When The Woman Directs (A Horror Film)

2
When the Woman Directs

(a Horror Film)
Katarzyna Paszkiewicz
In the iconic opening sequence of Michael Powell’s 1960 thriller/horror

film Peeping Tom (United Kingdom), a man follows a woman with a
camera hidden under his coat, murders her and later watches the footage
as the credits roll on the screen. The scene of the brutal killing is shown
as if through the viewfinder: we see a frightened expression on the vic-
tim’s face, as she stares in agony into the camera.
Although there are several interesting issues raised in this scene,
I would like to focus on one specific aspect of it, that is, the structure of
looking considered typical in horror cinema. The scene seems to leave
no doubt about who is looking and who is being looked at within this
filmic universe. As many critics have shown, Powell’s metafilm, which
depicts a psychopathic murderer recording his female victims when he
kills them, shows the negative implications of voyeurism, exposing the
relationship between the cinematographic apparatus and gender bina-
ries. Patricia Pisters argues in her incisive reading of the film that there
is a clear distinction between ‘the subject, Mark, the photographer, the
peeping Tom’ and what is being looked at: ‘the object, the prostitute, the
object of desire’ (2003: 25). Even though this schema might be applied
to any genre or any realm of (dominant) film representation – assuming
that we adopt the psychoanalytic paradigm of Gaze theory – it seems
particularly evident in the case of horror films. In fact, Peter Hutchings
Copyright © 2017. Routledge. All rights reserved.
describes horror cinema as a male genre, ‘produced largely by men for a

predominantly male audience and addressing specifically male fears and
anxieties’ (1993: 84). According to this scholar, in horror films we are
usually faced with a male monster and a female victim, the idea that led
Linda Williams to consider this binary opposition in relation to Laura
Mulvey’s (1975) theory of visual pleasure. Just as the classical narrative
cinema reproduces the structure of the active male Gaze and the quality
of ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ of women, in horror films the male spectator
identifies with the active subject of narration, exercising a punishing,
controlling look, while women are denied this look or they are castigated
for exercising it (Williams 2002: 62).1 In her well-known essay, ‘When
the Woman Looks’, Williams (2002) identifies various factors which
cause the woman to look away, including the female spectator’s inability
Women Do Genre in Film and Television, edited by Mary Harrod, and Katarzyna Paszkiewicz, Routledge, 2017. ProQuest
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42 Katarzyna Paszkiewicz
to bear witness to violence and degradation perpetrated upon women. In
consideration of the fact that the structures of the Gaze2 have received
a great deal of theoretical attention, from Mulvey’s pioneering work to
the plethora of studies that have emerged since then (Clover 1992; Creed
1993; Halberstam 1995; Berenstein 1996), I am more interested here in
the extrafilmic dimension of these looking relations: who orchestrates
these gaze(s) and for whom?
The metafilmic scene of Peeping Tom seems to confirm the long-
standing prejudiced claim that horror cinema is produced by and for
sadistic men. Let’s consider for a moment the second part of this equa-
tion. A lthough there have been several notable exceptions, the critical
discourses centring on horror film spectatorship have tended to privi-
lege the male Gaze and, consequently, the male spectator. This perva-
sive assumption that women do not derive pleasure from horror films is
confirmed in the popular press: despite the growing visibility of female
horror fans, 3 the narratives which are constructed around them rely
upon certain notions of gender that are highly problematic, as can be
observed in Michelle Orange’s article for The New York Times:
And yet recent box office receipts show that women have an even
bigger appetite for these films than men. Theories straining to ad-
dress this particular head scratcher have their work cut out for them:
Are female fans of Saw ironists? Masochists? Or just dying to get
closer to their dates?
(2009, my emphasis)
The idea that horror cinema and female audiences don’t mix has been
questioned by many feminist film scholars, who have sought to concep-
tualise the female pleasures derived from the horror genre (Halberstam
1995; Berenstein 1996; Cherry 2002, among others). Surprisingly, while
women spectators of horror films have received some theoretical atten-
tion in the last two decades, such has not been the case for women film-
makers who choose to work within this genre. Drawing on the title of
Williams’ essay, we need to ask what happens not only when the woman
looks, but also when the woman directs.
This chapter seeks to raise some questions about what is at stake when
women directors make horror films. In order to address the problematic
relationship between female authorship, film genres and feminism and
especially how these tensions play out in the discursive circulation of
women’s cinema, I will first look at several examples of horror films di-
rected by women in the North American context; in the second part of
this chapter, I will address the remake of Carrie, directed by Kimberly
Peirce (United States, 2013), which was defined by the filmmaker as a
feminist revision of the horror genre (in Cadenas 2013). What makes this
film a compelling case study for feminist film criticism is the fact that
When the Woman Directs (a Horror Film) 43
it draws on a genre traditionally codified as ‘male’ and it was produced
within a predominantly ‘male’ Hollywood industry: a major film studio
(Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) hired a woman to direct a horror movie on
the assumption that she could impregnate it with a ‘female perspective’
(Mischer in Chitwood 2013).4 What follows is an attempt to add to our
understanding of women filmmakers working within horror genre cin-
ema produced by Hollywood studios. To achieve this, I have analysed
female-directed horror films’ marketing materials and reviews, as well
as filmmakers’ profiles, to unravel some of the tensions that have per-
meated the popular construction of these directors’ star personas and
authorship, and the reception of their films. Rather than presenting the
detailed results of this analysis, I am hoping to examine some of the
pitfalls involved in conceptualising female/feminist authorship, in par-
ticular in reference to the conventions of the horror genre.
Women Filmmakers and Horror Films

