Planning a Slasher Movie Date Night for Halloween? This Is How Your Partner May Respond
Study illustrates gender differences in slasher movie perceptions
With Halloween right around the corner, many couples are planning horror movie date nights that will chill them and thrill them. For some people, films on the roster may include slasher movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, and Halloween. Although these movies are made to elicit some kind of scare response, the way you and your partner experience them may be different, according to research in Sex Roles.
During their study, researchers Justin M. Nolan and Gery W. Ryan had 30 male and 30 female college students describe the plots, as well as their emotional reactions, to what they considered the most memorable slasher films they had ever seen. Their written responses — which mentioned movies including Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Shining, The Omen, and Halloween — revealed that reactions to the films were starkly different based on gender.
“Women…display a greater fear of images connected with family terror and demonic possession….”
Women participants tended to be more responsive to the familial-related danger depicted in slasher films, and they were most likely to use words like “father,” “boy,” “parents,” and “little” when describing these movies. In addition, women often mentioned themes related to demonic and spiritual possession. Researchers attributed these responses to the fact that women have concerns about interpersonal violence in real life.
“Women in the study display a greater fear of images connected with family terror and demonic possession, the latter of which is often contextualized in the home against the backdrop of ‘the familiar,’” the authors explained. “This observation supports the hypothesis that women’s descriptions of slasher film mirror their fears of intimate terror.”
“Men…identify images of rural terror in describing the slasher antagonist….”
On the other hand, men were more likely to discuss rural terror in their descriptions, mostly using words like “killer,” “country,” “hillbillies,” and “massacre.” The authors surmise this response is because these terms represent the unfamiliarity of the settings in many slasher films and the fact that men are more often the victims of crimes committed by strangers — like robbery, assault, and murder — rather than violence committed by family members and other people who are known to them.
“Among men, there is a propensity to identify images of rural terror in describing the slasher antagonist as part of a menacing and unfamiliar landscape,” wrote the researchers. “This pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that men fear strangers and unfamiliar assailants.”
Despite these gender differences, there were areas of agreement when talking about slasher films. Both men and women mentioned words like “young,” “girl,” “children,” and “kid” when describing these movies. This could be because the theme of adolescent lust is often explored in horror movies, and when young people get hot and heavy with each other, they tend to become a target for punishment by the movies’ villains.
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Source:
Nolan, J. and Ryan, G. (2000, January). Fear and Loathing at the Cineplex: Gender Differences in Descriptions and Perceptions of Slasher Films. Sex Roles. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1007080110663
