Reimagining the Final Girl

Abstract

This master’s thesis focuses on the two surviving characters, Bee and Sophie, in the film Bodies Bodies Bodies. This thesis analyses the narrative and mise-en-scène to discuss how Bee and Sophie are constructed as final subjects, as a literary extension of the theory on the final girl by Carol J. Clover. This analysis is conducted using David Bordwell’s chapter ‘Three Dimensions of Film Narrative’, David Bordwell’s and Kristen Thompson’s chapter ‘Narrative as a Formal System’, and ‘The Persistence of Textual Analysis’ by Richard Dyer. Bordwell’s and Thompson’s chapters are used to analyse the narrative. This chapter introduces the characters and discusses the plot and story of this film, and how certain things are part of the story, but not of the plot to maintain the curiosity, suspense and surprise. Thereby, it discusses the cause and effects of the events happening in the film. The analysis also discusses the difference of a classis slasher film and Bodies Bodies Bodies, due to the lack of a killer. In the second part of the analysis the three steps of Dyers textual analysis are used for the mise-en-scène analysis. Due to the contemporary representation of Bee and Sophie as final girls, they do not fit perfectly in the description of a final girl, given by Clover. Therefore, this thesis calls Bee and Sophie final subjects, named after the concept of Jeremy Maron. He proposes the final subject instead of the final girl, more as a conceptual figure, rather than a character with specific, distinguishable gendered traits. By analysing these final subjects in the film, I aim to make a small contribution to the debate about final subjects.