Released in December 1996, Scream announced a redirection in horror filmmaking. A Hollywood staple ever since Dracula (1931) announced the stateside viability of a genre developed by German expressionists, horror had already gone through a succession of variations that nonetheless maintained an array of recognizable tropes and sub-genres. Much in the same way that Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) examined the medieval film genre, Scream introduced the concept of meta-horror to the mainstream, bolstered by director Wes Craven’s bona fides[1] in the genre. While the film’s meta-criticism focuses on horror, a related critique intrinsically linked with the genre emerges as the film progresses: white American masculinity.
Scream was not alone in this regard. The 1980s, particularly when it came to blockbuster action films at the front of popular culture, “remasculinized” male characters as “symbolic configuration[s] of hegemonic masculinity that restabilize[d] the centrality of men’s bodies” in response to the perceived de-masculinization of the nation’s loss in Vietnam. However, by the time we reached the 1990s, those extreme examples of hegemonic masculinity, the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Sylvester Stallones of Hollywood were reevaluated, reaching a point where they were “frequently caricatured in popular culture” (Messner, 465). While Scream sidesteps direct caricature, Kevin Williamson’s script and Craven’s direction present a dyad of white American masculinities that simultaneously assail the dangers of violent and toxic masculinity while presenting a healthier alternative, all within the framework of deconstructing horror. To demonstrate this, I will focus on two male characters from Scream: Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) and Dwight “Dewey” Riley (David Arquette).
Billy Loomis
Writing about the formation of the psychopathic human killer version of the slasher, Carol Clover identifies the recurring killer figure as “an insider, a man who functions normally in the action until, at the end, his other self is revealed” (30). Billy, along with Stu in a less developed way, embody Clover’s observation. Yes, Billy is teased as a suspect throughout Scream, but at each turn when we seem to zero in on his guilt, he is exonerated of suspicion until the closing scenes. Linking to the meta-commentary, Billy even displays an awareness of the trope through his and Stu’s plan to frame Neil Prescott for their murders, an attempt to pervert the unassuming father figure into a psychopath. All of this, alongside the use of a mask that harkens back to a trope solidified in Halloween (1978), as well as Billy’s chosen weapon being a knife in the vein of Jason Vorhees or Michael Myers, places Billy resolutely in the slasher lineage. Where Scream diverges from its predecessors is the way in which it uses its position to deconstruct the white American male murderer.
While Billy initially claims “it’s a lot scarier when there’s no motive,” it takes only a few more beats before he reveals why he felt compelled to go on a murderous rampage and gaslight Sidney (Neve Campbell)–rage aimed at female sexuality. His motive stems from Sidney’s mother sleeping with his father and thereby breaking up the Loomis family. Further facets of the film suggest that Billy harbors a broader loathing for self-governed female sexuality that slots directly into the idea of toxic masculinity as a vision of manhood fixated on “violence, sex, status, and aggression.”[2] Billy consistently works to pressure Sidney into sexual acts under the guise of proclaiming his patience and goodness; and once his identity as killer is revealed, Billy spouts the words “slut” and “whore” to degrade sexually active women; moreover, Billy turns his and Sidney’s first penetrative sexual encounter into a twisted joke by faking his death right after, therefore linking trauma to sex for Sidney.
Whereas many previous slashers focus on the “annihilation of promiscuous women” (Christensen, 31) without interrogating why they die beyond having premarital or licentious sex, Scream employs Billy’s stated and enacted rage and violence to condemn his version of white American masculinity. By clearly establishing Billy’s obsession with punishing women[3] who engage in self-determinative sexual behavior, Scream codifies his viewpoint as the locus of horror. Ending his arc at the hands of Sidney and Gale (Courtney Cox), two women whose sexuality he has attempted to punish, Scream eschews the standard genre practice of using sexualized female bodies as gore-gushing props; instead, the film clearly states that violent and toxic white American masculinity must be obliterated for any community to escape horror, both individual and structural horror. As opposed to the sexually active young women of previous slashers who must die for societal order to be restored, Scream posits that it is instead the male killers who must fall to achieve a hopeful end.
Dwight “Dewey” Riley
In addition to the critique of toxic masculinity present in Billy’s arc, Scream incorporates a more aspirational vision of masculinity in Dewey. If Billy is the film’s vector for toxic masculinity, Dewey is the counterpoint for what theorists have labeled “inclusive masculinity,” a vision of manhood that, among other things, produces men who “are more emotionally intimate with friends” and who “eschew violence and bullying” (Anderson, 548). The existence of a male figure who operates as a point-by-point rebuke of the toxicity Billy and others project suggests that the creative team hoped not only to reprove the previous genre approaches to masculinity but to establish the beginnings of a blueprint for how positive visions of masculinity could be incorporated in horror.
