The horror genre has been repeatedly criticized in a feminist framework for its sexualization and objectification of women through the perpetuation of enlightened sexism, a phenomenon regarding how media represents women as having attained sexual, economic, and social equality with men but actually reinforces a gender binary (Clover, 1996; Douglas, 2010; Shaw & Lee, 2015). An example of this is how many horror movies feature naked women having sex and exposing their bodies under the guise of empowerment, when in actuality these scenes cater to the male gaze (Douglas, 2010). There has been focus in the feminist sphere on how femininity is presented in the horror genre, but less so on masculinity, male or female. The apparent dichotomy that exists between the female protagonist and the more raw characteristics of the male antagonist establishes an overarching trend of masculinity in the horror genre. This essay will look at how masculinity and femininity is constructed differently in 2000’s horror films Behind the Mask: the Rise of Leslie Vernon (2007) and Get Out (2017) through means of race and gender.
Behind the Mask came out a decade after Wes Craven’s classic self-referential slasher movie Scream (1996), but instead of heavily relying on name dropping and horror tropes, it managed to dissect the slasher sub-genre in a whole new way. The movie explains questions one would typically have about slasher movies, like how a killer walks just as fast as their victims run, the rationale behind stalking their prey, building suspense until the final showdown, or how they can disappear so quickly when they were thought to be dead. Behind the Mask reveals how a slasher get their abilities, how they can chase down multiple victims while never showing fatigue or disappear and reappear at a different location seamlessly. Leslie, like other killers, must maintain a strict fitness regime, practice sleight of hand and escape tricks, and stay in a sensory deprivation chamber to sharpen his senses and slow his heart rate. Leslie Vernon is an aspiring serial killer with a creepy backstory of being drowned as a child in a waterfall by the townspeople of Glen Echo after murdering his parents. He’s preparing to come back for revenge and enlists a film crew of three grad students, named Taylor, Doug, and Todd, to gain an inside perspective on slashers and how they do what they do. This is a world where all the slasher classics are real: Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Pinhead, and Michael Myers.
All of these infamous, fictitious killers have something in common, besides the obvious fact that they stalk and kill people. They are all White men. These slashers’ victims are predominantly female, which exemplifies how White men use their power to subjugate those they deem as below them. This mirrors real life statistics where 90% of America’s documented serial killer profiles are men and 52.5% are White (Aamodt, 2016). This maleness and whiteness also informs crimes like mass shootings A typical slasher has a tragic backstory of othering and is an outcast in some way. Because of this, they don’t fit the traditional structure of White masculinity, like being the breadwinner of a family, a powerful worker in a professional setting, or a large, muscular athlete (Hyde & Else-Quest, 2012). The killer in a typical slasher must redefine their masculinity. This almost always includes power and dominance over others, especially women. Leslie’s masculinity is framed based on his ability to overpower others physically and mentally and by remaining in control of the situation. He is able to achieve this through means of excessive cardio training, perfecting sleight of hand, and using escape tricks to evade situations when he needs to.
Leslie’s slasher outfit consists of a frowning face in a light greyish-white and dirty overalls. The whiteness of Leslie’s mask amplifies his Caucasian skin and plays into the idea of Whites having power just as Leslie has dominance and control over his victims. “The power to create and destroy” while still being respected and revered has been “historically granted to the White masculine male” (Byrant, 2014). This is shown in how serial killers both in real life and Behind the Mask garner heavy media attention. For all the tropes and subversions Behind the Mask calls out about the horror genre, it fails to bring to light the perpetual Whiteness that is displayed in this film and many others. The cast is fully White, including all minor characters and the background population. This Whitewashing of film media points to how Whiteness is the universal, dominant, unmarked norm, like a character’s default race is White unless otherwise specified, and how heterosexual White masculinity is predominantly displayed from the killers (Rehling, 2007). This may be intentional on the creators part as the movie could be purposely commenting on the blatant Whiteness seen in mainstream horror, but was not explicitly called out in the movie.
Leslie takes the film crew to a high school and explains how he selects his victims. The stoners, to increase the body count, the jocks, popular girls who have sex with the jocks, and the Survivor Girl. The Survivor Girl is someone who has a fighting chance to beat the killer and overcome him in the end. This is also known as the Final Girl coined by film theorist Carol Clover. There are two defining features that comprise a Final/Survivor girl: that she is a virgin and by the end of the movie takes on masculine traits necessary to overcome the killer. Although Behind the Mask pokes fun at how slasher films tend to kill off women who are sexually active, they still play into that trope instead of having a non virgin woman be the Final Girl. At the end of the movie, it’s revealed that the girl Leslie was stalking is not actually a virgin, and Taylor, the virgin filmmaker, was the real Final Girl all along.
