Week Five: Witches and Women in Genre

Internalized misogyny, as present as it is in our culture, has an interesting way of manifesting itself in our stories and media. Many times it is so subtle and so common that many people don't even notice it even when you isolate it and point it out. There are not just a couple ways that women and femininity have manifested themselves in the horror genre in particular, but many-- and not all are very flattering.

There are usually two types of women characters in the horror genre: helpless and powerful, opposite sides of the same spectrum. Many 'helpless' woman characters are side characters, whose role in the story is to be saved be the (usually male) main character. If a helpless woman character is the main character in the story, many times she is a passive character, not active-- meaning that much of what goes on in the story happens to her, instead of her being the catalyst to moving the story forward.

One of the ways that a 'powerful' woman character manifests herself in a horror story is in the form of a witch. Witches have magical powers and are usually more evil than good. These witches are usually very ugly, warty, and extremely hard to be around. If she is not evil (like the Good Witch of the North) she is usually incredibly beautiful, idolized, and in a way, untouchable.
All of these tropes say a lot about how our culture views many women in a way.

By putting powerful women on a pedestal, or making them incredibly evil and ugly, I think it sends the message that power is something that women cannot inherently achieve. Though if she does achieve power, she must be so far removed from femininity that she is hardly a woman anymore, or at least not one that looks any good (green skin, anyone?).

The film we watched in class, Kiki's Delivery Service, is an example of a story in which the witch characters are not viewed as evil, untouchably beautiful, or otherwise-- they are viewed as borderline normal members of society just trying to fit in. Kiki, the main witch, seems incredibly human. More and more stories these days are expanding their horizons and including the trope of the 'witch' character as one that is more normal and human, but it is important to talk about how internalized misogyny affects how these characters (and how women characters in general) are interpreted in other works of literature, films and comics.