Laura Mulvey's Feminist Film Theory in Horror movie: Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Laura Mulvey in 1975 wrote an article called 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative cinema'. Mulvey examines a few Hollywood movies, which have been made by Hollywood Cinema and she made the decision that everything what see in the cinema we see through Male gaze effect. Mulvey admitted that male gaze was made by narrative cinema and camera angles. She separated Male Gaze into two factions: one of them is a sadistic voyeurism - how narrative objectifies a woman and second faction - fetishist scopophilia - that shows woman's body and its form.

Mostly in horror genre movies, you could see those factions. Nightmare on Elm Street's story line tells story line about Freddy Krueger, which was a paedophile and been burned alive. Movie perfectly shows Mulvey's feminist theory when Krueger kills kids in their dreams.

The differences in the death between the males and the females highlight the fetishist way in which the camera treats the female form, which from another angle looks sadistic to female characters.

Tina's death

When Tina's nightmare starts, she leaves the house, while she is walking down the stairs; the camera shows that she is only wearing a shirt on her naked body. While she is moving to the backstreet low angles and wide shots show her naked legs and only the shirt on her body. When she finally reached the backstreet, light behind her creates even stronger link to her legs.

When filming gets back to the bed shot, camera always holds a position near her legs and her cheeks, because there is only one place on her body, where a male could continue to gaze at her body. That gaze gets even stronger when she lifts her body from the bed, so that audience could see more. In the end a close up shot shows directly how Tina's shirt gets ripped off her body directly through chest between her breasts.  She could die at the same moment when she got cut, but the film director wants that Male gaze to last longer so he is trying to hold her alive until the last scene and shot.

Nancy's death

However, in the end on the movie camera shows Nancy's death, which was way different than Tina's. Nancy was fully dressed and did not have any naked spot on her body. Other aspect would be that her death was quicker than Tina's was, because Tina was haft naked. That only proves Mulvey's theory about Male Gaze, which she wanted to discuss through her article.  Nancy's death goes to sadistic voyeurism, because camera only showed how Nancy is stabbed by Krueger and dies while lying in her friend lap.

Glenn's death

As example could be Glenn's death, camera only shows close up on his face when he was sleeping. Later he gets sucked into the bed and camera only shows a huge hole in his bed. Later camera shows huge blood gazer coming from the depth of bed, which represents Glenn's death.

These three different deaths shows, that movie mostly depends on Male Gaze on women. Because mostly biggest part of the horror movie audience are men, that why a woman’s naked body is emphasized more than men’s.