Women in Film Noir IV – Containment and Conformity

As i noted in the previous section the representation and then containment of the strong and/or desiring women is  an integral element in film noir (and Hollywood cinema’s) narratives. This representation and containment is determined by, and engages with, the cultural context of America in the late 1930s to the late 1950s. In regard to the representation of women, the vast de- and re-territorialization of the domestic and work sphere during and after WWII is an important determining factor. D&G’s concept of de- and re-territorialization illustrates the process whereby a labour-power is freed from a specific mode of production or territory and then returned. The series of “Inclosure Acts” passed in the United Kingdom during the period of 1750-1860 is a prime example of this process of de- and re-territorialization. The Inclosure Acts forcibly removed any access to common land and animal pasture. The consequence of this act was that many workers were left without the ability to continue working on the land they relied upon. Therefore the Inclosure Act forced thousands of workers to move from self-sustained, rural cottage industries into urban-centred industries. The Inclosure Act de-territorialized workers by freeing their labour from the land (the territory) they traditionally worked on. De-territorialization is therefore the process whereby labour-power is freed from a specific territory or mode of production. The opposite of de-territorialization, re-territorialization is the re-establishment of labour power into a specific geographical location or labour situation. The establishment of mill towns after the Inclosure Acts is an instance of the re-territorialization of “freed” labour force into new jobs (labourer) and geographical location (urban centres). Re-territorialization is therefore the capturing, labelling and enclosing of space (geographical location) or identity (from agricultural worker to labourer).

This process of de- and re-territorialization can be located in film noir’s representation of women and the historical context it both reflects and engages with. During WWII American women were actively encouraged to enter the work force. Krutrik explains ‘one of the consequences of the wartime expansion of the national economy was that women were overtly encouraged, as part of their ‘patriotic’ duty, to enter the workforce’.¹ This was engendered by the de-territorialization of women from their traditional role as home-maker. Women were effectively freed from the traditional location they were expected to reside (the home) and allowed freedom to choose which sphere – domestic or work – in which to use their labour. Due to the war the domestic sphere was briefly de-territorialized as the natural sphere in which women resided. However, this freedom did not last because within a capitalist society de-territorialization is always met with a subsequent re-territorialization.² Once an Allied victory was seen as a likely prospect female labour began to be seen as problematic.³ Michael Renov notes that:

by 1944, the internal memoranda of government agencies show that female work force was being termed ‘excess labour’ and efforts were being made to induce voluntary withdrawal, an attitude even then being transmitted from the editorials of major newspapers, magazines and through other public opinion forums.⁴

This inducement of “voluntary” withdrawal from the labour market was facilitated through pressure from factory managers and the culture industry (newspapers, magazines, films). By the end of the war these passive inducements gave way to aggressive discrimination and wholesale redundancy.⁵ In 1946 Frederick C Crawford, chairman of the National Association of Manufacturers, asserted ‘From a humanitarian point of view, too many women should not stay in the labour force. The home is the basic American unit’.⁶ Crawford’s assertion illustrates the change in attitude to women’s labour. During WWII a woman was doing her patriotic duty by joining the labour force. After WWII it was her patriotic duty to return to motherhood and domesticity. During the conclusion of WWII women were therefore re-territorialized, re-rooted as being “naturally” located in the domestic space.

