On this special Halloween edition of Trope Anatomy 101, Carlie St. George examines horror movies and the girls in horror movies who are too often killed off. Trope Anatomy 101 is a monthly column in which familiar tropes, particularly in speculative fiction and pop culture, are broken down and discussed by new regular contributor and author Carlie St. George. Trope Anatomy 101: The Girls Who Deserve to Die If you know anything about horror movies, especially slashers, you’ve almost certainly heard of the “final girl,” i.e., the last woman left standing after virtually everyone else is dead. First coined back in 1992 by Carol J. Clover in Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, the idea of the final girl has since become commonplace in pop culture, especially as horror has become increasingly more self-aware: films like Cabin In The Woods, The Final Girls, and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon have all played with this trope, as have books like The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones and graphic novels like Hack/Slash by Tim Seeley. Every Halloween someone writes a new list of The Top Ten Best Final Girls; hell, I even wrote […]