Televisual Horror’s Female Uprising
By Rita Kucinskaite
University of Amsterdam MA Thesis – Media Studies
Television and Cross-Media Culture Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Toni Pape
Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Chapter 1: Defining the Horror Genre 6
Televisual Horror in Genre-Hybrids 7
Horror Tropes 10
Recent Transformations in the Horror Genre 13
Chapter 2: The Current Implications of Gender Roles
American Horror Story 16
When Reality Kicks In: Cult’s Difference from the Rest of Anthology Series 17 Whom and What Cult Negotiates as Monstrous? 19 Shifting the Archaic Mother Trope on to the Father 22 Paranoia is No Longer Her Problem: Shifting Female Paranoia Trope on to Men 24 The Female Rage: The Implications of Toxic Masculinity and Divisiveness 27
Chapter 3: Realizing Normality Was Monstrous the Whole Time
The Handmaid’s Tale 30
“The Tranquilizing Drug of Gradualism.” Sexism as a Norm 31
The Banality of Evil: Sexism 34
Women Forced to Fit Tropes in a Patriarchy 36 Pitting Women Against Each Other 42 Controlling the Women Under the Pretence of Economics 44
Chapter 4: Breaking out of The Perpetual Gender Roles
Westworld 49
Going Back to the Wild West: American Identity and Traditional Gender Roles 50 Narratives and Loops of Traditional Gender Tropes 53 Undermining and Inverting Traditional Gender Tropes 58 What Happens When Women Break Out of Their Roles 61
Conclusion 67
Bibliography 71
Introduction
In the current decade, television has seen an increase in critically acclaimed dramas. Advancements in technology resulted in new production, distribution, and consumption opportunities. Eventually, high-production values have removed the stigma about accomplished A-list Hollywood actors appearing on television, and many big-name celebrities are making a move to TV. Furthermore, mass audience’s greater interest in serialized television products pushed content creators to pay increased attention to TV series narratives and their complexity (Iftene 5). Storylines are more convoluted and less predictable, prompting the audience to look for clues, hints, and play the guessing game after every episode while anxiously waiting for the next one. Televisual horror especially is experiencing a Golden Age (Griffin 87), possibly even surpassing cinema horror because of a more intimate and subjective experience it offers (88). According to television curator David Bushman, audiences can explore TV series’ characters and narratives in greater depth than they can in a movie (Young 67). He noticed that TV viewers are more interested in such programs as American Horror Story which shows the more troubling aspects of society and is politically relevant.
In the last few years, and especially after the 2016 United States Presidential Election, there was a new wave of feminist movements in the United States including the enormous 2017 Women’s March and the #MeToo movement. Women’s rights have become a pivotal topic not only in the national conversation but also in the discussion surrounding television and cinema. In this thesis, I will explore what contemporary televisual horror reveals about the anxieties surrounding the US government and culture in connection to women’s rights. How has horror, as a potentially misogynist genre, been reappropriated by feminism? How do some of the television dramas with horror elements treat such topics as reproductive rights and sexual assaults, and how do the horror elements of these shows specifically contribute to the treatment of these issues? How do these television series reflect on women’s portrayal in horror in the past, and how is their portrayal different? How
does the contemporary televisual horror renegotiate what the source of horror is, who are the victims and who is monstrous?
The horror genre has often been accused of misogyny by academics. Barbra Creed even coined the “monstrous-feminine“ horror trope which according to her portrays women and their bodies exceptionality as monsters (King 558). Even if the woman’s body is not the source of horror and fear, then it is heavily sexualized (Creed 9). Thus, it is exceedingly interesting to analyze the genre in contemporary social climate and observe how the tropes are being renegotiated. After the Harvey Weinstein scandal in 2017, there was an increase in requests for more women in the top deciding positions in Hollywood. Therefore, perhaps it is already possible to observe some televisual horror examples from a contemporary female’s point of view. Series like The Handmaid’s Tale (2017) and the seventh season of American
Horror Story, Cult (2017) could already be examples of what is frightening from a
woman’s viewpoint. Cult is tackling urgent issues like the extremist views and the increased divisiveness that arose as a direct result of the recent 2016 American Presidential Election and Trumpism. On the other hand, The Handmaid’s Tale addresses America’s past that is not as recent as the 2016 Presidential Election. The show portrays a dystopian US future while addressing its post-second-wave-feminism past through flashbacks. Finally, Westworld (2016) takes on the history of how American identity, values, and culture was constructed and shaped since the beginning of the Modern Age. The series addresses the most common, often stereotypical and sexist tropes in the media and horror.
I will do a close reading of these three TV shows and observe if they are setting up new dynamics of the horror genre and women’s portrayal in it. In order to do that, I will begin by revisiting genre theory and gender theory. This will allow me to analyze each TV show one by one and distinguish changes they are making or tropes they are reinforcing with aspects like narratives, characters, and cinematography that create the horror. Furthermore, I will interpret what these changes mean in the context of gender roles and relations in contemporary American culture. These transformations are particularly fascinating and noteworthy because they create tension between the horror genre that is often described as misogynistic and feminist reappropriations of this. The tension prompts violent and unapologetic confrontations that are full of powerful emotions. The analysis of these TV series could indicate women’s frustration with the US
government, patriarchal laws enforced on their bodies, misogynistic stereotype culture, and lack of action when it comes to sexual harassment and assault. It could also indicate that American women have no more patience for all of it.
Chapter 1: Defining the Horror Genre
There are a lot of grey areas and overlap between what constitutes a horror movie and a scary thriller, or suspense drama, or a movie of any other genre. A thriller can also be horrifying, and a horror movie can thrill. In this chapter, I will revisit different aspects that define horror genre. In addition, I will address how the rise of narrative complexity in television and genre-hybrids relates to horror. Making this connection will allow me to analyze genre-hybrid television series that do not fall under the pure-horror definition but have a lot of horror elements in them. Furthermore, I will bring up horror genre tropes, especially the problematic tropes concerning gender stereotypes. Acknowledging the tropes that existed in American horror gives television series an opportunity to indicate how the tropes have contributed to American society, and how those television shows are transforming and renegotiating horror tropes in contemporary televisual horror. Re-appropriation and uprising against conventional horror can indicate that there is a shift in the mindset of American culture.
The horror film has been consistently the most popular Hollywood genre among regular American movie-goers in terms of fan engagement (Wood 29). At the same time, movie-goers that were not obsessed with the genre would not go to horror movies at all. Horror has been the most dismissed of Hollywood genres, considered by the majority of critics to be the lowest of the low (Wood 30, Tudor 444). Many expressed disdain for those who enjoyed watching these horrible films which evoke such unpleasant emotions as fear, threat, and disgust. Noël Carroll notably paid close critical attention to this paradox (Carroll 1990) as well as to the definition of horror genre itself which is still referred to by many horror genre scholars to this day.