The cliché that horror films are made purely for and by men in order to
indulge sadistic, voyeuristic fantasies against women persists in debates
around this film genre, even though as early as the 1990s some feminist
scholars, such as Carol J. Clover (1992) and Barbara Creed (1993), had
already questioned this assumption. This prejudice might be one of the
main reasons why horror films authored by women create such a public
disturbance, and at the same time why they have received so little theo-
retical attention from feminist film criticism.
Hostile, gendered responses to women directing horror films have a
long history, and it is useful to mention some particularly noteworthy
cases in which the aesthetic practices engaged in by a particular text
have coincided with and mediated extratextual social practices. The
critical discourses that circulate around women who direct big-budget
horror films tend to emphasise the exceptional5 – and often ‘morbid’ –
nature of both their tastes and their film practice. This happened, for
instance, in the critical reception of Mary Harron’s American Psycho

(United States, 2000) – co-written with her friend Guinevere Jane Turner
and based on the homonymous novel by Bret Easton Ellis – which was
overlaid with moral panic about the literal representation of torture and
death. According to an article in The Guardian, although many ‘out-
standing’ directors were interested in adapting Ellis’ novel, the producers
opted for a woman director, assuming that with a ‘female perspective’
they would be able to evade the protests over representations of violence
against women (Bussmann 2009). Despite their efforts, the movie pro-
voked a number of controversies even before being released. In a wave
of protests against American Psycho, within the context of the famous
Columbine High School massacre which detonated a heated debate on
the mass media’s representation of violence and its impact on youth, the
Feminist Majority Foundation played an important role, condemning
the film and the director for being ‘misogynist’ (Harron 2000). In spite
of these negative, sometimes openly hostile, responses, as time went by
the film achieved a ‘cult’ status, and the polemics that accompanied its
release gave way to appreciation of its satirical qualities.6
Almost 20 years earlier, filmmakers Amy Holden Jones and Rita Mae
Brown, creators of the slasher film Slumber Party Massacre (United
States, 1982), had been subject to a converse effect. Brown, a fem-
inist activist, had written a highly satirical screenplay, subverting the
traditional conventions of the slasher subgenre, but the result, filtered
through the hands of the executives in the Santa Fe Production Studio,
was stripped of its parodic trimmings. As Monika Bartyzel (2010) as-
serts, ‘The film is goofy and exploitative, meant to revel in the period’s
genre norms rather than critique them.’ After completing her experience
making horror films, Brown observed wryly that ‘horror films are one
of the last places where women will make progress, because they go to
the root of adolescence. They attract adolescence, on some level, even if
you’re 50’ (in Orange 2009).
Other examples are abundant and easy to find. A gender-centred dis-
course has circulated around almost all of Jennifer Lynch’s films, addi-
tionally tainted with allegations that she became famous thanks to her
father, David Lynch. When she was only 19, the director was, as many
press articles put it, ‘lynched’ for her film Boxing Helena (United States,
1993), due to the scenes of its female protagonist’s mutilation and torture.
The awful experience had such an impact on her that it prevented her
from making films for 15 years, as she explained in one interview:
I remember one of the headlines said that I didn’t deserve to ever be

loved again. Let me tell you – that was a really good reason to put
my ankles behind my ears and leave the business for a while. It was
devastating to me.
(in Webber 2012)
Her subsequent projects, like Surveillance (United States, 2008) or

