The New Femme Fatale

During the Hollywood golden years, the femme fatale entertained, titillated, and perplexed audiences. Decades later, this character type was thought to have become nothing more than a nostalgic figure of a time past, a figure rooted in patriarchal fear and anxiety of the possible emergence of the phallic woman. The femme fatale was nearly forgotten, viewed as an irrelevant figure in a post-patriarchal culture as such fears seemingly exited the public consciousness.

In the early nineties, or arguably the late eighties, the femme fatale made an unprecedented comeback, especially in the form of Sharon Stone's Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct. In this neo-noir thriller, author Catherine Tramell is accused of murdering a famous musician during an S&M sexual encounter after writing a book in which a subject dies the identical death to the one of her sex partner. Detective Nick Curran becomes tangled in Catherine's web of sex and murder as he attempts to solve the case.

Basic Instinct provides a drastic repositioning of the femme fatale. As Kate Stables describes in her essay on the new femme fatale, the fatale transformed from merely a threat to societal norms due to her transcendence of conventional social structure to a freestanding character willing to inhabit cultural margins to satisfy her appetite for her only goals: money, power, and sex (Stables 170). Gone is the fatale of the mid-twentieth century. The fatale is no longer silenced by the patriarchy, confronted with the choice of a return to convention or death. Rather, she now controls the narrative, leaving patriarchy in the dust as she pursues, and nearly always achieves, her goals.

Forbidden Language and the New Femme Fatale

The first marked difference from the previous fatale that warrants a greater discussion is her new style of speech. While the original femme fatale worked through masked wordplay and understated subversion, the new femme fatale confronts the audience with an aggressive form of speech. Stables further points out that this subversive speech embodies a form of sexual performance in and of itself, taking on a role of foreplay with the listener (Stables 177).

When asked whether the deceased musician was her boyfriend, Catherine responds, "I wasn't dating him. I was fucking him." "Are you sorry that he's dead?" the police ask. True to form, Catherine answers, "Of course. I liked fucking him." The fatale's use of forbidden language serves as a hallucinatory force for the male audience, conjuring uninvited vivid sexual imagery through a licentious arousal of the subconscious (Arango 15). This becomes more transparently evident when Catherine is later asked if she had ever engaged in sadomasochistic acts: "Johnny liked to use his hands too much for that."

This use of forbidden language has become a staple of the new femme fatale, increasing as cultural acceptance has allowed. Take for instance Kathryn Mertuill of Cruel Intentions (1998), a neo-noir teen drama. Increasing the subversive nature of the fatale's sexuality, and in turn her use of forbidden language, the plot revolves around a wager between Kathryn and her step-brother Sebastian. Consider the following exchange:

Kathryn: Sebastian, that little wager you mentioned earlier. Count me in.

Sebastian: What are the terms?

Kathryn: If I win, then that hot little car of yours is mine.

Sebastian: And if I win?

Kathryn: I'll give you something you've been obsessing about ever since our parents got married.

Sebastian: Be more specific.

Kathryn: In English, I'll fuck your brains out.

Sebastian: What makes you think I'll go for that bet? That is a 1956 Jaguar Roadster.

Kathryn: Because I'm the only girl you can't have, and it kills you.

Sebastian: No way.

Kathryn: You can put in anywhere.

It is of note that both characters, Catherine and Kathryn, are members of the upper class. Their use of "low class" language for the purposes of sexual titillation serves only to add an additionally frictional and pornographic quality to the already subversive style of speech (Stables 177). Cruel Intentions expands heavily on the aural sexual performance of the new femme fatale as opposed to visual as Kathryn is never shown in a visually sexually explicit manner.

Lesbianism and Sexuality as Power

The new femme fatale is marked by her use and performance of sexuality. Many gay and lesbian advocacy groups have interpreted the new femme fatale as narrative homophobia. The new femme fatale is nearly always bisexual, as her lesbian activities position her in a place of power over the male victims. For no matter how much the male may desire and need her in a sexual sense, the fatale is always explicit in her independence from the male.

Catherine Tramell entices Det. Curran who eventually becomes genuinely smitten with Catherine, beyond the original guise of an attempt to woo her into divulging her crimes. However, Catherine merely wields her sexuality as a controlling force over Nick, constantly reminding him of his lack of necessity by revealing her bisexuality through the line of criminal mistresses she has at her disposal. Nick's only function within the criminal mind of Catherine is to serve as a tool to satisfy her ends.

In addition to the function of bisexuality as sexual independence and a repeal of the law of the father, this serves as yet another performance for both the male protagonist and the viewer. For the fatale rarely indulges her lesbianism without a present spectator.

