"A VISUAL ESSAY"

ARCHIVE

by Sarah Kendric (2022)

“Death by sex” is a trope in horror movies that marks female characters who engage in premarital sex as more likely to be killed off. The trope frequently juxtaposes sex acts with violence. It was popularized and most frequently seen in slasher films throughout the 70s and 80s, but has since been frequently subverted. Scroll down to explore how this theme has been used in theatrically released movies from 1930-2022.
Note: to my knowledge, all films mentioned deal strictly with a cisgender representation of women.
*Content Warnings* rape and sexual assault, gratuitous violence

START HERE
1. "Horrors of Society: The Reflection of Societal Fears in American Horror Films" by Brooke Lilek

2. "Horror movies reflect cultural fears. In 2016, Americans feared invasion." by Aja Romano

3. "An Evolutionary Explanation for Fear of Female Promiscuity" by Tom Jacobs

What are you most afraid of? The most prevalent anxieties of any sociopolitical climate are reflected in movies of that period (especially horror movies…for obvious reasons). This is true throughout American history. In the 1950s, monster movies like Godzilla represented the threat of nuclear warfare. In the 1980s, Poltergeist revealed a distrust of new technology.1 2016 saw a rise in horror movies dealing with nationalism and class violence.2

Throughout all this, there’s been one fear society has persistently cowered from: female desire. Psychologists like Michael Price of Brunel University theorize that our discomfort stems from long-held beliefs regarding economic dependence.3 Price and his contemporaries believe that “opposition to promiscuity arises in circumstances where paternity certainty is particularly important,” i.e., when women are more economically dependent on their sexual partner and would need financial support to raise any resulting child.

“These feelings are a remnant of some of the oldest impulses in our evolutionary history: A man’s fear of getting stuck with the tab for raising another man’s child, and a woman’s fear of losing her man’s financial support because he suspects her child isn’t his.” 3

Sex resulting in death in horror movies could be attributed to many more things that are a part of American culture, like abstinence/purity culture (especially in religious communities), lack of standardized sex education in schools and legislation surrounding abortion. Even more simply, sex and taking your clothes off in general can be an extremely vulnerable act, and can symbolize vulnerability to violence on-screen.



4. "How Self-Censorship Influenced the Motion Picture Industry" by Nicole Walsh

5. "Think of the Children! Examining ‘Pre-Code’ Horror and its Influence on Cinema" by Alexandra West

6. "The Lost Years of Horror Movies: 1936-1938 and 1947-1952" by Jim Vorel

“A HISTORY OF SUPPRESSION”

In some of cinema’s earliest years, female desire and on-screen sex on screen were demoralized on an institutional level. This suppression took the form of the Hays Code, a set of guidelines written in 1930 by associates of the Catholic Church for filmmakers. The aim of the code was to “regulate the moral content of feature films, designed so that Hollywood could police itself and thus avoid or minimize outside censorship.”4 The Hays Code prohibited a long list of things like on-screen nudity, denouncement of religion, “lustful kissing”…anything the church deemed immoral.

Major Hollywood studios like Universal and MGM willingly agreed to adhere to the code to avoid being censored by the government because movies weren’t yet protected under first amendment rights. When the Great Depression hit in 1930, shock value became necessary to sell tickets and movies really had to push the envelope with their depictions of sex and violence. As far as horror movies, the horror on screen had to be even scarier than what was going on in real life. We saw a focus on more literal monsters in movies like like Dracula and Frankenstein, both made in 1931.5

The Catholic Church viewed this type of 'indecent' content as the moral decline of society. Their response was to set up the Legion of Decency in 1934 with devout Catholic Joseph Breen at the head. The purpose of this new organization was to begin strictly enforcing the Hays Code and assigning morality ratings to every movie. Since the organization was controlled by the church, they had the purchasing power of millions of Catholics pledging not to go see any movie that wasn’t “up to code” behind them. Studios complied to avoid major losses in ticket sales, which resulted in a “lost era” of horror movies between 1936-1938.6

“Given that the Code warned against such things as depictions of “brutality and possible gruesomeness,” the horror genre was being stripped of its bread and butter. Breen reportedly thought that the horror genre itself was inherently immoral, and was thus willing to go far out of his way to discourage it.” 6

Because the Legion of Decency had a grip on major studios (which at the time owned the majority of theaters in the US), essentially every movie available to the public complied with the Hays Code. This didn’t change until 1948 when court case United States vs Paramount Pictures ruled this distribution practice as a monopoly. The major studios had to sell their theaters, which allowed independent filmmakers to come in and make/distribute movies without having to abide by the code. The Legion of Decency continued to exist with considerably less power until the 1950s, at which point it “weakened into relative obscurity.6 We switched over to the MPAA (motion picture association of America) rating system that we still know today in 1967, but the Hays Code left studios and viewers with the lasting impression that on-screen sex was deserving of punishment.



7. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol Clover

8. "Halloween Tropes Explained: Final Girl & Death by Sex" by The Take

A good way to get to know the “death by sex” trope is by contrasting it with another one of horror’s beloved archetypes: the "final girl." Professor Carol Clover first coined the term “final girl” in her 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Clover described the “final girl” as a (often sole) female character who is able to outlast the killer by the end of the movie. She is more likely to survive because she possesses some masculine qualities, often a gender-neutral name, a less traditionally feminine presentation, etc.7


“SEX VS SURVIVAL IN HALLOWEEN (1978)”

John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) is widely considered one of the most influential movies in terms of establishing both the "final girl" and "death by sex" tropes. In Halloween, the majority of murders in the film occur following or in anticipation of sex acts. Halloween’s final girl, Laurie, is made fun of for her lack of sexual experience by her girlfriends but outlasts them because she’s not preoccupied with sex like they are (though not without the help of another male character).8





The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th franchises also usually feature a “final girl” character. “Final girl” characters were traditionally abstinent from sex until Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) allowed final girl Sidney Prescott to have sex and outlast the movie’s killers. This opened new doors in terms of what is permissible for “final girls,” but these characters’ sex lives are a lingering part of the discussion around them.

Halloween’s Michael Meyers is also a interesting example of a slasher antagonist who is motivated by sexual fury/violence resulting from sexual deprivation. This results in a “revenge of the repressed” trope within horror that sees killers who are unable to express themselves sexually lashing out and killing those who can.8 This takes on a potentially ableist subtext when the killer is disfigured in some way like Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) or elderly like Pearl from X (2022). This motivation can impart slasher films with an almost cautionary message against the repression of sexual urges.



9. "America's Forgotten Mass Imprisonment of Women Believed to Be Sexually Immoral" by Scott W. Stern

10. "The Confusing and At-Times Counterproductive 1980s Response to the AIDS Epidemic" by Natasha Geiling

The “death by sex” trope could easily be read through the lens of sex representing social death. The sexual history of women has provoked their ostracism throughout history, and we see in this case once again how cultural anxieties inform the genre.

In early 20th century America, the “American Plan” allowed for women to be arrested on suspicion alone of having STIs. The plan began during World War I after federal officers began realizing that a large percentage of soldiers were contracting STIs. They assumed that sex workers were responsible and banned sex work within a 5-mile radius of all training camps, then realized the soldiers were actually contracting STIs in their hometowns. This subjected pretty much any woman going about their business to be “forcibly examined” and detained until proven noninfectious.9



As far as our more recent history, it feels obvious to relate this to the HIV epidemic. At its emergence in the early 1980s, there was a huge misconception that HIV only affected MLM (men who love men) because they were one of the most highly affected demographics. Because information was withheld and research was delayed, the general public wasn’t properly educated on how the virus is spread. These factors combined to encourage the condemnation of queer sex by the general public. The initial mishandling of the crisis by the Reagan administration fueled nationwide hysteria over the virus. Fear-mongering was heavily used in prevention campaigns that almost resembled horror movie posters to help raise awareness about the spread of the virus.(see above) 10







"PASS IT ON"

It Follows (2014, dir. David Robert Mitchell) is a horror film with a cult following that serves as an allegory for STDs and “sex as social death.” The antagonist of this movie is a murderous, shapeshifting supernatural entity that stalks its prey one victim at a time. The only way a victim can “pass on” the wrath of this entity to someone else is by having sex with them. However, if a victim is caught and killed, the entity will regress to stalking the previous person to pass it on. It Follows uses horror to demonstrate the cyclical and long-lasting effects (physically, socially, and emotionally) of STDs and the ways they’re spread. Sex being portrayed as punishable by death on-screen addresses our own fears about its sometimes gravely serious real-life consequences. To this day, stigma, legislation, lack of access to healthcare, and lack of education work to create a myriad of fears around sexual activity, especially for women.