Film noir reflects and engages in this re-territorializing process in its repressive narratives and character archetypes. This reflection is both direct and oblique. A direct reflection of re-territorialization is a film which attempts to deal with the issue or problem clearly in the film’s narrative. Mildred Pierce is one such example of a film which directly reflects the re-territorization of women. Pam Cook notes that Mildred Pierce articulates ‘the historical need to re-construct an economy based on a division of labour by which men command the means of production and women remain within the family’.⁷ In Mildred Pierce the central female figure Mildred Pierce divorces her husband, builds a successful career and business. However, this success comes at the price of her two daughters (one dies naturally and the other is imprisoned). The film’s resolution then features Mildred returning to her first husband and ultimately being re-installed into her “natural” space; the domestic sphere. Mildred Pierce is therefore a simple reflection of the re-territorialization process of naturalizing and re-installing women as belonging to the domestic sphere. Though some films are direct reflections of this process of re-territorialization most film noirs are oblique reflections. An oblique reflection is a disavowal or a dislocated reflection of a determining social context. In psychoanalysis, a disavowal is a denial accompanied with a simultaneous acknowledgement. This conception of disavowal can be used to illustrate how texts can both acknowledge a problem and attempt to deny its existence. The science fiction genre can be cited as a prime example of this process of simultaneous acknowledgement and denial. Rollerball’s (Dir. Norman Jewison, 1975) narrative reflects contemporary concerns about increased violence in television and sports. It does this however, by situating the narrative in a futuristic, fascistic society. Rollerball therefore reflects contemporary concerns regarding violence while simultaneously denying the problem a place in contemporary America. This process of disavowal can also be located in film noir’s representation of women. The Big Sleep is an example of a film which does not directly reflect the process of de- and re-territorialization that women encountered during and after WWII. The Big Sleep features two financially secure female characters (Carmen and Vivian) that require containment by the male protagonist. Carmen and Vivian are daughters of General Sternwood. The figure of General Sternwood stands for paternalistic capitalist society which requires financially and sexually independent women to be contained within appropriate institutions. Therefore The Big Sleep attempts not to acknowledge the issue of de- and re-territorialization but, through the film’s characterisation and narrative resolution, it obliquely reflects and is determined by the concerns of capitalist society regarding the increased independence of women – financial or otherwise.

1 Krutnik, In A Lonely Street, p. 57.

2 As D&G assert ‘The more the capitalist machine deterritorializes, decoding and axiomatizing flows in order to extract surplus value from them, the more its ancillary apparatuses, such as government bureaucracies and the forces of law and order, do their utmost to reterritorialize’. After capitalism de-territorializes it always simultaneously utilizes its institutions to re-territorialize that which was freed. D&G, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, p. 37.

3 Krutnik, In A Lonely Street, p. 59.

4 Michael Renov quoted from Krutnik, In A Lonely Street, p. 59.

5 Marjorie Rosen, Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies and the American Dream, (New York: Avon Books, 1974), p. 223.

6Fredick C Crawford quoted from Rosen, Popcorn Venus: Women, Movies and the American Dream, p. 216.

7Pam Cook, ‘Duplicity in Mildred Pierce‘, in E Ann Kaplan (ed), Women in Film Noir, (London: BFI Publishing, 1980), pp 68-82, p. 68.

Exploring Noir – The Representation of Family and Gender in Film Noir

In this article I will explore Sylvia Harvey’s ‘Women’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’. Harvey believes that film noir is an ‘echo chamber’ which ‘captures and magnifies’ the shift in the foundations of the West. (1.) Harvey asserts:

film noir offers us again and again examples of abnormal or monstrous behaviour, which defy the patterns established for human social interaction, and which hint at a series of radical and irresolvable contradictions buried deep within the total system of economic and social interactions that constitute the known world. (2.)

Harvey is arguing that film noir mirrors the gender issues suppressed by western society. Film noir reproduces sites of tension in exaggerated terms. The faultline cracks, that started to appear along gender issues post-WWI and WWII and were covered deep within normal social interactions, are exposed and examined in film noir. Harvey concedes that the narrative and story structure of film noir is explicitly repressive – they often end with rule-breakers dead or imprisoned – but argues that the visual style of film noir indicates an irrepressible element of contradiction and in relation to the family, the representation of the domestic sphere, film noir’s ‘portrayal of the family… suggest[s] the beginnings of an attack on the dominant social values normally expressed’ through film and literature. (3.)

To Harvey, film noir’s portrayal of the domestic sphere mirrors an underlying sense of decay and complication in the validity of traditional gender roles. Harvey explains:

It is the representation of theinstitution of the family, which in so many films serves as the mechanism whereby desire is fulfilled, or at least ideological equilibrium established, that in film noir serves as the vehicle for the expression of frustration. (4.)

