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Evil
Dead In Depth By Amanda Obee |
Hey, folks, in case you were wondering whether Evil Dead was merely a cheeseball exploitation flick or a film chock full of deep social implications... here ya go!
-BC
DISCUSS THE PORTRAYAL OF "ASH" IN THE EVIL DEAD TRILOGY IN RELATION TO OTHER FILMS OF THE HORROR GENRE WHICH PRESENT A FEMALE VICTIM-HERO.
By Amanda Obee
12/5/98 (or 5/12/98 to all you Americans!)"Mother...what’s the phrase? isn’t quite herself today...". Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), with its blend of macabre humour and sensational violence, has often been seen as signalling a new epoch in horror cinema. It paved the way for a spate of films from the early 1970’s onward known as "splatter movies". The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper), which provoked a strong response amongst scholars due to its alleged critique of American consumerism, is usually cited as the first of these.
Such films, with their persistent visual images of nubile half-naked women meeting their deaths at the hands of psychotic killers, have often been considered extremely sexist. However, recent work in this field by Carol Clover (see Clover, 1992) and Vera Dika (see Dika, 1990) has stressed the progressive elements in this genre for women, largely revealed in the figure of what Clover has termed the "Final Girl", the lone female survivor who eventually subdues the killer.
Clover identifies the following characteristics as typical of the Final Girl: she is resourceful, intelligent, confident and studious - in a word, notes Clover, boyish, and sees her name (Stevie, Terry, Laurie, Max...) as spelling this out for the less perceptive observer (Clover, 1992, p.40). The early roles of Jamie Lee Curtis, ironically the daughter of Janet Leigh, who played Psycho’s first victim, are model examples here. It is within this convention the Evil Dead films are notable, since the final survivor is not a female but a male, Ash, played by Bruce Campbell.
Clover’s somewhat laborious analysis leads her to conclude that the typical Final Girl’s sexual makeup is ultimately indeterminate: "She is a physical female and a characterological androgyne, like her name, not masculine but either/or, both, ambiguous" (Clover, 1992, p.63). Clover only addresses the possibility of a male in this role in a footnote: if her pretext is correct, she states, "we might expect films of the future to feature Final Boys as well as Final Girls". She cites Ash as exemplary since his full name, Ashley, can be bestowed on either sex (Clover, 1992, p.63). The implication, therefore, is that a Final Boy would be positioned as the exact opposite of a Final Girl, female-identified where she is male-identified.
A cursory viewing of the first Evil Dead film would appear to confirm this: Ash seems almost the antithesis of a typical Final Girl. He is both cowardly and foolish, and is often spatially positioned with the female characters whilst Scotty, the other male character in the film, takes a more assertive role. However, it will be a key concern of this analysis to suggest that the trilogy itself, when studied as a whole, is not reducible to such a simple binary positioning, since Ash changes greatly as the narrative progresses.
In order to assess fully the significance of Ash’s position in relation to other contemporary horror films, the portrayal of female characters within the trilogy must firstly be considered more closely. The production of the original film is important here: The Evil Dead (1982, Sam Raimi) was an independent venture by a group of teenage males (the primary audience for films of this type), who dropped out of Michigan State University to produce the film. The filmmakers were presumably aware of Final Girl conventions as the narrative plays with them. For example, it draws from the scenario employed by the Texas Chainsaw and Friday the 13th series: a group of teenagers (here, three female, two male) trapped in a remote location being systematically slaughtered.
The Final Girl is usually the lone female in a group, and the film does indeed fix Cheryl, the single girl, as the first point of identification for the audience. She is the most studious of the group, the most watchful, and the only one to be overtly disturbed when Scotty plays a tape recording that awakens a dark force in the nearby woods. In short, she reflects Clover’s assessment of the Final Girl as: "the one...who perceives the full extent of the preceding horror and of her own peril...her viewpoint is closest to our own" (Clover, 1992, p.35). This positioning, though, is later violated.
Unlike the vast majority of modern horror films, the Evil Dead series chooses not to objectify women’s bodies with the clichéd "Tits and Scream" shot typically deployed just before the often post-coital death of a female victim. However, what it does do is scarcely more forgivable. Having set up Cheryl as our Final Girl, the narrative presents us a few moments later with a particularly graphic (in the uncut version of the film at least) scene in which Cheryl is molested by a tree. This sequence has often been criticised for being in poor taste (see Martin & Potter, 1992, p.820) since it lacks the humour attached to all the other violent scenes in the film.
