Halloween was never really a thing in Australia. I remember trick or treating as a child, ambling around dressed as a ghost asking for candy and returning home with a near empty plastic bag. But it seems in lockdown, because there was nothing else to look forward to, Halloween is having a moment.
Apart from the horrific amount of useless plastic stocking the shelves of Kmart, I really, really love Halloween. Obviously, since I love anything witchy, spooky and supernatural and love a costume. But it’s also because I love horror.
The horror genre is super controversial in regards whether or not it is feminist, as it at times glorifies violence against women, and upon doing more research into this I decided that it’s just too complex to do any justice talking about on this little Substack. We can track the general attitude towards women through how they are treated in the horror films at that time, and in the 70s it was not good, let me say that much.
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But from films made recently, I believe horror is a women’s genre. From when I was born, only two years before Scream, horror was always the genre that championed powerful women with agency. I've grown up to see how the female characters on our screens have evolved to the fierce final girls we see all the time now.
Final Girl (noun) A trope in horror films, particularly slasher films, referring to the last female character alive to confront the killer. She's often the one left to tell the story.
There have been some really fantastic horror movies that depict the female experience, from the transformation of menstruation to intense feminine rage, and that’s what I want to be immersing myself in this spooky season.
So we’re doing a movie marathon.
Feel free to join us and follow the Planet Persephone podcast as MHB (cinema programmer and movie connoisseur) and I (with a dusty film degree) dissect these iconic spooky films. We’ll be doing one episode each week in October.
How it works:
Watch the movie(s) of the day on the day (or whenever)
Listen to our review podcast at the end of the week
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you’re joining in on Instagram or Tiktok.
Planet Persephone is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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