The Stepfather!

Summary:

    In the text “Trying to Survive on the Darker Side: 1980s Family Horror”, Williams talks about how the patriarchy is a huge part of the family structure in horror films. Williams says that while horror films were shifting, in the 80’s especially they were focused on family values. He also discusses how Clover thought that having the final girl face off against the monster, leading to her becoming more masculine by the end of the movie where she faces off the killer. Williams also says how familial dysfunction becomes more of a prevalent theme in horror films, that usually fall in line with marginalized families rather than upper-middle-class families. The horror films also delve into the theme that the parents won’t believe anything their teens tell them, therefore unintentionally helping the killer isolate and then kill their kids as seen in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Willaims also says that abused kids in these movies often carry on the cycle of abuse from their parents.

Analysis:

    In the film The Stepfather, there is a clear that right from the start, Stephanie has a problem with the new man in her house. She tells her concerns to anyone that would listen, including her mother, who ended up just brushing off her concerns. Susan does what most mothers do in horror films- ignores her child’s worries. Williams says that often the killers are, “aided by undiscerning parents.” This is supported by the fact that if Susan had actually listened to her daughter, she may have prevented or at least been more prepared for when Jerry finally snapped and tried to kill them both.

Williams makes the point that, “slasher films thus express obsessive male anxieties concerning gender.” Even though Jerry is a murdering serial killer, he still performs the tasks a good father and head of the family should do. Jerry sits at the head of the table during dinner, and he was first to carve the turkey when the family was eating. Jerry cooks at the cookout he throws, and is very hands on. He builds the bird house they put in the backyard by hand. Jerry also plays the role of very protective father when Stephanie is kissing a boy goodbye on their front porch. He screams at her and the boy, and yells about how she’s too young and innocent to be doing anything like that with a boy. Jerry is very much a man’s man, which is shown every time he loses his temper and starts hitting things. When he kills Stephanie’s therapist, he kills him by beating him with a wooden plank, rather than a knife or a gun, which would have been a quicker death.

Williams says how in horror films, “submission to any form of family authority results in death.” Stephanie begins to trust Jerry, and starts to treat him more and more like the father figure he was trying to be for her. Jerry comforts her while she cries over the death of her therapist, and she starts to help him around the house and accept him into her life.This inevitably leads to her almost getting murdered via kitchen knife by Jerry once he gets mad at her and her mother for not listening to him.