Final Paper: Slashing the Gender

In “The Philosophy of Composition”, Edgar Allan Poe states that the death of a woman is “the most poetical topic in the world.” Woven into the American slasher film, this Poe-like quality is adapted and transcended beyond the screen to audiences across the nation. Notably, a good slasher flick is not at all terrorizing and gruesome without the female tragedy.  The majority of these horrific writers, however, are men, which calls into question the dependability on this notion of “beauty.” Feminist theorists, Gilbert and Gubar, argue that a woman should not be forced to be killed into the art that the patriarchy paints. That is, the cinematic beauty of a woman dying from multiple stab wounds should not be the only type of woman seen in Hollywood films. Simultaneously, female homicidal maniacs should be able to defend more than just her domesticity. Unfortunately in the 2009 horror film, Orphan, while the movie seems to promise a stray from the typical, it delivers anything but an original outlook on the female horror heroine. By examining Orphan through a feminist and gender studies lens, we will learn that the film’s female characters are not only angelic and demonic, but are stereotypically oppressed by the patriarchal society surrounding them.

The title Orphan, gives way to the plot’s basic outline. The movie begins with a nightmare of a particularly grueling scene concerning Kate Coleman and the loss of her third child, Jessica. Automatically, the film sets its theme on the cruelty of domesticity, for the foundation of the entire movie focuses on a mother’s loss and a family’s attempt at fixing it by way of adoption. After the bloody nightmare, Kate droningly wanders to her medicine cabinet and takes prescription medication which indicates the depression she suffers as a result of the loss of her child. The movie is slow going and considerably more suspenseful than gory, but after stepping into the life of the Coleman family, the viewer then meets the orphan, Esther. The Coleman’s adopt Esther for her brilliance and well mannered behavior, but not long after the honey moon stage with the child, Kate learns that “There is something wrong with Esther,” which is the movie’s catch phrase and premise. Through the use of narrative delay, the audience not only learns of the Coleman’s messed up past with death, adultery and alcoholism, but they also learn Esther’s similar background of cruelty and insanity. The movie’s ultimate and fascinating denouement reveals that Esther is not a little girl, but a 33 year-old-woman.

Unlike most slasher films, Orphan does not concern itself with deaths of beautiful women, but still constructs itself around motifs of angelic and demonic qualities. Gilbert and Gubar argue that “It is debilitating to any woman in society where women are warned that if they do not behave like angels they must be monsters” (Norton Anthology 2027). In other words, women should not only be forced to be considered either or, however it would seem like this binary opposition is not only absolute but considerably prominent in this particular film. At bed time, Kate tells her daughter Max, that her sister Jessica is a beautiful angel up in heaven. Similarly, as the Coleman couple goes to the adoption center, the little girls are all playing in the snow and making, as John calls them “snorphans” or, snow angels. It would come to no surprise then, that Esther lures John upstairs by her angelic singing, away from all the other little supposed angels. She is alone and painting pictures which tell stories of the domestic lives of women and the happiness they have with their children. With ribbons in her hair, tied on her wrists and neck, Esther is undoubtedly angelic. She is always the pristine example of femininity with her pretty dresses as well as her well mannered smile. Kate, however, is the demonic housewife with an ill temper and unstable psychology. She is depicted as neglectful for nearly allowing her daughter, Max, to drown in a pond as she was intoxicated from the alcohol. And it is interesting that despite John cheated on Kate with another woman 10 years prior she is not justified in having her own adulterous acts because it “wasn’t the same.” A man’s desire for sex is not comparable to that of a woman’s intoxicated desire. At least Kate admits it was a mistake, but yet, the audience is trained to see her as unjustly betraying as her husband. This undoubtedly becomes a revelation that the woman of Orphan cannot be seen in Purgatory’s light. Esther transforms from angel to devil and similarly Kate does the same. But interestingly enough, the women in this film have all the right to feel the emotions of which the two extremities bring to them.