The notion of Final/Survivor Girls having to abstain from sex in order to be victorious in a slasher or horror movie context is problematic. This further perpetuates societal norms placed upon women to maintain purity by abstaining from sex. This idea is eerily similar to the practice of “True Womanhood” in the 19th century in the United States. During this time, women were not granted freedom to desire sexual relations except to produce children, and if they engaged non-reproductive sex they were shunned. The “Cult of True Womanhood” maintains and reinforces the myth that white women are naturally pure and are in control of their sexual accessibility (Katz, 2007). True Men were seen as being closer to their carnal instincts, “in less control of it,” and were more easily forgiven for sexual transgressions, while “True Women were defined by their distance from lust,” (Katz, 2007, p. 84). Because women were held to a pure, higher standard than males, women who had sex for pleasure were looked down upon and seen as outcasts. Purity is often linked with whiteness and virginity, two characteristics Taylor encompasses. Making Taylor this shining beacon of innocence puts her on a pedestal as the only type of personality that is able to survive a horror movie. Although this view seems harmless, it’s a form of benevolent sexism as it views women as weak but pure beings who should be protected and adored (Hyde & Else-Quest, 2012). The genre as a whole doesn’t want the viewer to celebrate a personality that’s sexually expressive and instead reveres a woman who conforms to traditional gender roles by maintaining her virginity.
Although sexual promiscuity is generally frowned upon in the slasher sub genre, i.e. if you have sex you get killed, females are much more likely than men to be objectified sexually on screen. A study done on 50 North American slasher films released between 1960 and 2007 found that women are 58% more likely to be featured in scenes with sexaully explicit content (Welsh, 2009). Additionally, the study found that women who were sexually active were killed more often than women who were not and had more prolonged, graphic deaths. Other researchers found that majority of characters that did not survive a slasher movie “engaged in sexual activity either prior to or immediately preceding their victimization” (Cowan & O’Brien, 1990). While this may not be directly applicable to real life scenarios, it still perpetuates the stereotype that young women should not be sexually active.
Behind the Mask presents the idea of the Survivor Girl as illogical and Taylor herself is confused by Leslie’s persistence on the subject. Why does the Survivor Girl’s sexual history enable her to overcome and defeat a killer? Leslie proclaims that she is taking on a form of masculinity by grabbing ahold of a phallic shaped weapon that will ultimately be used to defeat him and “empowering herself with cock” (Glosserman, 2007). Masculinity is linked with fearlessness and strength and emphasizes the significance of power, control, and macho characteristics (Hyde & Else-Quest, 2012). When masculinity is discussed in terms of the penis or muscularity it creates this notion that masculinity is “naturally” tied to male bodies and disregards female-bodied people as masculine. Certain scientific ideas on masculinity become “mythological in the sense when they’re taken to be the essential truth about men, like genetic explanations for violence and warfare, or studies about how boys are biologically more or less something than girls” (Reeser, 2011, p. 22). However, the type of masculinity portrayed by the Final Girl in the horror genre breaks down and redefines the gender binary by questioning the naturalness between sex and gender. In order for the Survivor Girl to become a Survivor Girl, she must switch from being a scared victim to exhibiting confidence, strength, and to some degree recklessness in order to kill the perpetrator. This shows that these characteristics aren’t limited just to men, but can be successfully embodied by women. Taylor pushes herself to occupy the male-dominated sphere of slashers and become the dominant force in the story.