Clover’s basic contention is that male and female viewers are not generally differentiated in their response to horror (a point that is well-illustrated in the Evil Dead films as a whole), but, she asserts, the male may have the ability to identify with both the girl and her attacker at the moment of conflict (Clover, 1992, p.61). This is clearly not the case in the rape scene: by being presented largely from Cheryl’s point of view, it is fairly uncomfortable to watch. This is as true for the male viewer as for the female one, since there has not been an opportunity this far in the narrative for him to identify with any other character. He can only feel shocked as his principal site of identification is violated.
Therefore, the scene can perhaps be defended in the same way as a similar act in Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1976) has been (see Schoell, 1985, p.45). In both cases the rape is presented from the perspective of the terrified woman, and thus the (male) audience is discouraged from enjoying it. The inclusion of such an event at all, however, can also be seen as reflecting the patriarchal nature of the Hollywood cinema. It clearly illustrates, in a particularly brutal way, that Cheryl (as a woman and therefore vulnerable to sexual assault) is considered inferior to Ash. The second Evil Dead film also presents us with an assumed Final Girl, Annie, who is portrayed in a more commendable way than Cheryl, maintaining a strong role throughout the film but ultimately sacrificing herself to save Ash. By the third film, though, there is no need for a female "substitute" as Ash ultimately reveals himself as a true hero who possesses all the positive attributes of the Final Girl.
Unlike most splatter films, and appropriately for a male lead, the Evil Dead trilogy does not employ a male killer but instead presents the evil force as possessing mostly female characters, turning them into murderous zombies. One contemporary reviewer of the first Evil Dead (Joseph Francavilla of Cinefantastique Magazine, who interestingly made no mention of the rape scene) remarked on the "creeping misogyny" that appears to pervade the narrative due to this, as the women are tortured and dismembered. However, as William Schoell rightly observes, the demonic creatures can hardly be considered male or female, only animal (Schoell, 1985, p.51). It is also worth noting that the Evil Dead trilogy has been cited as one of the most popular within the horror genre for women (see Cherry, n.d.) suggesting that both the male and female audience can enjoy these scenes, which are comical above all else.
An overview of female characters in the Evil Dead films thus reveals that they are subordinated to Ash in the narrative, fixing him as our privileged point of identification. The deliberate violation of Final Girl conventions may be a further attempt to stress his importance. The film employs several other techniques to further our identity with Ash: we are closely positioned with him through the somewhat unconventional camera positioning used throughout the three films.
The invisible evil force that relentlessly pursues Ash is represented through a series of quick zoom to close up shots, and this is juxtaposed with the point of view of the horrified Ash as he tries to escape. Rather than splitting our identification (as Clover suggests), this serves to fix us even closer to Ash as we are able to understand and better anticipate his terror: to use Murray Smith’s model (see Smith, 1995), he retains our allegiance even when we are aligned with the force’s point-of-view, since there is no visible entity to attach this viewpoint to. This is in marked contrast to certain Final Girl films where the Final Girl is upstaged by her pursuer (for instance, in the Nightmare on Elm Street series).
We begin to appreciate the comical aspects of such scenes as we gradually become accustomed to the distinct style of the film. The audience is able to enjoy watching Ash being tortured as they earlier enjoyed the scenes of the possessed women being eviscerated: Ash’s torment is possibly more amusing. Peter Hutchings believes that there is a clear reason for this. The torturing of men is always comic, he argues, to reassure the male audience that men cannot be seriously hurt, and thus again reflective of patriarchy (Hutchings, 1993, p.91).
Women have been so often victimised in cinema that their terror no longer needs an explanation, whereas a man in terror is so unusual that it is hard not to portray as comic, especially in a horror film. This is confirmed by comparing the assault on Ash with a scene in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre that employs a similar camera technique of zooming to close-up on the Final Girl as she is attacked. Here the effect is as disturbing for the viewer as The Evil Dead’s rape scene and probably accounts, more than any other scene in the film, for its continued ban by the BBFC.
