So I was pulling together, combining the filmography for the edited collection and in the filmography we're listing Movie Title (year). Director. Writers. As I was going through, cleaning things up, going through IMDB, a couple of things struck me. The first was how men dominate the genre. I mean, this is not news to anyone who studies or writes about horror, but to see movie after movie, page after page, of men, men, and more men, really drives the point how. And not just directors but writers, a whole genre that usually centers the torture, rape, and trauma of women, their experiences not as an actual narrative, interested in them or the effect on them, but their use as a plot point, all only put down on paper by men writing about what they cannot know.
There is a particular type of male director who thinks everything they do is "high art" and who often disparages a genre until they make it, then it's different. In many ways all art requires this ego- the belief that you have something new to say, some unique take. I think this is seen in the above list but also in the horror adjacent films like Alien3 (1992) directed by David Fincher or Terminator (1984) directed by James Cameron. These men certainly go onto make films they argue are high art or revolutionize the field, technically or narratively.
Pulling together this filmography the second thing that struck me was the repetition. The writer who paired with the director through several sequels, the writer who becomes a director later on, the creator or originator still credited many sequels on. Likewise, the director or writer who made the first film then disappears. Or is placated by a writing credit but not really present in the movie like 2013's Evil Dead. These all tell a story as much as Steve Miner holding tight reins to the first few Friday the 13th sequels. Until single director/writers like John Carl BUuchler and Rob Hedden have their run.
Then there are the television shows who privilege just listing creators over directors or writers of individual episodes, how their vision, process, is what is put forward. Then there are the television series that list no creators like Tales from the Darkside (1984-1988) or series that build on iconic, foundational horror series, yet their creator is not a big name at all like the 2016-2017 series The Exorcist created by Jeremy Slater. On the opposite end of the spectrum there are series that cannot be separated from their makers like J.J. Abrams' Alias (2001-2006).
For the purposes of our collection we're looking at how contemporary horror films deal with, revise, and revisit the idea of nostalgia. So the listing of title, year, director, and writer(s) is what we want, as the top billed actors aren't really a focus. But again, to look at all these formative, foundational movies that influence sequels, remakes, reboots, the genre itself, and see nothing but men forming the vision, defining the landscape, dictating the terms is still a gut punch. How different does all this look if even half this list were women? If even half the writers were women, if women were the ones writing the dialogue and setting the scene of horror? How different would that feel?
I only know that horror would not be recognizable if these imaginings were true and neither would horror scholarship. As someone who worked hard to work with partner to create a representative collection, it's still very telling how our references are so dominated by the same voices, the same films, the same men. I think it highlights just how important it is for us to consciously make sure we are actively pulling back against this, fighting and advocating for different, better voices, not supporting the same old same old.
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