The process of a Survivor Girl’s transformation become a heroine is said by Leslie to occur after she grabs ahold of a phallic shaped object. Once this is completed, the Survivor Girl becomes capable of committing violent acts and her existence embodies the same masculine traits as the killer challenges his masculinity. Leslie says that “She’ll be taking [his] manhood and empowering herself with it” to overcome him (Glosserman, 2007). This ideology presented by the movie, while misogynistic in that the only thing powerful enough to challenge a man is someone with “man-like” traits, subverts many gender norms and is interconnected with female masculinity. The Survivor Girl “feminizes her [male] assailants and often penetrates them with knives, chainsaws, etc. and, in doing so, poses a threat of castration to masculine discourse” (Taylor, 2012). Penetration, in a horror movie context, is not referring to sex, but to the act of the Survivor Girl’s phallic object penetrating the skin of the killer. Through this act, the Survivor Girl further dissolves the gender construct inherited from society as males being the penetrator. In actuality, it is the killer with the phallus that is overtly lacking the necessary masculine traits needed to win the fight (Roulet, 2015). Normally, in a cultural context, a negative reaction to this kind of female masculinity reflects men’s fear of emasculation and anxieties of being feminized by a woman; however, in Behind the Mask, Leslie welcomes his metaphorical castration (Reeser, 2011). He recognizes her acquisition of masculinity through this metaphorical sex change thereby bolstering her masculinity. The start of Taylor’s transition is her grabbing an axe from the tool shed then entering into the woods. This visually manifests itself in yonic imagery where Taylor hunting down Leslie through the tomb-like environment of the woods symbolizes her rebirth. Leslie describes it as a “sacred place, symbolic of the womb” equating the darkness of a confined space to the safety of being in a mother’s womb as the womb represents innocence (Glosserman, 2007). Leslie holding motherhood and rebirth in high-regard is another example of benevolent sexism as he idealizes these traditional gender roles as something necessary for a Survivor Girl to have. Taylor reemerges from the woods in a tank top showing off her toned muscles with a vengeance to kill. Roulet, a published film critic, claims Final Girls are more aware of their surroundings because their experience can be either phallic or non-phallic while the killer is stuck in a world of phallus (2015). This phallic subjectivity gives Final Girls the upper hand. Taylor strikes Leslie with an axe, but the final blow is crushing his skull in a manual apple juice making machine. She took on the dominant role and through the penetration of Leslie’s skin with her weapon does Taylor survive.
Behind the Mask features a killer who maintains dominance and control over his victims aided by his maleness and White skin. It’s not a perfect example of a feminist horror movie because, in addition to the rampant Whiteness, it perpetuates the trope that only virgin girls are capable enough to outsmart a killer, that their pureness seems to bolster their intellectual competence. However, it does call out how the abundant sexualization of female characters restricts their role to a stupid, party girl based solely on their overly-sexualized appearance. Behind the Mask features an intelligent protagonist who is able to embody a form of female masculinity and reconstruct the supposed “biological” tie between masculinity the male body. Final Girls, prominently found in the horror genre, can reflect negative stigmas about gender, but can also be a source of breaking the gender binary revealing a more in depth look at female masculinity.
Horror movies from the 1980’s perpetuated the trope that the minority character, usually a Black male, is first to die. This is seen in popular media such as The Shining (1980), Gremlins (1984), and The Monster Squad (1987). The horror genre has since moved past that, but there is still a lack of minority representation in the genre as a whole. Although recent movies like The Purge: Election Year (2016), Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014), and The First Purge (2018) have a cast made up of almost all non-white leads, mainstream studios tend to release horror movies with mainly White protagonists and one or two non-White leads or people of color comprising some of the supporting cast. Some examples of this are seen in Blair Witch (2016), It Comes At Night (2017), and The Invitation (2017). In a recent interview, Jordan Peele, director, writer, and producer of Get Out (2017), divulged that the origins behind the movie largely came from the illusion that racism was over once the nation had elected a Black president, Barack Obama (Clayton & Nigatu, 2017). Get Out has revolutionized the contemporary horror genre by tackling political issues like analyzing post racial america, the fetishization of Black men, and Black masculinity in a way that builds tension and utilizes classic horror tropes.
The movie begins with the protagonist, Chris Washington, packing to meet his girlfriend’s, Rose Armitage’s, family. They are an interracial couple and Chris, an African American, was a bit nervous to be introduced to a White family given the racial tensions in the United States. On the drive to Rose’s parent’s house, they hit a deer on the road. A classic horror trope is the death of an innocent human/animal at the start of the movie (Dartmouth, 2017). Chris goes to check on the animal but there’s nothing he can do. The image of the dying, bleeding deer recurrently haunts him throughout the movie. A cop responded to the call and insisted on taking Chris’ ID despite Rose being the one driving, but she stands up to the cop calling him out on his blatant bias for “needing” Chris’ ID. In this moment, Rose’s White femininity protects Chris from being racially profiled because the cop decides to walk away from the situation instead of insisting on taking his ID. This reflects on society as a whole revealing who is privileged and when that privilege is used. The Stanford Open Policing Project, an organization that has “analyzed more than 100 million records of traffic stops and search data from 31 states,” found that Black drivers are 20% more likely to get a ticket (rather than a warning) than white drivers (Stanford, 2018). Another study that focused on the intersections of race and gender was able to conclude that White women were most likely to receive a perceived benefit in a traffic stop, such as receiving only a warning or no outcome at all, but Black and Hispanic women are just as likely as White men to be ticketed, arrested or searched instead of receiving a warning or no outcome (Kansas State University, 2012). In regards to Get Out, Rose used benevolent sexism, thinking women are pure and not as capable of wrongdoing as men, and her White privilege, not having to face discrimination due to being a part of the majority race in a country, to her advantage to get the cop off of Chris’ back.