Chained (Canada, 2012), won her critical recognition – she was the first
woman filmmaker to earn the Best Director Award at the New York
City Horror Festival – but at the same time, they attracted even more
accusations of nepotism, as well as sexist attacks centred on the violence
represented in her films.
Another interesting case is Jennifer’s Body (United States, 2009),
a result of the collaboration between two women working for a big
Hollywood studio: the director Karyn Kusama and the screenwriter
Diablo Cody.7 The latter’s public persona profoundly affected the film’s
reception, generating an uproar when she claimed that Jennifer’s Body
was a feminist rewriting of horror cinema.8 These claims should be
contextualised within Diablo Cody’s broader self-promotional activi-
ties, taking into account, for example, the recurrent backlash against
her star persona, especially in reference to her pole-dancing past, as well
as narratives constructed around her success at the Academy Award cer-
emony in 2008 when she won an Oscar for Juno (United States, 2007).
Articles with titles such as ‘From Stripper to Hollywood Screenwriter’,
or ‘From Ex-Stripper to A-Lister’ have been plentiful.9 One of the mar-
keting strategies for Jennifer’s Body involved framing the film within the
genre’s pleasures based on revenge and sexual liberation for girls. Film
producer Jason Reitman said that they wanted a woman director, so
that the film would take horror in a new direction. He said, ‘It’s a horror
film told from a female point of view, starring women, and written and
directed by women.’ At one point he explained what this female perspec-
tive might look like:
The jock gets it. The sweet nerd gets it. The Goth kid gets it. This
may just be Diablo’s revenge on every type of boy she’s ever met. If
Juno is the film that speaks to her need for love, Jennifer’s Body is
the film that speaks to her need for revenge.10
The responses to these claims, which emanated from the online media,
film critics, popular press and blogs, both professional and amateur,
were largely hostile, most of them contesting the feminist potential of
the film. For example, Brittney Jade Colangelo (2009) observed that
‘Jennifer’s Body is actually a woman “hating” film. It’s a classic example
of men not being able to trust women or the vagina.’
Ultimately, all these cases of women directing horror films have gen-
erated widespread discussion of the representation of women’s bodies in
this genre and revealed certain assumptions concerning male/female ge-
neric divisions, in particular in relation to women’s participation in the
mainstream Hollywood industry. Accordingly, they have also opened
up questions about the interaction between aesthetics and the cultural
and ideological meanings involved in both the production and the re-
ception of genre texts authored by women. My analysis of Kimberly
Peirce’s remake of Carrie in the next section will broach the question of
how women working in dominant screen industries might use familiar
generic forms in ways that have far-reaching implications for gendered
production and spectatorship.
Kimberly Peirce: A Feminist Auteur?

Unlike Jennifer’s Body, Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie did not provoke a
public outcry over its label ‘feminist’, even if – just like Jennifer’s Body
and many other examples of horror cinema – it features the figure of the
monstrous feminine, which according to Barbara Creed’s well-known
conceptualisation ‘reinforce[s] the phallocentric notion that female
sexuality is abject’ (1993: 151). Although in the promotional materials
Peirce – similarly to Reitman – repeatedly highlighted the appeal of re-
venge stories in the Girl Power mould, with particular emphasis on girls’
sexuality, her take on the representation of women in the horror genre
was slightly different. Peirce seemed to be more interested in the positive
characterisation of the feminine monster, as in various interviews she
framed Brian de Palma’s version (United States, 1976) within the super-
hero origins story.11 This reinterpretation was further rendered pertinent
by the choice of the leading actress, Chloë Grace Moretz – famous at the
moment of Carrie’s release principally for her role as Hit Girl in Kick-
Ass (Matthew Vaughn, United Kingdom/United States, 2010).
The biographical legend of Peirce also played an important role in
the promotional strategies and the discursive circulation of Carrie.
A lthough she might not fit as well within the ‘commercial auteur’ cat-
egory coined by Timothy Corrigan (1991) as some women filmmakers
do,12 her career and earlier films were central in the marketing activi-
ties around, and arguably influenced the reception of, her film. In the
interviews about Carrie, Peirce’s personal relationship with her mother
was repeatedly cited as having had a profound impact on her revision of
Brian de Palma’s film (Schilling 2013). As she explains in reference to the
opening scene where Margaret gives birth to Carrie, written by Peirce
as an addition to the source material, she wanted to ‘make sure that the
mother–daughter relationship was the heart and soul of the movie and
it was the engine that drove everything forward’ (in Cadenas 2013). In
fact, the mother–daughter relationship was one of the reasons Peirce saw
the story as a feminist text, but she also added, ‘It’s essentially a story
about looking at the disempowered and trying to give them power. In
the same way, it’s a queer story – how do the disempowered gain power
[?]’ (in Cadenas 2013).
Interestingly, rather than having fun with the horror genre and its
clichés, as many of her contemporaries do, she was more interested in
making a character-driven film. Peirce, best known for her successful

independent production Boys Don’t Cry (United States, 1999), a drama-
tisation of the real-life story of Brandon Teena – a young woman who
masqueraded as a boy and was raped and murdered in Nebraska – said
that when she read Carrie she immediately realised:
Oh, these are all my issues: I deal with misfits, with what power does
to people, with humiliation and anger and violence. Like Brandon,
Carrie has gone through life getting beaten up by everyone. […] And
then she finds telekinesis – her talent, her skill – and it becomes
her refuge. […] With her period comes the power. With adolescence
comes sexuality, and with sexuality comes power.
(in Thompson and Hanna 2016)
As with the characters portrayed in her films, Peirce’s public image is
also defined by her outsider status. She’s frequently been posited as a
feminist/queer director with a maverick sensibility, since
like the protagonist of her latest film, Carrie, Hollywood has failed
to bully her around [sic]. She’s kept at the business and art she loves,
despite being passed over for major projects and has carved out her
own success, taking the helm of unconventional films like Boys
Don’t Cry and Stop Loss.
(Castillo 2013)13
Her collaboration with the executives of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was