Catherine Tramelle's groping and embracing of her mistresses serves a dual function of performance. This display serves to fire the jealousy of the male protagonist, deepening her control over the male. But in addition to jealousy, it serves as a form of pornographic performance for both the viewer and protagonist, a similar sort of sexual control as displayed in the previously discussed forbidden speech, that of arresting the subconscious of the spectator by forcing the sexual imagery with or without the consent of the spectator.

Rather than the aural imagery of speech, the fatale's lesbian activity allows a direct visual performance of sexuality, without reliance upon either imagination or subconscious, as she creates the images, often casting knowing glances to alert the spectator of her control of performance.

Identifying the Gaze

This leads to the discussion of the new femme fatale's gaze, a difficult analysis as her gaze includes both the male and female gazes as described by Laura Mulvey. As will be examined, the fatale's gaze is yet another aspect of performance, dictated and wielded by her to achieve her various ends. While these gazes have traditionally been viewed as "male" and "female," I would prefer to use the terms "active" and "passive" for the purposes of this discussion.

As has become the motif of the modern fatale, control is the overriding trait of her being. Gone are the constraints of the previous fatale, that of the male narrative and patriarchy. The fatale has now been freed to unleash her full fatal potential, and unleash it she has.

In Basic Instinct, Cathrine Tramell offers the viewer a wealth of gazing, all sharply shaped by her circumstance and current role acceptance as previously discussed. When exerting her power over the male, Catherine gazes simultaneously with desire and control, expressing her sexuality whilst never truly allowing him a part in it.

It is of note that often during sexual encounters in Basic Instinct, Catherine doesn't look at Det. Curran at all, choosing instead to display her pleasure by thrashing wildly in a state of self-absorption. One could argue that she has turned her gaze inward, allowing herself to become the object of her desire and affection, once again eliminating the male from a position of necessity and relegating him to secondary place of means to an ultimate fulfillment of ends that theoretically could be filled by any number of other males.

However, given the new femme fatale's liberation, she often chooses to inhabit the dominating social structure to achieve her ends. During this re-inhabiting of the patriarchal society, the new fatale relinquishes her active gaze for an almost overly compliant one of passivity. She allows herself to become the object of male desire and control if only to shield her true intentions from the public eye, thus her gaze becomes yet another performance, be it of spectacle, submission, or authority.

But what of the viewing audience? The new femme fatale's place within the narrative and in connection to the male protagonist has been established, but how is the audience to react to this drastic mingling and often reversal of gendered gazes?

Laura Mulvey argued that the male viewer had limited choices to divert his castration anxiety when viewing the female within the cinema. The first option formulated by the male psyche is that of guilt, says Mulvey, leading to voyeurism, which finds connection with sadism (Mulvey 65). Thus, the male is able to subvert his castration anxiety by punishing the guilty female, often through the narrative. But the modern femme fatale will not be subjugated to the male and thus his guilt. On the contrary, the fatale rather inverts the process, possessing the male and subjecting him to punishment, possibly even castration. This option leaves the new femme fatale as possibly the largest source of male castration anxiety present on the modern screen.

This leaves the male viewer with Mulvey's only other choice: fetishistic scopophilia. By this, the male turns the object of anxiety (the fatale) into a reassuring fetish object, regaining control and subduing his castration fear (Mulvey 65). The new femme fatale invites the viewer to take this fetishistic route, often aiding in the process through any number of culturally taboo acts of sexual performance. However, this scopophilia is controlled solely by the fatale as a gateway back into anxiety. For the fatale will not merely relegate herself to the object of voyeurism, rather she will use it to invite the unknowing male to his ultimate demasculation and death.

Tramell's most famous moment comes during an interrogation regarding the murder of her ex-lover. While sitting cross-legged in an interrogation room, she slowly uncrosses her legs whilst answering the detectives' questions, revealing her genitalia to the detectives, and by nature, the audience, practically arresting voyeurism. The unwitting detectives stare on, as does the audience, but the audience is aware that Tramell is again merely asserting control. For we know that, as the new femme fatale narrative structure dictates, she will reign supreme until the closing credits. Thus she has effectively relinquished the only available option to the male viewer to eradicate castration anxiety, that of fetishistic scopophilia.

As such, the male audience is left without a comfortable gaze or lens of viewing in relation to the femme fatale. As always, her sexuality remains her greatest power, and if Mulvey's theory of the spectator's gaze rings true, the male viewer is also left without a structure from which to frame the female to subvert his anxiety.