When they arrive, Rose’s father gives Chris a tour of the family’s house. He tells Chris how Rose’ grandfather always came in second place to Jesse Owens, a Black man who won multiple gold medals in the Olympics for running emphasizing the fact that her grandfather “almost got over it.” (Peele, 2017). The story of Rose’s grandfather serves as a backstory explaining why the Armitages, in a twist of events, take the bodies of Black people and implant the consciousness of a White person in them. This procedure renders the original Black consciousness as a mere passenger. They are unable to control their actions and can only view what the White person does with their body. This is an example of scientific racism that will be explored later in this paper.
The next day is the Armitages annual “party” where Chris is expected to meet the family’s wealthy, close friends. This is where Chris encounters a full range of modern racism. It is revealed that the “party” the Armitages throw is actually an auction and Chris is the piece being sold. The guests are there to meet him and gauge his best attributes. Chris and Rose walk around listening to comment after comment that sounds vaguely racist, like “Black is back in fashion” (Peele, 2017). Tension increases when they talk to an older woman who felt up his biceps, without consent, as she asks Rose “Is it true? Is it really better?“ (Peele, 2017). This woman was very forward with Rose implying if Chris has a big dick and if he is good in bed. She completely avoids speaking directly to Chris despite visually objectfiying his body. This interaction is an example of the hypersexualization of Black male bodies that originated from the “othering” of Black male slaves, reducing them down to physical prowess and genitalia, which frames their masculinity as excessively violent and sexual (Reeser, 2011). The sexuality, and in part hypermasculinity, of Black men is often stereotypically associated with violent sexual aggressions and a large penis size, two attributes that are heavily fetishized by straight and queer communities alike (Ho, 2018). Since the woman’s husband is in a wheelchair and is unable to sexually please her, she’s in the market to bid on a new body for him. This woman is similarly pathologizing Chris as hypersexual, reducing him down to his sexual prowess, physical attributes, and genitalia like White people who attended slave auctions did.
Shortly after, Chris sees another Black man at the party named Logan King and goes to talk to him. Little does he know the man is actually Andre Hayworth who was abducted off the streets and had a White, old man’s consciousness put into his body. Chris is puzzled by his speech, clothes, and demeanor and confused as to why he is in a relationship with a White woman 30 years older than him. Logan King’s wife pulls him away from Chris to show him off to a group of party guests. She is not there to bid on another person, but came to the party to show off her husband’s new body. He turns in a circle and the White people around him applaud. In addition to being more evidence of Black fetishization, this scene also serves as a parallel to slave auctions. Black men were paraded around to show off their physical strength to be ogled by the buyers. Slaves in the 1800’s “were examined with as little consideration as if they had been brutes indeed; the buyers pulling their mouths open to see their teeth, pinching their limbs to find how muscular they were… and in addition to all this treatment, asking them scores of questions relative to their qualifications and accomplishments” (Doesticks et al., 1863). These events are parallelled in Get Out’s party scene, where the guests are scoping Chris out and feeling him up, drawing from America’s violent history regarding the treatment of Black bodies.
Chris is then confronted by an Asian man who asked: “Do you find being an African American an advantage or disadvantage in the modern world” (Peele, 2017). While many non-whites are continually discriminated against, there is a racial hierarchy and privileges that can outweigh certain factors. The Asian man attending the bidding did not experience racism from the White group he was surrounded by. This was most likely also due to his class and high status since he was wealthy enough to attend the bidding in the first place. Patricia Hill Collins, a prominent feminist scholar, analyzed this phenomenon through intersectionality, a framework that identifies how connected systems of power impact marginalized groups in society (2007). She states that “intersectionality works better when applied to individual behavior than when documenting group experiences,” because people with the same demographics don’t necessarily live the same experiences (Collins, 2007, p. 206). Collins focuses on how systems of oppression, like gender, class, and race, differ based on an individual’s social location. The Asian man at the party is a perfect example as his influential power and money overshadows his marginalized identity of being non-white, thus allowing him to engage in the bidding and, consequently, the subjugation of Black bodies.