When defining the genre, Noël Carroll argued that Horror derives its name from the emotional state and response it intends to evoke – horror, threat, and disgust (Carroll 338). According to him, ideally, audience’s emotive reactions of fear run parallel to emotions of the characters in the movie (Carroll 52). Thus, Carroll insists that a particular sort of monster or a monstrous entity is a necessity in horror
movies (Carroll 52, 1987, Carroll 67, 1995). Both audience and the characters regard the monster as abnormal and a “violation of nature“ (Carroll 53). Gary Taylor expanded on Carroll’s defining feature of horror films – the monster – by arguing that even a physical human can be a monstrous being if he lacks necessary human traits like compassion and therefore confuses the distinction between human and non-human (Taylor 28). The mixing of categories makes something monstrous. Species-identification is a crucial biological survival skill (ibid.) and not being able to recognize what we encountered is perplexing. Furthermore, based on Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection, the monster which violates natural laws evokes fear because it does not respect borders, positions, rules (Kristeva 4) and it disrupts identity, system, and order. Through the use of monsters, horror violates natural laws and “violates our assumption that we live in a predictable, routinized world by demonstrating that we live in a minefield“ (Pinedo 21). Monsters throw our assumptions of normality into disarray and make us consider how many unpredictabilities there are in our lives. Most horror from the past can be described with Robin Wood’s simple formula for the horror film: “normality is threatened by the Monster“ (Wood 31) and historically and culturally in America’s context “normality“ is defined by gendered, sexual, political, racial and economic terms and the monster is linked to fears of Otherness (Subramanian 110).
Televisual Horror in Genre-Hybrids
There has been a rise in interest in horror genre within American society, and televisual horror especially is experiencing a Golden Age (Griffin 87). “Horror has a distinct relationship to television programming“ (Subramanian 112). Considering the serial format of the TV shows and television’s place in our personal spaces and homes, televisual horror has a special impact on its audience. For a long time television was considered an inferior medium to film and cinema (McCabe and Akass 39) and the horror genre, which is really a sound film genre, was better served by the film medium because of a higher production value it could provide, especially sound quality (Carrol 342). “Horror narrative’s reliance on spectacular sensation might appear to be eminently more suited to the immersive cinema experience, whose overwhelming visual and aural possibilities may be unfavorably contrasted with even the most sophisticated domestic small screen” (Griffin 88). In
simplistic terms, horror relies on frightening sounds and sights to terrify the audience. Thus, cinema’s huge screen and better sound quality seem better fitting for a horror movie than a much smaller and less impressive TV set at home. However, American television production values and aesthetic worth have improved dramatically, and new digital technologies have increased television sound quality and video resolution significantly which lead to more cinematic aesthetics (McCabe and Akass 15). These changes have coincided with the rise of narrative complexity in television drama (Mittel 30). Increased engagement with televisual horror correlates with a rise in television series narrative complexity. The audience wants to delve deeper into issues that concern contemporary society and the superficial “monster of the week“ format is not enough to address nuanced issues. Therefore, a lot of television horror narratives introduce aspects of drama and other genres to maintain audience’s interest throughout many episodes. These television series cannot be described as pure horror anymore and instead they are genre-hybrids. In “the current horror cycle of American television,“ shows such as
The Walking Dead, The Vampire Diaries, and American Horror Story “combine quality
television aesthetics with the narrative and visual excesses of both melodrama and horror“ (Subramanian 112-113). These shows have complex relationships and character developments unfolding in an apocalyptic zombie-infested world or a murderous haunted house. Thus there are a number of successful shows like
Westworld and The Handmaids Tale which are not horror TV series but rather a
genre-hybrids with horror elements and complex narratives that allow these shows to explore anxieties of the contemporary American society.
Narrative complexity showed the possibilities of TV series and gave the medium legitimacy with the academy and in cultural terms (Bell 416). When Twin
Peaks first aired in 1990, it was proclaimed to be a groundbreaking television series
that changed television forever with its multi-layered, complex narrative and a horror, melodrama and detective genre-hybrid. Such programs as Twin Peaks require a very high level of engagement, and their storytelling can be more complex than that of movies. Television drama’s complex narrative sets it apart from the film, and according to Mittell, it is arguably more pleasurable to follow (Mittell 2006). In recent years, various television drama series with hybrid-genres, like The Walking
such contemporary television productions has sparked increased attention to the TV series narratives and advantages that televisual horror can offer (Iftene 5).
“Televisual horror offers a more intimate, perhaps even subjective experience, playing to the strengths of a genre which frequently emphasises, even capitalises upon, its spectator’s homely domestic setting and associated imaginary fears. [...] T.V. horror can be seen to channel the genre right into the heart of the home, by playing on the fears, dreams and nightmares that haunt those that inhabit the domestic sphere. (Griffin 88)”
TV horror has the potential to affect the viewer on a more personal level because it links itself to the viewer’s home. Furthermore, in cinema a film offers a contained experience and provides closure (Pinedo 27). In contrast, television series’ serial format has a capacity for a weightier, more in-depth and more richly textured storytelling. At the same time, serial format creates an audience with a more significant history of viewing a particular show and insider knowledge. Insider knowledge to a degree rewards the audience for its engagement by allowing the viewers to figure out what to expect and have a sense of security. Thus TV viewers specifically have a “fascination with the stuff of nightmares“ (Young 67). Horror fans can indulge their love for horror by spending more time viewing and delving into complexities of a serialized TV horror show. Appropriately, domestic viewing provoked horror’s rebirth (Conrich 46). This is due to the fact that horror is a genre which more than others deconstructs and engages our fears about social, economic, ecological, political and personal issues and episodic structure and domestic viewing offers the viewer more control and the opportunity for in-depth engagement with the show (Forsyth 3). Television shows were able to develop more complex narratives that can explore complicated concepts in depth because of recent television viewing practices like binge-watching, rewatching old episodes, and investigating every detail. Horror involves a vast amount of speculation, trying to figure out and theorizing what is going to happen next (Carroll 2015). Thus viewers can engage with content about issues they care about, such as women’s rights, more in-depth when it comes to television series. Furthermore, televisual horror negotiates those issues in the home of the viewer relating the issues to the viewer’s
personal fears and struggles. That makes the issues appear to be more “close to home” and inhabit viewers’ domestic spheres (Griffin 88). In her discussion of Gothic horror, a subform of horror, Keetley writes:
“Televisual Gothic particularly focuses on home and family. The ‘threatened domestic spaces and traumatized family are pivotal in the specific identity of Gothic television,’ especially in the United States. The uncanny domestic spaces and imprisoned, threatened families of the Gothic are heightened by television’s unique place in the home. For viewers of television Gothic, then, the terrors are multiplied – their own home, their own family, is reflected back to them from the screen, trapping them in an uncanny house of mirrors. (Keetley 91)”
This means that TV horror and its subforms intimately relate to families and households. Thus, Americans are becoming more engaged with televisual horror as their safety, financial stability, and social status indirectly come into question. In the comfort of their home, citizens can confront their anxieties and get a thrill from it. The mediation of horror has become ever more present in post-9/11 America because citizens’ concerns about their safety and invasive surveillance increased (Conrich 58).
