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

[swan_tower]

It would need the proper home, of course. But I'll keep it in mind.

[sovay]

But I'll keep it in mind.

Did this experiment ever happen?

[swan_tower]

Yes and no and yes again. :-)

The "yes and no" is not at the level of description, but rather worldbuilding: in Rook and Rose, the trilogy I'm writing with teleidoplex, there's a pervasive setting motif of textiles: threads, knots, embroidery, weaving, things being tied together, etc. Both in the sense that the region is known for good lace and embroidery and in the sense that when things get named, the images often come from that direction -- we got some impetus in that direction from the fact that "knot" is an old slang term for a gang. So it's a common refrain there, but not quite on the level of descriptive imagery like we were discussing.

But then the "yes again" is that I just wrote a short story in that setting, and partway through I realized it's a very good candidate for trying to take that setting-level motif and work it into the prose more directly. (Not least because the short story is 3300 words long instead of 226,000.) I figured that out about halfway through writing the story, so it goes on the list of things I need to fix when I revise, but yeah -- I may use this as a direct experiment in what happens when I list out all the verbs and nouns and adjectives that evoke textiles, and see how often I can work them into my -- wait for it -- text. :-P

[sovay]

I figured that out about halfway through writing the story, so it goes on the list of things I need to fix when I revise, but yeah -- I may use this as a direct experiment in what happens when I list out all the verbs and nouns and adjectives that evoke textiles, and see how often I can work them into my -- wait for it -- text.

I approve of all levels of this project and look forward!