Demi as femme fatale

Femme Fatale & Film Noir The name 'femme fatale', the 'deadly woman' points to anything but a victimzed female. Instead, it is she who poses the threat. In fiction she will eventually be punished or reformed nonetheless. Why is that so? One possible answer can be found in feminist film theory. I particularly like this approach because it focusses on the question of subject constitution.

According to Laura Mulvey, a feminist film theorist who bases her propositions on psychoanalysis (Freud's scopophilia and Lacan's subject constitution) and classical Hollywood cinema, suggests that the woman is always a reminder/represen- tative of castration anxiety. In order to face that threat the male protagonist in film and through him the viewer has two options: Punishing/degrading the woman (the guilty object) or fetishizing, sometimes also saving, or, worst of all, domesticizing her. Like Sadism this kind of film needs a narrative, a story.

Gilda

Narrative conventions enable the viewer to identify with the male protagonist whose point-of-view the camera takes. This identification leads to a momentary loss of ego in the viewer that is pleasant, nonetheless, because it enables him to share the power of the protagonist. It is through the male hero, that the viewer can possess the female on screen.
One of Mulvey's points is that this scheme makes viewers regress into a state of hallucinatory wish fulfillment (which is supposed to be negative ;)).

Female characters in classical Hollywood cinema tend to be no more than decor. Their presence doesn't serve any purpose in progressing the story, instead, the narration practically freezes, as soon as the female image fills the screen.