Whoo boy, watching men talk about the femme fatale archetype from film noir and the vamp archetype from silent film entirely through a male perspective can be really infuriating. ESPECIALLY when they so obviously think they're being "feminist" in what they're saying. They're not.

I found a noir docu on youtube where one of the talking heads was talking about the femme fatale as a misogynistic thing, with the "good girl" being so much better and how she was the only one that could "save" the man. Here's a hint: if you're reducing a woman's role in a

narrative to "saving" a man, you're not being a feminist.

Obviously, femme fatales and vamps aren't perfect feminist depictions of women. They're always going to be characters in films that are a product of their time. But vamps and femme fatales were subversive archetypes that

made a feminist statement. Which was usually made even clearer when they put in contrast to the "good girl" character, who was usually uninteresting, on dimensional, and who generally had a relationship with the leading man that was perfunctory and passionless.

Now, this of course isn't ALWAYS the case. Jeanne Crain in Leave Her to Heaven is a good example of a "good girl" character who is multi-dimensional, layered, and who does have a chemistry with the leading man. Those kinds of good girl characters absolutely exist. But for the

the most part, overall, the "good girl" that's meant to be the "right" choice for the leading man tends to a dull, flat character with a dull relationship with the leading man.

Vamps and femme fatales were common and popular character types during periods of film history where

filmmakers were struggling with a lot of pressure in regards to what they were portraying in their films. In the 1920s, which was pre-Production Code, there were a lot of conservative and religious groups putting a lot of pressure on Hollywood for the kinds of films they made and

the "values" they were said to promote, especially in light of a number of things that happened in the early '20s, like the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the manslaughter trial and the rape accusation that accompanied it, and the drug related death of Wallace Reid, among

other things. States were cutting films up to censor them, and there was a lot of pressure from these groups to "clean up" films, otherwise they would push for government intervention. Eventually, in the 1930s, Hollywood wrote and enforced a Production Code, which dictated the

kind of content that was and wasn't allowed onscreen, and that's what was effecting filmmakers in the 1940s. There were strict rules about what kind of characters were allowed onscreen, what kind of characters were allowed to be portrayed positively, which kind of characters were

allowed to "win". This kind of censorship and pressure during both of these periods led to filmmakers finding creative ways to subvert the restrictions. Vamps and femme fatales were subversive reactions to these restrictions. Bother vamps and femme fatales tend to be one of the

most interesting characters in the film. They were interesting, layered, complex. Most importantly, they were smart and powerful. In some cases they end up being the smartest and most powerful characters in the films. And, of course, they're sexual. Smart, powerful, sexual women

were not the kinds of characters that would be considered acceptable as main characters or heroines or the characters you root for. Under the Code they absolutely had to be punished. In the 1920s, while there might not have been an enforced code, it was the general acceptance

that the same thing had to happen: they couldn't wind, they had to be punished. In contrast, the "good girl" characters were very flat characters. They were generally in much less of the film, they didn't have the same level of complex characterization. They often weren't shown

to be particularly smart or powerful. They generally existed to be the "right" choice for the leading man. To "save" him. To be wholesome and good so she could make the leading man that way too. And the relationship she had with the man was usually as flat as she was.

This was intentional. Filmmakers were subverting this idea of sexual, powerful, smart women as being evil or bad by technically following the rules, but framing them as villains, by having them "pay" for it all at the end. But they were the interesting ones. They were the

complicated, complex ones. They were far more layered and human. The good girl would usually "win", ending up with the man and sharing a perfunctory kiss with him at the end. But they weren't interesting. There was no complexity to the characterization. Their entire presence in

the film, their motivation, was entirely about the man. The relationship they had with the man was passionless. They were everything the pressuring influences of the times said a woman was supposed to be, but they were the least interesting thing on the screen.

So if you think that femme fatales and vamps are misogynistic archetypes and that the films in which they appear show feminism because the men end up with "good" girls who can "save" them, you're very, very wrong and very much missing the point. /fin #Noirvember

I also feel like it's a thought process that could potentially reveal a lot about how men sees women and the general situational fantasies he has about women like this, but that's a topic for another time.