Returning to my original proposition, I would argue that one way of characterising Ash’s route through the trilogy from passive victim to eventual active hero is to turn to psychoanalysis and draw from Lacan’s theory of the Imaginary/Symbolic. We begin in the Imaginary, which represents closeness to the mother. The Imaginary is prelinguistic: we have no access to the letter "I" which, according to Lacan, is used to represent our successful position in language. To move into the Symbolic realm the male (this theory, like much of psychoanalysis, is problematic in relation to the female) must obey patriarchal law and find a female Other to transfer his affections to, thus becoming a part of patriarchal language himself, and gaining an "I" (Hayward, 1996, pp.186-7).
It is my contention that the Evil Dead films, when studied together, demonstrate this trajectory through the novice audience member’s constant identification with Ash as his/her response to the visual spectacle of horror develops. For this reason the films can be regarded as more progressive than those narratives concerned with the Final Girl - it could be argued that the typical Final Girl, through her "male" characteristics, is already positioned in the Symbolic. She has all that she needs to defeat the killer at her disposal: ultimately, she undergoes no major transformation.
There are several key scenes throughout the trilogy that reflect this change in Ash and the audience. The first involves the bloody confrontation with Scotty’s possessed girlfriend, Shelley, the first true gore scene of The Evil Dead. Ash is transfixed by the spectacle, unable to act against her or to assert his "I", and eventually turns away, leaving the injured Scotty to quell her.
The uninitiated audience, still disorientated by the violation of Cheryl and now perceiving the extreme scenario enfolding in front of them, are at first horrified by it, reflecting Ash’s viewpoint. Both are therefore positioned in the Imaginary, or, as media sociologists Dolf Zillmann and James B.Weaver characterise it in their study of audience response to the horror film, the "feminine" position:
Boys must prove to their peers, and ultimately, to themselves, that they are unpeturbed, calm and collected in the face of terror. Girls must similarly demonstrate their sensitivity by being appropriately disturbed, dismayed and disgusted.
(Zilmann and Weaver, 1996, p.83).This "feminine" position, however, is later proven to be problematic: as noted above, both sexes later come to appreciate the comical aspects of such scenes. The trilogy thus maintains an interest for feminism despite its ultimate devotion to patriarchy, since here the female can follow the same trajectory as the male viewer.
Evil Dead 2 (1987, Sam Raimi) begins with Ash alone in the cabin, talking wildly to himself, and therefore enacting the schizophrenic position suggested by Lacan as constituting the adult failure to transfer to the Symbolic. This is confirmed in a particularly farcical scene in which Ash dismembers himself with a chainsaw, laughing wildly as he chops off his own possessed hand, which he traps in a bucket under a copy of A Farewell to Arms. Ash’s enjoyment of the scene validates our own: we have by now witnessed several such gory scenes, and horror is no longer experienced as a revulsion.
It is ironic, given the Imaginary’s stress on closeness to the Mother, that the second film should end with Ash’s battle with the possessed parent of Annie, here representing the feminine elements within his character that he must defeat. She has mutated into a much more fearsome creature than Shelley, yet Ash continues to battle her. However, his attempt to transfer here to the aggressively masculine realm of the Symbolic lacks conviction as it is primarily his fearsome weaponry that gives him strength, and, lest we be unclear on this, he is ultimately saved by Annie, who recites ancient passages to banish the evil with her dying breath.
Ash is, bizarrely, transported to medieval England on Annie’s death. His horrified cry of "No!" when he hears the assumption by the villagers who witness his fall from the sky that he is their promised saviour reflects his ultimate failure to move into the Symbolic: he refutes here the offer of "I", and the audience are unable to disagree, as confused by the sudden change of setting as Ash is.
By the time Army of Darkness (1992, Sam Raimi), the third film in the trilogy, was released, the Evil Dead films were well known for their cult status. The implied audience of this analysis should therefore be considered to be familiar with the character of Ash by this point, and this is reflected in his exaggerated construction here - the arrogance that he displayed only briefly in the first two films is brought to the fore, as he revels in the awe with which the medieval villagers regard him. The schizophrenia inherent in Ash’s character again surfaces: he is besieged first by a host of little Ashes, then by an "Evil Ash" who emerges from his shoulder and splits apart from him. It is this Evil Ash that Ash must defeat to fully enter the Symbolic realm.