In many classic Hollywood films the domestic sphere is a realm of desire fulfilment – where the hero gets the girl, marriage etc. – or a place within which stability is found – as in The FBI Story (1959) where John Michael Hardesty’s domestic sphere becomes a bedrock of support – however in film noir this traditional sphere of desire fulfilment and stability is often the site of tension, lust and murder. Harvey asserts that this alternative representation of the family sphere is ‘an attack on the dominant social values normally expressed through the representation of the family’. (5.)

Harvey continues that, in classic Hollywood films, the family commonly entails a ‘metamorphosis’, a transference of a man to a father and a woman to wife. (6.) To Harvey ‘this magic circle of transformation is broken in film noir’. (7.) In film noir, family relations are represented as ‘broken, perverted, peripheral or impossible’ rather than as life-affirming, uniting and spiritually enriching. (8.) Harvey identities the film Mildred Pierce (1945) as a good example of the ‘disruption and displacement of the values of family life’. (9.) Mildred Pierce is a woman of the world and business and lastly a mother. Harvey argues that Mildred Pierce coincided with:

the rise and fall of nationalistic ideologies generated by the period of total war. It may be argued that the ideology of national unity which was characteristic of the war period, and which tended to gloss over and conceal class divisions, began to falter and decay, to lose its credibility, once the war was over. (10.)

Harvey is explaining that the feeling of unity over having a common goal and common enemy had dissipated and old class and gender issues reappeared and found expression in film noirs such as Mildred Pierce.

To Harvey the domestic sphere, often a site of emotional support and unity, is represented as corrupted in film noir. Harvey cites a recurring theme of film noir: the concern ‘with the loss of those satisfactions normally obtained through the possession of wife and presence of a family’. (11.) In Double Indemnity (1944) the Dietrichson home is poisoned, all three family members are at each others throats. The husband, named only Mr. Dietrichson, ignores his second-wife physically [symbolically on crutches to indicate his inability to engage physically with his wife], the daughter, Lola, fights with her father over the choice of her lover and the second-wife, the femme fatal Phyllis Dietrichson, invites insurance salesman Walter Neff into her home in order to kill Mr. Dietrichson for money. Double Indemnity seems indicative of the loss of satisfaction that the possession of a wife family affords the husband in film noir.

Harvey also asserts that the traditional desire fulfilment function of women is inverted in film noir. Although women are still desired, the satisfaction is either short-lived or non-existent. In Double Indemnity Walter Neff kills for Phyllis but neither gets her or survives unpunished for his efforts. In Murder, My Sweet (1944) when Moose finally tracks down, with the help of Marlowe, the woman he remembers is not the idol of love and compassion but a femme fatal who Moose dies rather cheaply for. Moose’s journey for his past-love, his symbol of desire fulfilment, is met with death as is Neff’s journey in Double Indemnity. Harvey asserts ‘the ideological safety value device that operates in the offering of women as sexual commodities, breaks down in probably most of these films, because the woman are not, finally, possessed’. (12.)

Harvey concludes the essay by arguing that:

The absence or disfigurement of the family [in film noir] both calls attention to its own lack and of its own deformity, and may be seen to encourage the consideration of alternative institutions for the reproduction of social life. (13.)

Harvey believes that the treatment of the family in film noir highlights the issues and contradictions inherent in the domestic sphere. Harvey sees film noirs’ treatment of family as encouraging and enabling contemplation of alternative approaches to the issue of family and the domestic sphere. Harvey goes on to assert ‘despite the ritual punishment of acts of transgression, the vitality with which these acts are endowed produces an excess of meaning which cannot finally be contained’. (14.) Although many film noir narratives end with the destruction of the femme fatal, and often the man who sought her company, Harvey believes that the acts of transgression cannot be suppressed totally and that film noir remains subversive in its portrayal of family and the domestic sphere.