not without pressures, though. As it turns out, the studio cut around
40 minutes out of the film,14 and they also intervened significantly
when it came to deciding on an ending. Talking to the AFI Conser-
vatory’s Directing Workshop for Women’s showcase, Peirce explained
the reaction of the executives when she came up with a new ending
for Carrie, which in the end was only included on the DVD, involving
Sue, the cheerleader, giving birth to a full-grown Carrie (the ending
was inspired, as she explained, by a clip from Lars von Trier’s King-
dom [Denmark, 1994], in which a woman gives birth to an adult man).
Peirce’s statements provide some crucial clues for the general under-
standing of what can happen when women are handed the reins of a big
Hollywood film. After relating executives’ (misplaced) concerns about a
possible need to show a vagina on screen, she recalls with retrospective
incredulity how:
When one guy started forming a sentence that should have in-
cluded the word ‘vagina’, he would just stop. ‘So when you have
to shoot the hand coming out of the, uh, the, uh,…’ and then there
was just silence. And giggles. And finally it came out: ‘the Vajayjay’.
(The Vajajay? Really?) ‘The cooter, the hole’, other euphemisms.
(in Anders 2015)
She then goes on to mention encountering multiple female colleagues

with similar stories, and suggests that it is little wonder women face is-
sues in a system characterised by a fear of even pronouncing their body
parts.
Given her public appearances and her focus on marginal subjects in
her films, it is not at all surprising that Peirce’s feminist credentials were
not undermined in the critical discourses. In contrast, her auteur status
as linked to the horror genre was frequently undercut in comparison
to Brian de Palma’s in relation to his version, and her film dismissed
as an unnecessary do-over. Peirce’s Carrie was seen as not gory or not
camp enough, the sort of comments which were also circulating around
J ennifer’s Body. As one of the reviewers argues, ‘Peirce has excised every
dirty chuckle and whisper of camp from the material, nudging the story
in a more textured, realistic direction’ (Chang 2013).
It is interesting to notice how the film was considered more empa-
thetic and less violent than De Palma’s version, even though, de facto,
Peirce added more blood to Carrie, for example in the opening shower
scene, or when Carrie is covered with pig’s blood at the prom, shown
in slow motion and three times. As Will Ashton observes, ‘This final
deluge of blood echoes a scene that Peirce added to the beginning of
the movie, in which Carrie’s mother endures the bloody birth of her
daughter’ (2016). Nevertheless, most reviewers do not seem to acknowl-
edge these elements, focusing instead on an in-depth character devel-
opment and ‘human’ representation of the female monster. Peirce’s film
was perceived as essentially ‘different’ from those of their male peers.
The filmmaker promoted this view as well, for example when she told
Women and Hollywood that her goal was to make Carrie as sympa-
thetic as possible (in Cadenas 2013). She also stated repeatedly that she
wanted to do away with the objectification of the female bodies in the
original shower scene, where many of the girls are naked and filmed in
long, slow shots.15
This avoidance of the ‘male’ Gaze16 and emphasis on social realism
in depicting the experience of teenage girls might be considered a sig-
nificant departure from traditional genre conventions – if we agree that
there is such a thing as a traditional horror film – and in that sense it
could help to consolidate Peirce as a Hollywood feminist auteur, that
is, just as Christina Lane and Nicole Richter put it in reference to Sofia
Coppola, a filmmaker who manages to ‘articulate the process of pro-
ducing gendered knowledge and representation within the confines of
a conglomerate-based, mega hit-driven marketplace’ (2011: 191). Nev-
ertheless, the concept of ‘feminist auteur’ might become problematic
for many reasons. First, because in the promotional discourse feminism
tends to be employed as a unified and one-dimensional entity, which
many feminists would agree does not actually exist. There are various
schools of feminist thought, and there is also an important time-lag that
exists in the circulation of ideas from academe to mainstream journal-
ism. What is more, as Deborah Jermyn rightly points out in her study
of Kathryn Bigelow, ‘the quest to locate a “female/feminist” specificity
per se is doomed until it is able to contend with the diversity encom-
passed by these terms’ (2003: 139). Another challenge is posed by the
auteurist concept of film-making itself, in particular traditional mascu-
line paradigms that restrict women filmmakers to being considered as
auteurs only in particular ways. ‘Every reference to the cinema as au-
thor carries weight of several centuries of literary and art historical crit-
icism,’ Jane Gaines reminds us, arguing that ‘authorship has been taken
up too uncritically’, too often eclipsing the contributions of audiences
and other texts as sources of meaning, for example genres themselves
(2012: 15). Her inspiring essay on the ‘co-implication of authorship and
genre’, included in Gender Meets Genre in Postwar Cinemas (edited
by Christine Gledhill), poses, in my view, another question relevant to
this discussion: the problematic notion of female/feminist ‘subversion’
of genre cinema. Gaines and other scholars writing in the same volume
argue against the notion of genres understood as a series of ‘negative
restrictions on artists, whose expression was constrained by a set of con-
ventions’ (2012: 19). Gaines suggests that instead of ‘violating’, ‘trans-
gressing’ or ‘subverting’ the formal dictates of the industrial genre (that
is instead of ‘going against genre’), some women filmmakers ‘go with
genre’, conceived here as a framework that is remarkably flexible and
highly productive (2012: 20). This might be particularly the case with
the horror film: although the genre was considered the enemy of early
feminist criticism, given the association of generic repetition with the
reinforcement of stereotypes, it was later recognised as a productive site
of contestation and reimagining. Indeed, Brian de Palma’s Carrie was
already seen as a feminist tale by some scholars and film critics. If we go
back in time even further, in Danse Macabre, a personal record of the
thoughts about horror that the writer of the source novel Stephen King
developed as a result of the course he taught at the University of Maine
in 1978, King himself observed:
Carrie is largely about how women find their own channels of