Horror Tropes
Couldry describes media as a distorting mirror of the social (Couldry 2012). It does not merely reflect the actual state of a given country’s politics. Instead, media’s depiction negotiates the social and can even influence it. For example, when numerous television shows are depicting relatable LGBTQ characters with multilayered personalities, they become normalized in society, and audiences grow more accepting and tolerant towards the LGBTQ community (Searcy 3). Horror, in particular, derives from and contributes to what Jervis describes as the ‘cultural imaginary’ (Jervis 13, Griffin 89). It has been acknowledged that the horror genre often attempts to express repressed feelings and emotions applicable to the shared social mood at the time (Carrol 17). Freudian theses, such as “the return of
repressed“ and “the uncanny“ (Freud 1955) are often used when analyzing and explaining the Horror film (Wood 32, Tudor 443). Something that is uncanny is familiar and extremely odd at the same time. According to Robin Wood, we project our repressed thoughts on to the Other in the figure of the Monster (Wood 27). The Other within American culture can be a woman, the proletariat, other cultures, different ethnic groups within the culture, alternative ideologies or political systems, deviations from ideological sexual norms, children, or simply other people (27-28). This way, monster narratives can allow society to safely address the anxieties of its time and help us overcome our subconscious fears and culturally repressed feelings (Levina 1, 4). The horror genre in America is frequently claimed to articulate social circumstances and concerns of a particular time in the country’s history (Tudor 458, Bayles 87). For example, Frankenstein’s (1931) Monster’s proletarian clothing signals warning about retaliation of the working class, especially considering the author Mary Shelley wrote the novel shortly after the abolition of the slave trade (Subramanian 110). Another common example is Alien invasion movies in Hollywood such as The Thing from Another World (1951) which coincided with the beginning of series of U.S. space missions, as well as widespread fears linked to the cold war (Tudor 459).
“It is common to examine 1950s science fiction-horror in terms of an interlinked cluster of themes, including the threat of alien invasion, the risks of nuclear power, and the roles of science and scientists. Typically, it is argued that such films articulate distinctive American fears (xenophobia, anti-communism, anxiety about technocracy and mass society, etc.) apparent in both the public discourse and private lives of the period. (Tudor 458)”
In other words, horror movies are our collective nightmares (Wood 30). Thus, these movies formulate their perception of the politics of gender, sexuality, class, race and globalizing capitalism in American society (Forsyth 3).
The horror genre has always been theorized as the most misogynistic genre by academics (Markovitz 211, Amy King 558). Scary movies are believed to be disproportionately littered with female corpses and women are often punished for their sexuality (Markovitz 211, Williams 5, Taylor 2). “The portrayal of women in
abject terror has been a staple of cinematic suspense“ (Welsh 762). For example, when one thinks of Hitchcock’s classic Psycho, the first image that comes to mind is the main female character’s Marion’s terrified face as she is screaming in the shower. Slasher films especially, have been criticised for depicting graphic eroticized violence against women and having significantly longer victimization scenes of those female characters who engage in sexual behaviors (Welsh 762). These depictions of female victims and their definition in terms of their sexuality reinforce and emphasize certain stereotypes and negative gender role expectations. For example, women who challenge traditional gender roles and are more sexually assertive are constructed as “bad girls“ or “whores.“ They are punished for their immoral character, while female characters whose behavior fall within the traditional gender boundaries or are “androgynous“ are constructed as virginal “good girls“ (Welsh 763). The "good girls" are more likely to survive and become the “final girl“ – a common horror genre trope coined by Carol Clover to describe the woman who fights the monster and survives. Such depictions imply that women are only defined by their sexuality, and if they do not conform to traditional gender roles, they deserve to be punished. Horror tropes are commonly criticized for a problematic depiction of women. The attractive female robot or cyborg in science fiction film, for example, is critiqued for objectifying women. (According to Carroll SF is most often a subcategory of horror (Carroll 1987). The “damsel in distress“ trope of a female victim is likely to reinforce a stereotype of female vulnerability and their need to always be taken care of by men. The “monstrous feminine“ trope described by Barbra Creed illustrates how the female body generates cultural anxieties because it has the ability to reproduce and menstruate (Creed 110). Therefore female bodies relate to Kristeva’s abject theory and women’s exceptionality is portrayed as monstrous (Amy King 558). “The feminine is not a monstrous sign per se; rather, it is constructed as such within a patriarchal discourse that reveals a great deal about male desires and fears but tells us nothing about feminine desire in relation to the horrific” (Creed 63). Meaning that whether a woman is the one who terrifies or the one who is terrified, the horror is constructed based on the male experience of what horrific is. Furthermore, in American culture, gender is rooted in opposing, hierarchical categories (Koistinen 54) and since it is a male-dominated culture, the feminine is constructed as “The Other“ (Wood 27, Tudor 450). Consequently, the horror genre is preoccupied with the sexual difference (Levina 118) and sexual content in general (Wood 28).
Recent Transformations in the Horror Genre
In the last few decades, the monstrous of contemporary horror films have evolved from vampires, werewolves, and mutants to mostly omnipresent ones (Levina 1). The monsters can no longer be described merely as horrendous creatures that the protagonists can face and fight head on. Instead, the omnipresent monsters are diffuse, systematic, and invasive. This is due to the shift in society and new abstract and internalized fears of the twenty-first century about rapidly changing technology, ecological disasters, financial uncertainty, increased mobility and interconnected global environment (ibid.). Horror movies increasingly don’t provide closure or an explanation, and the inconclusiveness causes anxiety (Carrol 342). Such aesthetics feed into society's fears about the unpredictable ways in which our lives can change because of technological advancement, unstable economies, and increasingly erratic politics in America and around the world. “It is safe to say that, over the past decade, we have been terrorized by change“ (Levina 1). With such rapid change, the future of our society and our definition of ourselves becomes unclear and is constantly questioned. Therefore, monsters in horror are more ubiquitous than ever, especially in a post 9/11 American society (Cornich 4, Levina 53): “with recent productions there is a discernible occurrence of panic narratives, a horror cinema of abandonment, helplessness, and futility, a concentration on torture and extreme distress, and an inescapable, omnipotent force“ (Conrich 3). Such tragic and widely reported events like 9/11 contribute to American society’s anxieties and fears of what will happen when the institutions such as government, economy, law, and family which hold the culture together, will break down and create a national crisis (Bayles 87). The omnipresent monster and paranoid horror resonate with American anxieties about the instability in post-9/11 America (Koistinen 72, Tudor 459).
