Gender Bashing: Marketing the Vulnerable Woman in Shark Horror
Anya Stanley
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When the first domestic poster for the latest shark blockbuster, The Meg, came out I was floored. A relatively minuscule diver swims up towards the surface of the ocean, followed by a great white shark in pursuit, which is then followed by a creature so huge that all but its gaping maw remains unseen from the lower edges of the image. Not only did I think it the perfect poster for my horror-obsessed kid’s bedroom wall, but I noticed that the diver’s gender wasn’t evident. The incoming danger is still present in the picture, but gone is the unassuming bikini-clad woman who graced so many shark movie posters of decades past. This is a poster for a big-budget studio blockbuster; does the gender-neutral depiction of man versus beast here indicate a change in genre marketing devices?
The short answer is no, no it doesn’t. But let’s look at those marketing devices anyway.
Depending upon the decade and the scholar, horror spectatorship has been understood to be both sadistic and masochistic. We safely achieve catharsis from our seats as others are harmed onscreen, and we fearfully but faithfully gaze upon representations of ourselves suffering. Watching scary movies gives us pleasure that oscillates between, according to Miriam Hansen (in Rhonda Berenstein’s Attack of the Leading Ladies), “…identification and desire, between dominance and passivity.”
Studios count posters among their most durable marketing devices. A large image that fills the frame, a title, and a tagline are all that’s needed to tease a film before a potential ticket buyer. In the past, the general assumption was that young men (under the age of 25) held the lion’s share of horror movie audience seats, and that scary movies were marketed to them as such. Regional video rental store studies and studio-sponsored statistical surveys seemed to support that, with variations depending upon the decade in which the study took place and the subgenre surveyed. But according to Berenstein, studios have long appealed to both male and female audiences:
“…classic horror marketing rarely took women for granted. Films often included romance at the narrative level, which was included as a selling point to women viewers…not surprisingly though, given the goal of as wide a viewership as possible, classic horror movies were made and marketed with a general audience in mind.”
In her The Dread of Difference essay, “Gender, Reception, and Classic Horror Cinema”, Berenstein goes on to illustrate how horror films of the 1930’s were promoted with women audiences in mind. So, it’s been a thing. Women have managed to show up and enjoy horror films since the early stages of cinema. It turns out, ladies can identify with the victimhood depicted in scary films just like men can, even when the promotional materials for said films favor the victimization of one gender more than the other.
From the genre’s onscreen genesis, women have largely functioned as victims. This was once understood to be an appeal towards a mostly male audience that desired traditional gender roles of the brave male rescuer and the passive female victim. After all, the social characterization of women throughout history has been partially centered around two constant elements of horror: passivity and fear. I know I sound like a broken record by now, but I’m not even sorry that Carol J. Clover once again has something relevant to add to the monthly Gender Bashing sermon. Open your holy book Men, Women, and Chainsaws to page 8:
“In fact, of course, males and females are not evenly distributed over the categories. The functions of monster and hero are far more frequently represented by males and the function of victim far more garishly by females. The fact that female monsters and female heroes, when they do appear, are masculine in dress and behavior, and that male victims are shown in feminine postures at the moment at the moment of their extremity, would seem to suggest that gender inheres in the function itself— that there is something about the victim function that wants manifestation in a female…”
Well, there it is. There’s just something about the ladies that screams “victim.” It plays better. Carrie director Brian De Palma agreed with the sentiment in William Schoell’s 1985 genre film book Stay Out of the Shower: “Women in peril work better in the suspense genre. It all goes back to the Perils of Pauline… you fear more for her than you would a husky man.” If that’s what academic and cinematic minds have concluded, then the damsel in distress imagery makes perfect sense. It is fun to imagine the Jaws poster with a husky man breast stroking his way across the water, though.
If movie marketing’s aim is to peddle a movie, then the fearful woman has been employed to that effect time and time again. From the shrill screams capping the original House on Haunted Hill trailer to exhibitor-sponsored women audience plants who “fainted” in the aisles during late-night screenings. It all creates buzz. Posters in particular straddle the line between artwork and adwork, selling a film while retaining aesthetic value. A conventionally attractive woman always positioned in a precarious situation relative to the monster pursuing her. Two genres within horror took a particular fancy to this template: the slasher film, and the creature feature. Because it’s August and it’s hot outside, let’s look at aquatic horror.
While movies like The Creature From The Black Lagoon could fit nicely into the category, let’s consider Jaws to be the progenitor of aquatic horror as we know it today, based upon blockbuster prowess and successive influence. The poster for the film is one of the most iconic movie posters of all time, lifted from Peter Benchley’s novel of the same name (which the film adapts). It depicts a behemoth shark baring its razor-sharp teeth, ascending from the murky depths towards a lithe woman leisurely swimming along the sun-kissed surface of the water. The promise of blood is represented in the bold title atop the frame.
The shark is menacing, the woman defenseless. Her impending doom is moments away. She’s not even a main character of the film, and yet her precariously- positioned image is used to give people an impression of what the film entails: a feeding frenzy.
The success of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws cannot possibly be overstated. After the film’s sensational box-office victory in 1975 a wave of inspiration occurred, leading to decades of ocean-centric, often shark-specific films. Piranha. Orca. Mako:The Jaws of Death. Tintorera. Deep Blue Sea. Open Water. Three disappointing Jaws sequels. While not a universal constant, the promotional poster art for these movies were overwhelmingly variants of the classic Jaws creature feature artwork, oriented around a barely adorned or soaking wet woman either fleeing from or proximal to certain death via shark (or other sharp-toothed sea-dweller).
Fast forward to The Year of Our Sharknado 2018, where The Meg posters mostly depict men (like action star Jason Statham) in the position of peril. At first I thought that this was evidence of a shift in social attitudes. Maybe we’re past the vulnerable woman approach, and moviegoers need something else to inspire them to buy a ticket, yeah? But then I looked up posters for The Shallows and “The Shallows But Underwater:
To be fair, both The Shallows and 47 Meters Down do have the imperiled women wearing activity-appropriate apparel. Baby steps.
So, studios still mobilize the time-honored gender trait of the unguarded woman in an appeal to potential viewers because… it still works. It’s a strange dynamic in a genre that is filled with contradictions on its treatment and representations of gender. Posters still ape that of Jaws in aquatic horror today, remnants of chum from a successful, time-honored marketing model. And if the Sharknado series, an entire six-film franchise centered around a shark-flinging waterspout, is any indication, shark movies haven’t worn out their welcome just yet. It seems that for the time being, it’s an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” situation.
Marketing is, among other things, an extratextual way for the genre to play around with gender dynamics. It appeals to the parts of us that see things a certain way, and want to see certain things happen. The evolution from our boy Bruce hurtling towards a buxom blonde to the Megalodon advancing upon a great white shark advancing upon an unspecific diver doesn’t mark any sort of about-face in cultural thought. For the time being, we still respond to the doomed little lady in the horror genre, but I imagine that the aquatic horror movie poster will continue to serve as the gender-perceptive weather vane that no one asked it to be. Watch the posters.
Anya Stanley is a California-based writer, columnist, and staunch Halloween 6 apologist. Her horror film analyses have appeared on Birth Movies Death, Blumhouse, Daily Grindhouse, and wherever they’ll let her talk about scary movies. See more of her work on anyawrites.com, and follow her shenanigans on Twitter @BookishPlinko.
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