power, but also what men fear about women and women’s sexuality.
Writing the book in 1973 and only three years out of college, I was
fully aware of what Women’s Liberation implied for me and others
of my sex. Carrie is a woman feeling her powers for the first time
and, like Samson, pulling down the temple on everyone in sight at
the end of the book.
(in Derr 2014)
While most criticism on King’s Carrie focused on the male fear of

owerful women, interpreting the protagonist’s death as the ultimate
p
defeat of the ‘monstrous feminine’ (which would therefore confirm the
misogynist nature of the text),17 the writer’s declaration also points to
an articulation of potentially feminist themes: Carrie’s maturation and
standing up for herself, as well as her anxiety and fear that no matter how
powerful she becomes, the patriarchal system is still aligned against her.
If King’s and De Palma’s representations of Carrie are already femi-
nist, we might ask in what ways Peirce’s work is a feminist revision of
it. And, more generally, in relation to genre: if women directors make
genre films, do they transcend the format – considered as an industrial
obstacle to their artistic creation – or do they repeat it, drawing on its
generative potential? Gaines suggests that we ‘conceive innovation as
already anticipated and “contained within” the generic, that is, in the
sense of already there, already-in-form’ (2012: 26). We need to ask if
what we might call a ‘subversion’ of the patriarchal tropes of horror cin-
ema, or the inclusion of a female perspective, is not the effect of changes
generated through repetition with difference, already vested in the logic
of genre. Carrie is to my mind a good example of the productive use of
genre conventions to tell women’s stories – stories about the bodies of
young girls, accepting the self, generational conflicts, etc. – which are in
fact nothing new in this genre. Although, for reasons of space, I can cast
nothing but a cursory glance over the film here, I would like to stress
how some specific aspects which in the critical circulation have been
considered a female/feminist subversion of horror conventions might be
already included in the generic.
Repetition with Difference: (Post)feminist Carrie

As the example of Peirce’s Carrie shows, in addressing women’s film
authorship in genre productions, the factors to consider are numerous:
industrial pressure and institutional discrimination, the commerce of
auteurism and the public profiles of women filmmakers, the collective
nature of film production, film reception and the discursive circulation
of women’s cinema in a wider sense, among many others. In the case of
contemporary horror cinema, in particular, it might be useful to mention
other contextual factors, such as the ones addressed by Pamela Craig
and Martin Fradley (2010: 83): the supposed feminisation of contem-
porary horror cinema, the dismissal of youth-oriented films and ‘their
allegedly wholesale escapist allure’ and the (gendered) allusion to the
generic terrain of the soap opera contained in the recent manifestations
of the genre, among others.
In his analysis of contemporary American teen horror cinema, Martin
Fradley remarks that ‘perhaps the key structuring element in the evo-
lution of teen horror since the mid-1990s has been its overt address to
a young female audience’ (2013: 210). Certainly, if we observe recent

horror cinema marketing strategies, we quickly realise that it is not un-
common to find horror films advertised not only as ‘female’ (that is,
addressed to women spectators), but also ‘feminist’.18 This shift towards
a mode of direct female address is, according to Fradley, also indicative
of ‘shifts within the genre itself that render former models of genre crit-
icism anachronistic when dealing with contemporary horror films that
insistently foreground the female hero’s expressionist transformation
from an uncertain young woman to an adult’ (2013: 210). In particular,
Fradley argues that ‘the affective semiotics of teen horror’s key visual
trope – the exhausted female victim-hero, tearful, bloodied and psycho-
logically traumatised – holds a dark social mirror to […] postfeminist
culture’ (2013: 205).
Carrie can be inscribed within this trend. For example, Peirce’s version
could be framed within extratextual discourses on the ‘mean girl’ figure,
a line of argument that might generate and determine particular reading
strategies by women spectators. Following this line of interpretation,
Chris and other girls in Carrie would stand in for a hyper-sexualised
image of neoliberal girlhood, as a pathological product of postfeminist
discourse, which celebrates white, middle-class, heterosexual feminin-
ity, grounded in competitive individualism. In this light, the final prom
scene might be considered a key moment in the affective power of con-
temporary horror film. As Fradley rightly notices, making reference to
Brian De Palma’s version, by contrast with the empowerment-through-
consumption narrative, the most interesting teen horror films instead
criticise it.
This is why teen horror’s most enduring image – the eponymous