Uncertainty, the inability to trust anyone, a heightened state of vigilance, and the deterioration of self in terms of virtue, became new standards for a majority of post-9/11 horror narratives. America’s questionable and arguably cruel foreign policies and citizens’ increased resentment against the surveillance state correlated with contemporary horror narratives flipping the original monster and human allegory (Levina 74). The authority figures in contemporary horror are not to be trusted. What is more, the “good guy“ deteriorates and becomes monstrous himself,
creating uncertainty of what is good and what is evil. Such narratives resonate with pre-emptive U.S. invasions of other nations and implementation of torturous “enhanced interrogation techniques“ in order to keep everyone safe. The horror genre in contemporary America questions when people cross the line and, under the pretense of the greater good, become the menace they were fighting in the first place. “What we should most fear is not the monstrous Other, but our monstrous selves“ (Levina 77). It is chilling to think about how easily someone can change their entire personality and beliefs to survive in unforeseen and threatening situations. Furthermore, as the human is becoming monstrous, monster or the Other is re-appropriated and can even become the hero. Contemporary globalized American society is concerned with differences, and understanding and de-demonizing the Other (Levina 304). The most common monsters such as vampires and werewolves which used to embody the excluded Other became the leaders of challenging the now monstrous established norms. As an example, in the Twilight movies, the vampires could not change to become humans. As a solution, the main human character who was in love with a vampire transformed herself into a vampire. By showing that the main character willingly transformed into a monster, the Twilight movies challenged society’s boundaries to expand and include both of the characters. The re-appropriation of monsters exposes the problematic aspects of society that have been excused as a norm or as means to achieve the greater good. Thus, normality itself can now become monstrous in horror, because it does not allow for the inclusion of the Other. Wood’s horror film formula “normality threatened by the Monster” requires more complexity and adjustment, as normality can be the reason we are in peril (Wood 31).
These developments in the genre have prepared the emergence of a new kind of horror series in which the conventional horror script is flipped in order to put normality in question and renegotiate the Other. For that reason, horror tropes have to be addressed, scrutinized, and perhaps even changed. Since the genre had a plethora of recurrent tropes portraying women in problematic ways, contemporary televisual horror starts to bring feminine perspective into focus. According to Creed, conventional horror is constructed solely from a male point of view (Creed 63), thus contemporary TV horror that aims to break conventions, increasingly constructs its monsters and fears from a woman’s point of view. An increase in content from a new point of view gives an opportunity to analyze how American culture, society, and
politics are formulated and seen from a female standpoint. It can indicate how women in America feel about current and past events or views. Moreover, perhaps it can even suggest what American society can expect from feminist and women rights movements in the near future.
Chapter 2: The Current Implications of Gender Roles
American Horror Story
Hauntings, spine-chilling mad scientist experiments, demonic possessions, alien abductions, vampires, witches, Frankenstein-like monsters, freaks, cannibalistic hillbillies, even killer clowns, FX’s show American Horror Story has nearly every major American horror trope. The show honors all eras of American horror, from silent horror to B-movie horror flick, to contemporary self-referencing satire horror. From the very first season Murder House the series pushed boundaries and stirred up television horror (Subramanian 109, Amy King 557). The show became a significant addition to the Gothic canon (Keetley 89). It had a gothic horror narrative of a haunted home full of explicit graphic visuals and excess sex and violence meant to frighten and disgust the viewers (Subramanian 109).
However, American Horror Story’s haunted homes and unnerving asylums filled with gory narratives also serve as a commentary on contemporary society and culture in America as well as its dark periods in history. The show uses fictional monsters, re-mixed horror and cultural tropes and historical references to tackle very real and palpable issues facing Americans today (Keetley 90, Iftene 7, Earle 259). There are clear underlying themes about the recession, plummeting housing markets, racism, sexism, homophobia, declining birth rates, lack of access to quality mental health care, lack of gun control and the loss of trust in its government. Still, perhaps the most prominent underlying themes and horror tropes in American
Horror Story have to do with women. Executive producer Tim Minear said that the
show is really concerned with themes of family and female empowerment among social injustice and other issues (Young 67). “While gendered representations always prominently factor in horror genres, American Horror Story consistently frames its horrors as American cultural norms that terrorize women” (Amy King 557). All narratives in the seven seasons mainly center around women’s experience both as victims and as monsters. Many times in the show, female bodies are manipulated in
violent ways to highlight female characters’ sufferings of domesticity, femininity, and aging (Subramanian 115).
In this chapter, I will first distinguish the latest season of American Horror
Story, Cult from the rest of the anthology series. I will consider how the latest season
breaks the norms of the show itself and the classic gothic horror narrative by negotiating real-life events in the U.S. politics as the background for true horror without the use of supernatural or fantasy aspects. Then I will analyze what is negotiated as normality and who or what the show considers monstrous, as there are no supernatural or disturbing creatures in this season. Furthermore, I will assess how Cult treats problematic horror tropes and finally, what the reworked tropes imply about gender relations in contemporary American society. This season clearly references many issues concerning political and social climate in contemporary America, but I will focus on how the show deals with stereotypical horror tropes and what role does gender have in horror aspects of this season. Cult is a female-centric televisual horror, but it treats female characters just as critically as male, showing cult-like behaviors on both sides.
When Reality Kicks In: Cult’s Difference from the Rest of Anthology Series American Presidential candidate Donald Trump on the television screen rallies a crowd and gets applause after confidently declaring he could stand on New York’s Fifth Avenue “and shoot somebody“ and he still would not lose any votes. Other Donald Trumps’, as well as Hillary Clinton’s soundbites, unfold intermingled with footage from various political rallies, speeches, right-wing and left-wing protests that disrupted America during the 2016 Presidential election. Seemingly ordinary suburban housewives Ally Mayfair-Richards and Ivy watch horrified as it all culminates at the Election Night when Donald Trump is announced as the next President-elect of the United States. Ally lets out a terrified scream and her wife Ivy tries to comfort her as their upset son asks with concern if his mothers will no longer be able to stay together. The anthology series American Horror Story had many diverse seasons, each horrifying and uniquely different from the last one. However, the latest season Cult stands out among other seasons because it ditches supernatural monsters and uses the real-life discourse of 2016 US elections as a backdrop for showing and constructing perceived horrors of demagoguery, hate,
sexism, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia in contemporary American society. From the very first shot of the first episode, mediation of reality creates horror for the protagonists. The fictional characters in the show react to real television content from the 2016 Presidential Election, hence, making it clear that the show takes a denunciatory stance on Trump and his supporters specifically.
