Talk:Final girl

Quibble
Minor quibble: Were films such as "Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street" really films with a predominately male audience? MinorEdit June 30, 2005 00:44 (UTC)
 * you're right. maybe remove the word "predomionantly"... from the second link: Although Clover doesn't claim that these woman are feminist representations of women, she acknowledges their role on a deeper level instead of writing them off as one dimensional damsels in distress, seeing within the Final Girl an evolving woman who learns to not just run and scream but actually fight back and represent female empowerment which the male audience can then identify with. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Niz (talk • contribs)

Not so minor quibble: "final girl" is a CONVENTION of the genre, perhaps even a conceit, but certainly not a "trope." This should be changed in the heading section which has no edit button (I changed it in the history section). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.17.217.255 (talk) 00:17, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Androgynous name?
Wikipedia's list of final girls strongly disputes that final girls "often [have] an androgynous name." I only count a handful in the entire lengthy list. I would remove this line unless we can find more proof to the contrary. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MaxVeers (talk • contribs)
 * Actually, that's one of Clover's rules. But Clover holds that a "final girl" need not be final or a girl, so it's a lot more vague than usually asserted. Шизомби 18:41, 5 April 2006 (UTC)


 * This assertion in the article strikes me as original research. The list of final girls is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is the claim supported by an academic source.  Unless a third-party source can be found for the claim, it should be removed from the article. -- Exitmoose 06:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I've removed the bit about the numbers as I counted 15 androgynous names, and as Exitmoose said, it's not an exhaustive list. It says "sometimes" not "usually" so there's no need to try to dispute it. &mdash; AnemoneProjectors (zomg!) 22:10, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The relevance would be in considering whether the Final Girl is allowed to be strong in part by being less feminine and/or sexual, with the androgynous name being part of that defeminization. A Final Girl isn't likely to be a Tiffany or Barbie or Buffy (which is why the Slayer's name was so transgressive of horror tropes). -- Orange Mike


 * Thanks for clarifying that. Although I don't think Buffy as a name is particularly feminine. &mdash; AnemoneProjectors (zomg!) 17:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * At least in the States, until the rise of the Slayer "Buffy" was one of those girly-girly names, right up there with Barbie, Kimberly, Tiffany and Bambi, associated with cheerleaders and other mall-haunting ultra-feminine types. -- Orange Mike 17:41, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * First - I must say, if Clover listed that as a "rule" for it, it should be mentioned, in the form say of "Clover also argues that...", probably followed with, say, "although there are some notable exceptions in horror film and television, such as...".


 * Second - agreed, Buffy is usually a girl's name (and in this native English speaker's opinion, it is in fact a very fluffy, girly, frou-frou, bubbly girl's name, right up there with "Bambi"). I cite as an actual source(!) for this as HowManyofMe.com, a searchable database site which uses U.S. census data to tabulate how many people have been recorded in the U.S. as having any particular first or last name you care to search for. This site states the following if you search for "Buffy" in the first name portion:


 * There are 4,527 people in the U.S. with the first name Buffy.
 * Statistically the 2762nd most popular first name.
 * More than 99.9 percent of people with the first name Buffy are female.


 * So yeah. Girl's name. And I would say definitely girly-girl's name at that. Runa27 16:45, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Fun sidenote: I wonder if the name Buffy in the title of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is in fact a double-pun on both the fact that she's blonde, and the fact there is actually a "buff-colored" portion of blood called the Buffy layer? Hmm... wonder if the BtVS main page has a mention of that? Runa27 17:44, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for enlightening us non-native English speakers. Also want to point out that Bambi was in fact a male character in the Disney film. It _sounds_ feminine though. AadaamS (talk) 12:44, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Phallic appropriation?
Could someone please explain this? Usually I just ignore red (or blue) words that need a dictionary to understand, but the assertion that final girls take up weapons to have a penis-like (?) appendage strikes me as being somewhat silly; my figuring was that they did it to avoid being killed.66.133.180.22 20:27, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


