My Bloody Valentine Not So Loving

My Bloody Valentine, directed by Patrick Lussier in 2009, takes us back ten years ago, where an inexperienced coal miner named Tom Hanniger, played by Jensen Ackles, caused an accident that killed five men and put a sixth, Harry Warden, into a coma. A year later, on Valentine's Day, Harry wakes up and murders 22 people with a pickaxe before dying. Now, Tom has returned home after his father dies and is given the mine, still haunted by the past. Something, too,  is back in the tiny town of Harmony. A pickaxe killer in a miner's mask, who may be the ghost of Harry, come to finish the job on Tom and his friends.

Now, after reviewing the Carol Clover article, I started to focus on the way different genders are treated, how they are represented, and the common characteristics present in the film that are in your typical slasher film. Truthfully, it was surprising to me how one of my favorite movies used these basic methods such as the use of phallic weapons, the punished sexual female, and the terrible place.

The first topic to be discussed in the use of phallic weapons. These are weapons that represent the male anatomy, or bluntly a penis. These weapons tend to masculine, for obvious reasons, and they penetrate their victims. In the film, a most notable scene would have to be the one where the killer puts his ax through a man's head, ejecting his eyeball out of its socket. The AXE goes through a HOLE in the head, a most clear symbolic gesture of masculinity coming from the killer. To top it off, there is blood and aqueous humour (clear eyeball fluid) coming from the area that was penetrated with the phallic weapon. This could represent not only the killers dominance over the victim but could also parallel the events of when a man takes a woman's virginity. There may be blood and other forms of ejaculation coming from both individuals. * Please view clip from 0:01 to 0:49 for this example.

 

 

My next topic is the characteristic of the punished sexual female. As the audience gets more introduced to the killer, we witness a scene where a woman and her partner were having sex. The male she was with basically brushes her off and gives her money as to saying she was a cheap lay. Angry, and naked I might add, she storms off after him as he leaves the cheap hotel they were at. "Shocker", the killer is there and killed the man quickly. The audience doesn't get a huge ordeal as we do when its her turn to die. So, still naked and exposed, he follows her back into the hotel room where she goes to die. We witness her under the bed and then the killer finding her. Instead of ending her life, he seems to tease her and the audience gets a good glimpse at her heavy breathing and her chest/breasts bobbing up and down. We get a close up of her face, her plump lips quivering, and her begging for her life. This is a way for the audience to see her as a weak female in need of being saved as well as being punished for her sexuality. The whole entire time she was naked and vulnerable. We didn't witness the male with his penis flying out begging and crying for his life. We didn't witness his hairy chest bobbing up and down. Yes, as gross as they may be, it makes one wonder and just brings to light how females are depicted as those who should be pure and clean. And those who are not...well...get axed.



 

My third topic of discussion is the terrible place. For a film this good the terrible place was painfully obvious but still had viewers jumping out of their seats. The mine that Tom inherited from his father is the place where all the events of murder occurred and still continued. The mine is cold, dark, enclosed, and much of the unknown has a possibility of lurking anywhere and everywhere. The female anatomy, the vagina, is similar. It's dark and enclosed. If you remember from previous lectures in class, we had read an article in the beginning of the semester called "Medusa's Head: The Vagina Dentata and Freudian Theory" by Creed. Creed explained that throughout history and society, males found the vagina as evil and had the fear of being castrated if entered into this unknown hole. The same goes with this idea of the terrible place. The unsuspecting victims enter into this area with the thought of the unknown and the obvious expectance of danger from the audience. The terrible place is arguably feminine where the masculine killer enters with his phallic objects to murder. Now, for even more of a twist, the phallic symbols could also be seen as the sharp "teeth of the vagina" just waiting to feast upon the blood of its next victim. As you could see in the picture above, the killer is standing at the entrance of the mine (vagina) with his ax (teeth/phallic symbol), waiting for his attack on the next victim. In addition, the gate by him could be seen as the lips of the vagina.

Finally, my overall take on the film and the typical slasher film characteristics used in My Bloody Valentine is that is it followed the outline of gender representation well. It made the masculine and feminine characteristics obvious enough for each place or weapon. Such as the ax being phallic and the mine being that feminine terrible place. It had the usual sexually female character that gets punished for her actions but still gets a lot of screen time. The camera still focuses on her death which is not only gruesome but erotic at the same time. One can't help but look at her bouncing goods as she runs away from the killer who represents this strong male figure. The scene where he kills her, as described above, has much sexual tension, especially the moment his body is only separated from hers with a metal bed frame. Granted, we did have a strong female character, Sarah, who escaped that damsel in distress portrayal and fought of the evil killer when she had to so she can survive. One can depict her as the final girl who really didn't need the strong male hero to protect her most of the time. Take for example where she and her coworker are attacked in the grocery store. Sarah fights and escapes unlike the first female character we encountered who hid under a bed a cried. Overall, this film did a fine job of character representation and staying true to the typical slasher film.