While pain is biological, it is not a woman’s job to feel pain, for comfort could be provided especially by males. If a man loved Esther, these biological pains could possibly be alleviated. But as Simon de Beauvoir puts it, “Men need not bother themselves with alleviating the pains and burdens that physiologically are women’s lot, since these are ‘intended by Nature’; men use them as a pretext for increasing the misery of the feminine…by refusing to grant woman any right to sexual pleasure, by making her walk like a beast of burden” (1409). Womanly pains are burdens because they are exclusively felt by women. A man does not have to suffer vicariously because, after all, he was not the one to bite Eden’s forbidden fruit. This indifference is noticeable in Kate’s situation, as John is adamant about his wife’s constant trouble with post partum depression and instead, always seeks to have sex with her when he feels vulnerable. Sadly, he does not once consider her needs. In the only pornographic scene between John and Kate, John mounts Kate like an animal in the kitchen, assuming a male dominated role for his own desires despite that Kate is not willing to consent in the first place. Similarly, as Kate has issues with Esther’s ever growing violent behavior, he neglects her warnings and instead threatens to leave the marriage. But notably, for Esther, there is a scene in which she commits her first malicious crime in bricking a pigeon. It is highly symbolic in terms of the feminine and the role men must assume in correspondence with responsibility in alleviating pain. Earlier, the archetypal brother, Daniel, complete with the workings of a typical American boy, shoots a pigeon with a paintball gun and severely injures it. Upset, Esther picks up a brick from the snow and hands it Daniel and states very clearly, “put it out of its misery. It’s in pain and it’s your responsibility to fix it.” To no avail, Daniel declines, afraid. Quite possibly, if Daniel had taken the brick, he might have transcended beyond his father’s animalistic nature, in that, he would have vicariously relieved the suffering of woman (Esther’s feelings) through the bricking of a pigeon. But he did not take that responsibility for it is not a man’s job. The external emotions are not only projected due to the physiological nature of a woman, but exist within the extrinsically sociological interactions as well.

What is unfortunate for the woman monster, the female homicidal maniac, is that she can never really be any of those things for the sake of thrill, but instead all her malicious behavior seems to depend upon the people she encounters. All the external cruelty is what scars her interior being, which in turn accumulates towards revenge, seeking to kill only those who have caused harm to her. For Kate and Esther, a multitude of exterior factors contribute to their need and want to harm others. Aside from her body, all other women and girls alike are threats to Esther. In the playground scene, Esther is not only irritated by the fact that John pays attention to an older woman, she also hunts a young girl who has tortured and bullied her in the halls of her school. Funnily enough, the young girl who bullies Esther picks on her because of her dresses and the fact that Esther carries a Bible with her. She even goes as far as calling Esther a “Jesus freak.” It would appear that this young girl represents the modern view in American society where women should not have to carry this act of angelicness, but yet the audience is trained to view this young girl as the devil picking on a poor innocent good girl. Therefore, we sympathize with Esther and almost hope that she will seek her revenge on this young girl at some point or another.

Kate’s exterior motives are a lot more extensive than Esther’s. While Esther is one of the major reasons Kate seeks revenge, it would not have happened if her husband, John, had not even brought up the fact that he wanted to adopt. The adoption was not to fill the holes of Kate’s tragic loss, but was instead John’s desire to have his third child. Aside from that, because of past troubles with alcoholism and neglect, Kate is told by a female psychologist that she is an inadequate mother. But it is Esther who brings to the surface these haunting facts, and it is Esther who tells Kate, “…it’s your own fault. You took your family for granted.” But ultimately the trouble for both women extends to their domestic lives. While the film seems to promise a numbing masochistic female maniac, what Orphan has given is a classic case of American feminine vengeance, which is no wonder why this particular film seems to fit the plot of other female driven films. As Ann Archer’s character in Fatal Attraction said, “You cannot come near my family again or I’ll kill you,” Kate Coleman in Orphan says something quite similar to this effect with: “I will do whatever it takes to protect my children.” As Kathi Maoi states in her article for Agenda Magazine, “Women can shoot a gun…and blow anyone away who threatens their men or their kids…” but otherwise, women fail in doing so for other external factors aside from her domestic responsibilities.

