SUBTLE ART OF FEAR: THE EVOLUTION OF FEMINISM AND HORROR

As scary movies continue to evolve, so too does their reflection of the feminine — a lens that progresses from evil to empowerment.

- By BHAGYA SHREE ADIANI

Art by ANDREA PANALIGAN

Women have always been monsters. Since the beginning of time, stories and illustrations of fear were simplified into the feminine form.

The Greeks portrayed the terrifying snake-woman, Medusa, to be the destroyer of man. Pandora, the first woman created by Haphaestus, god of the forge, shows that only chaos is brought from giving freedom to women. Interestingly enough, stories from the other side of the globe show that this trend is not exclusive to the West. Whispers of man in their tellings of Eastern horror stories almost always take the shape of a woman as well, many of which include Thailand's disembodied demon woman Krasue, China's Fox Spirit Huli Jing, or the famously known aswang from the Philippines.

During the beginning of mainstream horror in the 18th-century Gothic era, it was in between the lines of the era's scary novels that embodied the true intentions of the literati and novelists - coincidentally men in male-dominated fields.

Whether it be a ghoul feeding on naughty children or a villainous temptress, the ill-tellings of female characters always inherited ideas of anger and disgust, perpetuating the outlook that the horror genre became a literary weapon against womanhood. Seen in Matthew Lewis' The Monk or Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the monstrous female trope became nothing more than a mocking symbol to the first wave of feminism, warning readers that powerful women would only generate chaos.