Femmes, filles, and hommes: postfeminism and the fatal(e) figure in contemporary American film noir

Abstract

The femme fatale of North American film noir has attracted considerable attention from feminists, film scholars, and psychoanalytic theorists over the decades. However, despite the large body of scholarly research on the figure, a number of gaps and limitations exist in the field that have been overlooked to date. Firstly, interest in the deadly woman has, for the most part centred on the classic film noir era of the 1940s and1950s and neo-noir of the 1980s and1990s. There is a noticeable lack of scholarly attention to the femme fatale as she appears on screen in the new millennium. Secondly, there is a conspicuous absence of feminist enquiry into the figure through critical engagement with dominant postfeminist discourse. This is despite the fact that postfeminism emerged on the cultural landscape around the same time as the deadly woman regained popularity in neo-noir. The third limitation is that lethal sexuality has been aligned with the femme fatale, meaning other incarnations of the figure, namely the fille fatale and homme fatal have been almost entirely overlooked. This is particularly true of the fatal man. Though the presence of this character is recognised in noir scholarship, very little analysis of the figure has been done, especially from a socio-cultural perspective that takes account of historical and cultural factors rather than offering predominantly psychoanalytic interpretations. Similarly, while the deadly girl has received some academic attention, this is negligible in relation to the mounting popularity of the figure since the 1990s and the overwhelming centrality of girls in postfeminist popular culture. This project addresses the lack of research on the contemporary and alternative manifestations of the fatale figure in film noir by locating the postmillennial femme fatale, fille fatale, and homme fatal in relation to their historical precursors and in relation to current critical debates about dominant postfeminist discourse. The aim of this is to provide an up-to-date, more sophisticated and inclusive analysis of the character, expanding on both film scholarship on noir and feminist scholarship on postfeminism, subjectivity, and representation. I begin by drawing on the work of noir scholars including Foster Hirsch and Mark Jancovich in order to provide a contextual foundation for this thesis by establishing what constitutes the femme fatale of classic film noir. I also trace the figure back to earlier incarnations of the vamp and the female vampire of Gothic literature with a view to establishing archetypal patterns of portrayal. I then establish what is meant by postfeminism and the ways in which a critical interrogation of dominant postfeminist discourse can add to the field of research on the fatale figure. In the process I engage with theorists such as Angela McRobbie and Yvonne Tasker whose scholarly work is significant to understanding what constitutes postfeminism and the way it interacts with creative mediums such as film. Following this I analyse a number of key English-language cinematic texts produced mainly in North America since 2000 including, but not limited to, Jane Campion’s In the Cut (2003), David Slade’s Hard Candy (2005), Atom Egoyan’s Chloe (2009), and Park Chan-wook’s Stoker (2013), with a view to establishing the various ways that these films engage with, and in some instances, actively critique dominant postfeminist discourse.