A Study in Tropes: The Blonde Sacrifice

(SPOILER WARNING: I Know What You Did Last Summer) We've seen it a thousand times. She's cute! She's blonde! She's...dead and covered in her own blood and guts! This trope was popularized, and most likely created by, Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock enjoyed killing blondes in his movies, and the audience loved to see them get killed. What is it that is so appealing to movie-goers about seeing angelic-looking young women get slashed? Maybe it's the contrast between the pure, light hair and the heavy, dark blood. But you have to love the blonde sacrifice! She's unsuspecting, she's beautiful and she's got a pretty sweet death scene, but no one takes her seriously. What many don't realize is that the blonde sacrifice can be the most interesting character in the movie. Take Helen Shivers in I Know What You Did Last Summer, played perfectly by my life-long idol, Sarah Michelle Gellar. Helen's life seems like a teenage girl's dream before the car incident. Helen is beautiful, she's fashionable, and she dates Ryan Philippe, for God's sake. Her character is shallowly written before the car incident,  but after she is forced to realize that all of her good fortune has been based entirely on her looks. She tries her hand at acting in New York City, but realizes that she lacks the depth needed to be a serious actress. When she moves back to her home town, she feels worthless. She values her looks above everything, because she thinks that her looks are the only thing she has. The killer has been observing her for a year now and knows about her insecurities. The killer knows that the way to finally destroy her is by taking away the only thing she has left, which is in her mind, her looks. The killer cuts her long, blonde hair while she sleeps, thus symbolically delivering the final blow. Poor Helen is tortured and tormented unfairly by the killer. He kills her sister, then proceeds to chase her for several terrifying minutes. Helen narrowly escapes, but is finally, brutally murdered by the hook-handed villain. Helen was a fighter, she was bright, and there was so much more to her than met the eye. Thank you, SMG for portraying perhaps the most secretly-interesting, totally-tragic, blonde sacrifice of all time. Helen Shivers, you deserved a better fate.