detective is more on a self-discovery like in Angel Heart or Blade Runner. Foster Hirsh says, “While there have been many local changes, noirs basic narrative molds have remained
notably stable. Neo-noir is as likely to take place in vast open spaces as in the pestilential city of tradition.”
3
This is related to the fact that during WWII everything was city-centered, but after the war as capitalism got a strong foothold, everything started to spread out, which also
affected the locations of neo-noir stories. In line with changes to the locales, there were also changes in the lifestyles depicted in neo-noir works. This is apparent in considering that the
traditional nuclear family was no longer prominent, and people became more mobile. This resulted in people not having good social ties with their communities or neighborhoods
anymore, which is often seen in these neo-noir works.
4.4 Neo-Noir Femme Fetales
In comparing the roles of femme fetales in 1940s noir films and modern neo-noir films, the traditional femme fetale is more interested in money and acquiring wealth, perhaps
because the topic of sexuality was forbidden during the 1940s as the censorship board was worried about viewers being negatively affected. The producers could only use sexual
innuendos and vague references to sex expressed in indirect ways. For today’s femme fetales, the characters are not only interested in financial gains but also sexual domination, as this can
be clearly depicted in literary and film works. The male characters in neo-noirs resemble the male protagonists in traditional detective or crime noirs. They are threatened by femme
fetales and have great difficulty in overcoming these imposing women. The femme fetales today are more ferocious and duplicitous to depict their desires to be equal or superior to
males. This kind of femme fetale is even seen through female criminals in modern news stories that would not have happened in past year, as in the case of Loraine Bobbit castrating
3
Hirsh, Foster, “Detours and Lost Highways”, from Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2009, p.8.
her husband for his sexual indiscretions or other such heinous crimes. The neo-noir films of today do not necessarily deal with morality or issues of the femme fetale meeting her demise
if she does not repent, as found in classic noir stories. In neo-noirs the femme fetale may escape or not be detected for committing various crimes. She may be more devious and
underhanded than her male protagonist counterpart. Furthermore, a femme fetale may be defeated by a female heroine, whereas in traditional noir works, the male protagonist was
always the hero, like in the characters Sam Spade, Philip Marlow, Mike Hammer, among others. Femme fetales today do not face the same constraints in their sexuality and
aggressiveness as in past years due to the fact that females are able to break out of their traditional household roles and have more independence to live their lives as they choose to
be separate from the patriarchal structure. Noir films also contribute to reflections of modern society in cinema through the
characterization of femme fetales. These kinds of women are now found in thrillerhorrorslasher kinds of films. Although modern films generally do not use the same
black-and-white style of lighting in traditional noirs unless they are trying to recreate the exact mood of the 1940s, various aspects are still carried over in today’s era. Expressionistic
lighting is still used in varying degrees to show characters being entrapped The Grifters or in a fight for good against evil The Empire Strikes Back. The style and music primarily
jazz can also be made to resemble mid-20
th
century films. Femme fetale characters are further found in films like The Grifters, Basic Instinct, Malice, Body of Evidence, The Hand
that Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female, among others. These are all deadly and dangerous femme fetale women that are found in films of various genres but still convey the
underlying femme fetale characteristics. Different from traditional femme fetales who are money and power oriented, modern ones may also be obsessed with men or may want to be a
mother by killing the real mother and trying to take her place. The newer version of the femme fetale does not have particular constructs to fit into, whereas the traditional one was
required by censorship regulations to meet particular criteria. The newer femme fetales have broader audiences to appeal to, so their roles and genres are more varied.
Another difference in the way classic and modern femme fetales are shown is through the ways the films are made and what kind of audience they target. This refers to the
production, distribution, and targeted audience. Hollywood used to just make these films as “A” or “B” level films for big screen audiences with small budgets for American viewers.
Now femme fetales are found in worldwide venues with big budgets, more elaborate camera work and special effects, more varied stories, different kinds of viewers, and in various
distributions formats like TV series, videos, cable TV, etc. Therefore, more care is needed and pre-screenings to ensure that it will be accepted by a wide-scale audience.
As in noir films of the WWII era, in today’s society femme fetales can also pose a threat to male sexuality and patriarchal society. As men today are less masculine than in
years’ past, these femme fetales can symbolize the further degradation of masculinity in society. Femme fetales highlight male insecurities in an ever-changing industrial world.
In discussing how modern femme fetales contribute to male paranoia, Amelia Jones reveals woman films are “the fearful response of patriarchy to the loss of boundaries endemic
to the conditions of subjectivity in contemporary, so-called postmodern, American life. Their seemingly conventional narratives are, on closer look, distorted by projected anxieties
provoked by the postmodern collapse of traditional rules governing sexual difference. Male paranoia is a defense aimed at rebuilding the subject-object dichotomy that threatens to
dissolve as more and more women and men for that matter take on both masculine and
feminine roles.”
4
Therefore, in analyzing the femme fetales of today, they possess some of the same characteristics as those of past years but have expanded and more developed
personality types and are more blatantly aggressive and domineering than in the past. What’s more, modern femme fetales do not necessarily meet their doom or reform themselves. They
may continue going on living in the same manner. They can subvert the traditional patriarchal structure and determine their own destiny.
In analyzing how the modern femme fetale has been reinvented, Kate Stables claims, “The new fatale uses the accumulated visual iconography of the fetale in art and film, but the
introduction of three key areas: 1 repeated representations of sexual acts; 2 transparently sexual speech; and 3 the open problematizing of the fetale’s sexuality; has skewed the figure
in a totally new way.”
5
Stables continues by stating that, “Classic film noir sexualized its heroines through highly cooled glamour, and an armory of visual iconography arranged to
signal sex and define her as a sexual presence. Put repeatedly on sexual display, the new fetale is redefined as a sexual performer within a visual system which owes as much to soft-
core pornography as it does to mainstream Hollywood.”
6
The new femme fetales are more direct, blunt, and harsh in the way they talk, whereas the classic femme fetale is not as open,
uses more metaphors, and is more ambiguous in her manner of speech. Classic femme fetales go back and forth with their male protagonist counterparts while flirting without engaging in
much physical contact, while the modern femme fetales can be much cruder and engage in visible sexual acts on the screen.
4.5 Neo-Noir Anti-Heroes
