I am a coward. That is why– and how– I’ve managed to narrowly avoid watching John Carpenter’s Halloween for the past 21 years. I’ve never been one to watch horror movies at all, but in watching Halloween I became frustrated, quite consistently, with its treatment of women.
I know it’s asking a lot to want a slasher film to be “woke,” but throughout the years Halloween has been the source of a constant debate over whether or not the film is a feminist work. There are countless people arguing both sides, and they all have valid points, but this is my blog, and we aren’t going to address those here.
The first thing that truly struck me about the film was how voyeuristic it was. So much of the film focuses on the sexual behavior of young women through the eyes of men, starting from when Michael Myers watches his sister and her boyfriend, and chooses to murder his sister for it. From there, after Myers escape, he watches young girls for a significant amount of time throughout the film, even before the next murder takes place. He watches Annie undress from the window, and follows her as she’s only partially dressed, staring the whole time. After he murders Annie, he then stalks her friend Linda as she hooks up with her boyfriend, pretending to be him for a time, and as she reveals herself to him, he simply watches. He also stalks Laurie throughout the film, looking through her bedroom window, or following her through town.
The most surprising moment in the film for me was actually when Myers kills Linda’s boyfriend. I became so used to the women being punished for their perceived promiscuity that the moment in which the man dies threw me off significantly. That was when I realized that the voyeuristic point of view and stalking behaviors had significantly skewed my perception of the female characters. They weren’t characters in my mind anymore, they were just victims. I had become desensitized, and resigned myself to the murder of these girls, so I had stopped caring about them as characters, because I knew they were just going to be murdered anyway. They weren’t significant as people anymore, unlike the Doctor and the Sheriff. When Annie was murdered I spent a lot of time wondering how the men in the story would handle the news. Why wasn’t her off-screen boyfriend wondering where she was? How would her father, the Sheriff, react when he realized the threat he’d been treating as a far-off hypothetical had killed his own daughter? The girls failed to be anything more than the victims they were created to be. It even got to the point where I thought of Laurie as a victim, instead of a protagonist.
As someone who doesn’t handle suspense with much grace, I found myself wishing for the moments in which the Doctor and Sheriff came on screen, because the men at least knew what was going on, even if they weren’t managing to make any progress in stopping the threat.
This isn’t to say the movie wasn’t good, but I found myself distracted by the focus on punishing women for exercising their sexual freedoms and the realization I had in the middle of the movie that the female characters no longer had any value. The messages, whether intended or not, were clear: Women are to be punished for sexual behaviors, and they need to be protected by the men, who know better than they do.
Oddly enough, I don’t feel those are very feminist messages.
Film, Gender, and Sexuality 
Hi Amy,
I definitely shared your view of the film, and I also felt that while both sides of the feminist argument had valid points, I overall resigned to my opinion that it was not a feminist film. That being said, I am (hypocritically) going to play devil’s advocate, and add onto your analysis of Michael’s stalking.
Some people think that Myers represents the patriarchy; he is everywhere, always watching, and specifically the women in the movie, just as the patriarchy in society observes women and confines them into a small box of gender roles and expectations. When they break their norms, they are punished. The murders of the women who are sexually inclined and comfortable in their sexuality – something looked upon and even feared by the patriarchy – can represent the harsh punishments the patriarchy instills on women, such as casting out as whores, and being mistreated and disrespected, amongst other terrible things. By representing the patriarchy through such a grotesque and twisted character, it could be seen as a negative commentary on the patriarchy’s treatment and oppression of women. I think that this could be a valid point, however due to other things in the movie, such as the sexualization of the murders, I still do not think it was overall a feminist film.
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This? This IS the tea.
In all seriousness, I totally, totally agree with you. I straight up forgot until I watched the film through a second time that the Sheriff was Annie’s dad! There’s a huge disconnect between “men” and “women” in this film. The relationship we see between Michael and his sister… do I even need to say it? The relationship between Michael and his mother: non-existent on screen, but we know she locked him away in a psych ward and seemingly threw away the key. So probably not great. The relationship between Annie and her dad is fleeting, shallow, and casual. The relationship between Annie and her boyfriend seems purely sexual. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it does leave Annie with seemingly no emotional connections with male characters. Lynda has a very emotionally shallow relationship with her guy in the film. Again, is this wrong or bad? No, but it leaves Lynda with no emotional male character connections. Laurie herself is almost afraid of the men in her life, begging Annie to call back the boy that she admitted to liking. Interesting that the only character who lives is actively escaping male relationships of ANY kind. When I hear arguments for how the film can be feminist, I try to think about it like this:
The film itself is not feminist. The negativity towards sex, drugs, alcohol, and towards women and their intelligence is abundantly clear and rampant. Just because a woman survives the killer doesn’t make the film a feminist film. However, I think that the film can be flipped on its head to be INTERPRETED as feminist. How we choose to make our own decisions as viewers about characters, relationships, and scenes can completely change a movie. I think we have the power to view the women in this story from a feminist lens, but I think the problem comes when we confuse that with author intent. The film is not feminist, but we can make it out to be with our own perspectives.
I hope my view makes sense! I loved your response.
Fuck Michael Meyers!!!!
Much love!
~ Maddie Macloud
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