Sign of the Times; reflecting on the creative process and my research into the relationship to the female gender throughout horror history

This thesis is a record of my research into women and their portrayal in contemporary horror and how such research informed my writing of Sign of the Times, the TV show I submitted in conjunction for the Masters by Research in Screenwriting at the University of York. Throughout this essay I examine multiple roles and identities within horror, including ‘The Final Girl’ and ‘The Mother’ amongst others, and analyse how the portrayal of these roles have changed history and how the political/social attitudes at the time could have informed such portrayals. My specific focus was on 80’s horror in particular and the role of women in horror during the Reagan administration as my previous research had suggested social values became more conservative in this time and a focus of my writing is a partial satire of modern 80’s nostalgia.