 Perhaps the problem in constructing a female horror heroine is not because of just a socio constructed gender, but because of the gendered body itself. Unlike male American constructed monsters, female monsters cannot “transition from inflicting violence on himself to turning the violence outwards [because] that monstrosity originates when the ability to resist pain turns into a desire to harm others” (Briefel 18). Women have been given the natural ability to feel pain because of their menstruation. This is not something escapable for it is biological. If women can escape their biological pain, it is only then that women can become true blue serial killers. As the film opened with a type of menstruation, a still birth, but vaginal bleeding nonetheless, it is safe to assume from then on that Kate is not a serial killer. Although she is depicted as a demonic housewife, her depression from a still birth leaves her an inadequate homicidal maniac as much as a supposed inadequate mother. However, for Esther, while it seems she has potential to become a masochistic in-it-for-the-thrill killer, her body is still a restriction.  Despite that Judith Butler suggests that, “…the body is not a ‘being’ but a variable boundary, a surface whose permeability is politically regulated”, it would seem that more than political factors regulate this biological phenomena (Norton Anthology 2499). Men do not tell women they must feel pain when they menstruate, for any woman knows, both menstruation and child birth are naturally inherent pains which cannot be escaped. Esther does not demonstrate these pains, but it is very clear that she is in pain because of her biological existence.  Esther, as the viewer learns, is trapped within a cage--her own body-- not really able to fulfill her womanly sexual desires because she is condemned to look like a child. A hormone problem has left her with a proportional dwarf-like deformity, which makes her a victim of self loathing. In Gilbert and Gubar’s “Mad Woman in the Attic,” they suggest that “learning to become a beautiful object, the girl learns anxiety—perhaps even loathing—of her own flesh” (Norton Anthology 2030). And while Esther is a pretty little girl, she is not a beautiful woman. Embracing that notion that she will never be able to become the attraction of a man’s eye, leads her to this facade of acting like a child to attain what she really wants, a husband.

Like all horror movies, a woman typically lives to tell the tale of torture. For this movie, a young girl by the name of Max becomes what Carol Clover calls, the Final Girl. By definition the Final Girl is, “the one who encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent of the preceding horror and of her own peril…She is abject terror personified” (Clover 201). The foreshadowing of Max’s role of Final Girl happens when she asked Kate for a sister. Automatically, the viewer knows that the ties between Esther and Max would be inseparable, but not by choice. While Max does not wish to aid Esther in the brutal beatings of a nun, her father, her brother and so-on, the literal and figurative silence causes her to be just that, silent. Max has no language because she is hard-of-hearing and completely deaf without her hearing aids. This factor becomes symbolic in the nature of the feminine, for women’s languages (either by her body or mind) are never understood in the first place. Earlier on, the viewer watched as Daniel and John ignored Esther and Kate directly, as they verbally spoke on their sufferings and worries. Unlike Kate and Esther, Max has no voice and it is because of that which causes her to be the center of torture more-so than her other female counterparts. While this little girl displays apparent characterization of masculine qualities, she essentially assumes a very feminine role. Symbolically, when Max attempts to use the phallic symbol of a gun to shoot Esther, it ultimately fails her. The patriarchy fails her. Her father is killed, her brother is nearly dead as well, and she is the only one who can save whatever domestic life is left for her and her mother. How this is empowering to female viewers is questionable. Again, Max is trying to kill for domestic responsibilities and external sociological confrontations with Esther aside from trying to kill for the sheer pleasure of death. Perhaps she would become more empowering if she was not killing for her mother and if her characterization strayed from the typical “maning-up” of most, if not all, Final Girls.

The patriarchy in this movie becomes the hero despite that no men live to tell the tale. The women are still kept in their rightful place in spite of it all. While the movie itself is not a rendition of previous horror flicks, its originality cannot be praised for it is very typical in terms of the usual binaries consisting of: male vs. female, angel vs. demon. There are some qualities which make this movie stray from the typical, but they are subtle and do not compete with the overall commentary that a woman’s job is in the home, protecting her children and her beloved unfaithful husband. In fact, it shows how weak women in America can be. Kate, in the present day, does not have a real job but her husband does. Had she left him long after he cheated on her, she would inevitably have nothing. Her makings of a failed woman would be known. Instead, she chose a path in which caused her more suffering and torture. Kate placed her children in a position of death for the sake of her husband, John’s, needs. Despite the will to become a masochist and kill several men and his families, Esther fails as an empowering horror heroine. If Esther’s motives were constructed more on the thrill-seeking aspect of homicide, rather than succumbing to the pressure of external factors, she would have been more heroic. Unfortunately for Orphan, the gender biases and stereotypes were not slashed, but rather, amplified. 

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Works Cited

Beauvoir, Simone De. "The Second Sex." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 1406-414. Print.

Briefel, Aviva. "Monster Pains: Masochism, Menstruation, and Identification in the Horror Film." University of California Press 58 (2005): 16-27. JSTOR. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. .

Butler, Judith. "From Gender Trouble." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 2485-501. Print.

Clover, Carol J. "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film." University of California Press 20 (1987): 187-228. JSTOR. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. .

Gubar, Susan. "The Madwoman in the Attic." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. By Sandra M. Gilbert. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 2023-035. Print.

Maoi, Kathi. "Women Who Murder for the Man." Agenda 1992: 5-8. JSTOR. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. .

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Philosophy of Composition." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. 742-50. Print.