IB Film 1: W31.2

The Good Wife and Femme Fatale

Female ArchetypesThere were 2 female archetypes that usually figured in Film Noir.

These were the Good Wife and the Femme Fatale.

An archetype is a prototype character upon which other characters are patterned.

The Good Wife - 'Lena Horne conserves fuel', from UK Office of War Information, circa 1941.

The Femme Fatale - Rita Hayworth as Gilda (1946)

Gender Theory

Gender theory looks at the roles of the genders and their Representation in film.

Women and men are depicted differently in different Genres and in different cultures around the world.

As noted previously, in many films men are the heroes, the characters who take action to deal with the conflict that forms the basis of the narrative.

Women on the other hand, often featured primarily as the reward.

In Genres as varied as the Western and the Musical, the woman’s role was to be sought, protected, and won by the male hero.

John Wayne wins Angie Dickinson with his ability to defend the town as sheriff in Rio Bravo (1959)

Fred Astaire wins Ginger Rogers with his incredible dancing ability in Top Hat (1935)

In both cases, the role the woman played was 'the prize'.

This was not entirely true in Film Noir.

Female Archetypes

Unlike a stereotype, archetypes often occur across different cultures in stories and myths from different societies.

Often we can identify their pattern even when they appear in an unusual context.

For instance, Obi-Wan in Star Wars (1977) is very close to Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings (2001).

They both share many similarities that come from the pattern of the wizard / mentor archetype, even though one is from the Science Fiction Genre and the other is from the Fantasy Genre.

An interesting aspect of The Good Wife and Femme Fatale archetypes is the way they evolved from the socio-cultural events that influenced the birth of Film Noir.

Before World War II, the stereotypical Housewife depended on her husband to 'bring home the paycheck'.  'A woman’s place was in the home' was commonly accepted in most societies.

When the World War II began and large numbers of men were called up into the military service, jobs in industry and elsewhere had to be taken on by women.

The new image of an American woman was 'Rosie the Riveter', the woman who took care of the house and then went to the factory to build planes for the war effort.

You have already seen how World War II contributed to the birth of Noir Film.

In the aftermath of the conflict, things seemed less innocent and more prone to fatalism than they had before the war.

Uncertainties like labor disputes and growing awareness of racial inequality, worries about the atomic bomb and the continued Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union, and the growing awareness of the magnitude of evil during World War II, with photographic evidence of the Holocaust becoming available - all these things created a world-view where the dark vision of the Noir film could flourish.

When the war ended, 'Rosie the Riveter' came home.

She no longer had a place in a man’s world, and was a little threatening to the men who were coming back to their civilian lives.

The Good Wife

In this context, it is easy to see where the Good Wife and Femme Fatale archetypes arose to dominate Film Noir.

Though, in keeping with the plots of Film Noir, it is possible to have a Noir Film with a Femme Fatale and without a Good Wife.

In the Noir film, the Good Wife represents ordinary family life and woman’s accepted role in society.

A 'good' or 'normal' woman accepts her traditional role in the home.

She also represents a chance for the hero to escape from the sexy, destructive Femme Fatale and her world of shadows and danger.

In short, the Good Wife represents the idea of an ordinary woman before World War II.

The Femme Fatale

On the other hand, the soldiers returning from war came home to a new kind of independent woman unlike the woman they imagined.

She was independent and strong.  After all, she was the one who had kept those planes flying.

The Film Noir Femme Fatale is partially constructed out of the eternal archetype of a dangerous woman, like the Sirens of mythology, who offered unavoidable desire and entrapment as inescapable as a spider’s web.

She was also inspired by the anxiety of the men who had come home to a new kind of woman who was threateningly competent in ways that were unexpected.

The Femme Fatale is sexually aggressive as well, not letting anything get in the way of who she wants.

In this respect, her aggressive behavior is more like the accepted male norm. She is sometimes seen as a predator, even though her actions are not any different than a man’s.

However, in the context of the Noir film, it is not only the Femme Fatale, but also the dark world she inhabits, that will be fatal for the hero ( or more likely, the anti-hero ) of the Noir film.

Drawn away from the Good Wife by the Femme Fatale, the hero leaves the light behind, to pursue the darkness within.

Film Noir StatusFrom a Gender theory point-of-view, the ramifications of the Noir film are very interesting.

Competent, aggressive women are clearly linked with doom.

Women who are content to be Housewives and nurturing Mothers are clearly linked with salvation.

Sexual aggressiveness in women is also linked with darkness and doom.

In this respect, there are similarities with the Slasher Horror film of the late 1970's and early 1980's, where sexually active women became the first victims of the psychotic or supernatural slayers.

It seems that society, or some part of it, is threatened by aggressive women.

Though the age of the classic film Noir ended, there are still neo-Noirs being made, such as the neo-Noir film John Wick (2014).

Frequently these new films only feature the Femme Fatale, whose archetype is so compelling that she continues on - even if there is no Good Wife to contrast with her.

You might want to think about the images of women that inhabit films today and what they represent about our current society.