victim-hero in Carrie (DePalma, 1976), traumatised and drenched
in pig’s blood on her prom night – is so iconic. Stripped of an ideal-
ised traditional femininity, the affective semiotics of the brutalised
Final Girl bespeak a knowing critique of the dystopic limitations of
postfeminist cultural norms.
(2013: 206)
It is not a coincidence that Brian de Palma’s Carrie influenced so many

contemporary teen horror films, which focus on the ‘horrors of high-
school socialisation’ (Craig and Fradley 2010: 89). What is significant
here is that rather than revising or subverting, Peirce’s Carrie reproduces
and contributes to re-establishing contemporary teen horror genre con-
ventions, especially in reference to their mode of direct address to a fe-
male audience. As Fradley shows in his study,
films such as The Craft, Ginger Snaps, Cursed, Teeth and All the
Boys Love Mandy Lane […] all share a thematic preoccupation
with intra-female relationships, the sublimation of gendered anger

and the repression and/or denigration of young women’s bodies and
sexuality.
(2013: 209–210)
This is not to say that there are no differences between Brian De P

alma’s
and Peirce’s adaptations. In her article ‘Monster Pains: Masochism,
Menstruation, and Identification in the Horror Film’, Aviva Briefel offers
a comparative study of male monsters, associated with acts of masoch-
ism, and female monsters, whose sadistic rampages are preceded by mo-
ments of menstruation and who tend to commit violent acts as a revenge
for abuses they have suffered from their parents, boyfriends, rapists and
other aggressors. The apocalyptic destruction of Carrie’s professors and
classmates, for example, is preceded in De Palma’s version by several
scenes of her own victimisation, with implications for audience identifi-
cation. Briefel concludes that the moment of monstrous transformation
in horror cinema ends up reinforcing gender norms. Carrie’s menstru-
ation appears as ‘a passive, uncontrollable act that reflects an equally
passive identity’ (Briefel 2005: 22). In the shower scene, the protagonist’s
anger makes a bathroom light explode but, in fact, she has little control
over her body:
Carrie reacts to her suffering as one might, by crying and screaming,

rather than by enjoying or controlling her pain. Because C arrie is un-
able to stop feeling pain, she cannot use it as effectively as her male
counterparts, whose violence often displays an obsessive control.
(Briefel 2005: 22)
Peirce’s remake of Carrie departs from this approach to characterisa-

tion. Moretz’s Carrie is much more commanding than her predecessor,
interpreted by Sissy Spacek. Even though throughout the film she takes
up a marginal position, literally occupying the corners of the frames, in
key moments she speaks up, and she does it with a new confidence and
power, especially during confrontations with her mother (Figure 2.1).
Her rebellious side is evident almost from the beginning: as Ashton
(2016) observes, not only does she resent that her mother failed to tell
her about menstruation, but she even pulls her up for espousing non-
Biblical ‘Christian’ doctrine. This Carrie is well-informed and is not
afraid of questioning her mother.
Furthermore, Peirce’s Carrie becomes an expert in telekinesis and her
transformation echoes the superhero origin stories, as hinted by Peirce,
usually revealing how a character gained his/her superpowers. While
Spacek puts her telekinesis into practice almost involuntarily, Moretz
Figure 2.1 C
hloë Grace Moretz’s Carrie puts her telekinesis into practice.
trains her talents, for instance when she destroys the water bottle,
raises the light while reading, smashes mirrors, makes furniture fly or
when she locks her mother in the closet (Figure 2.2). In the prom scene,
Spacek’s revenge feels more as if she has lost control, while Moretz’s
Carrie physically guides her telekinesis.19 This is because in De Palma’s
version Carrie trembles and crushes all around her, even those who were
on her side. She seems to be pushed over the edge: her look is blank,
her expression unchanging, and her posture almost immobile when she
executes her killings. In Peirce’s adaptation, in contrast, Moretz surveys
the space and controls her victims as if they were their puppets, moving
her hands and orchestrating the slaughter with much skill and precision
(Figure 2.3). She is more aware than the 1976 character, as she decides,
for example, to spare the gym teacher this time (a detail in fact borrowed
from King’s book).
Figure 2.2 Nobody puts Carrie in the corner. The protagonist speaks up and
uses her new skills.
Figure 2.3 Carrie’s rage.
Carrie’s characterisation as a young, resolute girl, perfectly capable of
defending herself and executing her revenge, who expresses rather than
represses her rage, should be understood within the wider context of
postfeminist media culture. As E. Ann Kaplan argues in her analysis of
Nancy Meckler’s Sister My Sister (United Kingdom, 1994) – a blend
of the male-oriented horror genre with the woman’s film – the current
preoccupation with female violence and aggression ‘may be a reaction
to the utopianism of 1980s hopes for female solidarity’ (2012: 75) and
the feminine imagination understood as essentially non-violent and non-
aggressive. When women filmmakers gain access to the dominant means
of production,
they are able to imagine the violent, aggressive woman […] while show-
ing her relatively sympathetically and in ways far from stereotypes of
the female killer such as the classic femme fatale. It is women’s at-
traction to violence, long unacknowledged, that [women filmmakers]
dare[s] to address through figures that are cathartic because imaginary.
(2012: 75)
These cinematic representations have the potential to provide women

