The Final Girl Needs to Evolve

The Final Girl. A term that came into use following the publication of Men, Women, and Chainsaws, and has persisted ever since. Even if you don’t know the term, you recognise the character. They’re as big a part of the Slasher genre as the killers themselves, standing up against evil and pushing through as their friends die around them. The most famous are familiar names – Laurie, Nancy, Ellen Ripley. More modern takes on the genre have tried to ‘subvert’ the trope, sometimes effectively, but the core ideas remain the same.

And often, these characters are created by the same sort of hands – men, writing women who aren’t ‘just’ victims, but survivors and fighters.  When the Final Girl emerged, the world was a different place. The only way we had strong female characters on screen was if they were created by men. Horror pushed the boundaries of gender in ways other genres weren’t doing and, arguably, continues to do so. Characters who didn’t fit into the male/female binary were coded, giving them elements only the intended audience would recognise, allowing them to present on screen characters that would not have otherwise been included.

We would not have had Laurie and Nancy and Ripley without men creating them. And when you look at the Slasher compared to Possession films, as argued in Men, Women, and Chainsaws, we see the opposite happen; Slashers masculinise women, while Possession films feminize men (to a point), but the masculine woman remained more acceptable than a feminized man.

The world has changed, and to keep up the pace, The Final Girl needs to change too. Yes, there have been subversions of the trope, but these rely on the specific form of the trope to subvert it anyway. In terms of books, we’ve seen the trope name on books by male authors (such as The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix), and while these can be good, thoughtful books, maybe it really is time for men to let go of the trope and allow the Final Girl to be placed in the hands of women (if you have any recommendations for these please, please let me know!).

There have been times I have latched onto Final Girls and enjoyed their stories, especially when there doesn’t seem to be many other heroine characters. But like the female action hero, it’s time to reconsider the masculinisation of the Final Girl. Why can’t we have a kick ass woman who likes makeup and dressing up? Do people realise how good a weapon heels can be? Not to mention how, the majority of the time, the Final Girl is a white, cis woman. As pointed out in American Horror Story: 1984, the Final Girl is never a Black woman – Black characters all too often killed off first. (SPOILERS: Yet where AHS seems to be leading to subverting the trope, ultimately it doesn’t, but it does manage to have some good plays on it throughout the series, including the killer yelling that she is the real Final Girl.)

Why does the Final Girl have to be masculinised? Despite what I said above, it’s not that the Final Girl has to run around in a dress, heels and makeup, but the trope itself sticks to now outdated ideas of gender – only by becoming more ‘manly’ can the Final Girl defeat the villain. Yet this is rarely explored in interesting ways. What if the Final Girl starts off as a tomboy? Or consider how a cheerleader could become the Final Girl – she does, after all, have the physical capability to do so already. 

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the Final Girl trope, but there seem to be so many ways this could be more explored within the genre. Partly because, as she stands, the Final Girl was an excellent character for the time she emerged, giving representation where it was desperately needed. Yet it’s also verging on a Fantasy Ideal for men. But times, as they always do, change, and we need fresh takes on the trope, we need explorations by marginalised voices, and we need to see more faces on the survivor that aren’t cis het and white. Like many things within genres, it is time for the Final Girl to evolve, to take hold and become something new, and not be constrained to the hands of cis het white men.

By Elle Turpitt

Twitter.com/elleturpitt