The horror in Cult’s America hinges on mediation a number of times. Cult leader Kai tries to deliberately arouse fear with information he self-admittedly found on Facebook. Later on, he is given more credibility and recognizability among the public when he gets retweeted by Donald Trump’s son Eric. Often with the help of Beverly, who is a reporter, Kai stages media events and crimes to instill fear in Americans. For example, he purposely provokes a group of Hispanic men only to film them attacking him and use the footage for demagoguery. He later references Trump’s speech about Mexican immigrants being criminals. Notably, mediation affects women the most negatively in the show. Ally’s mental state is deteriorating partly because of constant tweets from Trump and his supporters. Beverly had to go through anger management treatment after she breaks down when her reports get repeatedly interrupted by people shouting out Trump’s infamous quote repeated by many newscasters and political commentators “grab her by the pussy.” According to Tudor, it is not uncommon to assert topical societal concerns in horror (Tudor 459). However, it is unusual to reference them in such a direct manner without the use of supernatural or some monstrous creature, almost blending reality with fiction. Such a merger of facts and fiction mimics the current state of mediation and populism in America. It creates a sense of urgency by attaching a sense of horror to non-fictional media cases.
Hence, a sense of urgency is also applied to the many cases of discrimination based on gender that are depicted in the show. These cases are relatable to many American women, and it is easy to imagine them happening in real life. For example, in the fourth episode “11-9“ reporter Beverly Hope is struggling to advance in her career as her boss Bob keeps compromising her stories to favor her professional rival Serena Belinda, whom he has a sexual relationship with. In another instance in the same episode Meadow and her husband Harrison argue over their financial issues after they have received an eviction notice. Harrisons income alone is not enough to sustain them, and as he points out that she does not have a job, Meadow reminds him that because of her cancer she had a disability and the one time he
guilted her into taking a job, she was sexually harassed numerous times by her boss. These two explicit examples already build a narrative of how women have to struggle in their professional lives and constantly deal with sexual harassment in
American Horror Story. In both cases, this issue is given as one of the main reasons
which drive both women to rebel and act out in rage and violence later on in the season. Cult portrays the current state of America’s reality as a terrifying society in which women are often oppressed, harassed, assaulted and driven mad by men and women who conform to patriarchal society. Furthermore, the season works as a warning that these cases of discrimination will soon lead to grim consequences. Whom and What Cult Negotiates as Monstrous?
In the first episode “Election Night“ Ally’s and Ivy’s horrified reaction to election outcome is juxtaposed with Kai Anderson’s elated response as he celebrates by jumping and shouting “USA“ at his home. He continues to celebrate by simulating sexual intercourse with the TV and rubs orange Cheetos chips on his face to resemble President-elect. All the characters’ reactions are extreme, but Kai’s sexualized display of joy and the fact that he physically transformed himself into Trump combined with ominous background music creates an uncomfortable atmosphere and indicates that this character is to be feared and inspire disgust. Trump’s victory, his politics and his supporters are negotiated as an abnormality, which threatens lives of ordinary American citizens. Inspired by Trump's’ victory, Kai manipulates men and women one by one throughout the season and draws them in his cult. In the beginning, he inspires multiple women like the reporter Beverly Hope and Meadow, the housewife married to a gay man, to violently retaliate and no longer conform to the dominant social norms, which are oppressing them. Kai is a threat to “normality“ which based on Wood’s definition makes him a monster (Wood 31). People like Beverly Hope, Meadow, and her husband Harrison would not normally act out and violently rise up against their respective higher-ups or established social rules. However, Kai persuades his followers to stop abiding by the societal norms and laws. With his encouragement, they take extreme measures to reach their objectives. When a large group of people allows their disdain and hostility to take over and act out in violent ways against each other, chaos ensues. Kai
exploits the divisiveness and fear created as a consequence of chaos to further his political agenda and power.
By the seventh episode “Valerie Solanas Died For Your Sins: Scumbag,” through mediation and manipulation Kai has attracted the attention of a sizeable group of people whom he then brainwashes and controls, thus creating a cult which centers around his persona. Various cult members joined the cult for different reasons. Many of them even have opposing beliefs and political stances. The cult is full of identically dressed white men reminiscent of white nationalists (fig. 1), a few gay men who were conditioned to repress their true sexuality until they met Kai, and a group of mostly liberal women who were fed up with discrimination they were constantly experiencing. Women who initially were promised equality in the cult are excluded from Kai’s no-women-allowed inner sanctum in his basement. They are made to work in the kitchen and endure constant harassing and belittling comments like “Men lead, women bleed.“ The show suggests that the cult of US masculinity can be perpetuated by sexual minorities and women as well. Toxic masculinity, which champions masculine behavior to a point it harms society and men, allows even such oppressed groups like gay men to obtain some sort of power over women. Cult’s mechanism of exclusion creates divisiveness and elevates cult members above other groups of people. Cult members’ emotions and beliefs overshadow facts and suspend rational thinking, thus making it easy for Kai to manipulate them. Cult members have different beliefs. Yet, they all look equally terrifying and sinister behind the killer clown costumes when they brutally execute their victims together (fig. 2). According to Levina, contemporary horror lies in “the potential devolution of humanity—that we have become chaotic creatures of selfishness, violence, and unchecked aggression, who do more damage to ourselves and the world around us than any reanimated corpse ever could” (Levina 74). Therefore, it is scary to watch how cultish behavior of different groups of people leads them all to deteriorate and create mayhem.
Fig. 1. “Winter of Our Discontent.” American Horror Story, season 7, episode 8, FX. 27 Oct. 2017
Fig. 2. “Election Night.” American Horror Story, season 7, episode 1, FX. 8 Sep. 2017
Furthermore, people with cult-like beliefs act against their own well-being. The cult mediates imagination of what reality is, and its members are required to suspend facts and rationality. This creates a disconnect because out of touch cult members live in an alternative reality. In episode four “11-9,“ one of the cult members, Gary, is even persuaded by Kai to mutilate himself and saw his hand off just to be able to make it in time to cast his vote for Trump and go against Winter’s and Ivy’s will. Furthermore, Kai’s followers are willing to die for him and literally
drink the Kool-Aid that they think is poisoned. Furthermore, Ally’s young son Oz is easily able to call out Kai on one of his lies by quickly checking Wikipedia’s page on his phone in the ninth episode “Drink the Kool-Aid,“ but the men simply shun him. In the last episode of the season, there is an unsettling scene where men, inspired by the real-life Manson family and the murder of Roman Polanski’s pregnant wife Sharon Tate, practice stabbing mothers and their unborn fetuses on watermelons. They intended to have “a night of a thousand Tates“ and kill a thousand mothers listed on an abortion waiting list which they stole from Planned Parenthood. They hoped that there would be thousands of women who wanted to terminate their pregnancies “just to make a political statement,“ but it turned out that it was difficult to find even a hundred. That did not deter the cult from proceeding with their plan as well as sacrificing one of their own to use his dismembered body alongside a message “Stop the Slaughter“ to frighten the supporters of Planned Parenthood. The fact that Kai’s supporters voluntarily self-mutilate indicates that in Trump’s America polarized groups tend to go against their own self-interest. According to a human behavior specialist, Ruth Capriles, people tend to vote against their self-interest when there is a widespread feeling of resentment. Instead of voting for policies that would benefit them, citizens vote against something or someone they resent (Capriles 61). Hence, the show suggests that the cult of toxic masculinity in America has been exacerbated because of divisiveness. Some men resent various women rights movements when in actuality, these movements do not exclude men but rather work for their benefit too. Sadly, rationality and facts barely mean anything in a cult and its members are determined to fight against something they resent at all costs. In Kai’s cult, all men are dressed, look, and act the same. It is a sign of how cult members are robbed of their personality and humanity. “When a monster is physically human, he seems to lack traits like compassion that we consider necessary to humanness“ (Taylor 28). People blindly following the cult of toxic masculinity and the disconnect that results from it are monstrous.
