exclusive interview with
Sarah Kendric
Interview by: Jennie Bull
Images by: Sarah Kendric
Images by: Sarah Kendric
Most college students dread their senior theses. To tackle hers, Sarah Kendric brought one of her biggest loves to the classroom: horror movies. A 2022 graduate from the Parsons Communication Design program with a concentration in Web Design, Sarah’s thesis project serves as a visual essay on the “Death by Sex” trope present in horror movies.
According to Sarah, the “Death by Sex” trope, at it’s most basic, marks female characters who engage in premarital sex as more likely to be killed off, as popularized in 70’s / 80’s slasher movies. Through her research, Sarah unveiled this trope as the juxtaposition of sex and violence. She found it to include women enacting revenge on their abusers after a sexual assault (ex: Teeth, I Spit on Your Grave, Ms .45), monstrous women who use their sexuality to lure in their victims (ex: Jennifer’s Body), horror movies serving as sexual health allegories (ex: It Follows), and sex itself provoking fear because of how vulnerable of an act it can be.
SK: To get a little more psychoanalytical about the “Death by Sex” trope, we can think about stabbing in horror movies as penetration–weapons like knives can be phallic. There’s this book by Barbara Creed called The Monstrous Feminine, and the main idea is that women in horror movies are monstrous because they have the ability to castrate, and male castration anxiety is at its peak during sex. That’s a very Freudian lens through which to look at it, but still kind of interesting.
JB: In addition to the “Death by Sex” trope, your research also dives into the “Final Girl” trope. What is the difference between these two?
SK: The “Final Girl” trope is kind of the inverse of the “Death by Sex” trope. It’s usually a young girl, who will sometimes have more masculine qualities or a unisex name, they are able to survive these horror movies because they’re not engaging in premarital sex. This foil is interesting because it’s evolved so much. I feel like some movies now want to make the “Final Girl” kind of a ‘girlboss,’ so it is interesting to see how the two have evolved together.
JB: In your thesis, you mentioned how the Hays Code made on-screen sex a sinful act deserving of punishment. How do you think this has translated into society's views on sexual expression?
SK: The Hays Code is a just small part of the lineage of shame and stigma surrounding female sexuality in the US. The Hays Code was basically created because a certain group - namely the Catholic Church - was afraid, afraid of losing control over their perception of morality in the general public. Shame is a really powerful tool of oppression and it gets passed down, from the time the Hays Code was in effect until now.
JB: Would you classify films that fall under the “Death by Sex” trope as inherently anti-feminist?
SK: I’d say in most cases it depends on the intention of the filmmakers. In general, horror is just one lens through which to see, discuss, and critique violence against women. Definitely at its darkest, when the “Death by Sex” trope is done strictly for the male gaze, it can get really sadistic and voyeuristic. Violence against women being acted out, a fantasy of punishing women, eliminating the threat of seduction; I would consider this side of the trope to be anti-feminist.
JB: What makes a film feminist?
SK: I think it comes down to the aim of undoing oppression. One route for that is depicting women on-screen with agency- the agency to defend themselves, the agency to seek revenge on those who have wronged them, the agency over their own bodies - we see a lot of that throughout horror history. Also, a horror movie could be feminist if a woman can see it, identify with the protagonist, and feel a sense of catharsis. Horror so often mimics real-life patterns of abuse (ex: The Shining) and it can mirror our fears about our own changing bodies.
But like anything else, horror cannot be considered truly feminist if it’s not intersectional. People who aren’t cisgender or white or of a certain economic background have even less agency under a patriarchal society, which has been historically reflected on-screen. We think of trans-coded characters in horror movies like Dressed to Kill and Silence of the Lambs, and their characterization has historically been almost like a caricature. That’s just one example that shows a need for some progress.
I see a lot of newer horror movies posturing as feminist, but they’re kind of just new takes and commentary on existing formulas. A lot of these formulas are great and they work for a reason, but I was just watching this video by the MoMa that asked: when we’re updating the genre to reflect a change in culture and make room for new types of characters and protagonists, maybe we need new formulas and stories to support them. I would love to see some exploration in that direction.
Lastly, it goes without saying that for horror to be feminist there has to be a reallocation of resources behind the camera to support the telling of these new stories in an authentic way.
JB: A lot of the films you discussed in your thesis had underlying elements of hysteria and fear mongering. How do you think the use of this form of subliminal messaging in film has evolved over time?
SK: In my opinion, what makes horror so valuable as a genre is that it kind of holds a mirror up to what the collective is anxious about in any given time period. That’s been true since the very beginning of the genre. For example, in the 50’s monster movies were kind of an allegory for the threat of nuclear warfare, in the 80’s poltergeist represented a distrust of technology, one could argue that John Carpenter’s The Thing serves as an HIV allegory, in the 2010’s we got a lot of movies about nationalism. Horror reflects our time back to us; how we’re changing is how we are discussing it in those movies.
JB: What direction do you think horror movies will take now?
SK: Maybe AI or climate anxiety. With AI there’s a lot to pull from there because I think there’s a lot that people don’t understand about it and a lot of distrust. I’m very interested to see what comes out of it.
JB: Is there one horror movie world that you are down to live in, despite the circumstances and inevitable death?
SK: I think, if you’re living in a horror movie you’re not gonna be having a fun time so you might as well be in something really beautiful. Maybe Suspiria, I wouldn’t mind living in a Dario Argento film. Or Rosemary’s Baby so I could live in the Dakota on the Upper West Side.
JB: What are your favorite thriller/horror movies that you can recommend to our Moody readers?
SK: My recommendations change literally every week but there’s a few I’ve been obsessed with recently. Rosemary’s Baby, which was so sick. I saw Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy in theaters for the 20th anniversary, which was unbelievable. Takashi Miike’s Audition. Zach Creggar’s Barbarian is a little bit more silly, there’s definitely some intentional comedy in there, but I would highly recommend it.
JB: Is there one lasting message you’d like to send out for people who are interested in diving deeper into horror?
SK: To prepare for our conversation, I was watching a TedX talk by psychiatrist Dr. Steve Schlozman. He was talking about how the value in horror is that it allows us to ask uncomfortable questions about the world around us. Because the circumstances in horror can get so heightened, it gives us as viewers enough displacement and distance to give thought to the underlying issues. Fear is a really powerful tool for progress; change is scary but that doesn’t make it any less necessary.
Moving forward, Sarah hopes to direct and experiment with the aesthetics of horror; emphasizing the colors, sound, and textures that can create the visual tension between desire and repulsion.
Directed By: Kyle Cobian and Sarah Kendric