Deconstructing the Modern Femme Fatale

The re-emergence of the fatale character has left feminist theorists scratching their heads at the evolution of this character type. Her embodiment of simultaneous misogyny and empowerment, object and gazing subject sends seemingly intentionally mixed messages. The audience can have its cake and eat it too, or so it seems. So what are we to make of this bizarre character type and her refusal to fit comfortably into any construct but her own?

First, one must understand the context of the cinema in which she occurs. During the blockbuster era, films were carefully constructed for calculated success. Genre lines were ignored, previous structures eradicated, and ideology abandoned for the sake of a sell-out opening weekend. Stables refers to this is "pick-and-mix postmodernism" (Stables 164). This lack of an ideological narrative allowed the lines of intended messages to become blurred, because in reality, oftentimes films had no ideological position. They simply told a story the projected audience would want to visualize.

In the case of the new femme fatale, her construction is just as muddled. While her character expresses freedom from the patriarchy, she is bound by the ever-present misogyny within the narrative construct she inhabits. As Stables would say it: "The new fatale is at once exhilarating and exasperating for the female spectator or critic, as her plethora for possible meanings jostle for attention" (Stables 179).

Referring back to Catherine Tramell, controversy arises when considering the implications of her character for the female viewer or critic. She is an intelligent woman, directing the narrative through her novel and subverting the powers that be by her bold sexuality and presence. However, the film never explicitly validates women apart from Tramell, leaving a bitter, misogynistic aftertaste to the film. In reference to the open ending regarding the crime, "When we ask the film to tell us who did do it, the only answer it can give us is that the women did it, which is to say The Woman did it" (Hart 130).

There is a notable exception to this rule, and possibly an intentional rejection of the misogyny characteristic of early nineties new femme fatale movies such as Basic Instinct and Body of Evidence, and this rejection comes in the form of the more recent Cruel Intentions. In this film, the fatale is ultimately subverted, until the sequels that is, by another female. The film ends with the displacement of both the fatale and the patriarchy through a character coded in neither misogyny or the confines of the patriarchy. After the accidental death of her lover due to the interference of the fatale, Annette Hargrove invades the funeral of her lover to turn the tables on the fatale, removing her power through demystification and transferring the power to her own being.

Thus the place of the modern femme fatale in culture is fluid, relying upon the construct of the narrative to code The Woman for the audience. As such, it could easily be argued that the narrative, not the character, is the ultimate purveyor of meaning and coding, leaving the femme fatale a consistently ambiguous figure within the realms of feminist discourse.

Psychology of the Modern Femme Fatale

Surprisingly little exists in the way of understanding the fatale in terms of her psychological condition. Throughout the extreme majority of modern femme fatale representation, the character is one of a hyper-sexualized antisocial individual. In fact, the fatale is really little more than a glamorized portrayal of Anti-Social Personality Disorder.

Catherine Tramell fits very comfortably in the category of a psychopathic anti-social individual. To be diagnosed with APD, one must fulfill three of the following characteristics:

1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;

2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;

3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;

4. Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;

5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others;

6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;

7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

As is blatantly obvious, Catherine Tramell exhibits at least the minimum requirement for diagnosis. In fact, it seems her character may be the embodiment of APD fetishization. Her antisocial characteristics allow her to exhibit her sexual and violent nature in a way otherwise impossible.

The mixture of sexuality and violence also lends itself to the questioning of the psyche of her character in relation to the audiences reading. As previously mentioned, Mulvey discusses the way in which males are forced to either punish or fetishize females in order to subdue castration anxiety. Her analysis proves intriguing in that a psychological reading of the new femme fatale allows for both.

If one views the narrative of the fatale as a tragedy, it seems Mulvey would be correct in stating that the male will force the woman to undergo punishment for her guilt in providing constant castration anxiety to the male viewer. What greater retribution could one endure than being trapped by their own psychotic psyche, unable to ever experience love and fulfillment, forced to live as both the object of the male gaze and punishment?

On the flip side, a psychological reading of the modern fatale also serves to enact a high level of scopophilia within the male viewer. By her nature, the femme fatale is overtly sexual, pleasuring herself by the fetishization she receives in the form of the male viewer and often protagonist. She could be viewed as inviting her own punishment and subjugation whilst providing a pornographic performance of sexuality for the fetishizing male viewer. Thus, by this reading of the modern femme fatale, the male viewer is able to divert anxiety by both the sadism of voyeurism and the fetishization of scopophilia.

Taking also the character of Kathryn Merteuil, one can see a very similar pattern. Through her destructive behavior, she is ultimately punished both by her confinement to her psyche and the film's explicit narrative. In addition to her exertion of control through exhibitionist sexual performance (inviting scopophilia) and destructive behavior, Kathryn ultimately fails in all of her goals as her character is subverted by the other female, thus being punished for her actions whilst becoming the recipient of simultaneous voyeurism.

