The Halloween Gender issue

Yesterday we all watched the movie Halloween, the story of a crazed man who likes to kill people.  Fun.  We were then given the assignment to discuss the characters in relation to their genders.  Well what I’m going to do is give a short rendition of the movie in maybe three hundred words or more.

Haddonfield 1963 Halloween night

Mike Meyers: I’m a deranged six year old who wants to kill his sister

Mike’s Sister: Golly Gee, I am dead *tee hee* (falls down dead)

Several years to the future!  Zoom!

Loomis: I am a doctor who knows all about the problems of this man but wont be of any help until the end of the movie so until then I’m going to talk about some smart stuff and make every one feel like an idiot…

Mike steals his car

Loomis: Damn

Haddonfield, again

Laurie: I’m the main character in the movie because I’m more mature than everyone and I’m not paranoid and… did you hear that?

Annie: I’m, like, Laurie’s friend and, like, smoke pot and, like, care about my boyfriend who treats me like shit and all but I ,like, like him and all, so its cool.

Yes, she is stoned

Lynda: I’mlikeatotallycoolcheerleaderandlikeIlikeboysandsexandboysandbeerandsexandsexandthisisoneofthetwoscenesthatyouseemeinandtheonlytimeonscreenthatIhavemylikeclothesonsoyaysex

Tommy: I’m the kid that no one takes seriously.

Bully 1: I say old Victor, isn’t that Tommy over yonder?

Bully 2: Why I do believe it is, Charles.  What do you say Thadeus?

Bully 3: Oh my, I do believe a good teasing is what old Tommy boy needs right now.  Right lads?

Bully 1 and 2: Righto!

Loomis:  My intellectual talk has made me arrive in Haddonfield.  Excuse me sir, but are you the sheriff here?

Sheriff: Yes I am.  I am also, in case you didn’t know, Annie’s dad, who didn’t know that she was smoking pot with her friend, even though you think I would have smelled it while talking to them.

Loomis: Sir there is an evil afoot here. A terrible evil that could kill us all.

Sheriff: I am obliged to believe you.  Where do we start.

Loomis: Where it all began.  The Meyers House.

Sheriff: I’ll meet you there.

Sheriff drives away.

And Meyers drives right behind Loomis.

Loomis: I sense something, a presence I haven’t felt since….

Meanwhile…

Laurie: Ok Tommy, I’m babysitting you.  What do you want to do?

Tommy: Talk about the relationship between time and space?

Laurie: Listen I have my own problems with a guy who stalks me and friends who are too stupid or are going to die to care. Lets make a jack-o-latern

And they did.

Annie: I’m, like, making some food for, like, a kid I’m also babysitting who’s too brain dead to move away from the T.V.

We see a little girl who watches the T.V., quite brain dead.

Annie: I, like, spill butter all over my clothes and, like, I’m undressing in the kitchen and putting on a clean shirt and, like, I’m not going to put on pants, ’cause its obvious that I die so, y’know, why not?

We’ll skip the part where she takes the girl to the other kid’s house and go straight to the dying part.

Annie: I’m, like, dying because I was, like, stupid to notice that the car was, like, unlocked and all fogged up and stuff.

Mike: *Darth Vader breathing noise

Lynda: Letslikehavesexatsomeone’shousebecauseitsliketheadolescentthingtodoandallanddoitinsomeoneelsesbedandstuffcausethatslikefunandcoolandyaysex.

Bob: Sexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsex!

Lynda: Yaysex!

They take their clothes off, and Mike kills them.

Laurie: Its down to me now, hes going to kill me.  Thank god I have an armory of every type of weapon to ever exist in the  history of war.

And yet despite all the bullet, grenade, bomb, dagger, sword, arrow, chainsaw, axe, swear word wounds and the third degree burns from the spare flamethrower, he keeps on coming.

Laurie: This guys like a thing that could be used for a movie called Timinator or something.

Loomis: I’ll save you, I’m a doctor after all.

Six shots later, Mike falls out of a window.

And lives.

So from that shortened version of the film, the main heroine is not interested in sex, beer, or doing stupid stuff, even though she did smoke some pot.  The girls are stereotypical and are interested in sex, boys, and beer.  The guys are the same, only their interested in girls, not boys.  In regards to gender issues, the girls die with nothing or little on them in the way of clothing.  The guys are all macho men who know whats going on, try to know whats going on, or, in regards to Bob, are in it for the sex.  In short, with the exception of the main character, the genders of the characters are exaggerated because they are going to die, or are minor characters.

William Turbett