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| Why the Pure and Innocent Leads? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 19 2013, 07:14 PM (665 Views) | |
| Repo | Mar 19 2013, 07:14 PM Post #1 |
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Forget about the bloody gods and lsiten to what I'm telling you
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So, just about everyone expects the goody-good, moral compass, virginal girl to live (and, occasionally, guy) My question is, why? Why is it that the "good" one of the group is the survivor? There is no right or wrong answer, really. Just your own interpretations to why this is. I think the basic comes from Laurie Strode in Halloween, but I'm sure there's more than that. |
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| Matty | Mar 19 2013, 07:16 PM Post #2 |
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There are certain rules one must abide by to successfully survive a horror movie
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I honestly think it's unrealistic, a bad girl has a better chance of surviving in real life, a good character can't be like "omg imma runn" *killer comes* "ok, i have strength, gonna kill dat killah & sav dah day" it's unrealistic. |
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| Repo | Mar 19 2013, 07:18 PM Post #3 |
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Forget about the bloody gods and lsiten to what I'm telling you
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Well, that's not really what I was asking XD And I don't think having sex (or being a virgin) suddenly makes a person more likely to survive. A slut can have an emotional breakdown when a killer gets free. A virgin can rise to the challenge. My point is WHY is it that they just go for virgins. |
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| TheCheetahwings | Mar 19 2013, 07:29 PM Post #4 |
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I'm in California dreaming about who we used to be
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IDK, I feel like that people are afraid to make a "bad girl" the heroine because they assume most will find virgins more relatable or likable, because it's how it's been done for so long. |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() So hello from the other side I must've called a thousand times To tell you I'm sorry, for everything that I've done But when I call you never seem to be home | |
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| JessicaPierson | Mar 19 2013, 08:41 PM Post #5 |
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The Follower
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I guess it goes from Laurie Strode, although she wasn't really an emphasized goody good. Although, lots of 80's slashers had original survivors. I'm honestly not sure why the good girl virgin became the "final girl" of the group. |
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| TheCheetahwings | Mar 20 2013, 12:21 AM Post #6 |
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I'm in California dreaming about who we used to be
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I kinda blame Friday The 13th. Even though none of them were "innocent" most of the final girls in those movies just werent the ones "misbehaving" during the film. But the writer of the first Friday film basically said that he was told to write a film similar to Halloween, and what he noticed was the people that had sex died and the heroine was virginal. I actually really like how he took this and made it part of the killers' "motive's" (if they count as a motive) since Jason and Pamela both killed people they deemed as "bad". Which funnily enough is everyone, even the virgins. It's just as it turns out that the innocent appearing girls usually defeat the killer. |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() So hello from the other side I must've called a thousand times To tell you I'm sorry, for everything that I've done But when I call you never seem to be home | |
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| Repo | Mar 23 2013, 12:31 PM Post #7 |
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Forget about the bloody gods and lsiten to what I'm telling you
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I definitely agree it has something to do with feeling like people won't like a less-innocent lead and, to some extent, it seems to be true. I mean, look at slasher fans. Tons of them root for the killer no matter what, but if two characters have sex, for example, they seem to hate them even more. It's almost become the new norm to horror fans to write off sexually active characters as whores deserving to die. And with douches/bitches, a LOT of slasher audiences are even quicker to write them off, even if they undergo some massive growth and character development. Like, let's take the characters of the Friday remake. You have: *Whitney~The final girl. Good head on her shoulders, kind hearted, but not present much and she spends most the movie as a victim. Most people don't really hate her character, but being a kidnapee of Jason certainly worked against her. *Jenna~The good, innocent, virginal girl. She's kind, athletic, instantly leaves her douchebag boyfriend to help a guy find his sister (though admittedly.... you don't ditch your boyfriend to run off with another guy IMO @_@) Jenna is basically the classic final girl all rolled into one character. To me, she's actually quite boring, but you only need to look at how many people love her to see she's a fan favorite. *Clay~Loyal older brother to Whitney who'd do anything to protect her. That's really where his character begins and ends. Once again, well liked despite not being anything new. *Trent~Did anyone actually look at this guy and NOT write him off as a douchebag? I think most people decided they hate him from the moment they saw him, and the fact the writers did