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Why the Pure and Innocent Leads?
Topic Started: Mar 19 2013, 07:14 PM (664 Views)
Euphorae
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It's probably due to a culture clash where the "pure and innocent lead" is thrown head-first into a sticky situation. Also, the fact that they're more vulnerable than the usual badasses means you have someone to root for. I find it enlightening personally whenever I see somebody grow throughout the course of whatever they're enduring - almost like a Macbeth complex. If you start out small, then there's potential for that to be something beyond your wildest dreams later on. I'd love for horror to take more risks though and have a more interesting, abstract approach to things instead. I do get it, however. It makes it easier for everyone else to relate since those "pure and innocent leads" completely capture the essence of the suspense and tension that you want out of a good horror. There's this uncertainty that you have if the lead is pitted as being beneath the main opposition.

These are just my thoughts though. :love:
Edited by Euphorae, Dec 20 2014, 05:37 PM.
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mikebourkefan
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as much as I would love the final girl\boy to more often be white trash types big studios would not let this happen. because Hollywood is run by fuckin idiots


Damon: im bad Andie i do things i kill people

Andie: why do you kill people

Damon: because i like it- Damon Salvatore talking to Andie Star from season 2 of the Vampire Diaries
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mikebourkefan
Jun 4 2015, 12:54 AM
as much as I would love the final girl\boy to more often be white trash types big studios would not let this happen. because Hollywood is run by fuckin idiots
Err... I'd rather stick to virgins.....
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Kevin R.
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Jersey boy for life!
One thing I realized about the whole "good, virginal girl survives" cliche: in one of the films that helped popularize it, it actually made sense for the story. In the original Friday the 13th, the killer was deliberately targeting drunken, horny teenagers because they were drunk and horny -- after all, her son drowned because the camp counselors were too busy having sex to care that there was a boy out in the lake who couldn't swim. And even in the sequels, it can be implied that Jason inherited some of his mother's hatred of youth debauchery, partly out of his love for her and partly because he's a man-child who can't even conceive of that icky thing those kids do with each other's bodies. (Remember your reaction the first time you ever saw a porno when you were in grade school? "EEWWWWWW, they're naked and doing those weird things to each other!!! Why is he sticking his pee-pee into her pee-pee?")

I think it speaks a lot of the laziness of many '80s slasher films that they copied the surface-level elements of Friday the 13th's story without also taking the subtext with them. In Friday, it was the killer explicitly punishing perceived sin, while in the ripoffs of Friday, it often felt like it was the filmmakers implicitly punishing perceived sin. What made sense in one film's story soon became a cliche, and a pretty unfortunate one at that.
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Smeagollum
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Kevin R.
Jun 5 2015, 10:39 AM
One thing I realized about the whole "good, virginal girl survives" cliche: in one of the films that helped popularize it, it actually made sense for the story. In the original Friday the 13th, the killer was deliberately targeting drunken, horny teenagers because they were drunk and horny -- after all, her son drowned because the camp counselors were too busy having sex to care that there was a boy out in the lake who couldn't swim. And even in the sequels, it can be implied that Jason inherited some of his mother's hatred of youth debauchery, partly out of his love for her and partly because he's a man-child who can't even conceive of that icky thing those kids do with each other's bodies. (Remember your reaction the first time you ever saw a porno when you were in grade school? "EEWWWWWW, they're naked and doing those weird things to each other!!! Why is he sticking his pee-pee into her pee-pee?")
And of course there's the movie that started this, Halloween. John Carpenter said it was an intentional choice to make Laurie the virgin of the group so her sexual repression mirrors Michael's. The first Nightmare also had a reason. Freddy is a manifestation of Nancy's fears and problems, and one of them is pressure from her boyfriend.

As for why this approach works, I think an "innocent" person is just easy for an audience to get behind. People either don't screw around a lot, or don't want to think that they do, so they connect to these characters.
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Smeagollum
Jun 6 2015, 01:10 AM
[As for why this approach works, I think an "innocent" person is just easy for an audience to get behind. People either don't screw around a lot, or don't want to think that they do, so they connect to these characters.
I think that's why it worked then. I'm... Not so convinced that it works as well now. Super generic final girls don't tend to get high marks anymore. I usually do see more praise for a lead who breaks the rules a bit or something. Though that might be because they usually have more effort put into them while the generic ones are literally cut-and-paste at this point. And while its not related to the innocent stuff, you can definitely see people getting tired of the specific age/gender/race setup of the leads too.
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CaineDidIt

I immediately thought of Animal and how that movie backfired for actually not doing this.
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CaineDidIt
Jul 9 2015, 02:32 PM
I immediately thought of Animal and how that movie backfired for actually not doing this.
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Race is exactly why it backfired, along with the fact that
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mikebourkefan
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Jun 4 2015, 01:03 AM
mikebourkefan
Jun 4 2015, 12:54 AM
as much as I would love the final girl\boy to more often be white trash types big studios would not let this happen. because Hollywood is run by fuckin idiots
Err... I'd rather stick to virgins.....
to real for you repo?


Damon: im bad Andie i do things i kill people

Andie: why do you kill people

Damon: because i like it- Damon Salvatore talking to Andie Star from season 2 of the Vampire Diaries
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Forget about the bloody gods and lsiten to what I'm telling you
mikebourkefan
Jul 10 2015, 04:01 PM
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Jun 4 2015, 01:03 AM
mikebourkefan
Jun 4 2015, 12:54 AM
as much as I would love the final girl\boy to more often be white trash types big studios would not let this happen. because Hollywood is run by fuckin idiots
Err... I'd rather stick to virgins.....
to real for you repo?
Just the opposite, and way too annoying
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I don't want to be a queen. I want to be the queen
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