This pattern continues in the neo-noir thriller Wild Things. But in addition to the simultaneous fetishization and punishment, the fatales of this film are often put at odds with the reigning patriarchy, serving as yet a reminder of their punishment for subverting the patriarchal order. The voyeurism and scopophilia of this film are intensely heightened from the aforementioned films, lending itself to comments such as:

"'Wild Things'' is lurid trash, with a plot so twisted they're still explaining it during the closing titles." -Roger Ebert

It is of note that Ebert awarded this film three stars. Mulvey's words once again ring true.

This reading of the femme fatale also leaves the viewer with a troubling dilemma. While the actual character of the modern femme fatales do lend themselves to this reading, they are not the sole female characters of the narrative. In the case of Cruel Intentions, the film ends with the celebration of a freed empowered heroin, blatantly contradicting the message seemingly shouted at the audience by the portrayal of the villainous Kathryn. Indeed, the blockbuster era is one of mixing and matching.

Soft-Core Pornography and Incoherence

It seems that a clear reading of the modern femme fatale is simply impossible considering the pervasive incoherence of the texts she inhabits. Her character and readings encompass sexual independence, subversion of the patriarchy, misogynistic sadism, unrepentant scopophilia, and a plethora of other characteristics. So why the incoherence? In a word: pornography.

As Stables notes, the new fatal women is a sexual performer who owes a great deal to soft-core pornography rather than mainstream Hollywood (Stables 173). For all the theorizing one could accomplish when attempting to read Basic Instinct, in the end the film sold for one reason, the promise of titillation. This need to deliver erotic material overrode the necessity of any statement or ideology, bonding social commentary to the confines of pornography. It is important to remember that the fatale herself is not driving the narrative, rather the scriptwriter. Any coherent message that could be conveyed by the fatale is limited by the compliance of her author.

This is especially true of Wild Things, a film so pornographically obsessed that it seems both the narrative and characterizations were relegated to second importance alongside the transparent erotic orgies and lesbian make-out scenes. Aside from the blatant nature of films such as Basic Instinct and Wild Things, one cannot help to notice that even a dialogue driven film such as Cruel Intentions finds itself a slave to aural eroticism, sacrificing more intelligent characterization to arouse the viewer. Would Kathryn have really begun a park make-out session with Cecile were it not for the pornographic demands of the genre? Probably not. Her character is way too subtle for such activity.

Thus pornographic obsession serves to be the main pitfall to a true understanding of the fatale. For so long as her position within a text will be merely relegated to the role of sexual performer without regard to character or textual integrity, her character cannot be fully understood as it does not exist in its completeness. She only inhabits the fantasy of an overeager scriptwriter with an eye for a big budget box-office performance.

The Future of the New Femme Fatale

Audiences will have to wait and see what the future of mainstream cinema holds for the seemingly irrepressible femme fatale. Only in the character of the fatale can such a variety of characteristics be embodied. From her role as an empowering heroine to the possibility that she simply serves as yet another subjugation of the woman to the male gaze, the new femme fatale is a mystery, and as such, continues to elicit examination and study.

After the turn of the millennium, the new femme fatale seems to have taken yet another turn, sacrificing the aforementioned pornographic obsession for a focus on violence. As sexuality loses its taboo status within mainstream culture, the fatale is forced to embody the seemingly only remaining taboo, that of female violence. With Angelina Jolie's character of Fox from Wanted and other similar emerging character types, the evolving fatale character opens yet another field of discussion regarding her textual interpretations and societal implications.

As the culture sheds its homophobia, 'forbidden language' becomes commonplace, the patriarchy continues to subside, and even violence finds its place of taboo sliding away, culture may find that a femme fatale is no longer necessary, possibly able to be dismissed as archaic. But if the cinematic past is any clue, the femme fatale will find yet another way to reinvent herself and become once again relevant to the culture, leaving a new trail of questions and observations regarding gender coding and identity within the realm of film.

Works Cited

Stables, Kate. "The Postmodern Always Rings Twice: Constructing the

Femme Fatale in 90's Cinema."

Women in Film Noir. Edited by E. Ann Kaplan. British Film Institute. 1998.

Arango, Ariel.

Dirty Words: Psychoanalytical Insights. (New Jersey: Jason Aronson) 1989.

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema."

Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Edited by Sue Thornham. New York University Press. New York. 1999.

American Psychiatric Association (1994). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. pp. 645-650.

Ebert, Roger. "Wild Things." March 20, 1998.