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(Limelight). From the femme fatale of the early cinema to her post-feminist rebirth, this lavishly illustrated book and comprehensive guide traces the history of these dangerously alluring, manipulative, and desperate lethal ladies. Femme Fatale surveys the history of the femme fatale in world cinema, with more than 300 photographs testifying to the power of these mysterious women. The book begins with the silent period and its vamps, like Theda Bara, Pola Negri, Clara Bow, and Bebe Daniels, then moves on to the Pre-Code sound period of American films, which, showing liberated attitudes toward sex and women, featured actresses like Jean Harlow, Marlene Dietrich, and Greta Garbo. The story continues with the noir 1940s, when the femme fatale became truly lethal including actresses like Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, and Barbara Stanwyck. In the repressive 1950s, the international femme fatale took the fore Brigitte Bardot, Maria Felix, Elizabeth Taylor, Anita Ekberg, etc. Finally, the authors turn to the revolutionary post-feminist modern period, with an array of lethal ladies from all over the world, like Pam Grier, Salma Hayek, Gong Li, Angelina Jolie, and Sharon Stone.
"The femme Fatale takes a long view on the figure of the femme fatale, exploring her style, language, and stories from silent cinema to contemporary television. Author Julie Grossman provides a history of some of this dynamic figure's eruptions in film, TV, and culture generally, exploring the notions of female ambition, frustration, and intelligence that undergird the power and fascination of the femme fatale across time and media. We see how the fatal woman often mediates contradictory views on women's lives and their desire to gain fulfillment in a hostile or otherwise challenging environment. Embodied by some of the most charismatic female performers in Hollywood history, from Theda Bara and Barbara Stanwyck to Hedy Lamarr, Reese Witherspoon, and Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh, the femme fatale remains an active source of pleasure and subversion. Femmes Fatales pays particular attention to performance not only as a prominent feature of these works' production-established in part through references to studio press books and popular reviews--but also as a theme within the narrative (in, for example, the idea of the deceitful, untrustworthy, or "performing" woman). Focusing on expressive moments and scenes in texts that are celebrated and also those that are lesser known, this volume attends to the variety, trauma, wit, and transgressions of the femme fatale, emphasizing how this figure continually provokes us to reflect on rigid conventions and social roles. Femmes Fatales generates questions and analysis that speak to why stories about gender and criminality featuring tough and smart women are so endlessly thrilling"--
"examines the changing social and economic status of women from the 1860s through the 1880s, and rejects the stereotypical mid-Victorian femme fatale portrayed by conservative ideologues critiquing popular fiction by Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Honore de Balzac, and William Makepeace Thackeray. In these book reviews, the female protagonist is simply minimized to a dangerous woman. Refuting this one-dimensional characterization, this book argues that the femme fatale comes to represent the real-life struggles of the middle-class Victorian woman who overcomes major adversities such as poverty, abusive husbands, abandonment, single parenthood, limited job opportunities, the criminal underworld, and Victorian society's harsh invective against her." --publisher description.
Characters in the literary tradition of American naturalism are usually perceived as passive, lacking in will, weak, and predetermined. They are constantly seen as the victims of heredity and environment, and their lives are shaped according to these strong forces that operate upon them. This interesting book examines the representation of female characters in American naturalism and argues that women in American naturalism are often represented as femmes fatales. Since heredity and environment are the determining factors in their lives, they are victims who have no control. However, with characters such as Trina Sieppe in Frank Norris's McTeague, Caroline Meeber in Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, and Helga Crane in Nella Larsen's Quicksand, these women victims gradually turn themselves into victimizers in order to conquer both heredity and environment. They consciously and deliberately use the only power they have that can help them overcome the naturalistic world in which they are entrapped--the power of the feminine. The book explains who exactly the femme fatale that has been born out of American naturalism is, and explores images of women in American realism who precede the femme fatale of American naturalism. This study examines characters like Trina Sieppe, Caroline Meeber, Edna Pontellier, and Helga Crane. It analyzes these women's backgrounds, their demeanors, their temperaments, their experiences, and their settings, and explains how and when each woman decides to use her sexuality. There is also a brief discussion of other femmes fatales in American naturalism, such as Stephen Crane's Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Although the perception of women in nineteenth-century American literature has always had its place in discussions of literary texts, this book is unique in its argument that women in American naturalism are neither weak nor passive, but rather are strong and daring women who try diligently to find a means of fighting back. This book is an important addition to collections in literature and Women's studies.