 * It's a Clover referance. In her book, she makes the "Phallic appropriation" comment.  She isn't saying the girls want a penis, she's saying that the knife (or whatever) is symbolic and represents a penis.  The male killer stabs (penitrates) his female victims with a phallic object.  The final girl then takes the object away and penitrates him. 70.249.81.26 00:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It's spelled "penetrate", but yeah. That was actually my assumption, that it was the appropriation of guns or blades that are symbolically phallic, i.e. masculine extensions (probably considered symbolically "phallic" just as much because they're associated with the traditionally masculine realm of violence and aggression as anything else, is my guess). Perhaps the most easily understandable example of this "phallic appropriation" conceit though would be the wooden stake of vampire lore, for instance, as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I've seen, on a side note, arguments that Buffy is actually a member of the Final Girl archetype, even though she's not literally the last girl in the world or even the last girl left on the team, due to the fact that she is "the one girl in all the world" who can face the demons and vampires, and is a Chosen One given extraordinary abilities and apparently even special instincts for just that purpose, much as the Final Girl is usually smarter and psychologically tougher than the girls around her that get killed, i.e. is "different" and special compared to those who couldn't face the monster and win). It's a sharp, usually fairly thick object (roughly the size of, admittedly, a penis); you stick it in the vampire's heart, and they die. I don't know how to explain it more specifically without doing hours of research into the terminology of literary and psychological and film analyses, but you can't tell me that on a symbolic level, that stake isn't somewhat phallic, a symbol of aggression of the type traditionally reserved for males.


 * The article is awkwardly worded perhaps, but I got the jist of it, and upon further reflection can see a number of reasons for the "phallic" connection (even though personally, I would not have used the term "phallic" in my description for the phenomenon if I was analyzing it from that perspective, probably sticking to "masculine" if anything along those lines). Perhaps though it should be explained in more depth, especially with links to say any articles we have on phallic symbolism and gender roles (well, OK, gender role is already linked in another context, but you get the idea, yes?). Runa27 17:35, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * After first taking up the knife in Halloween (film) (after the knitting needle incident), Laurie Strode holds the knife above her body, pointing it at her crotch, for a noticeably long time, staring at it. Director John Carpenter himself says this was to show the knife as a phallic symbol. Format (talk) 04:53, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are scholarly papers explicitly identifying Buffy as a Final Girl, such as "The Third Wave's Final Girl: Buffy the Vampire Slayer" by Irene Karras, Thirdspace, Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2002. -- Orange Mike  &#x007C;   Talk  17:55, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Here I want to put a question: are the slasher movies' features like decorous Final Girl caused by a shade of morality or by plot's necessity? Being not intoxicated or having not sex the final girl is more attentive and ready-to-fly, so has more chances to escape from a sudden attack. What about all those not sining characters slain while working in a dark place or watching TV or off guard immediately after a false alarm?


 * Being she wiser than her pals, FG will be the first to notice bad omina, so she will be more cautious than other totally unaware victims.


 * "[I]f she doesn't outright stop her pals from bullying the geeky outcast who may someday grow into a homicidal killing machine, she at least feels really bad about it" (from www.about.com): and consequently she will be the first to relate their pals' deaths to the target for their mockeries.


 * Thus, Final Girl's survival is found by a better readiness rather deserved by a better morality.


 * Then, last survivor is ever female. This increases the strength gap between the hero(ine) and the villain, and more thrilling their confrontation: how could that disarmed feeble bloom survive a physical fight with a forceful machete-bearer like Jason, who had just destroyed Jimmy McQuarterback, the deputy sheriff and a score of other characters? This way, the end seems to be less foreseeable.


 * Final Girl's taking up a weapon against killer is more likely a material necessity rather than a "phallic appropriation": she tries not to be masculine, but only to fight for life with the first offensive tool within reach.


