The ‘final girl’ is one of the most persistent tropes in horror history – specifically concerning the slasher genre. It refers to the last female character standing after a killer eliminates the other characters. The final girl is often the one who defeats the killer.
The term ‘final girl’ was coined by film professor, Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (1992). Clover interpreted that the final girl is a feminist icon, challenging the patriarchy and the passive, weak female characters that were common in film plots for years.
‘Phallic appropriation’
In the traditional concept of the final girl, she is given implied moral superiority (the only one who rejects sex, drugs, alcohol, or other delinquent behaviours). In other terms, she’s an innocent white-dress virgin who has survived by being a ‘good girl’. A choice no doubt made to please studio executives who tended to be older straight white males.
Clover described her theory of ‘phallic appropriation’ in slasher films – how the final girl becomes a ‘masculine’ hero by taking up a phallic object to defeat the killer, e.g a chainsaw or knife. She may also have a unisex name (Avery, Chris, Sidney) and wear masculine outfits (Ellen Ripley in Alien (1979)).
In films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), the final girl is idle and passive – not furthering the narrative or surviving through skill.
Nancy Thompson
However, in 1984, audiences were introduced to Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Nancy faces off against serial killer Fred Kreuger. She refuses to sleep, doesn’t ask for help and creates a plan to pull Kreuger into the waking world where she can gain the upper hand. Her name and costuming are also distinctly feminine. She has not been masculinised.
Other modern final girls – Sidney Prescott from Scream and Grace from Ready or Not – also help defeat the villain or take matters into their own hands, showing the development of the final girl from a helpless victim surviving by chance into a strong, feminist survivor unafraid to also embrace her girlhood, defeating the evil men who terrorise her.
Different spins on the final girl trope have been introduced in recent years with The Final Girl Support Group novel and The Final Girls parody of popular slashers and it’ll be interesting to see how Hollywood further subverts and grows this iconic horror trope.
Featured Image Credit: New Line Cinema
He/Him
Arts Editor 24/25
Press email: arts@brignews.com
