Satisfied certain versions of gender roles, especially women, through it’s heavily aesthetic driven style. Film noir created a set of very specific and misleading archetypes for women; the significance of the patriarchy in film noir is one of the style’s most common features. The role of a female in American cinema and the female role within a domestic, post-World War II country were put side-by-side. The interest that the media had with a woman’s psyche and her sexuality is told through visual cues and dark, low-key sexual narratives such as the films The Big Sleep and Phantom Lady. The roles women had to take on in film noir were stylistic versions of a heteronormative patriarchy.
Given the time film noir was popular, women were expected to retreat back to their mundane, housewife ways of living after finding independence through the workforce after World War II. The narrative of film noirs and the domestic space during this era of film and American history is a blatant representation of how women were viewed as secondary. The attack on the ruling social values in a film noir was usually relayed through the representation of family. The immense lack of the families in film noirs created this concept that a woman’s place in a household determined her position in society as well. Because of this, it also served as a rumination of repressive social relationships. The complete control over the domestic space that women had when they’d entered the workforce during World War II was quickly sntached away from them when the country had to recuperate from the war.
The film noir narrative is built up in such a way that it is able to display the women’s point of view in the film. It is more common that we see films focused on appealing to men’s desires, so films such as Mildred Pierce break that common film noir trope. The 1945 film completely denies the conventional male narrative. It changes how the audience receives lead actresses point of view of the story. There is lot of effort made to balance out the role of the loving, caring mother figure while acting as the main income for the household. However, there is still a blatant hatred that eldest daughter, Veda, has for Mildred. It is understood that the disgust towards her mother is because of the source of her income. It is revealed later that Veda’s hatred stems from something else, though. As the film progresses, the audience can come to a conclusion when it is revealed that Mildred’s business partner and lover, Monty, is just taking advantage of Mildred’s money and providing Veda with all of her necessities, to which Veda gladly received, yet she despises her mother’s actions.
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One of the major defining characteristics of film noir is the stylistic choices made. The excess amounts of lighting, shadows (venetian blinds), textures, and interesting angles make this era of film stand out. Because film noirs were in black and white, they were extremely reliant on the shapes, colors, and contrast in the actors costume choices. Film noir relies heavily on its visual cues with the hopes of displaying a simple narrative for the audience. There were specific roles within the narrative of the film for the actors in the film to portray. One specific example of a cliche female character in a film noir would be the “femme fatale”. A good example of a “femme fatale” would be Barbara Stanwyck from the film Double Indemnity (1944). Femme fatales are the deadly women who would drive the crime within the narrative of a film noir.
To combat this specific view of the female figure, the femme fatale is both very useful and problematic. The femme fatale is defined by her dangerous and desirable presence over the fragile and secondary female characters that are cast in films. In these visually motivated films, the glorification of the woman holds all the power. The woman is what captures the eyes of the audience, at times making her the dominant character of the scene. This throws off the audience and their expectations of a sexualized female lead and it reestablishes the power of the “fragile” female character that once was. In her writings, Laura Mulvey explains, “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly.” Women are traditionally exploited sexually and their appearance alone is put on display to attract the eyes of men and use their erotic impact as leverage to satisfy the male viewers.
Women in film noir were automatically subjected to being portrayed from a man’s point of view. Through this perspective and having the lead male narrating the entirety of the film, film noir turned the narrative into a sought after male fantasy. Through this understanding of film, there is a lie that male is the perspective of normativity and female is considered other, as secondary and overlooked. These actresses were created as a fictional objects and then made into objects of spectacle. It is apparent that these female actresses sole purpose and role was to evoke pure pleasure and sexual satisfaction.
Film noir mainly stems from men’s fantasies, most art does. The cinematic, yet problematic, style of film noir glorified caucasian female beauty for the male viewers, yet provided an intelligent woman role, which was empowering and even relatable for the female viewers. Strong female roles in film noir, especially the femme fatales, were able to throw off the viewer by tricking them into adoring the woman for her sexual appeal as if she were a prop, only to then later commit a crime that oppose the views of her characters expectation of being eye candy for the male audience.
Citations
- Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44.