There’s an offshoot of the “death by sex” trope that sees men being killed after sex by a female character, usually following an assault. We see yet again the fears of audiences being represented in horror. For men, this storyline actualizes the fear that such actions result in consequences and/or that they are complacent in the wrongdoing of their peers. Another recurring theme of this type of storyline is castration, which we can read as emasculation (aka the ultimate enemy of toxic masculinity). For female audiences, this type of storyline recognizes a fear of assault, but also gives them a sense of catharsis in seeing assailants “get what’s coming to them.” The “rape and revenge” trope gained popularity in the 1970s with films like The Last House on the Left (1972) and I Spit on Your Grave (1978). This corresponds with second-wave feminism, which represents a break away from traditional family dynamics of the 1950s and corresponds with the Civil Rights Movement.

2007’s Teeth (dir. Mitchell Lichtenstein) exemplifies both themes of castration and rape resulting in revenge. The movie is an adaptation of the Vagina Dentata, a folk story about a vagina lined with teeth that threaten male mutilation upon intercourse. The myth has traditionally been told to discourage rape. In Teeth, passionate abstinence advocate Dawn has vagina dentata. After discovering the consequences of this after a sexual assault, she begins employing her abnormality both unintentionally as a defense mechanism and intentionally as a means for revenge against predators.







11. "Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny" by Sarah Banet-Weiser

I find the “death by sex” trope so exciting to study because there’s a lot of range to it. It feels obvious to state that women being killed off for having sex in horror movies is inherently misogynistic. However, it’s also really interesting to see sex in horror movies being reclaimed in empowering depictions for victims of assault or being used to expose societal attitudes about STDs.

There’s an interesting dichotomy in the two existing at the same time, especially in the 1970s. This calls to mind Sarah Banet-Weiser’s 2019 theory of Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Banet-Weiser observes that when popular media attempts to challenge gender norms and present feminist ideas (although usually commercialized and put forward to make a profit), there will always be backlash in the form of misogynistic media.11 We have to remember that all producers of popular media (including horror movies) are motivated by profit and the maintenance of their power. When filmmakers attempt to move the needle in media away from misogyny, there will always be someone in power who benefits from it and has the means to create more media supporting it.11

So where do we go from here? While I don’t expect the horror filmmakers to abandon this trope altogether, I think the best way to move forward with it is to incorporate it into richer characters. In the past 20 years since Scream, its become more and more common for female characters who have sex on-screen to not only survive, but be the movie’s heroes themselves. Either way, we can always count on horror movies to represent society’s dominant views on female sexuality.




"A VISUAL ESSAY"


by Sarah Kendric (2022)

“Death by sex” is a trope in horror movies that marks female characters who engage in premarital sex as more likely to be killed off. The trope frequently juxtaposes sex acts with violence. It was popularized and most frequently seen in slasher films throughout the 70s and 80s, but has since been frequently subverted. Scroll down to explore how this theme has been used in theatrically released movies from 1930-2022.

Note: to my knowledge, all films mentioned deal strictly with a cisgender representation of women.
*Content Warnings* rape and sexual assault, gratuitous violence


ARCHIVE
START HERE

What are you most afraid of? The most prevalent anxieties of any sociopolitical climate are reflected in movies of that period (especially horror movies…for obvious reasons). This is true throughout American history. In the 1950s, monster movies like Godzilla represented the threat of nuclear warfare. In the 1980s, Poltergeist revealed a distrust of new technology.1 2016 saw a rise in horror movies dealing with nationalism and class violence.2

Throughout all this, there’s been one fear society has persistently cowered from: female desire. Psychologists like Michael Price of Brunel University theorize that our discomfort stems from long-held beliefs regarding economic dependence.3 Price and his contemporaries believe that “opposition to promiscuity arises in circumstances where paternity certainty is particularly important,” i.e., when women are more economically dependent on their sexual partner and would need financial support to raise any resulting child.

“These feelings are a remnant of some of the oldest impulses in our evolutionary history: A man’s fear of getting stuck with the tab for raising another man’s child, and a woman’s fear of losing her man’s financial support because he suspects her child isn’t his.” 3

Sex resulting in death in horror movies could be attributed to many more things that are a part of American culture, like abstinence/purity culture (especially in religious communities), lack of standardized sex education in schools and legislation surrounding abortion. Even more simply, sex and taking your clothes off in general can be an extremely vulnerable act, and can symbolize vulnerability to violence on-screen.