Harvey’s short essay argues that film noirs’ representation of the family and domestic sphere is converse to traditional representations of family – which posit the domestic sphere as a stabilising force and family as a mechanism where desires are satisfied. Harvey asserts that this representation highlights the issues and contradictions inherent in the domestic sphere as currently imagined. According to Harvey, the repressive conclusion to many film noir narratives doesn’t inhibit this subversive portrayal of the domestic sphere. Harvey’s essay does accurately describe certain traits of film noir however, the essay is far from conclusive. There are two major roles of women in film noir, the first being the striking femme fatal. The second being the redeemer, the woman who offers a chance at domesticity, love, union and a happy[ier] resolution (for more on these two major roles of women in film noir see Women in Film Noir I – The Central Archetypal Roles). This secondary trait is much less overt but still important and a classic example of the redeemer role can be found in Where The Sidewalk Ends (1950). Harvey’s scant exploration of the mise-en-scene of film noir is also a strong critique because film noir is a visually striking genre (and I assert strongly that it is a genre) and cinema as a whole is an art form that confers meaning as much through its composition of light and shape than narrative event or dialogue. Harvey also seems to over-estimate the subversive nature of film noir as the representation appears to be that trespassing against traditional gender roles and expectations should and will be met with a violent and destructive end for all parties involved. In fact film noir is certainly interesting as a genre because it follows the French-European narrative structure – and not the Classic Hollywood structure – whereby people are determined by, and stuck within, their boundaries and limitations [I will explore this issue further at a later date].

1. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’, in E Ann Kaplan (ed.), Women in Film Noir, London: BFI, (1980), pp. 22-33, p. 22.

2. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 22.

3. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 23.

4. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 23.

5. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’  p. 23.

6. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 25.

7. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 25.

8. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 25.

9. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 25.

10. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 25.

11. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 27.

12. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 27.

13. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 33.

14. Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’ p. 33.

Excerpt from Janey Place’s Women In Film Noir

As well as exploring some central – and no so central – film noirs I will also run a side-by-side series of articles exploring the representation of gender and sexuality in film noirs. Here is an interesting introduction of Janey Place’s evocative essay ‘Women In Film Noir’. I will explore this essay in the future however I thought this excerpt was interesting in it self.

The  dark lady, the spider woman, the evil seductress who tempts man and brings about his destruction is among the oldest themes of art, literature, mythology and religion n Western culture. She is as old  as Eve, and as current as today’s movies, comic books and dime novels. She and her sister (or alter ego), the virgin, the mother, the innocent, the redeemer, form the two poles of female archetypes.

Film noir is a male fantasy, as is most of our art. Thus woman here as elsewhere is defined by her sexuality: the dark lady has access to it and the virgin does not. That men are not so deterministically delineated in their cultural and artistic portrayal is indicative of the phallocentric cultural viewpoint: women are defined in relation to men, and the centrality of sexuality in this definition is a key to understanding the position of women in our culture. The primary crime the ‘liberated’ women is guilty of is refusing to be defined in such a way, and this refusal can be perversely seen (in art, or in life) as an attack on men’s very existence. Film noir is hardly ‘progessive’ in these terms – it does not present us with role models who defy their fate and triumph over it. But it does give us one of the few periods of film in which women are active, not static symbols, are intelligent and powerful, if destructively so, and derive power, not weakness, from their sexuality. (1.)

Janey Place, ‘Women in Film Noir’, in Women in Film Noir, (ed) E Ann Kaplan, London: BFI, (1989), pp. 35-68, p. 35.

Criticising the Critics: Misogyny and the Postmodernism in Fatal Attraction

Along with other styles of articles I will be running a series which looks at important readings of a film from a film critic. I will analyse and explain their position concerning a text and explore where they hit and miss. My first film will be:

 

Fatal Attraction (1987)

 