After the party ends, Chris calls his best friend, and the film’s comedic relief, Rod to tell him about what happened. Together, they figure out that Logan King is actually Andre Hayworth, a man they knew from back in the day. Chris gets Rose to pack up and leave but before they can make it out the door the Armitage family descends on him. In a heavy climatic moment where Chris is cornered by Rose’s parents and brother, Rose reveals she was in on her family’s sinister plan all along. The most prominent example the rampant fetishization of Black men displayed in Get Out is Rose. She continually used Black men for sex and by pretending to be in a relationship lured them to their death. Rose is most obviously aware of the prejudice and discrimination people of color face and used her White privilege to her advantage, like in the beginning scene with the police officer and the car accident. However, despite this knowledge, she doesn’t see a problem in the continued subjugation of Black bodies, especially at the hands of her family. At the end of the movie, Rose typed in “top NCAA players” as she began to scope out her next victim. She is looking for a physically fit athletic Black male most likely due to the high number of consumers who want the procedure done in order to have a stronger, more sexually active body. This relates back to Black men’s masculinity being seen as hypersexual. Rose uses these bodies to satisfy her own needs, then makes a financial profit by literally selling Black bodies for their stereotypically beneficial attributes.
Chris wakes up in the basement of the Armitage house restrained to a chair forced to watch a video explaining the process of getting someone’s consciousness put into his body called the Coagula procedure. A prominent line that stands out during the coagula explanation video is Rose’s grandfather stating “[Black men] have been chosen because of the physical advantages [they’ve] enjoyed [their] entire lifetime. With [Black men’s] natural gifts and [White people’s] determination we could both be part of something greater. Something perfect” (Peele, 2017). This goes back to scientific racism where it was thought that White people were intellectually superior while Black people were physically superior. Physicians in the early 1900’s used fear of medically threatening words like “perversion” to medically validate the stereotype of the Black male as a perpetrator. A doctor in 1903 drew upon racist fears to explain why a Black man wanted to have sex with a White woman writing, “a perversion from which most races are exempt, prompt the negro’s inclinations towards the White woman, whereas other races incline toward the females of their own,” (Somerville, 2012, p. 262). This quote legitimizes the myth that Black men are rapists and hypersexual, but conveniently side steps the idea that White men are granted power over both White and Black female bodies. In the late 19th century, medical journals and science were viewed as reliable sources for consumers wanting to learn about sex and the human body. Results of many tests, however, were skewed as they mostly seem to reinstate and justify popular opinion. The power and influence of political and social views came into play when doctors examined the genitalia of Black individuals. The “malformed’ female genitalia” or “oversized penis” were used as evidence of a deviant sexuality and excessive sexual desire (Somerville, 2012). These medical reports create a “natural” or “biological” link between Black bodies and hypersexualization. While they may not have been purposefully skewing their report, researchers have subconsciously influenced experiments due to personal cognitive bias that medically justifies the mainstream politically charged propaganda of one race being above another.
After fading in and out of consciousness for a while longer, Chris gets a video call from the auction winner, a blind art dealer who admired Chris’ photography and artist works. When Chris asks why the Coagula is done specifically on Black people, the man answers “who knows. Some people want to be cooler, faster, stronger” (Peele, 2017). While the blind man may have spent 10 million dollars on Chris for his eyes and talent for photography, the rest of the bidders are doing it because they believe Black bodies are superior in certain aspects. White people who go through the Coagula procedure get to be “cooler” or “stronger” or “faster” or any other attribute that they picked the Black body for, but they don’t have to endure the hardships and day to day microaggressions Black people face. This can be seen as an extreme version of cultural appropriation where White people want to don what they perceive as the successful or positive attributes only Black people have (Lemley, 2007). They get to profit from Black culture, like having a physically capable body that can be used for sex, but don’t attempt to address oppressive forces that cause and perpetuate racism against the Black community. In fact, those who underwent the procedure don’t have to face prejudice or discrimination at all. Despite being externally Black-presenting, the community involved in this procedure all know that the person controlling that body is actually White, psychologically speaking. These White men’s masculinity was threatened, such as not being able to perform sexually, they turn to emulate extreme examples of masculinity, like the hypersexual, hyper violent images that are tied to the Black males (Lemley, 2007). In this case, they physically emulate these images by taking over a Black body. When Chris confided to Logan that he felt better knowing there was another Black man at the party, Logan recounted this to his wife in an almost mocking tone dismissing Chris’ words. This shows there are no real repercussions Logan has to endure by taking over Andre Hayworth’s Black body since Logan is perceived by the knowing community around him as White. He hasn’t lived a Black experience and is only getting a taste of what he sees as benefits of inhabiting that body.
