How American Horror Story: 1984 Flips the Script on the Gender and Race Conventions of the “Slasher” Subgenre
For those of us who enjoy a good horror movie, slasher films are often the easiest to turn to when craving a good scare. We gain the excitement and adrenaline of a suspenseful situation while safe in the comfort of our own homes. Convenient time to want to watch one of these, right? However, like most cinematic genres, horror films — and even more specifically, slasher films — have well-established conventions that surfaced decades ago with movies like Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). The most prevalent of these conventions are:
- A male who is a sexually-stunted, social outcast that goes on a killing spree, most often motivated by revenge or sexual fixation. These killers often possess unprecedented strength and near-superhuman qualities, making them seemingly impossible to kill. Most of these men also have either overbearing or absent mothers in their pasts.
- A group of disreputable teens/young adults who fulfill generic archetypes: the jock, the girl with loose morals, the token black friend who usually gets killed first, etc. This group usually goes on some road trip or excursion where they plan to engage in debaucherous activity — conveniently in the same location that the killer is fixated on.
- A harbinger of doom that warns the group not to carry on with their journey if they don’t want to be killed (usually the old man that runs the nearest gas station).
- A motivated psychologist/expert that wants to get to the bottom of the killer’s psyche (like Dr. Sam Loomis of Halloween).
- And perhaps the most important: The Final Girl — a virginal, innocent, female who outlives all others and is somehow able to vanquish the threat and save the day.
These genre conventions have contributed greatly to the “slasher canon.” They help guide the story and character motivations in a direction that creates effective horror and suspense. However, because following this formula can eventually result in predictability, the 1990’s saw a stylistic shift toward films that make the predictability of these conventions their entire focus. The Scream franchise and Cabin in the Woods (2011) are some key examples. And as evidenced by the most recent installment in the American Horror Story series, this self-referential and playful mode of storytelling is still proving to be a source of entertainment for horror fans.
Regardless of whether or not you like this show, it is undeniable that this season makes a strong commentary on “slasher” conventions. Not only does it pull a Scream and comedically examine the typical characters and plot devices of a “slasher” film, but it does us one better in actually flipping the script on those conventions to give us a story we’ve never really seen before. We are presented with every one of the above-listed character archetypes and narrative dynamics, but as we ride out the 9-episode season, the narrative twists these conventions into something new and unpredictable. Dare I say, something I’ve never seen before in a slasher film.
*The following definitely contains lots of spoilers. So if you plan on viewing this season, I highly recommend doing so before reading the rest of this article.*
The main focus of this particular season is on male serial killers, Mr. Jingles and Richard Ramirez (A.K.A. The Night Stalker). We being with the conventional archetype, but soon come to find out that each of these men are merely pawns being controlled by women. Mr. Jingles was innocently dragged into his circumstances by a socially-ostracized teenage girl out for revenge, and Ramirez was (not so innocently) persuaded to target women by another female in our group…again for revenge. So where we typically see women at the mercy of the killers, we actually have men who are at the mercy of female masterminds. Oddly enough, the majority of the men in this season are actually trying to do what they know is right — which is pretty refreshing for once.
We also see extreme deviations from character archetypes in almost all of our other characters. One of the most obvious is how our “Final Girl” (Emma Roberts’ Brooke)— who is only supposed to survive by remaining a chaste virgin — actually loses her virginity, turns dark and cynical after going to prison for a while, and still comes out alive and prosperous at the end. In a typical slasher film, those who have sex or engage in immoral activity must be punished by the killer. But this doesn’t happen for our 1984 cast. Everyone who is killed still remains at the camp postmortem and is able to create a functional afterlife for themselves.
Race roles are also a huge theme and discussion topic for this season. Typically, nonwhite characters function as token characters who are killed off early in these films. The inclusion of nonwhite characters was often a way to make the films seem “less white.” So naturally, AHS takes it upon itself to discuss these race dynamics as well. The two African-American characters we are presented with are Ray Powell (played by DeRon Horton) and Dr. Donna Chambers (played by Angelica Ross, a transgendered actress). There is direct discussion by the characters about how they would typically be killed first with a killer on the loose or about how there can’t be a “Black Final Girl.” By the end, however, each of these characters find ways to defy these stereotypes and come out on top. Ray saves Brooke, ensuring her place as a Final Girl. Donna, a psychologist who has been studying the minds of our killers, emerges with Brooke as a “Black Final Girl” — even against all the odds that Donna had previously prescribed for herself.
What I find most surprising, however, is that not only do we come out with TWO Final Girls (one African-American and the other non-virginal)…we also get the inclusion of a Final Guy — something almost unheard of in the history of this subgenre. I won’t spoil who that turns out to be, though, because it’s just too surprising to not see for yourself.
All these refreshing updates to character and narrative really marks AHS: 1984 as a study in horror genre conventions. So during this time when we are all confined to the safety of our homes, I recommend giving it a watch if you like these types of films. While I really can’t decide where it falls in my ranking of favorite AHS seasons, I do really love what it does to mix-up story-telling in a way that complicates the subgenre and does more for representation.
