​THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FEMALE VILLAINS BY NICO BELL

I’m a horror writer, and my favorite characters to develop are the villains. But when researching female villains, I’ve noticed concerning trends that I hope to illuminate and discuss.

Let’s talk clichés.
It has long been established that females are the gentler gender. Apparently, we are the nurturing, soft gender that are deemed weaker, both physically and emotionally, than our male counterparts. It’s not natural for filmmakers to take this view of womanhood and manifest it in a villain that stabs someone in the eye.

Well, unless that someone is a cheating husband.

Think of some great female villains. What is the inciting incident that causes them to turn evil? In Fatal Attraction (1987), Glen Close plays an obsessed mistress who seeks revenge by stalking her ex-lover. Notice how Close’s villainous character sticks well within the confines of femininity? She’s a scorned woman, who falls in love with a man, and can’t handle rejection. In the end, Michael Douglass’s character actually wins sympathy from viewers, even though he’s just as guilty for the affair. The woman is villainized, the man is the victim. Shocker.

Or how about the original iconic Friday the 13th (1980) movie. A little boy dies due to neglectful camp counselors and the mother avenges his death. It’s the mother-son connection that leads to her murder spree, once again confining the female villain to stereotypical female tendencies. We’re the maternal guiding lights to our children, therefore our horror must exist within that realm. Same with Carrie (1979) and her mother.

Let’s talk jealousy and revenge

Not only does our evil seem to be stuck in a world of female tendencies, we’re also typecast to villains with little emotional range. We’re jealous. We want revenge. The 2009 flick Obsessed plays off this trope, but it can be traced further back. Look at Disney fairytales. Ursala is jealous of Ariel and steals her voice in The Little Mermaid. Cinderella has three jealous stepsisters and an evil stepmother who want to take away Cinderella’s happily ever after. Did you notice a trend? The women are jealous of other women. Another cliché we could probably do without.

Let’s talk sex

But it’s not just our maternal or female instincts that are exploited when developing our evil personalities. It’s our sexuality. Think Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body (2010) or Uma Therman in Batman and Robin (1997). I’d just like to say, in case anyone needs to hear this, women were not put on this Earth to “look good” for men. Portraying our “power” in this sort of light truly diminishes our worth and humanity. The femme fatale trope is nothing new, but surely, we can retire it. We can create deeper characters whose bodies don’t play a role in luring prey.
Now, let’s talk solutions.

All I want are well-rounded female villains, just as there are well-rounded male villains. I recently saw The Joker (2019), which I could argue is one of the most haunting and brilliant portrays of a villain in cinema. Why can’t we take all the things film makers did right with that movie and apply it to a female villain?

The key to any good villain is depth and fear. Readers want to know the backstory, the spark that started the insanity and evil. They want to know the villain’s internal and external fears and see how that manifests into darkness. Look at Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide Wilson/ Red in Us (2018). She’s brilliant, and her character is one of the best female villains of all time. Her trauma isn’t sparked by her femininity. It’s a universal fear that haunts her and leads to revenge.
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I’m not suggesting that a female villain can never again wear high heels or have a backstory that’s derived from the loss of a child. I’m suggesting that we challenge ourselves to push beyond these stories. Create new female villains that we haven’t seen before.
 

Nico Bell is a horror author and book reviewer. She's had several short stories published, and her debut novel Food Fright is available March 2020. You can find her at www.nicobellfiction or  @nicobellfiction on twitter and instagram.