Shifting the Archaic Mother Trope on to the Father
Cult implies that toxic masculinity is a backlash against feminism. Thus, in Kai’s cult
women are forced to conform to their traditional gender roles in numerous disturbing ways. For example, in episode eight “Winter of Our Discontent,“ Kai
orders his sister Winter to bear his child, the new Messiah. Furthermore, women are verbally abused and forced to work in the kitchen. Such gothic texts make woman’s relationship to domesticity monstrous. It is common for Televisual Gothic to focus on threatened homes and traumatized families, especially in the United States (Keetley 91, Greven 88). Kai wants to reestablish traditional gender roles and family values because his own family has been plagued by several severe tragedies. In episode five “Holes,“ Kai’s troubled family background is revealed. His mother could not bear any more abuse from his angry, disabled, and jealous father. Eventually, she shot the father and herself leaving three of their grown children behind. Pressured by financial and professional issues, Kai and his brother believed that they had no choice but to cover up their parents' deaths and mummify their bodies with lye in their sealed bedroom. Ever since Kai keeps visiting the remains and talking to his decomposed mother with a hope that he will make her proud. He still deeply loves his mother but has no strong feelings for the father. Such a narrative resembles such renowned horror movies as Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and reinforces a common horror trope of an archaic mother. According to Creed, the archaic mother makes frequent appearances in horror movies and usually is a negative symbol associated with death (qtd. Greven 24). A mother is most often a revered female figure in men’s lives, and she can be considered as a figure of authority. An authoritative female figure is an issue in a patriarchy where men are supposed to be figures of power. Therefore, rejecting the maternal figure is a practice constructed within a patriarchal order, rendering the woman with power flawed (Tudor 450). However, in Cult Kai still acknowledges and looks up to his mother even when she is dead. She is not a commanding agency in Kai’s life like Norman Bates’ mother in
Psycho was. The Archaic Mother can no longer be used as an excuse for Kai’s
monstrous behavior.
Kai wants to reestablish patriarchy and traditional family values. Therefore, he disapproves of Ally and Ivy’s family because according to him their son Oz needs a man figure in his life. Kai wishes to be Oz’s paternal figure, and he secretly sends his sister Winter to work as a nanny for Ally and Ivy’s household. Winter exposes the young boy to the dark web, videos with disturbing violent content and guides him to observe the neighboring Chang family being brutally murdered by killer clowns. The young boy is traumatized by these events. A young child is a telos of the social order, and thus the hostility to children has been a persistent theme in Gothic Horror
(Keetley 93). However, in Cult, the child experiences hostility from the people trying to reestablish the social order in the form of patriarchy. With Winter’s help, Kai kidnaps Oz and tries to be a paternal figure to him. Furthermore, to Ally’s horror Kai insists that he is a likely donor who sired her son. Ally herself has been terrorized by Kai and his cult. She is repulsed by his beliefs and does not want her son to be indoctrinated by him. This revelation plays on the fear that the child might be damaged by his monstrous or archaic father’s influence. Ally needs to be reassured that Oz is not Kai’s son. As soon as she gets a chance, she rushes to the fertility clinic to beg for proof that Kai is not the father. Kai as a father figure is the abject that needs to be expelled to get rid of the threat to her family, home, and to return to normalcy.
“T.V. horror can be seen to channel the genre right into the heart of the home, by playing on the fears, dreams, and nightmares that haunt those that inhabit the domestic sphere” (Griffin 88). Cult portrays literal anxieties about children, homes, and the future of “American Dream” in the United States. The reassertion of sexual difference and gender roles within a cult of toxic masculinity is the main threat to Mayfair-Richards family. A man attempts to claim their child. Furthermore, their home is invaded by a patriarchal cult, and their domesticity is disturbed by online harassment. After being doxed (private and identifying information about them was published on the Internet with malicious intent) they had to deal with a naked stranger entering their house expecting sex from them. American Horror Story suggests that in Trump’s America the family is not eroding because of feminism or sexual minorities, but rather because of a patriarchal cult trying to impose gendered roles onto women. Most importantly, contrary to horror tropes, Cult renegotiates reestablishing patriarchal social order as a threat rather than salvation. Hence, the monstrous aspects of the archaic mother trope are shifted onto the patriarchy, the father figure, and toxic masculinity.