Parallel to Billy’s arc from “insider” to revealed killer, Dewey progresses from comic relief to emotional anchor. During the first half of Scream, most of Dewey’s scenes focus on his bumbling nature in realms personal and professional: constantly having to remind people that when he wears the badge he is a Deputy not just Dewey; accidentally terrifying Sidney by holding up the Ghostface mask at the door when he comes to check on her; missing the phone call when Billy calls the Riley household. However, even in these comedic moments, we are also offered a glimpse of the caring and thoughtful Dewey. He is immediately responsive to Sidney’s fear and works hard in the initial police interview and subsequent interactions to assure her that he cares about her and will look out for her. When Gale turns on the charm to try and pull information from him he is noticeably flustered by her attention, but he also refuses to rise to any version of sexual “aggression” or become defensive about his “status.” Dewey may be goofy, but his characterization is centered around warmth and care that radiates out and changes those around him as the film advances.
The setup becomes even more integral in the back half of the film, focused on Dewey’s dynamic with Gale and his responses to the final rampage. Whereas Billy embodies a violent denunciation of female sexuality, Dewey’s gentle attempts to spend time with Gale posit a courtship more akin to a screwball comedy[4] than a horror picture. Dewey’s actions foreground interest in emotional intimacy that builds towards a romantic moment, albeit in the woods after diving away from oncoming traffic before he and Gale discover an abandoned car. Nonetheless, Dewey and Gale as a secondary couple in the film offer a comical but heartfelt counter to Billy’s violent approach to his relationship with Sidney. Even when the romantic focus gives way to Dewey’s desperate flight back to the house, we are presented with a man who does not rise immediately to violence, but who instead checks first on Sidney; his priority is the human, not the violently heroic.
Solidifying this fact is that Dewey is dispatched by Billy in the lead-up to Sidney and Gale’s vanquishing of the killers. A film that upheld toxic ideas of white American masculinity would play that moment as Dewey’s failure, but Scream presents it as a deeply emotional moment in which both Sidney and the audience fear for Dewey’s life. And while he does not succeed in killing the murderers, the film does not ridicule him for that fact. Simply, Scream ends Dewey’s arc by underscoring that this caring and genuine man does not need to be a gunslinging white knight to be a lovable figure. By rejecting every toxic trait expressed by Billy, Dewey emerges as the locus of aspirational masculinity, one that embraces imperfections without turning them into violent or angry defensiveness.
In the twenty-five years since Scream debuted, we have seen three sequels with a fourth on the way in January 2022. While the subsequent films have varied in their approaches to masculinity, the original persists as an early high-water mark for horror films’ reckoning with the genre’s gendered history. Other films have taken the critique further[5] in the ensuing decades, but Scream nonetheless remains as a paradigm-shifting work that has pushed the genre forward in exciting and necessary ways.
Notes
[1] For the unaware: Craven directed The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and, most famously, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) which helped define the 1980s slasher blockbusters.
[2] Drawn from the Cambridge Dictionary definition of “toxic masculinity.”
[3] This includes Casey, Tatum, Maureen, and the attempts at punishing Sidney and Gale.
[4] There is an interesting comparison to be made between the Gale-Dewey dynamic here and that of Susan and David in Bringing Up Baby (1938). A thought for a different paper though.
[5] American Psycho (2000), The Descent (2005), Jennifer’s Body (2009), and Under the Shadow (2016) are just a few I’d point out to interested parties.
Works Cited
Anderson, Eric, and Mark McCormack. “Inclusive Masculinity Theory: Overview, Reflection and Refinement.” Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 27, no. 5, 2018, pp. 547-561.
Christensen, Kyle. “The Final Girl versus Wes Craven’s ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema.” Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 34, no. 1, 2011, pp. 23–47
Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Messner, Michael A. “The Masculinity of the Governator: Muscle and Compassion in American Politics.” Gender & Society, vol. 21, no. 4, Aug. 2007, pp. 461–480.
Devin McGrath-Conwell is a graduate of Middlebury College currently working on a Screenwriting MFA at Emerson College. His work has also appeared on portlandfilmreview.com where he is a staff writer, cbsnews.com, and in The Middlebury Campus. He has been lucky enough to have his screenwriting produced in the short film Locally Sourced, which he also directed, and the web series Lambert Hall. If you enjoy his work, follow him on Twitter @devintwonames where he regularly tweets into the abyss about film, television, and, of course, horror. He has previously written for Horror Homeroom on Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass.
