Allison Wallace

The Beacon is a parallel of the movie The Lighthouse and is the encompassing piece of this series. Using the movie ’ s plot and themes as a plot device to display how femininity is the beacon that could have saved Thomas Wake and Thomas Howard from the original movie. In the movie these two characters go crazy together as they worship the lighthouse on the island they are trapped on. The Lighthouse is almost like a higher power or religious figure that the two men constantly idolize and fight over. They bounce back and forth between showing each other affection before getting into a violent altercation, and talk about how the men from their pasts have affected them negatively; they make each other worse and worse. Perhaps a woman on board could have kept them in check.

It’s Friday! Is a parody of the film Friday the 13th, this piece displays how the tropes The Final Girl and The Slasher are inherently sexual in nature and reverses them by making Jason a woman and giving her a Final Boy. Final Girls are put through the ringer throughout the whole film, most often just narrowly avoiding death, however they always reign victorious. Despite the fact the Final Girl beats the Big Bad, there is an air to this trope that feels infantilizing and objectifying of her, almost like it was such an amazing feat because she is so small and delicate. How could she ever manage to defeat such a big, mean, man? Switching the Slasher to a strong female character flips this negative stereotype on its head by making her the main physical threat.

It’s a girl! This is the ending scene of Rosemary ’ s Baby, everything is mostly the same except for the fact that her baby is a girl. In this movie Rosemary has no autonomy over any part of her life, even her own husband betrays her and uses her ability to have children against her. As long as humans have existed, women have been seen as “baby making factories ” and only supposed to tend to the children and the home. This piece showcases Rosemary having been the one to have transformed her baby into the Anti-Christ, this allows her to have control over her ability to bear children rather than in the control of her husband or other people in the coven. The baby being a girl is also a crucial detail due to the fact that baby girls are not seen as rightful heirs. Additionally, all of the coven members are also women thus this entire process was from the creation of women.

Open Wide takes the predatory nature of the shark from Jaws and humanizes it as a man who is preying on two queer women on the beach just trying to relax. This poster reflects the original Jaws poster, the man’ s legs being the border, the space in between his legs as the shark and the two women as the mouth of the shark. This composition shows how men often prey on queer women, either not taking them seriously or viewing them as a punching bag. Having the women be the mouth of the shark displays how they are being preyed upon, but can also be read as being more deadly than men may think. Additionally the infamous tropes Kill your Gays and The Black Character Dies First are reversed in this piece, by having the unsuspecting heroes of this drawing being a black woman part of a lesbian relationship.

Kill Your Darlings depicts the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre using the plot of the killer Leatherface as an analogy for women being seen as murderers for getting abortions. Part of Leatherface ’ s character is that he doesn’t really know what he is doing because of how he was raised and abused, much like how many people do not think women know what they are doing when they decide to get an abortion. In reality women do not get abortions for the sake of killing a baby, it is for their own mental or physical health. Lady Leatherface being surrounded by dead pigs, including pregnant pigs she has gutted, is an extreme emphasis on how women are seen after having gotten an abortion, like ruthless, depraved killers.

Here’s Shelley! Is a spin on The Shining, this movie is greatly about mental health and how a bad mental state can affect a person. Jack T orrance is the main villain in this story being the abusive husband and father to his wife Wendy (played by Shelley Duval) and their son Danny. This piece takes the iconic Here ’ s Johnny scene and uses Shelley ’ s character instead, devising a new plot of Wendy going crazy because of her husband’ s abuse and neglect instead. This is to show how women’ s mental and medical health is taken much less seriously. Even to this day women’ s health gets taken much less seriously generally leading to misdiagnosis and in the worst case, death.

The Countess is a parody of the story of Dracula. The prominent theme of this piece is how women are often not thought to be suitable for positions of power due to their emotions. In many political spaces around the world women are not seen as valid contenders because of their sex, their values and policies completely ignored in place of how they were born. For this piece the gender of Dracula has been switched, this is important as Dracula is a Count and in the original story was able to get away with as much as he did mostly likely due to his status and wealth. Many vampires in popular media also have the ability to control the minds of mortal beings, which is exactly what Femme Dracula is doing to her male servants, taking advantage of their weak minds to make them do her bidding.

The Monster and The Doctor presents a spin on the story of Frankenstein. Women are often still overlooked in their fields, not being seen as being capable of being smart or a dominant driving force. Furthermore women weren’t allowed to even go to school for a long time, only being seen as capable of keeping a home and making children. Creating a stereotype that women were meant to only be submissive, kind and gentle. This piece displays how women can be smart and make breakthroughs, by switching Doctor Frankenstein to a woman. Additionally, the monster is also switched to a woman showcasing how women don’t need to be gentle and meek, that they can be monstrous and scary. In this illustration, the doctor and the monster are having an intimate moment together to display how these two vastly different characters have more in common than they may realize, both of them doing the impossible in the era they are from.

Slash-Her