. All 5 are good or classic horror films that do not feature women being scared as a driving motivator. They predominately feature men being scared, and they are still considered great contributions to horror. This kicks your theory that men being chased=not scary, women being chased=scary in the balls.
Man up and quit bitching about little nitpicks.
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