1. "Horrors of Society: The Reflection of Societal Fears in American Horror Films" by Brooke Lilek

2. "Horror movies reflect cultural fears. In 2016, Americans feared invasion." by Aja Romano

3. "An Evolutionary Explanation for Fear of Female Promiscuity" by Tom Jacobs




“A HISTORY OF SUPPRESSION”

In some of cinema’s earliest years, female desire and on-screen sex on screen were demoralized on an institutional level. This suppression took the form of the Hays Code, a set of guidelines written in 1930 by associates of the Catholic Church for filmmakers. The aim of the code was to “regulate the moral content of feature films, designed so that Hollywood could police itself and thus avoid or minimize outside censorship.”4 The Hays Code prohibited a long list of things like on-screen nudity, denouncement of religion, “lustful kissing”…anything the church deemed immoral.

Major Hollywood studios like Universal and MGM willingly agreed to adhere to the code to avoid being censored by the government because movies weren’t yet protected under first amendment rights. When the Great Depression hit in 1930, shock value became necessary to sell tickets and movies really had to push the envelope with their depictions of sex and violence. As far as horror movies, the horror on screen had to be even scarier than what was going on in real life. We saw a focus on more literal monsters in movies like like Dracula and Frankenstein, both made in 1931.5

The Catholic Church viewed this type of 'indecent' content as the moral decline of society. Their response was to set up the Legion of Decency in 1934 with devout Catholic Joseph Breen at the head. The purpose of this new organization was to begin strictly enforcing the Hays Code and assigning morality ratings to every movie. Since the organization was controlled by the church, they had the purchasing power of millions of Catholics pledging not to go see any movie that wasn’t “up to code” behind them. Studios complied to avoid major losses in ticket sales, which resulted in a “lost era” of horror movies between 1936-1938.6

“Given that the Code warned against such things as depictions of “brutality and possible gruesomeness,” the horror genre was being stripped of its bread and butter. Breen reportedly thought that the horror genre itself was inherently immoral, and was thus willing to go far out of his way to discourage it.” 6

Because the Legion of Decency had a grip on major studios (which at the time owned the majority of theaters in the US), essentially every movie available to the public complied with the Hays Code. This didn’t change until 1948 when court case United States vs Paramount Pictures ruled this distribution practice as a monopoly. The major studios had to sell their theaters, which allowed independent filmmakers to come in and make/distribute movies without having to abide by the code. The Legion of Decency continued to exist with considerably less power until the 1950s, at which point it “weakened into relative obscurity.6 We switched over to the MPAA (motion picture association of America) rating system that we still know today in 1967, but the Hays Code left studios and viewers with the lasting impression that on-screen sex was deserving of punishment.


4. "How Self-Censorship Influenced the Motion Picture Industry" by Nicole Walsh

5. "Think of the Children! Examining ‘Pre-Code’ Horror and its Influence on Cinema" by Alexandra West

6. "The Lost Years of Horror Movies: 1936-1938 and 1947-1952" by Jim Vorel



A good way to get to know the “death by sex” trope is by contrasting it with another one of horror’s beloved archetypes: the "final girl." Professor Carol Clover first coined the term “final girl” in her 1992 book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Clover described the “final girl” as a (often sole) female character who is able to outlast the killer by the end of the movie. She is more likely to survive because she possesses some masculine qualities, often a gender-neutral name, a less traditionally feminine presentation, etc.7

“SEX VS SURVIVAL IN HALLOWEEN”

John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) is widely considered one of the most influential movies in terms of establishing both the "final girl" and "death by sex" tropes. In Halloween, the majority of murders in the film occur following or in anticipation of sex acts. Halloween’s final girl, Laurie, is made fun of for her lack of sexual experience by her girlfriends but outlasts them because she’s not preoccupied with sex like they are (though not without the help of another male character).8



The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th franchises also usually feature a “final girl” character. “Final girl” characters were traditionally abstinent from sex until Wes Craven’s Scream (1996) allowed final girl Sidney Prescott to have sex and outlast the movie’s killers. This opened new doors in terms of what is permissible for “final girls,” but these characters’ sex lives are a lingering part of the discussion around them.

Halloween’s Michael Meyers is also a interesting example of a slasher antagonist who is motivated by sexual fury/violence resulting from sexual deprivation. This results in a “revenge of the repressed” trope within horror that sees killers who are unable to express themselves sexually lashing out and killing those who can.8 This takes on a potentially ableist subtext when the killer is disfigured in some way like Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) or elderly like Pearl from X (2022). This motivation can impart slasher films with an almost cautionary message against the repression of sexual urges.


7. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film by Carol Clover

8. "Halloween Tropes Explained: Final Girl & Death by Sex" by The Take



The “death by sex” trope could easily be read through the lens of sex representing social death. The sexual history of women has provoked their ostracism throughout history, and we see in this case once again how cultural anxieties inform the genre.