 * Clover's thoughts seem to me pretentious and void of substance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.59.154.130 (talk) 17:57, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Usually a woman or female?
"The final girl is a horror film trope that specifically refers to the last person (usually a woman or girl) alive to confront the killer"

"Usually"? I've never heard a male character referred to as a final girl.Legend Chronicles (talk) 20:38, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Bruce Campbell in The Evil Dead is a perfect example of a male Final Girl. His character closely parallels the description of The Final Girl written by Carol Clover in Men Women and Chainsaws.

and then again
In many episodes of The Avengers, the Villain targets a group of people (scientists who worked on project X, directors of corporation Y, witnesses to event Z) – of whom Steed and Cathy/Emma/Tara save exactly one. &mdash;Tamfang 04:45, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

More references?
I'm concerned about this article: it appears to be parroting the views of Carol Clover from her book. There is one essay (posted online, editorial level of attention unclear) that refers back to Clover's book, but that's all, the rest is presenting Clover's viewpoint. Is this really appropriate? We should not have an article on this if it's basically the research of one person, but only if the concept has been discussed and analyzed by many people. Mango juice talk 22:57, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. I was surprised to see this article existed, and it seems to be giving WP:UNDUE weight to the opinion of just this one author, whose opinions are not accepting by a broad consensus of film historians/sociologists/whatever. DreamGuy (talk) 18:17, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You clearly haven't done the research to determine that. If you had, you'd have seen plenty of critics who have acknowledged this concept, employed it, and critiqued it. Uncle G (talk) 20:04, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * A quick Google search turns up other people besides Clover, including film critics, using the term, which Clover coined in 1987 and that I'd never heard of until now. If the article seems to not be NPOV, edit it, don't delete it. RoyLeban (talk) 06:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed, there are plenty of others who have employed the term and it is a fairly standard element of horror films. Unless there is any objection, we might want to consider removing the tag. 66.191.19.217 (talk) 04:03, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I restored the article. The term is notable in itself, article quality notwithstanding. Neither "mainstream use" nor "widespread acceptance" by the general public is a necessary criterion. It's jargon. Many terms and theories start out being coined or conceived by one person, and with respect to the "final girl", both are widely discussed by many scholars in the field of feminist film theory. I would even say it's common education for undergraduates studying film theory or feminist theory. Dancter (talk) 17:39, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Use of GoogleScholar or GoogleBooks (especially the former) will lead you to a number of scholarly uses of the term, particularly in feminst film studies; and a standard websearch finds that the concept is part of the memescape in popular culture as well. -- Orange Mike  |   Talk  17:51, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * And another thing: WP:UNDUE addresses unbalanced coverage of a particular aspect of the article subject. The final girl is the subject of this article. The principle does not apply across multiple articles, and it seems you are trying to conflate the concept with POV forking, which wouldn't apply either. Dancter (talk) 18:02, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Sarah Trencansky's article, "Final Girls and the Terrible Youth: Transgression in 1980s Slasher Horror" would be a nice addition. AFP95 (talk) 00:09, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

