FOR YOUR VIEWING PLEASURE:
^ NEVER GETS OLD :)
With this film being in the horror genre, it does follow stereotypes that can be seen in all horror films. Sex is a big one. EVERY horror film I have seen involves some scene of sex- and this one does just that. The sex scenes are always in the beginning of the films, and it's between two secondary characters. You will never see the main characters (aka the Final Girl) involved in a sexual act. One reason I always believed that there was sex in a horror film was because they already had an R rating for the scary scenes/blood/gore that came along with the genre. So hey let's throw some topless chick in there too since we can. But there are obvious underlying reasons to this when you think about the role of the Final Girl. Like we discussed in class, the Final Girl is supposed to be some pure virginal spirit, and one of the reasons she is the Final Girl and lives till the end is because she is smarter than the rest- aka she won't be having premarital sex because she's too intelligent and busy worrying about defeating the killer. While the "sluttier" friend is busy distracting herself with sex, she usually gets offed by the killer, including her boyfriend or her choice for one night stand. It also portrays the message that this secondary female character gets killed because she is having sex, telling the audience she deserved to die for doing that. Kind of a scary message to send to a young audience when it comes to sex.
When it comes to our Final Girl, Nancy, she has all the qualities that the Final Girl is supposed to, according to our reading: "she's intelligent, watchful, level-headed; the first character to sense something amiss and the only one to deduce from the accumulating evidence the patterns and extent of the threat; whose perspective approaches our own privileged understanding of the situation. We register her horror as she stumbles upon the corpses of her friends. She is by any measure the slasher film's hero". This is true of every Final Girl in any horror film I have seen. The character to survive until the end is almost always a female, not a male, because the killer is male and terrorizes the female in sexual ways. Hence Nancy in the bathtub and the phone with Freddy's tongue coming through it:
Truly disgusting, as it's supposed to be.Nancy is the typical Final Girl, and takes on masculinity to outsmart Freddy in the end (setting him on fire and locking him in the basement, yet still screaming to her father for help, telling Freddy she takes back all the energy she gave him). What I thought was interesting is when Nancy figures out that the way she can defeat Freddy is by taking her energy back from him that she put into him, it's an idea that Glen (Johnny Depp in all his sexiness eating a cheeseburger) gave to her in the midst of the film. Instead of listening to his idea, she continues to try to solve the mystery and defeat Freddy on her own. I love the open ending of the film, where you think Nancy has succeeded, yet she seems to be stuck in the dream world of Freddy. It doesn't leave the audience with a straightforward answer, which is something a horror film should do because it increases how uncomfortable we are with the situation, while also leaving it open to making sequels (which is what happened although they all suck compared to the original).
One of the things I love most about this film is that it is hardly scary, and mostly just fun to watch. I enjoy Nancy's hair a lot:
Check out all the puffiness !
And I enjoy this first full picture we see of Freddy in the film with his stilt like arms:
This film is always fun to watch around Halloween and truly gets me into the spirit, along with the 1, 2 Freddy's coming for you song.
I have to say I also enjoyed the 80's hair in all its poofy glory in this film. The part where the phone turns into a tongue was so odd and gross! Nancy was extremely intelligent to be able to read the book about protecting her house and set it all up in a matter of 10 minutes. I think it’s interesting when Nancy is screaming for her dad all the police officers keep telling her she’s ok and in absolutely no rush at all to help her!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about the ending. I thought it was great and I've heard a lot of people don't like it. If she'd actually just defeated Freddy and nothing interesting happened that'd be lame but they ended it in a way that sort of sums up what the whole film is about which is being stuck in a nightmare. I think that they could have left it at that and made no more sequels and it'd still be a cult class but alas that's not what happened.
ReplyDeleteNancy truly is a strong independent woman. I mean I don't know many people who can read a book on improvised booby traps and explosives in a day and set those same traps up in under ten minutes to attack a dream monster. If this were made after 2001 Nancy would be put on a watch list and probably black bagged to Guantanamo. Pretty intense stuff right there. I try to get into this film whenever I watch it, but there is just something off when I watch it. The acting and ambiguous ending really gets under my skin.
ReplyDeleteIn horror films, it is always known going in what is going to happen; the characters are going to do dumb things, have sex, die, and a female is going to be the last one standing. Nightmare on Elm Street is no exception to that. Even though we know that going in, this film was still enjoyable and fun to watch. I also liked the ending of the film because it kept you guessing and at one point, you really don’t know if it’s the ending or not; it keeps you on your toes. I have seen Nightmare on Elm Street before but this one never gets old, mainly because of how dated it is. It’s funny but there are also some cool things in it like that shot of Freddy with his arms stretched out.
ReplyDeleteYou definitely cover all the bases here. Where would you like to take your analysis from here? I think you're right that 'having sex means you deserve to die' is a pretty horrid message to send to teens, especially young women. Do you think the virginal Final Girl complicates that message at all , or only reinforces it? What about depictions of young male sexuality? What is it, do you think, that makes slasher movies enjoyable to most young people, besides their silliness? What messages do you perceive from them, as a young person? (I don't have the same perspective as you. I didn't like them when I was a teen, and only watched them when I was much older).
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