The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O'Meara

The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O

She should have made a giant stink, she should have fought back, she should have, she should have, she should have. “At first, it made me so angry that she, as I saw it, took this gross offense to both her and her career lying down. But we also need to see ourselves behind-the-scenes, creating and writing and directing. That’s part of how we figure out our stories. Women need to see themselves fighting monsters. Horror films help explore these fears and imagine what it would be like to conquer them. In America, a woman is assaulted every nine seconds. They are at risk of attack from real-life monsters. Women have to endure it, fight it, survive it - in the movies and in real life. Women are the most important part of horror because, by and large, women are the ones the horror happens to.

Watching Nancy Thompson escape Freddy Krueger's perverted attacks reminds me of how I daily fend off creeps asking me to smile for them on the subway. These are forces women grapple with daily. But for much of the population, what is on the screen is merely an exaggerated version of their everyday lives. There are people who witness these problems only in scary movies. These themes are the staple of horror films. Horror is a pressure valve for society's fears and worries: monsters seeking to control our bodies, villains trying to assail us in the darkness, disease and terror resulting from the consequences of active sexuality, death. I was looking for suspicious figures, men that could be rapists, muggers or killers. Making my way down dark city streets to my apartment in Brooklyn, I was alert and on edge. As I walked home one night, I realized why. “Women have always been the most important part of monster movies. The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick Someone will just ask if you're on your period.” Women don't get to stomp around like Godzilla.

One of the hardest things about misogyny in the film industry isn't facing it directly, it's having to tamp down your anger about it so that when you speak about the problem, you'll be taken seriously. If a woman is angry or upset, she'll be considered hysterical and too emotional. Women rarely get to explore on-screen what it's like to be a giant pissed-off creature. The emotions and problems that all of them represent are also experienced by women, but women are more likely to see themselves as merely the victims of these monsters. Almost every single iconic monster in film is male and was designed by a man: the Wolfman, Frankenstein, Dracula, King Kong. However, only half of society is reflected in the ranks of the people who create these monsters. They explore prejudice, rejection, anger and every imaginable negative aspect of living in society.

The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O'Meara