In early 20th century America, the “American Plan” allowed for women to be arrested on suspicion alone of having STIs. The plan began during World War I after federal officers began realizing that a large percentage of soldiers were contracting STIs. They assumed that sex workers were responsible and banned sex work within a 5-mile radius of all training camps, then realized the soldiers were actually contracting STIs in their hometowns. This subjected pretty much any woman going about their business to be “forcibly examined” and detained until proven noninfectious.9




As far as our more recent history, it feels obvious to relate this to the HIV epidemic. At its emergence in the early 1980s, there was a huge misconception that HIV only affected MLM (men who love men) because they were one of the most highly affected demographics. Because information was withheld and research was delayed, the general public wasn’t properly educated on how the virus is spread. These factors combined to encourage the condemnation of queer sex by the general public. The initial mishandling of the crisis by the Reagan administration fueled nationwide hysteria over the virus. Fear-mongering was heavily used in prevention campaigns that almost resembled horror movie posters to help raise awareness about the spread of the virus.(see above) 10



"PASS IT ON"

It Follows (2014, dir. David Robert Mitchell) is a horror film with a cult following that serves as an allegory for STDs and “sex as social death.” The antagonist of this movie is a murderous, shapeshifting supernatural entity that stalks its prey one victim at a time. The only way a victim can “pass on” the wrath of this entity to someone else is by having sex with them. However, if a victim is caught and killed, the entity will regress to stalking the previous person to pass it on. It Follows uses horror to demonstrate the cyclical and long-lasting effects (physically, socially, and emotionally) of STDs and the ways they’re spread. Sex being portrayed as punishable by death on-screen addresses our own fears about its sometimes gravely serious real-life consequences. To this day, stigma, legislation, lack of access to healthcare, and lack of education work to create a myriad of fears around sexual activity, especially for women.


9. "America's Forgotten Mass Imprisonment of Women Believed to Be Sexually Immoral" by Scott W. Stern

10. "The Confusing and At-Times Counterproductive 1980s Response to the AIDS Epidemic" by Natasha Geiling



There’s an offshoot of the “death by sex” trope that sees men being killed after sex by a female character, usually following an assault. We see yet again the fears of audiences being represented in horror. For men, this storyline actualizes the fear that such actions result in consequences and/or that they are complacent in the wrongdoing of their peers. Another recurring theme of this type of storyline is castration, which we can read as emasculation (aka the ultimate enemy of toxic masculinity). For female audiences, this type of storyline recognizes a fear of assault, but also gives them a sense of catharsis in seeing assailants “get what’s coming to them.” The “rape and revenge” trope gained popularity in the 1970s with films like The Last House on the Left (1972) and I Spit on Your Grave (1978). This corresponds with second-wave feminism, which represents a break away from traditional family dynamics of the 1950s and corresponds with the Civil Rights Movement.

2007’s Teeth (dir. Mitchell Lichtenstein) exemplifies both themes of castration and rape resulting in revenge. The movie is an adaptation of the Vagina Dentata, a folk story about a vagina lined with teeth that threaten male mutilation upon intercourse. The myth has traditionally been told to discourage rape. In Teeth, passionate abstinence advocate Dawn has vagina dentata. After discovering the consequences of this after a sexual assault, she begins employing her abnormality both unintentionally as a defense mechanism and intentionally as a means for revenge against predators.





I find the “death by sex” trope so exciting to study because there’s a lot of range to it. It feels obvious to state that women being killed off for having sex in horror movies is inherently misogynistic. However, it’s also really interesting to see sex in horror movies being reclaimed in empowering depictions for victims of assault or being used to expose societal attitudes about STDs.

There’s an interesting dichotomy in the two existing at the same time, especially in the 1970s. This calls to mind Sarah Banet-Weiser’s 2019 theory of Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Banet-Weiser observes that when popular media attempts to challenge gender norms and present feminist ideas (although usually commercialized and put forward to make a profit), there will always be backlash in the form of misogynistic media.11 We have to remember that all producers of popular media (including horror movies) are motivated by profit and the maintenance of their power. When filmmakers attempt to move the needle in media away from misogyny, there will always be someone in power who benefits from it and has the means to create more media supporting it.11

So where do we go from here? While I don’t expect the horror filmmakers to abandon this trope altogether, I think the best way to move forward with it is to incorporate it into richer characters. In the past 20 years since Scream, its become more and more common for female characters who have sex on-screen to not only survive, but be the movie’s heroes themselves. Either way, we can always count on horror movies to represent society’s dominant views on female sexuality.


11. "Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny" by Sarah Banet-Weiser