Dames in the Driver's Seat: Rereading Film Noir

CHAPTER 2: SEXING THE PARADIGM: WOMEN AND MEN IN NOIR

chapter 2 SEXING THE PARADIGM: WOMEN AND MEN IN NOIR As shifts in regulation made it at least possible for the femme fatale to profit by her crimes, the noir hero . . . emerges as inept in, if possible, a more thoroughgoing way than their 1940s’ predecessors. yvonne tasker, Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema A historical moment called ‘‘postmodernism’’ contributes to the third wave . . . [feminism’s] distinction from the first and second waves in that ‘‘the simultaneous confidence and uncertainly about what constitutes feminism doesn’t have to be conceptualized as a problem.’’ Instead, the condition of ambiguity is understood as a natural consequence of the proliferation of feminisms. ednie kaeh garrison, referenced by deborah l. siegel, ‘‘The Legacy of the Personal: Generating Theory in Feminism’s Third Wave’’ In the introduction, I discuss the two antithetical female characters common to film noir and suggest that parallel male characters exist as well. Historically, in scholarly and popular texts, the term femme fatale implicates the female character in the downfall of the male protagonist; for me, it implies her own inevitable demise. The femme fatale almost always causes her own destruction or, at the very least, containment within prison walls or marriage. I also rename her passive , nurturing opposite, identified by Janey Place in ‘‘Women in Film Noir,’’ as the ‘‘woman as redeemer.’’1 This female character becomes a femme attrapée, de19 noting her situation in the gendered economy of the film instead of implying her role as a potential savior for the male character. With both terms, femme attrapée and femme fatale, the goal is to focus attention on the female character, on her survival through acquiescence in the requirements of the patriarchy, or on her destruction through resistance. This removes the male subject from his central position in the descriptive nomenclature for the female characters predominant in film noir. A large part of the appeal of classic film noir comes from its portrayal of the choices available to these mostly working-class female characters. These women are either trapped in the realm of domestic labor, economic hardship, and drab dullness, or they are criminal, sexy, exciting, and doomed. Both characters remain bound by patriarchal culture , and classic film noir clearly delineates the ambivalent nature of the choices available to them. This project also recognizes and discusses male characters analogous to the femme fatale and femme attrapée in classic films noirs: the homme fatal and homme attrapé. Noir theorists do occasionally discuss the homme fatal as fatal to the women whom he seduces. Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style identifies Joe Sullivan in Raw Deal (1948) as an homme fatal, a man who seduces a woman ‘‘into a world filled with violent action and murder, enticing her with a promise of sexual fulfillment that goes beyond the realm of normal relationships.’’2 I retain the terminology but, as with the femme fatale, redefine the homme fatal to suggest that he is, above all, fatal to himself. Whereas the femme fatale resists a society that requires her containment in marriage and domesticity , the homme fatal resists a culture that insists on his participation in capitalism through a job and a modest paycheck. Like the femme attrapée, the homme attrapé accepts that participation. In exchange, society offers him the fiefdom of the domestic realm, one place he can reign supreme. The homme fatal wants either a more lucrative lifestyle than participation in legal forms of capitalism enables, ora sexuallydominant and worldly woman rather than a submissive wife. He guarantees his demise in classic noir by wanting both big money and a dangerous dame. Other views of masculinity in film noir also circulate. Chris Straayer, in ‘‘Femme Fatale or Lesbian Femme: Bound in Sexual Différance,’’ identifies the classic film noir couple as the ‘‘phallic femme fatale and emasculated protagonist .’’3 This terminology serves to reinscribe rather than disrupt gender binaries, but thewoman often dominates in film noirand the male protagonist often wants to be dominated. Not everyone sees male protagonists as emasculated, although many of them, such as Bart Tare in Gun Crazy and Christopher Cross in Scarlet Street (1945), might easily earn that descriptor. In ‘‘ ‘New Hollywood,’ New Film Noir and the Femme Fatale,’’ Yvonne Tasker comments on more recent versions 20 CONTENTS AND CONTEXTS of movie masculinity, but also notes that ‘‘while the 1940s...