Chris is able to outsmart Rose’s family killing her father, mother, and brother before driving off in one of their cars. Rose overhears the commotion and follows him down her driveway with a hunting rifle shooting at the car. He manages to overpower her and they get into a fight before a cop car approaches the scene of Chris overtop of Rose’s bloody, beaten body and she immediately falls into the trope of White women victimization. Rose is playing into the notions that White women must be saved and protected, they are the rational subjects of justice, and they are protected by the law (Dartmouth, 2017). She knows how the scene looks with a Black man standing over a White woman who was shot, and uses the potential bias from the police officers to her advantage screaming “Help! Help!” By doing so, Rose is playing into the stereotype of Black men being aggressive, dominating, and unable to control themselves, especially when it comes to White women (Reeser, 2011). This is the second time in Get Out where police are involved utilized to highlight police violence against people of color. Fortunately, it’s not actually the police who responded, but Chris’ best friend Rod who had been searching for him since they discovered Logan King was actually Andre Hayworth. They drive off together away from the scene of the crime with the Armitage house burning behind them.
A final point pertaining to masculinity that is notable in Get Out is Chris’ reluctance to divulge what he’s truly thinking or feeling to Rose. When Chris comes to Rose with a concern or problem, it was seen periodically throughout the movie that she doesn’t engage with him to delve deeper. She doesn’t take his emotions as valid, usually laughing off his concerns and making jokes. Feeling like he’s not being taken seriously, Chris always backtracked after her dismissal and pretends like everything is fine. A key component of masculinity is controlling emotional weakness, like holding in crying and masking fear, and hiding vulnerabilities (Kimmel & Messner, 2013). It’s seen as a weak for men to open up and say how they’re feeling, and men are instead taught to be the a pillar of strength for those around them. This leads to men bottling up their feelings and valid concerns in an effort to “man up” because emotional vulnerability has been equated to weakness, femininity, and not masculine (Hyde & Else-Quest, 2012). Chris struggles opening up to Rose about his anxieties, fears, and deep concerns about her family that have been plaguing him. In the end, Chris chooses to open up to her and cries, overcoming the barriers masculine ideals placed upon him that were stopping him from opening up.
Get Out is a revolutionary horror movie that takes on social issues regarding race. It tackles topics like how Black bodies are fetishized as having superior traits, like a strong, fit body, but their plight and discrimination is ignored. Masculinity of Black men is framed as hypersexual, reducing them down to stereotypes of dominating sexual aggressiveness and putting a bigger emphasis on genitalia. The Armitage family use Black bodies for the Coagula procedure because they see them as physically superior and sexually more beneficial. This parallels medical procedures that would “other” Black bodies as different from White that created a “natural” association between hypersexuality and Black men. Get Out plays with the realistic horrors of scientific racism done to justify maltreatment of Blacks to create a heart-stopping thriller. e
Although Behind the Mask and Get Out are horror movies of two different sub genres, the former being a dark comedy slasher and the later being a thriller, they both exemplify subversions of tropes involving gender, race, and masculinity. Behind the Mask presents a female character as a competent woman embracing her masculinity in order to triumph over a killer, to beat him by penetrating his body with a phallic object. Despite its attempt to deconstruct the gender binary and show that masculinity is not embodied by only male-bodied people, it simultaneously conforms to other traditional gender roles, like the Final Girl having to be a virgin. Additionally, Behind the Mask is another horror movie that features a White woman surviving the end. Like most horror movies, the cast is all White leaving the odds of a Non-White person surviving the movie very slim. Get Out, on the other hand, subverts the trope that the last person alive to conquer evil is a White woman, one of purity and innocence. Instead, a Black man that has to fight and kill his way out of a house of evil White people despite the movie technically having a majority White cast. Rose at first seems to be pure-hearted and in any other typical horror movie would be the perfect candidate for a Final Girl. Instead, Get Out chooses to have a Black men survive until the end. It also addresses topics like racial profiling from police, scientific racism used to justify the treatment of Black people, and White privilege.
The two movies display how masculinity is constructed contingent upon race.