List of films ...
Another contributor added a list of films to the article. I think it is a great addition, but I have a couple suggestions. First, adding another column in which to put the films year of release. Secondly, there are other films that feature a final girl (e.g. Alien, A Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.) that should be added. Thanks. 66.191.19.68 (talk) 00:12, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Film List
It appears that an anon IP changed the film list from that of a table to a simple list. Anyone else think the former format was better? I do. On that topic, do we even need a list, or could the majority of films featuring a Final Girl be referenced, internally linked, and properly sourced in the body? Just throwing it out for discussion. Surv1v4l1st (Talk 23:36, 7 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I removed the list as completely unreferenced, and restored the cited content from the previous table. I also removed a recent addition of a "Hypotetical [sic] descent" section to the page as likely original research, especially given the use of self-referential first-person. It seems to be meticulously complied, but even if it was found to be pulled from an independent source with the appropriate licensing, I have concerns about the data set and the analysis. I don't understand why the The Frighteners is even mentioned. Dancter (talk) 17:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * That is not to say that I disagree with underlying observation. There is certainly reputable and verifiable commentary on the typical "whiteness" of final girls, and I think it would be a good idea to include some of that to flesh out the concept in this article. Dancter (talk) 20:12, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the follow up and the work regarding the list. As to the ethnicity issue, I am going to reply to the topic started by our anonymous friend below, but totally agree with your assessment. Surv1v4l1st (Talk 20:55, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Addition to the List
Shouldn't Terminator 1 be on the list. In it there was an unstoppable killer and by the end the only person left is Sarah Connor, a girl. And in the end she defeats the killer. I think that makes it eligible for the list. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.27.39.106 (talk) 22:31, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Final Girls' Ethnicity
Recently I added a section about FG ethnicity. I also add a table with a comparison between various FG, showing a WASP prevalence. Twice this section was dropped. May I add this section here, in the talk page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.59.154.116 (talk) 14:24, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hello 151.59.154.116. I can't specifically address your question regarding the revert as I didn't do so.  However, we will need reliable sources for any such additions.  Original research is not allowed to be published on Wikipedia.


 * Having said that, I think you bring up a very interesting topic regarding the ethnicity of the Final Girl. If the aforementioned sources are available, I would certainly welcome the inclusion. Surv1v4l1st (Talk 21:01, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * There's a table with all my researches

According this table's results, Here are listed 47 films with a Final Girl but of 6 Final Girl I have not their last name. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.48.105.246 (talk) 20:44, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
 * in 14 non-slasher horror movies, there are 64% (9 in number) Final Girls with English surname, 21% (3) with Germanic or Celtic surname and 14% (2: Alien vs Predator and Gothica) with Afro-American descent.
 * in 31 slasher movies (counting also parodical-slashers and supernatural-slashers), there are 71% (22 in number) Final Girls with English surname, 25% (8) with Germanic or Celtic surname and 3% (one only: The Frighteners' Lucy Linski) other, a Pole (Slavic) family name. Moreover The Frighteners is more a parodic horror than a straight slasher and the true protagonist is not the Final Girl but the male hero, who is played by Michael J. Fox and his last name is the very English Bannister.

English used
As it is, the article contains spelling in both American and British English; with most of the spelling in the former. Either is fine, but according to the MOS, it should be one or the other, but never both within the same article. I thought I'd post here before performing any changes. I don't particularily mind either way, but we should reach an agreement beforehand. Thanks. Surv1v4l1st (Talk 17:50, 29 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, I went ahead and changed it to American English. Reason being that the majority of the text was already using that spelling and I'm more familiar with the aforementioned spelling.  Moving forward, I suppose we should keep that format, unless there is a reason for the changes.  Thanks. Surv1v4l1st (Talk 17:33, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Buffy -- why is that character in this article, in the first place?
I don't get it: in my opinion Buffy has NO place AT ALL in an article about the topic "final girl", let alone occupying such a HUGE portion of it. What the heck's up with that? -- MF (talk), 21:40, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. The section is introduced by saying that Buffy isn't a final girl, so why should such a large portion of the article be devoted to her?  I'm removing it. CKarnstein (talk) 21:01, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree as well. I suspected this article had been written by tvtropes users but after reading the completely unnecessary Buffy section I'm now sure 201.252.41.39 (talk) 21:44, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Doesn't the Bettis quote about the Buffy character "subverting" the Final Girl trope make it relevant to the article? There seems to be a good deal in books about the relation of Buffy to the Final Girl idea:  1   2   3   4    5    6  -- Chetvorno TALK 22:04, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It may be relevant to mention Buffy as a subversion of this trope, but most of the content included here really belongs in the articles on Buffy/Willow/B:TVS. In fact, some of it is copied nearly verbatim from the Buffy character article.  I am editing down the Buffy section here and would encourage people who wish to write at greater length on Buffy as a subversion of the Final Girl trope to do so on the actual Buffy article. CKarnstein (talk) 18:18, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Notability and contents questionable
I have some serious doubts as to the notability of this article---and even greater doubts as to the actual contents.

