Essay: Maleness of the Final Girl

Sample Essay

The final girl concept mainly refers to horror films listed above as they portray an influential female who struggles and wins the struggle for her own endurance, while at the same time treating substantially to the socio-moral norms. Clover emphasizes the maleness of the final girl when she states this to be an “a loosening of the category of the feminine” (Clover, 63).  She takes over male strength which allows the male audience to identify with her.

Mary Ann Doane, on the other hand, discovers the idea of deception or masquerade to further explain the relation of woman to her representation in the movies. Her work was actually premised on work of Joan Rivièr. Doane mentions that masquerade, in her understanding of female characters in movies, is a mask of feminism that women wear to overcome the power of males in this society. Doane noticed that women who find themselves in a male position of power put on a masquerade of feminism that functions as recompense for their male position. Doane disputes that the female viewer lacks this essential aloofness because she is the representation. Femininity is built as nearness, as an irresistible presence-to-itself of the female body (Doane, 1982). The female spectator can assume the derivation of the pleasure of over-identification’ or ‘the vanity involved in becoming one’s own object of yearning (Doane, 31-32). Doane mentions that the female audience is inspired by the representation rather than overriding it.

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