Ash’s arrogance betrays him initially, however, as he is unable to remember a set of passages that would banish the evil - a literal instance of the failure of language. He nevertheless insists that the villagers send him back to his own time, and it is significant that in this point in the film the audience feels a division with him as he is shown to be dishonourable, ironically in comparison with a group of medieval villagers. Ash is forced to act when his new girlfriend, Sheila - the Female Other whom he must save in order to enter the Symbolic - is captured by Evil Ash.
Ash’s eventual entry into the Symbolic is expressed in his declaration of "I’m through running". This refers back not only to the earlier part of the film but to the whole trilogy for the experienced viewer who has witnessed his frequent torture by the evil force/camera in the first two films. The ludicrousness of the inherently cowardly Ash as hero from the audience’s point of view is reflected in the query by a villager: "Are all men of the future loudmouthed braggarts?". His destruction of Evil Ash represents the destruction of the schizophrenic nature of his character and the saving of his female Other.
The original ending of Army of Darkness abandons Ash in an apocalyptic England as he swallows too many drops of the sleeping potion required to get him home. This is redundant for the viewer as it shows his long-awaited transformation to be worthless, though it is preferred by Campbell who stresses: "What character deserves to be left alone at the end of the world more than idiot Ash?" (see Campbell, 1998). The studio, wanting to capitalise on the film’s cult status, ordered a second ending made, in which Ash is returned to his original job as a supermarket assistant, battling demons on the shop floor. For the seasoned viewer, this ending is much more enjoyable as it exaggerates Ash even more, making him into a complete parody of the action hero and thus continuing the theme of ludicrousness that marked his entry into the Symbolic earlier the film.
I hope to have shown by this analysis the value in using psychoanalytic theories in the study of the Evil Dead films. The growing status of the trilogy as a "cult" probably means that identification did develop in the way I have illustrated. The films are important to the female viewer in providing a rare instance in which she can follow the same trajectory as the male viewer. This is achieved not through a Final Girl, as in other films of the genre, but through the playing with Final Girl conventions that the trilogy employs, coupled with the rare portrayal of a man in torment. Ash begins as the Final Girl’s opposite, but becomes her equal. At the same time, however, the limitations of the trilogy as a product of patriarchal cinema need to be recognised: the female characters in the film are ultimately subordinate to the males, and the rape scene can hardly be forgiven.
See the Bibliography.
See the Filmography.
Campbell, Bruce (bcact@aol.com) 28 February 1998, Re: Bruce Campbell Manifesto, E-mail to author.
Cherry, Birgid (n.d.) Refusing to Refuse to Look: Female Viewers of the Horror Film, University of Stirling, Stirling.
Clover, Carol (1992) Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, BFI Publishing, London.
Dika, Vera (1990) Games of Terror, New Jersey Associated University Press, Cranbury.
Hayward, Susan (1996) Key Concepts in Cinema Studies, Routledge, London.
Hutchings, Peter (1993) "Masculinity and the Horror Film" in Kirkham, Pat and Janet Thumim (eds) (1993) You Tarzan: Masculinity, Movies and Men, Lawrence & Wishart, London, pp.84-94.
Martin, Mick and Marsha Potter (1992) Video Movie Guide 1993, Ballantine Books, New York.
Schoell, William (1985) Stay Out of the Shower: The Shocker Film Phenomenon, Robinson Publishing, London.
Smith, Murray (1995) Engaging Characters: fiction, emotion and the cinema, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Zillmann, Dolf and James B. Weaver (1996) "Gender-Socialisation Theory of Reactions to Horror" in Weaver, James B. and Ron Tambourini (eds) (1996) Horror Films: Current Research Into Audience Preferences and Reactions, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, New York, pp.81-101.
Army of Darkness: The Medieval Dead (1992, Sam Raimi, US, 95 mins)
The Evil Dead (1982, Sam Raimi, US, 85 mins)
The Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987, Sam Raimi, US, 88 mins)
Friday the 13th (1980, Sean S. Cunningham, US, 95 mins)
Friday the 13th Part Two (1981, Steve Miner, US, 87 mins)
Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, Wes Craven, US, 91 mins)
Nightmare on Elm Street Part Two (1985, Jack Sholder, US, 85 mins)
Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock, US, 109 mins)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper, US, 83 mins)
Page Updated 03/30/00.