As is, we have the trite observation that horror movies usually involves the killing of people from the group of protagonists---by which means the tension is kept up and the presupposition of a happy-ending/"the heroes always live" is neutralized. Now, as the group of protagonists shrinks, it will often be reduced to a very small group of heroes and sometimes to a single hero. In the latter case, we sometimes have a man and sometimes a woman. To reduce this greater phenomenon to a "final girl" is misleading and it is highly dubious whether the specific concept of a "final girl" (as opposed to more general concepts like "the surviving minority"/"the last survivor" or "the one who finally brings the monster down") is noteworthy.

(In particular, there are a number of very notable movies with a non-girl final survivor or group of survivors, including Evil Dead, Hostel, Saw, and Jaws, and many others where any remaining girl is merely a damsell-in-distress rescued by the final boy, a love interest of the final boy, and/or serves as the final boys reward.)

The further speculation on e.g. slasher films vs feminism, gender-roles, whatnot, is unlikely to be appropriate (being speculation and merely one conceivable opinion/line-of-thinking). Notably, even if "final girls" turn out to be more common than "final boys" on a closer inspection, other explanations are very possible, including that physically weaker women make better and more natural under-dog victims. Michael Eriksson (talk) 23:14, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I note the poorly motivated reversion of my notability-tag (16:01, 4 January 2011 Uncle G) and strongly object to both the lack of an explaining comment in reply to my comment and his unfounded claim that I would not have read the article. It is true that I have not read the AfD, which was not sufficiently obvious on the talk page for me to notice it the first time around; however, what is said there is only a partial save. In particular, it does not address the quality and content problems of the article. The notability issue may, however, be limited in scope and another tag more relevant. (An important question is whether the concept of a final girl is flawed within film theory, and outside Wikipedia's scope, or whether the article gives a misleading view.)Michael Eriksson (talk) 07:44, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Should be moved to entry on slasher films
This does not deserve its own entry in an encyclopedia. A section about it in the slasher film entry would suffice. The whole article is basically a summary of one book and so one person's opinion on the matter. You may as well just do an entry for the book itself--it would probably not look much different. Alialiac (talk) 07:48, 25 January 2012 (UTC)


 * As I said three years ago (see above), "Use of GoogleScholar or GoogleBooks (especially the former) will lead you to a number of scholarly uses of the term, particularly in feminst film studies; and a standard websearch finds that the concept is part of the memescape in popular culture as well." -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  14:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * +1 to Orange Mike's comment.-- Surv1v4l1st (Talk 21:57, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

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"Usage" Relevancy
The last two sentences of the section "Usage" seem a bit irrelevant. The discussion of declining popularity of slasher films and rising popularity of other genres feels out of place, as does the mention of the "Dysfunctional Mother".Taylorboswell01 (talk) 23:26, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
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Final girl
I think we should add a final girl from the 2000s because we don't see any you think we should add the girl from behind the mask the rise of Leslie Vernon so we can have a final girl from the 2000s? Judyhopkins (talk) 03:19, 24 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but could you reword your comment? It's difficult to understand. I think I might have figured it out. I think you're asking about Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. We need two things from you. Which character are you referring to? And most importantly, we need a reliable source to support your request. Sundayclose (talk) 04:03, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Psycho
Lila Crain is the "final girl" and real protagonist in Hitchcock's 1960s classic Psycho, and finds Norman Bates mother in the basement. Is the reason she's not counted here is because of her boyfriend still being alive too? Shouldn't that character be considered at least the "prototype" of this trope?

Shouldn't there at least be a discussion of Hitchcock's influence on this trope? I mean he did basically create this trope with Psycho and The Birds, even though the "boyfriend" also survives. Colliric (talk) 05:08, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Are there sources about Hitchcock's influence on horror films? Dimadick (talk) 08:52, 17 October 2021 (UTC)