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Former film and media studies hat on!
Horror as a genre is used as a means to interrogate the things that cause anxiety and fear in any given society. Those things change over time, as all trends do, but femininity is a consistent hinge point because, well, the patriarchy, tbh. https://twitter.com/thesupremejedi/status/1329878824708939778
Horror as a genre is used as a means to interrogate the things that cause anxiety and fear in any given society. Those things change over time, as all trends do, but femininity is a consistent hinge point because, well, the patriarchy, tbh. https://twitter.com/thesupremejedi/status/1329878824708939778
In a system where men are the assumed default, women are therefore Other. Anxieties over female power, over women's bodies, over the threat of upending this longstanding status quo, that's been an anxiety of horror writers since almost the start of horror as a genre.
Men are also conditioned to protect women even as they also fear that otherness, so the guilt element--the town burning a witch, or a little girl being murdered--that comes into play because of the inherent anxiety over protector vs predator vs prey.
So I wouldn't say it's "guilt for past sins", though that can certainly be a part of it, but it's a time-honoured tradition of the genre.
(all of this is EXTREMELY cisheteronormative, obviously, and ignores the intersections of gender, race, class, etc, but it's a quick and dirty opinion on stuff!)