Paranoia is No Longer Her Problem: Shifting Female Paranoia Trope on to Men FX’s American Horror Story is guilty of using those often criticised horror tropes that offer a spectacle of feminine victimization and the latest season Cult is not an exception (Amy King 557). It shows female bodies screaming, crying, or bleeding, and Subramanian argues that this kind of representation builds on fear of femininity
and its excess (Subramanian 110). Ally and her struggle to deal with her heightened phobias like coulrophobia (fear of clowns), trypophobia (fear of small holes), agoraphobia (fear of open, public spaces) and anxieties are one of the primary focus of the show from the get-go. Ever since the election night, her phobias have heightened, and she gets easily triggered even by her son’s comic book with clowns or a coral at her therapist’s office. Thus, when Ally gets terrorized by what seems like actual killer clowns in a grocery store or in her bedroom in episode two “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,“ she completely breaks down and becomes a terrorized female victim that shares the spectacle along with the killer clowns. It is a trope that is characteristic of the classic horror film according to Williams (Williams 5). Both Ally’s wife Ivy and her therapist dismiss Ally’s fears as irrational because there is no evidence to support her encounter with nightmarish clowns. The series tracks a regression of Ally’s mental state as she is unable to be taken seriously and her constant paranoia causes her to shoot an innocent Latino man Pedro dead when she mistakes him for a clown. Ally is prescribed medication and in episode three “Neighbors From Hell,” her therapist suggests she voluntarily checks herself into an inpatient facility. However, she is unable to listen to the therapist’s advice and take care of her mental health because she cannot afford to take off time from her family and business, and the Mayfair-Richards family already had to take out a second mortgage on their house to sustain the restaurant they own. This is one of several instances in the show when lack of access to health care and financial issues contribute to further deterioration in characters’ lives. Cult indicates that Trump’s America is full of uncertainties regarding financial stability, health, and safety. These uncertainties create an opportunity for disastrous results and thus create horror. As attacks become increasingly brutal and terrifying Ally must perceive her seemingly irrational fears as credible threats to be able to defend herself. A notion of productive fear or “female paranoia” marks the female as the “Final Girl,” Clover’s term for women who are able to survive because they perceive their monsters seriously (qtd. Markovitz 212, Greven 88). What is horrifying is that it is necessary for Ally to have her sanity put into question in order to survive. This suggests that with Trump in office, America is in a daunting place where the eeriest conspiracy theories may be true. The fact that the “Final Girl” is coded as a lesbian is a prevalent horror trope as well (Tudor 452, Williams 7). “The lesbian heroine, figured as the ‘tough woman,’ is ‘a female Terminator, designed to look and act like a
patriarchy-defying heroine but programmed to destroy patriarchy’s deviant enemies, queer men and power-seeking women’” (Greven 176). Although the difference, in this case, is that Ally as a lesbian heroine is actually defying patriarchy and is out to destroy a killer clown cult whose goal is to reestablish it.
In American Horror Story - Cult, the “Final Girl” undergoes traumatic terrorization that consequently disrupts her family, business, and domestic spaces. It is common in horror genre for women to undergo a transformation at key points of the narrative (Greven 1). The transformation is key to defeating the monster. Constant terrorization finally leads Ally to lose her wife and son, finances and causes her to break down and culminates in her getting committed for three weeks. The intense stress she had to endure because of Kai and his cult causes her to finally no longer be afraid of her irrational phobias in comparison to real horrors. When in episode nine “Winter of Our Discontent,“ Ally faces Kai she is seemingly changed and no longer intimidated. Kai points out that she seems different and Ally responds that his actions have ultimately cured her of her fears. Phobias and paranoia have been replaced by anger and a need for revenge on anyone who has betrayed or hurt her.
“Another important theme in the woman’s film, linked to or perhaps allegorical of transformation, carries over into modern horror and deepens in significance: female vengeance, figured in the phallic, retributive woman, whom I call, consciously evoking classical mythology, the Fury. (Greven 3)”
Ally’s female paranoia is replaced by female vengeance. The significance of this specific case is that while Ally rapidly develops and becomes stronger through frantic stress and retaliation, at the same time the monster – Kai – appears to become more paranoid and irrational. He increasingly suspects someone is about to betray him. Growing paranoia leads him to suffocate his sister, whom he genuinely cared about in episode ten “Charles (Manson) in Charge,” and ultimately break down in tears. These emotions are often ascribed to women in horror, as Subramanian states, “to return to the notion of ‘rebirth’ and monstrosity, women in horror are the locus of more specific fears of uncontainable bodies” (Subramanian 110). In this instance, however, the feminine characteristics including the female paranoia trope have been projected onto the monster, a man who fights to reestablish patriarchal
rules. According to Markovitz, female paranoia and the need to have her sanity questioned to survive, mean that she is not in control (Markovitz 215). Therefore, by shifting this horror trope from a female character to a male character Cult implies that Trump’s victory is a desperate act of retaliation because American men are losing their authority and women are gaining control.
The Female Rage: The Implications of Toxic Masculinity and Divisiveness “We’re sitting on the biggest bomb the universe has ever seen. You know what that is, Mr. Anderson? Female rage. (Episode ten, ‘Charles (Manson) in Charge’)”
Kai’s anger management therapist Bebe Babbit describes the shifting female mindset in American society as an explosive weapon that will cause a significant amount of damage. She is excited about Trump’s victory because misogyny inspired by President-elect rhetoric will no longer be confined to microaggressions and will liberate women to unleash “the female rage.” Themes of angry women loom large over the eleventh episode of Cult. There is a flashback to a feminist tipping point in 1968 in episode seven “Valerie Solanas Dien For Your Sins: Scumbag.” A prominent feminist Valerie Solanas has a mission to kill Andy Warhol who has a cult-like following. She is furious that Warhol lost her script and that he claimed that as a woman, she could not expect to be a great artist. Solanas shoots Warhol and directs other attacks on men from her hospital cell. However, Valerie was never able to get the credit for the murders. Even when she confessed to the police, she was not taken seriously, and credit for her crimes was given to an imposter known as the “Zodiac Killer.” Valerie’s solution to prevalent sexism, as she argues in her manifesto “SCUM,” was to kill all men. However, Solana did not manage to gain the acknowledgment and power she hoped for. Flashforward to 2018 and it seems that female characters have another chance to fulfill Valerie’s goal. United, women take their revenge. Kai sees Ally, who is now running for Michigan Senate seat herself, and attempt to shoot her on national TV after escaping prison. However, he does not realize that women expected his attempt to kill and they have prepared for it. Beverly steps in and shoots Kai in the pretense of self-defense. Such a public attack boost Ally’s ratings and she wins. Horror film “allows us to give free rein to culturally repressed feelings, such as terror and rage“ (Pinedo 26). Thus, Cult gave insights on perceived fears and
desires of women in the United States and the forthcoming consequences of the female rage.
According to King, the horror genre often constructs the feminine as a monstrous sign within a patriarchal discourse to reveal insights about male fears and desires (Amy King 566). One of the more popular fears is women’s power and the possibility of them uniting and undoing patriarchal structures (ibid.). However, what was horrific in Cult, was not the possibility to undo patriarchal society, but rather a possibility of reinstating it. American Horror Story shifted the problematic feminine horror tropes onto male characters and replaced women’s paranoid victim status with female rage and the need for revenge. Furthermore, in this season of American Horror Story, unlike in most cases in the horror genre, men’s bleeding bodies were the spectacle, not women’s. From sawing a limb off to having multiple nails shot one by one into one’s head, to intestines pouring from a sliced up body, male characters’ deaths and injuries were the most graphic ones in the whole season. Graphic violence against men combined with the season’s ending seems to imply that the emergence of female rage has some negative and even horror aspects as well. Once Ally kisses her son Oz goodnight, she puts on a cloak with a hood resembling that of Valerie Solanas’ women’s cult from the past. Thus, the notion of revenge is rendered problematic. Some of the women, like Ally’s wife Ivy, turned out to be just as guilty of terrorizing Ally and her son. Shifting horror tropes on to men did not eliminate horror, but rather just redirected it.
