Page 21 - Noir106 Femme Fatale

Noir On The Couch Script Noir on the couch - We shrink noir stereotypes
Script by Karen Young with contribution by Mariana Funes
Voices: Interviewer is Kevin Hodgson and Professor Karen Young as herself Editor: Mariana Funes
Tonight on Noir on the couch, we have the pleasure of having on the couch none other than Professor Karen Bossy Young, the world renowned expert on the femme fatale in cine noir. Author of ‘Woman know your limits, or pout’ and the New York times best seller ‘Dead men are heavier than broken hearts’. She has recently published a critically acclaimed essay on the Femme Fatale Stereotype in film noir titled: ‘I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons’.
I - Good Evening, Prof. Young. It is a pleasure to have you on my couch tonight.
K - Good evening, Thank you for inviting me to your couch. It is such a pleasure to be here, reclining.
I - Noir is one of the most compelling film forms in the cinematic repertoire and as we both know part of its allure lies in the darkness of the image, both in subject and lighting. Noir is rich in symbolism and meaning and reveals the mind of the time and the minds of those who made it. To put it simply, once the surface is scratched, Noir offers a deep well of thought provoking possibilities. Nowhere is this more so, than when unpacking the femme fatale in noir. Let’s start at the beginning: Why the rise of the idea of a woman as “femme fatale” again just after WWII in cinema?
K - We all know the archetype of the first woman as temptress, Eve. We also see her as the source of all evil as in Pandora and Lucrezia Borgia. Woman uses her beauty as a destroyer as in Helen of Troy or Cleopatra. This is nothing new. So why the revival of this view of women on such a massive scale after World War II?
During the war, women moved into the workplace to replace the men, a role they filled admirably as we all know. But what happened afterwards? It was back to the home, but in a very different way than before WWII. In a reversal of western society’s upward trend of divorce, common-law relationships and fewer children prior to the war, in the 15 years after the war marriages and births went up, divorces declined. This was a strange statistical anomaly but during this time of enforced domesticity, women were actually encouraged by society to stay home, do laundry. There is a strong sense of male ownership of women and their work.
[commercial here]
I - What about women who didn’t buy into the idea?
K - Well, interesting you should ask me that. In ‘More Work for Mother’, Ruth Schwartz Cowan wrote that psychiatrists, psychologists, and popular writers of the era critiqued