Okay guys, take your time for this one..:) Anyone, can you correct my grammar for me? More than grateful. “Hard Candy” is a film about a 14-year old girl’s revenge for her friend’s death on a 32-year old pedophile, Jeff, by faking his castration and eventually forcing him to commit suicide. Hayley, the teenage girl, is shown as sexually and intellectually precocious, which makes her a perfect candidate for this “vengeful woman” role. However, there are definitely many unique features which put extra emphasis on female dominance in this film that brought this conventional role to an extreme. The fact that the film is shot mainly in Jeff’s house and focuses exclusively on the confrontation between two characters declares at the first place that this is a war about gender and sexuality, and Hayley the little feminist is on her way to completely destroy Jeff’s masculine pride. We will first analyze how the stereotypical “Vengeful Woman” role has been constructed by considering how Hayley’s ambiguous gender has been portrayed in the film. Surely she is independent and sophisticated, inviting herself to Jeff’s home by pretending to be a common sweet kid, making sure the neighbors were not around, drugging Jeff with a poisoned screwdriver and then ties him to a chair. In other words, she is able to make a perfect revenge plan all on her own without assistance. And when Jeff tries to escape, Hayley is daring enough to threaten him with a shotgun. She also has a sadistic tendency, not by actually performing the castration, but by faking it and nevertheless let Jeff undergoes the worst terror imaginable to a man. All these details intend to give Hayley a masculine personality. In fact, Hayley’s young age effectively eliminates the feminine characteristics, too. She is not yet old enough to be sexually appealing, but instead has all the boyish charm that is unique to a 14-year-old. More importantly, as Hayley said in the film, “Just because a girl knows how to imitate a woman, does not mean she's ready to do what a woman does”, in other words, she is not sexually available. Not only does she lack feminine appearance, but she is not considered having “female function” yet. One of the reasons for this emphasis on Hayley’s masculine traits is that masculinity is a necessity in a successful revenge. According to Devor, dominant persons of either gender tend to use influence tactics and verbal styles usually associated with male and masculinity, because the achievement of high status in one’s social group requires competitive and aggressive behavior from those who wish to obtain it. Therefore, Hayley has to be characterized as masculine, because it’s impossible and unimaginable for a weak, submissive 14-year-old girl to even start the revenge at all. Another reason is that as audience, we are not ready to view femininity and masculinity on an equal basis, but tend to view them as being in a hierarchical relationship with masculinity reining over femininity. Therefore it’s unacceptable to show a feminine person overpowers a masculine one, regardless of their sexes. Especially in this case where Hayley is so young and have absolutely no physical advantage over Jeff, the emphasis on her masculinity compensate for her lack of physical strength and places her on equal ground with Jeff. In other words, Hayley has to been shown as masculine to meet the social criterion and gets justified for her success. On the other hand, illustration of sexuality is another important factor that contributes to the construction of the “vengeful woman” role. Jeff is a pedophile who is obsessed with underage girls and killed one of them; Hayley faked his castration to let him believe that he no longer has sexual ability. In other words, Hayley not only turns Jeff into someone who is no longer able to commit crime, but also someone who is equal with his victims, someone who has been deprived of male characteristics and feminized in this process. And that is something unique to female revengers, who receive gratification and a sense of equality by castrating a man. (“Penis envy”, according to Freud) Furthermore, if we consider the relationship between the two characters, it’s far more complicated than that of between two enemies. Although Hayley is almost depicted as asexual, she is nevertheless Jeff’s potential pray, which means she could be Jeff’s another Lolita after all. Also the age difference between the two suggests another possible relationship as well, that of father and daughter. Here I’m not taking about the actual biological bond, but the kind of affection that may possibly exist between Jeff and Hayley. Therefore, the situation is as ambiguous as in almost all the other films which feature a vengeful female; there is always something other than hate between the revenger and the one being punished.