Visual Studies Commons^™

"Torture The Women": A Gaze At The Misogynistic Machinery Of Scary Cinema, Sarah Hankins

Copley Library Undergraduate Research Awards

A frightening truth remains that within horror-thriller films the experience of women is at the heart of the horrifying. This project analyses the effects of film media on the construction, fetishization, and destruction of female figures and engages with feminist critical concepts, such as Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze” and Linda Williams’ “body horror,” to evaluate Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo (1958) and Satoshi Kon’s anime Perfect Blue (1997). Importantly, this essay critiques the misogynistic inner-workings of the horror-thriller genre typified in Vertigo—that evokes visual pleasure from objectification, victimization, and physical, often sexual, violence—and contrasts it with Kon’s anime. This paper finds …