By: Lauren Deaton
I watched all the Scream movies with my parents—perhaps an odd choice for family movie nights, but combine a daughter who never shuts up about movies, a dad who loves action movies, and a mom who just wants everyone to live happily ever after, and somehow you end up setted in a living room watching 572 minutes of a horror franchise.
The first time I watched Scream I was instantly enraptured with its heroine, Sidney Prescott (played by the lovely Neve Campbell). Sidney is the token “empowered” final girl—full of action, wit, and yes, even sexuality. Sidney challenges many of the harmful characteristics that have traditionally surrounded the final girl.
The “final girl,” which is a term coined by Carol Clover in her 1987 essay, “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film” is defined as, “The one who encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent of the preceding horror and of her own peril. She is chased, cornered, wounded; whom we see scream, stagger, fall, rise, and scream again.”
Early final girls were virginal holier-than-thou characters, straight laced and often devoid of any sexuality. These girls were often inactive and oblivious–while their more sexual and adventurous friends were picked off one by one. Frankly, the OG final girls were dull, rather uninteresting, and foils to their more empowered friends (a direct embodiment of men’s fear of empowered women).
The original Friday the 13th film is a key example of these traditional final girls. The film, released in 1980, takes place at a summer camp where a group of counselors are being viciously murdered one by one. Alright—interesting enough concept—that is until you watch the film. Alice Hardy (played by Adrienne King) is the final girl in Friday the 13th, and she survives quite literally by doing absolutely nothing. She simply sits in a cabin while all the other counselors are killed until she is finally the only one remaining (it makes me angry even writing about it months after I first watched it). Alice is completely devoid of sexuality (and arguably personality) meanwhile, another female counselor, Marcie, played by Jeannine Taylor, is quite literally brutally murdered directly after having sex with her boyfriend. If that isn’t a clear attack on women’s sexuality, I don’t know what is.
All in all, the final girl in tales of old (i.e. many of the horror films of the 70s and 80s, and some less than stellar recent films) were far from empowering. In fact, they were blatantly degrading. These final girls boldly declared the message that strong women simply didn’t have sex, always had good grades, and generally seemed to be lucky in life as a result. However, this simply isn’t true, women come in all different ways and forms and they’re all incredibly powerful.
And so, we arrive at Sidney Prescott, the “empowered” final girl. Now, Scream was created by Wes Craven as commentary on the horror genre, so it makes sense that Sidney pushes back against many of the traditional notions of a final girl. Sidney has sex and lives (*gasp*), she actively fights back, and she even swears. Sidney seems to be the evolved and feminist final girl; on the surface, except this is not quite true. Sidney is white, heterosexual, and middle class; the other layers of her identity position her as far from inclusive. This is true of many modernly praised final girls too, such as Grace in Ready or Not, Jay in It Follows or Dani in Midsommar. In many ways, the final girl is stuck in a kind of second wave feminist purgatory–making progress from the beginning, but mostly appealing to white women of privileged positions. The final girl is evolving, but it hasn’t evolved. The final girl trope cannot be truly reclaimed and seen as empowering until it is inclusive–until we have LGBTQ+ final girls regularly gracing our screens, POC actors recognized as scream queens, and so much more. The work is happening, but it isn’t done.
And I know that can seem big and daunting–but don’t lose heart. This representation is already creeping in. Jordan Peele’s Nope boasted a black, queer final girl to central stage with Emerald Haywood (wonderfully portrayed by Keke Palmer). Leigh Janiak’s Fear Street trilogy featured two queer heroines with the characters of Deena and Sam (played by Kiana Madeira and Olivia Scott Welch respectively). And John Krasinki’s A Quiet Place featured an empowered deaf character in Regan Abbott (played by Millicent Simmons). Change is happening, the representation is appearing–but it must be continued to be championed and supported and welcomed, so that each and every person can see themselves on the screen and think, “Wow, that character’s really cool and they’re just like me”.
So, is it still okay to love Sidney Prescott? Yes, I sure think so (I know I still do). But that love comes with conditions–it comes with the hope for a better future, and a voice that is willing to speak up for that future. It comes with a passion to fight all the monsters that stand in the way of representation.
Edited by: Alyssa Schulties and Kate Castello