Leighton Grist’s article ‘Moving Targets and Black Windows: Film Noir in Modern Hollywood’ looks at several films and examines the allusions to film noir. Grist examines the stylistic and thematic allusion to film noir in Fatal Attraction. Grist notices that Fatal Attraction contains ‘self-conscious references to film noir’ and that it is ‘overtly structured upon an opposition of day and night, ‘normal’ and noir worlds.’.¹These opposing worlds are indicated by the radically different mise-en-scene. The day is linked to the domestic Beth and the noir is linked to the femme fatal Alex. The domestic scenes use a slight yellow hue to produce a warm, homely affect. The scenes tend to be cluttered with activity and life. Beth mirrors her surroundings; she is warm, homely and active. She is also passive and dependant on Dan. The noir-styled night scenes that belong to the femme fatal Alex include rather less life. Important are the ‘dark corridors of [Alex’s] reconditioned apartment building… the cage-like lift… [and the] barren, sterile white of Alex’s apartment’.²The industrial motif attempts to communicate the rather basic mechanical and physical elements of a relationship between a man and a woman. As Dan stares out of a window we are shown a meat packing factory. The structure of Alex’s environment, and her character, is built from this cheap, dark and a mechanical atmosphere; Alex is borne out of the shadows. Alex and Beth are both stereotypical characters that are surrounded by stereotypical settings. The femme fatal Alex comes from a noir-like atmosphere and the homely Beth comes from a warm family setting. Grist argues that this is an attempt ‘to naturalise a misogynistic denial of ‘transgressive’ female (sexual) independence before a championing of woman’s ‘traditional’ subordinate domesticity.’³ Grist is explaining that Fatal Attraction’s adoption of two opposing female ‘types’ not only naturalises the belief that a woman may be one or the other but it also reaffirms the reactionary position that an independent and sexual woman is the catalyst for man, and societies, destruction. Independent or sexual woman have lead men to destruction in films such as Double Indemnity (1944), Body Heat (1981) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). Grist is arguing that Fatal Attraction is misogynistic. Grist explains that although what Alex says is ‘broadly feminist, such as her demand that Dan face up to his responsibilities when she finds she’s pregnant’ her actions undermine this ‘as she moves from sexual aggression through self-mutilation and harassment to acts of violence and open criminality’.⁴ Grist is arguing that Fatal Attraction explicitly links Alex’s feminism to her crazed behaviour. Another important point is that in one scene Alex stares through the window and is made to look longingly at Beth domesticity as if there ‘is no other satisfying female role’ and therefore, in Grist’s opinion, affirming the misogynistic opinion that ‘it is what every woman ought to do’ .⁵

Grist offers an insightful and comprehensive reading of misogyny in Fatal Instinct however I believe, due to the postmodern nature of the film, that Grist underestimates the self-criticising self-aware nature of Adrian Lyne’s film. Concerning Alex living near the meat-packing factory. As Alex is a successful businesswoman, who should be able to afford a good view, her rather industrial and symbolic view is evidently used for its affect; a ironic affect. Her character is produced in a environment where it would be impossible, structurally, to be anything other than a femme fatal. Hollywood’s heritage of thrillers, film noirs and action-movies almost demands her to be mad. Fatal Instinct is postmodern in its dealing with film noir because it takes the femme fatal and noir imagery to the extreme where it can only exist as clique. Because she has to exist in this clique all she can ever be is clique. Hollywood has made her who she is and trapped her into being just a femme fatal. Rather tellingly Alex screams at Dan “This is what you reduced me to”, Alex understands that she is locked into being a femme fatal and she could be as easily understood as screaming at Hollywood and the audience as much as Dan. The excessive foregrounding of misogyny and Alex’s structurally inevitable femme fatal character indicates that Hollywood cinema and film noir are being criticised, explored and taken to the extreme. Taking an element of film to an extreme becomes a device to highlight the regularly accepted aspects of that particular film element. In Fatal Attraction the structural devices used to define and create character are criticised and taken to the extreme and in this way the film produces a postmodern critique of Hollywood and the femme fatal.

 

A side note should be made that Fatal Attraction, and all postmodern critiques, do tend to get away with having their cake and eating it; criticising the treatment of women and characterization as brutal while brutalizing them.

 

1Leighton Grist ‘Moving Targets and Black Windows: Film Noir in Modern Hollywood’ in Ian Cameron (ed), The Movie Book of Film Noir, London: Studio Vista, (1994), pp. 267-285 p. 275.

2Leighton Grist ‘Moving Targets and Black Windows: Film Noir in Modern Hollywood’ p. 276.

3Leighton Grist ‘Moving Targets and Black Windows: Film Noir in Modern Hollywood’ p. 276.

4Leighton Grist ‘Moving Targets and Black Windows: Film Noir in Modern Hollywood’ p. 276.

5Leighton Grist ‘Moving Targets and Black Windows: Film Noir in Modern Hollywood’ p. 276.