Graphically violent and sexualized horror’s “very existence and popularity hinges upon rapid changes taking place in relations between the “sexes” and by rapidly changing notions of gender – of what it means to be a man or a woman” (Williams 12). Cult implies that gender relations and politics in America are
changing. The season emphasizes the urgency of this change by depicting horror in the contexts of actual events of 2016 American Presidential Election. The references to the real mediation of the election combine facts with fiction, mimicking the conspiratorial fears and anxieties. The show depicts how mediation creates divisiveness with both sides operating in different realities. When facts and
rationality no longer have any effect and beliefs take over, these divisive groups start to resemble cults, which create the horror. So does the cult of toxic masculinity, which the show depicts as the most prominent in contemporary America. Cult demonstrates how women can be disadvantaged in the current climate. However, by
shifting problematic horror tropes on to male characters, the show also indicates that switching roles, women taking over power and wanting revenge makes those women become a cult that elicits horror just the same. Cult is a female-centric televisual horror that criticizes men and female cults equally. It addresses the problematic horror tropes and gender relations in America’s past, but it also tackles the issue of divisiveness, which merely leads to redirecting the horror instead of an actual resolution.
Chapter 3: Realizing Normality Was Monstrous the Whole Time
The Handmaid’s Tale
Science-fiction, which according to Carrol is often a subgenre of horror (Carrol 51), often portrays a dystopian future with cities in ruins, engulfed in dark fog and toxic waste, a collapsed social order with criminals running rampant on streets, and plain chaos. In Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, however, the near-future dystopian Republic of Gilead has reduced CO2 emission by seventy-eight percent in three years, and while the birth rate is plummeting in the rest of the world, Gilead is being visited by foreign leaders keen on learning how the Republic managed to tackle this issue. What used to be the American government is now controlled by a devout Christian movement that promotes family values and does not look lightly at any breach of the law. Gilead could not be further from anarchy. Below the surface of pristine grocery stores and idyllic households of the elite, there is a dark and unsettling patriarchal order full of psychological and physical torture.
The Handmaid’s Tale television series has resonated among many Americans,
and it got awarded eight Emmy Awards and notably an Emmy and a Golden Globe for Best Drama series. It seems fitting that the show has some underlying Orwellian themes because similarly to Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is being described as a work of science fiction coming to life. The reason is that the creators of The Handmaid’s Tale did not need to invent new horrors and cruelties towards women - throughout history, there have already been many examples in the world and in America itself. Most of the horror relies on nightmarish monsters, imagined paranormal activities or freakish accidents that create a sense of detachment from the real world, but the psychological and bodily horrors that take place in Gilead are framed as American cultural norms that persecute women. Full of tension, the show depicts enslavement, institutionalized rape, forced surrogacy and complete violation of almost every human right as well as bodily horrors such as cutting off limbs, whipping soles of the feet and gouging out eyes. That being said, The Handmaid’s Tale does not rely on the overwhelming excess of “abject female bodies screaming, bleeding, or crying” like
horror often does (Subramanian 110). Instead, some of the most striking scenes are those where the horrors are quietly endured by the main protagonist June. Stonings, rape, public lynchings - she must be complicit and pretend all of these things are normal in order to survive. Monsters she is facing are not something she can fight back or run from while screaming from the top of her lungs. Instead, it is a systematic, invasive, and diffuse system, which is a new type of monster of contemporary horror (Levina 1). June’s and other Handmaids’ horror is that they lost authority over themselves and their bodies. “The horror and science fiction film poignantly expresses the sense of powerlessness and anxiety that correlates with times of [...] national confusion” (Carrol 16). However, unlike American Horror Story which frames the horror of Cult as a new phenomenon related to the rise of Trump,
The Handmaid’s Tale negotiates sexism as a horror with a much longer history and
which the American society got used to. In this chapter, I will first demonstrate how
The Handmaid’s Tale depicts the institutionalization of misogynistic culture in
America. Then I will go over the tropes that the show addresses and how they are framed with the use of horror elements. Furthermore, I will discuss how The
Handmaid’s Tale exposes these problematic tropes and how it goes against them. The
show depicts powerlessness that women have been feeling for years in America and suggests there is a rude awakening in progress.
“The Tranquilizing Drug of Gradualism.” Sexism as a Norm
In his speech, Martin Luther King criticized “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism” (Martin L. King 1963) in reference to slow change to achieve equal rights. Slight improvements in a vast array of injustices create an illusion of progress, lull the discriminated group, and prevent it from achieving true equality. It is easy to be soothed by gradual change, even if the change is for the worse. The ways in which women are being treated in Gilead are outrageous, but the show makes it clear that the oppression did not just happen one day. Instead, the nightmare was gradually introduced one step at a time. There are multiple flashbacks throughout the first season that show the steady loss of rights. The social unrest caused by fear mongering and Islamophobia gave the far-right religious extremist movement an opportunity to overthrow the American government. They blamed Islamic terrorism and used it as a reason to impose Martial law. Fear of the “other,” in this case, of
Islamic extremists, scared the masses into surrendering their rights to get a sense of security. Knowing that someone else is in control and is going to take care of everything, gives citizens perception of comfort and relief. Instilling a fear of “others“ while slowly taking away rights from people is evident in America even outside of the show: it is enough to go through a US airport security check to realize how invasive policies can get under the pretense of security. Politics of fear create consent for more regulation in the guise of security, which does more harm than good to the population (Friedman 78). Taking off shoes and allowing a stranger to pat your genital area has become a new norm (Dvorak). Aunt Lydia unintentionally warns the captured women about the dangers of taking their rights for granted in the first episode: "'Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary."
Before the new government started taking away rights, a discriminative climate already existed in America. The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates it by emphasizing instances of sexist comments from a worker in a coffee shop, judgemental passer-by looks at jogging women, and later in the second season, homophobic comments in an educational institution. In the climate where sexist and homophobic beliefs were still ordinary to some extent, the regime was able to hand over women’s bank accounts to their male partners or relatives and forbade women from working, getting an education, or owning property. This took away women’s independence and made them rely on men. Almost everyone avoided acknowledging the need to rise up and instead tried to rationalize and minimize every change. When people eventually started protesting, the new government used physical force against the protesters and shot them down. Finally, people were no longer allowed to leave the country, and anyone who tried to escape was killed. According to King, contemporary America has a tendency for cultural amnesia that easily forgets “the horror stories of history” (Amy King 571). The show suggests that American women took their rights for granted, were lulled by gradual change, and failed to notice when progress stopped, giving room for oppressive behaviors to be incrementally reintroduced. Women won some significant rights a long time ago and then mistakenly thought that the fight was over. The laws were changed, but there was still a deeply ingrained prejudicial culture. Sexist beliefs and the notion that women and men are complete opposites were still a norm to many. “In Western technoscientific culture, gender is traditionally rooted in opposing, hierarchical