These essays trace the femme fatale across literature, visual culture and cinema, exploring the ways in which fatal femininity has been imagined in different cultural contexts and historical epochs, and moving from mythical women such as Eve, Medusa and the Sirens via historical figures such as Mata Hari to fatal women in contemporary cinema.
The last freelance P.I. on Earth, Zach Johnson has been hired to track down a young beauty who happens to be a deadly secret weapon for the World Council. Zach follows Natasha to various vacation destinations, but she eludes him, leaving a trail of destruction in her wake. Original.
In the context of nineteenth-century Victorinoir and close readings of original-cycle film noir, Julie Grossman argues that the presence of the "femme fatale" figure, as she is understood in film criticism and popular culture, is drastically over-emphasized and has helped to sustain cultural obsessions with "bad" women.
My name is Blue—insert a mood-related joke here—and I’m a femme fatale in training. My goal is to join the CIA. Unfortunately, I have a tiny issue with birds, and the closest I’ve come to my dream is working for a government agency that’s disturbingly up-to-speed on everyone’s sexts, rants in private Facebook groups, and secret family chocolate-chip cookie recipes. I know I’m a spy cliché, that agent who works at a desk but craves fieldwork. However, I have a plan: I’m going to infiltrate the secretive Hot Poker Club, where I’ve spotted a mysterious, sexy stranger who I’m convinced is a Russian spy. And once I'm in? All I have to do is seduce the presumed spy without falling for him, so I can expose his true identity and prove my femme fatale bona fides to the CIA. I never lose concentration at work, so that'll be an absolute breeze for me. Oh, and did I mention he's sexy? I’m doing it for my country, not my ovaries, I pinky swear. WARNING: Now that you’ve finished reading this, your device will self-destruct in five seconds. NOTE: This is a standalone, raunchy, slow-burn romantic comedy featuring a quirky, spy-movie-obsessed heroine, a scorching hot maybe-Russian, several terrifying tales about birds, and lots of text debates about the relative cuteness of animals. If any of the above is not your cup of tea, run far, far away. Otherwise, buckle up for a laugh-out-loud, feel-good ride.
The femme fatale occupies a precarious yet highly visible space in contemporary cinema. From sci-fi alien women to teenage bad girls, filmmakers continue to draw on the notion of the sexy deadly woman in ways which traverse boundaries of genre and narrative. This book charts the articulations of the femme fatale in American cinema of the past twenty years, and contends that, despite her problematic relationship with feminism, she offers a vital means for reading the connections between mainstream cinema and representations of female agency. The films discussed raise questions about the limits and potential of positioning women who meet highly normative standards of beauty as powerful icons of female agency. They point towards the constant shifting between patriarchal appropriation and feminist recuperation that inevitably accompanies such representations within mainstream media contexts.
In this work of feminist film criticism, Mary Ann Doane examines questions of sexual difference and knowledge in cinematic, theoretical, and psychoanalytic discourses. "Femmes Fatales" examines Freud, the female spectator, the meaning of the close-up, and the nature of stardom. Doane's analyses of such figures as Pabst's Lulu and Rita Hayworth's Gilda trace the thematics and mechanics of maskes, masquerade, and veiling, with specific attention to the form and technology of the cinema. Working through and against the intellectual frameworks of post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theory, Doane interrogates cinematic and theoretical claims to truth about women which rely on judgements about vision and its stability or instability. Reflecting the shift in conceptual priorities within feminist film theory over the last decade, "Femmes Fatales" addresses debates over female spectatorhsip, essentialism and anti-essentialism, the tensions between psychoanalysis and history, and the relations between racial and sexual difference. Doane's nuanced and original readings of the "femme fatale" in cinema illustrate confrontations between feminism, film theory and psychoanalysis. This book should be of interest to students and lecturers in women's studies, communications studies and film theory.