spectators with an aesthetic access to violence and anger in a genre tra-
ditionally conceived as ‘male’. This rewriting might be also considered,
however, part and parcel of the logic of genre, based on ‘repetition with
difference’. As Jaine Gaines reminds us, ‘genre works are fascinatingly
predictable as they are unpredictable, paradoxically, by virtue of their
inevitable repetition in some innovative form of the form’ (2012: 20).
If innovation is already included in the generic, then rather than un-
doing genre, Carrie explores its productive potential, participating in
its longstanding and continuous re-inscription of the relation of women
with violence in horror cinema. Addressing women’s filmmaking in
conjunction with the role of repetition and ongoing cultural recombina-
tion already present in the genre can redirect demands for a specifically
‘female/feminist sensibility’ to an examination of the multiple cultural

factors that come into play in the struggle over making sense of particu-
lar examples of women’s work. Instead of conceptualising these filmmak-
ers a priori as feminist auteurs who transcend the industrially imposed
formats, it seems more useful to draw attention to how they activate the
‘generative’ force of genres in order to engage with feminist politics.
Notes
1 Adhering to this paradigm, in horror cinema we can either identify sadistically
with the male subject or masochistically with the female object. This deter-
ministic and masculinised view of horror cinema has been questioned by many
scholars, for instance Carol J. Clover (1992) or Rhona J. Berenstein (1996).
2 When capitalised, the term ‘Gaze’ refers to Mulvey’s conceptualisation of
visual pleasure.
3 According to Christine Spines (2009), ‘Name any recent horror hit and odds
are that female moviegoers bought more tickets than men.’
4 In this sense, I follow Cynthia A. Freeland (2004 [1996]), who has proposed
an alternative framework for constructing feminist interpretations of hor-
ror films to the psychoanalytic feminist approaches favoured by Barbara
Creed, Linda Williams and Carol Clover. I consider both ‘extra-filmic’ and
‘intra-filmic’ dimensions of this framework: on the one hand, the histori-
cal context, production and reception of horror films and, on the other, an
examination of how Peirce’s film represents gender, sexuality and power
relations. I’m particularly interested in questions about how Peirce’s Carrie
comments upon or replicates the gender thematic of its predecessors. This
framework, as Freeland clarifies, goes beyond the old-fashioned feminist ap-
proach to film studies, ‘the images of women approach’ (2004: 753). Instead,
in Freeland’s words, ‘questions about “the gaze”, the sadistic male viewer,
the masculine narrative order, and so forth, are replaced here by questions
about whether the film presents women as primarily suffering and tortured
physical beings, or whether they are also shown to be alert, curious, intelli-
gent, capable […] and so on, and also by questions about whether the women
characters help move the narrative along, or are simply targets of the horrific
spectacle’ (2004: 756).
5 If we take into account those directors who have made the most successful
horror narratives in film history, it may seem true that creativity within this
particular genre is dominated almost exclusively by men. However, although
historically there have been few women directing horror films in Hollywood,
there are a considerable number of screenwriters and other female profes-
sionals who operate within this film genre (for example producer and screen-
writer Debra Hill, known for Halloween [John Carpenter, United States,
1978 and its remake in 2007, Rob Zombie, United States] or The Fog [John
Carpenter, United States, 2005]) and who, not being considered authors of
the films on which they worked, have gone unnoticed in film history. On the
other hand, it’s worth mentioning that more and more women filmmakers
are receiving acclaim for their genre works; The Babadook (Jennifer Kent,
Australia/Canada/United States, 2014) and A Girl Walks Home Alone at
Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, United States, 2014) are recent examples of this
phenomenon.
6 As Kate Bussmann (2009) writes, ‘the famed US film critic Roger Ebert, for
instance, went from describing it as “the most loathed film at Sundance” to

