Instru(menstrual)

It's funny (not funny ha ha) that horror is the LEAST respected genre of film and yet ( i would argue, and i know what i am a talking about) deconstructs and exposes many of societies values and culture. It explores human life (both waking and comatose) in a very explicit way. This way may and can often come off as non-productive, but i assure you horror films will save us all.

Horror films are also VERY female centered. While of course there is the portrayal that women are hypersexual damsels in distress, who deserve to be murdered for their looseness - - their sexual power/freedom. However, (and this is the piece most people miss because they don't watch these movies at all) Women can also be antagonist - - which can be seen as a reflection of men’s pathological fear of women, their power, and menstruation, resulting in castration anxiety. Women in horror films are often thought to be child like. I mean 'child like' in the sense that they're helpless, simple, - - even small. One thing in particular that audiences gleam from horror films is that women do nothing. They do nothing to advance the plot. They do nothing when there is danger around ( mostly because they can't, am i right?). They do nothing but scream, moan and eventually die a brutal death. Wrong. Well its not wrong so much as it is surface. That understanding of women in such a male dominated genre is understandable, plausible, reasonable, and even expected. Women are thought of this way even when the film stars, or is directly about HER! There are a few women characters I'd like to talk about here. They together, but separately, string together a truth of extreme feminist importance. The period. Menstruation. The Flow. You may be asking a couple questions to yourself right now: in what movie is a women's period central? is there more than one movie? how can horror films be feminist? and I wrapped my head around this from a bunch of different directions; and i found something interesting. The films 'Ginger Snaps' (2000), and Carrie (1976) are just two examples of womens power - through menstruation.


You’ve probably all heard the euphemisms, and probably the jokes, such as: "Don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die."


to be continued....