Brother, what's my name?

[sovay]

I wrote the following around six in the morning, sparked by finishing my writeup of Robert Siodmak's Criss Cross (1949) and then showering and trying without much success to shut my brain off enough to sleep. I figured I would look at it when I woke up and see how much it resembled dreaming Dorothy Parker. Nothing in here rhymes with "passes" or "glasses," so it seemed safe to post. All of this is thinking out loud.

It is not that I don't believe in the archetype of the femme fatale. Film noir is full of dangerous, duplicitous women, as it is frequently full of dangerous, duplicitous men. I've met some examples already; I'm sure others exist. I just feel increasingly that the femme fatale, like the private eye, is a much more significant and frequently employed character in neo-noir—and film criticism—than in film noir itself. I would love to know when the term was coined and/or first applied within film noir, whether it happened during what I think of as the first wave of the genre (1940's), the second (1950's), or if it was even later, looking back from the neo-noir years. Most things look simpler in reception than in reality. Athene is not the goddess of wisdom.

I may have come to regard the term "femme fatale" in much the same way as I regard the term "Mary Sue"—I don't argue with the utility of a shorthand label for a class of fictional characters, even negative ones, but when I start seeing it misapplied to any female character at the center of a narrative, I start to side-eye its motives.

It is possible that I am skeptical of the concept of the femme fatale because I am approaching these movies from the perspective of a culture that no longer quite so uncritically accepts as a real factor in human interaction the irresistible attractiveness of women that absolves men of bad behavior committed while under its spell. This paradigm most often turns up in contexts of sexual consent, but I see no reason it shouldn't apply to crime. Probably for this reason, I really notice when noir filmmakers take care to point out the culpability of men as well as the incentive of women. It happens much more frequently than, even a few years ago, I might have thought.

If the deception isn't deliberate, if the seduction isn't part of the strategy, if she isn't using men to make up for the agency she can't otherwise obtain within the gendered confines of her society—or just for the fun of it—I don't think she's a femme fatale. She may be a bad idea, but so are a lot of romances that aren't La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

Tagged for Patreon by virtue of really being an extension of the previous review. I wouldn't have been able to fit it into a footnote.

Comments

[movingfinger]

My old (not electronically updated) OED gives the earliest citation for femme fatale as 1912, George Bernard Shaw writing in a letter, and therefore it has to be much earlier. I would guess, 1860s? Possibly much earlier, circa Romanticism?

My OED lumps all the "femme" constructions together, which is extremely annoying.

ETA: the new edition 3 online has a citation from 1879, which is better, and dates it back to "1800 or earlier" in the French French (rather than the English French) usage.

1879 St. Louis (Missouri) Globe-Democrat 21 July 2/3 It has intensified the disposition of most people here to regard the unhappy lady as essentially a femme fatale, a woman whose influence brings a curse to all within its range.

A 1954 citation seems to be in the context of a film noir type of thing being reviewed.

M. F. Rodell Myst. Fiction ix. 56 Whirling in a high-powered car from Monte Carlo to Cap d'Antibes on the trail of an exotically beautiful femme fatale.

However, with only four citations, it is difficult to track nuance and application.

I have no real expertise in this area, whatever it is, but it's a very old concept (Eve) aimed at pushing off responsibility for misdeeds onto women. But it's also crossed with sirens of various styles---irresistibly sexually attractive women---and thus the woman herself is not a person, really, she has no control over her magick sexiness either. The better appearances of the trope in film noir are the ones with agency, motive, and purpose, and that sets the cardboard ones at a disadvantage.

I think I have a book about this in a box somewhere.

ETA2: The Google ngram viewer is not particularly helpful, but does peg some uses in French to the 1820s and shows English usage racing upward from the Roaring '20's. But given the quality of their scanning, and the 1800 cutoff, not so useful.

[sovay]

I think I have a book about this in a box somewhere.

Thank you for the citations! I am not surprised to hear that the term originates in the nineteenth century or earlier; it feels like a very Romantic concept to me. Absolutely agreed on the antiquity of the idea and that it is a way of characterizing women as malign forces than people (which I suspect is another reason it reminds me of the concept of the Mary Sue). I will try to track down the entry of the term into film criticism. It seems to have become a default way of looking at women in noir and it is so hopelessly generalizing that it's useless.

[movingfinger]

I think the '20s connection, I suspect via pulp fiction and writers like Hammett, may be key.

ETA: yet another trope subverted by Jessica Rabbit.

[sovay]

I think the '20s connection, I suspect via pulp fiction and writers like Hammett, may be key.

Don't forget the jazz-age, silent film vamp. I am not sure if the two terms are synonymous, but Theda Bara has to be in the DNA of this archetype somewhere.

[edit] yet another trope subverted by Jessica Rabbit.

Very much so. Now I have "Why Don't You Do Right?" stuck in my head again.