124266 KO Critical Media Analysis (2021W)

Film noir, as feminist film scholar Ann Kaplan points out”offers a space for the playing out of various gender fantasies”(Kaplan, 1998:10). Analyzing the role of femmes fatales in American films noir reveals the complexities of ‘doing femininity’ in patriarchal cultures, since fantasies of women “are sociohistorically based and thus affected by the position of women in any given historical moment”(Grossman, 2009:3).

Based on Judith Butler’s idea how“gender is not exactly what one ‘is’ nor is it precisely what one ‘has’”(Butler, 2004:42) this CMA class sets out to investigate gender dynamics in early American films noir. If gender relations are understood to reflect “the material interests of those who have power and those who do not”(Brittan, 2004:41), then the role of the femme fatale is worth a more deeper investigation.
Building on approaches laid out by feminist film scholars such as Laura Mulvey, Janey Place, Ann Kaplan and Julie Grossman, this course invites students to do “a more nuanced and sympathetic reading of the women”(Grossman, 2009:1) way too easily branded as seductive evil-doers by film critics back in the 1940s&1950s.
Four films from the early period of film noir constitute the primary texts of this class. Relying on the tools from narrative film analysis and feminist film studies students are asked to do a close reading of all films.
Topics of discussion will include:
• How femme fatale characters reflect male post World War Two anxieties about changing gender roles in U.S.society.
• How the treatment of femmes fatales in films noir reveals the toxic sides of patriarchal 
 power structures instead of glorifying them.

Movie List:
Mildred Pierce(Michael Curtis, 1945)
The Postman Always Rings Twice(Tay Garnett, 1946)
In a Lonely Place(Nicholas Ray, 1950)
The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1952)