giving it his thumbs up.’
7 The film, released in 2009, was produced by Fox Atomic, which at that
moment was a production label of the major film studio 20th Century Fox.
8 Cody explained in one of the interviews, ‘We were trying to say stuff about
body image and sexuality, about female friendships, about relationships. We
tried to shove all our weird feminist ideals in there but package them in a
glossy commercial way’ (in Powers 2009).
9 On the other hand, the representation of Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body, who
plays the role of Jennifer, as an eroticised and demonised object of the Gaze,
evident in the film posters and trailers, seemed to confirm that this genre
serves as a vehicle for violently reinforcing patriarchy. For a more detailed
analysis, see Paszkiewicz (forthcoming).
10 Production notes. Online. Available https://robojapan.blogspot.com.es/2009/
09/jennifers-body-200920th-century-fox.html (12 February 2017).
11 ‘The next thing that was really important to me was that it be a superhero
origin story. That was wildly exciting. Now I have the benefit of the years
that have come between the two movies because we’ve turned superhero
stories into fantastic movies with great actors and fleshed out characters’ (in
Cadenas 2013).
12 Within the realm of horror cinema, Cody is perhaps the best example.
13 James Mottram includes Peirce in the pantheon of American independent
directors in his Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood
(2006), in chapter 15, entitled ‘The Sundance Sisters: Sofia Coppola and
Kimberly Peirce’.
14 There’s a petition circulating for the studio to release a Director’s Cut of
Peirce’s film that restores all deleted material. According to the sources
quoted in the petition, the elements that were removed include ‘more prom
violence’, more destruction in the town as Carrie leaves the prom, and more
character development earlier on, among others. See http://pl.petitionbuzz.
com/petitions/carriepetition (12 February 2017).
15 In De Palma’s version, the camera repeatedly zooms in on Carrie’s breasts.
See Will Ashton’s (2016) 9-Minute video essay that compares Brian De
Palma’s and Kimberly Peirce’s versions of Carrie.
16 One of the reviewers observed, ‘Carrie is a story defined entirely by women.
It’s about exclusively feminine problems, namely menstruation and birth
but also male objectification, and, in Peirce’s version, it deals with those
problems without catering to the male gaze. […] Under Peirce’s guidance
Carrie is uniquely [for the horror film] unconcerned with male viewing.’
Available https://cinesnark.com/2013/10/21/carrie-on-female-power-and-
identity (12 February 2017).
17 ‘I can’t believe I’m about to go all Freudian here, but for the male viewer the
shock of seeing unexpected blood between one’s legs clearly represents a fear
of castration – a literal embodiment of King’s anxieties about feminism. […]
The story therefore resonates with men in terms of the fear of (metaphorical)
castration prompted by changing gender roles’ (Derr 2014).
18 Paula Devonshire, producer of the critically acclaimed sequels of Ginger
Snaps (John Fawcett, Canada, 2000) has characterised all the versions of
Carrie as feminist, adding: ‘I think it is definitely possible to make feminist
horror movies and I think we have proven that with all three Ginger Snaps
films’ (in Barker et al. 2006: 68).
19 Interestingly, Peirce’s version seems to situate blame much more with Chris’
boyfriend than does Brian de Palma’s film, thereby constructing her nasty
behaviour, and the film’s sorry events as a whole, as a product of patriarchy

(whereas it seems closer to ‘pure evil’ in De Palma’s Carrie, for example in
a series of close-ups of Chris’ salivating mouth). In Peirce’s version, Carrie
thus fights back against specifically patriarchal violence and abuse. I would
like to thank Mary Harrod for this insight.

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2

When the Woman Directs

In the iconic opening sequence of Michael Powell’s 1960 thriller/horror

describes horror cinema as a male genre, ‘produced largely by men for a

Women Filmmakers and Horror Films

instance, in the critical reception of Mary Harron’s American Psycho

I remember one of the headlines said that I didn’t deserve to ever be

Her subsequent projects, like Surveillance (United States, 2008) or

Kimberly Peirce: A Feminist Auteur?

making a character-driven film. Peirce, best known for her successful

Her collaboration with the executives of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was

(in Anders 2015)

She then goes on to mention encountering multiple female colleagues

Carrie is largely about how women find their own channels of

While most criticism on King’s Carrie focused on the male fear of

Repetition with Difference: (Post)feminist Carrie

a young female audience’ (2013: 210). Certainly, if we observe recent

This is why teen horror’s most enduring image – the eponymous

It is not a coincidence that Brian de Palma’s Carrie influenced so many

with intra-female relationships, the sublimation of gendered anger

This is not to say that there are no differences between Brian De P

Carrie reacts to her suffering as one might, by crying and screaming,

Peirce’s remake of Carrie departs from this approach to characterisa-

Figure 2.3 Carrie’s rage.

These cinematic representations have the potential to provide women

‘­female/­feminist sensibility’ to an examination of the multiple cultural

instance, went from describing it as “the most loathed film at Sundance” to

behaviour, and the film’s sorry events as a whole, as a product of patriarchy

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Figure 2.3 Carrie’s rage.

‘female/feminist sensibility’ to an examination of the multiple cultural