Horror Is the "final girl" a completely made up concept?

[Jethro]

While watching the pilot of the television series Scream I suddenly remembered, i.e. can't put it off much longer, that I promised a site a series of articles on the slasher sub-genre, yeah coming guys. One of the things I promised to investigate was whether or not the "final girl" thing was a fixture of the sub-genre or something that Carol J. Clover invented to help justify her didactic feminist theories.

So how many slasher flicks have you folks watched that don't actually involve a "final girl" at all, but rather involve a "final dude", a "final couple", or a "final group"?

 

[Tom]

"final girl" thing was a fixture of the sub-genre

Slashers are not the only times we see the "final girl" outcome. I watch lots of monster & creature movies and there are many of those that have it. Some scifi thrillers / scifi horrors also have it.
In contrast to tracking the slashers that don't, we could also track the non-slashers that do.

example:
Alien - Ripley
Prometheus - that one chick (?), the synthetic doesn't count.
Ex Machina - the female synthetic does count
The Forgotten Ones - creature feature final girl

 

[Jethro]

Tom take your point but am focusing on the slasher sub genre for a series of six articles for another site. One of the facets of slasher movies is the supposed "final girl", term originally coined by Clover, however I'm setting out to state Clover made the facts fit her theories rather than allow them to change her theories as you should do under the scientific approach to proving or disproving a theory.

For example Friday the 13th Part 2 involves a final couple who battle sack headed Jason, there is no final girl as Clover defines her. Actually you could argue I guess the dog constitutes a final dog as well I guess.

If even core slasher flicks don't support Clover's arguments then the whole edifice is built on false foundations and should be torn down.

For those interest, hello mom, the first article is going to cover some origins of slashers, though huge debate about what constitutes origins. I'm going to be running past some Agatha Christie surprisingly, some Italian giallo, and some classic U.S movies like Psycho, all about elaborate death scenes and characters being whittled down.

Second one is tenativly going to cover the big three modern rule makers, Black Christmas (original), Halloween naturally, and Friday the 13th. Hopefully we can come at some sort of a definition of what a slasher is about here.