everything they can to villainize him, even when he was right (which was rare), doesn't help. It's established pretty quickly he's not supposed to be someone we like, but someone we just flat out loathe. I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that Trent IS clearly very wealthy. A lot of people probably relate him to the alpha-male douchebag that they hated in high school on sight, so the writers just went with it. It's easier than trying to show people that the type of person they hate may not be that bad. *Chewie~The "lovable" stoner. He basically provides comic relief, which people practically obsess over. It seems to me stoner characters actually get a lot of love for being what people perceive as cool and funny. (Whereas I find most of them braindead and downright annoying) Perhaps they find them a bit more relateable? Stoner characters generally seem to border on being outsiders/not in the main group, plus people seem to be easily amused by comedy. The only thing I can't comprehend is why stoners don't live, since Chewie is probably the most liked character behind Jenna. The rest of the cast is well... they're really just there to people. Bree's a whore for having sex, and the fact it's Jenna's boyfriend (even though everyone hates him, Jenna included) makes it worse. Chelsea, too, is quickly written off as a slut. (I watched it with someone who said sluts always die when she water-skiied topless) Lawrence is every black male stereotype come to life. I don't think Wade, Nolan, Mike, Richie, or Amanda (except maybe as a slut) even hit people's radars. IDK if my ramblings made sense, but to sum it up, I think people have almost been trained to root for characters who aren't pure and innocent to die, whether it be from personal experiences (anyone who looks/acts like a douche/bitch) or because of how they're portrayed (any girl who goes nude/has sex being shown to be a complete slut who deserves to die) I mean, I remember going on to Anna Hutchinson's IMDB Board (Jules, "the whore," from Cabin in the Woods) The first topic I see? "She isn't as hot as she thinks she is" and talking about how unlikeable Anna's character and, by extension, Anna, is for being such a whore in Cabin in the Woods and how we weren't meant to find her stereotypical. Basically, it seems to me that horror movie makers only do stereotypical leads to satisfy all the slasher fans, who seem to want the same thing over and over. |
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| TheCheetahwings | Mar 23 2013, 12:57 PM Post #8 |
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I'm in California dreaming about who we used to be
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Yeah, i definitely think it comes down to some fans. IDK why they only want stereotypical slashers, but it seems that way. |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() So hello from the other side I must've called a thousand times To tell you I'm sorry, for everything that I've done But when I call you never seem to be home | |
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| Screamer | Mar 23 2013, 07:01 PM Post #9 |
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Yeah, I feel as though classic horror has set precedents for modern horror and now virginal survivals have become a cliche. Cliches are meant to be broken...they need to get the hint. Although, I don't mind a virginal / goody two shoes survivor. I like it, but I love to see a uncliche survivor! |
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| Kevin R. | Mar 25 2013, 05:53 PM Post #10 |
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Jersey boy for life!
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I think I said this before once over on Fear Itself, but you have to look at the era in which the slasher movie really took off. The late 1970s and the '80s were the age of Ronald Reagan, the Moral Majority, the American right wing ascendant. Any media made in that era is going to have elements of that zeitgeist. Action movies, for instance, were often about lone heroes, rugged individuals, taking on communists and drug lords that the Establishment couldn't fight because it had its hands tied. Same thing in comics; this was the age when superheroes "did what they had to do" and murdered villains (often graphically) rather than just turn them over to the police. Speaking of police, the whole "buddy cop" movie emerged, portraying the police as lovable doofuses who still win in the end at worst and slick, cool heroes at best, taking things into their own hands rather than working by the book (written by liberal pansies with their concern about "civil liberties") and allowing criminals to walk free. It was inevitable that some of that would rub off on the horror genre. So you get films that, underneath all their exploitative sex and violence, have a pretty conservative morality underpinning them, deeming stoners, bitches, douches, sluts, homosexuals, people who listen to metal, etc. literally unworthy of life. The survivor, of course, is the "good girl" who meets all the criteria of good '80s Christian morality. Slasher films, I feel, are a perfect encapsulation of the '80s. On the surface, they were sleazy, trashy, and decadent as all hell, but they were also quite culturally conservative. That's why I think Scream, with its mockery of slasher tropes, was such a smash hit -- it was made in the '90s, the decade that characterized itself as being "not the '80s", when there was a lot of pop cultural backlash against that kind of stuff. A lot of people have written a lot more on this subject than I can in a single post, so go seek them out on Google. And yes, I do think this is something that irritates me about a lot of horror movies, slashers especially. |
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My blog: Kevin's Review Catalogue All reviews, A-Z Latest review: Mars Attacks! (1996) | |
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2:14 PM Jul 11