Subverting the femme fatale

So was that the last word on the femme fatale? Is she--can she be--nothing more than a tool of male dominance? Well...there's no such thing as last words now is there...?

The femme fatale is ultrawoman in patriarchal ideology. She is 'woman as sex' laid bare in minimalist style. Worse, she is 'woman' completely objectified. Without identity. A zombie predator intent on consuming men. Her sex nothing but a lure like the bright, shiny knob of flesh dangling from an angler fish.

If that's true, then how could the femme fatale be recycled and mobilized against her makers? Against male dominance. If she is ultrawoman is there any way the hyperfeminine can be occupied and used by women? Or is she hopelessly compromised? Any female appropriation a delusion? A visual and sexual gift to male supremacy...?

In Goth Culture, Dunja Brill relates this anecdote:

      Leipzig, June 2003, the annual Wave-Gotik-Treffen festival...I am on my way to the tram station
      to travel to the Agra, the main festival site, when a group of scantily clad girls catches my eye. All
      of them are wearing skimpy black PVC skirts or hot pants, with one even dressed in nothing but a
      skin-tight PVC bodice, torn mesh stockings and extreme high heels. Obviously I am not the only
      one to notice these women; their charms seem anything but lost on the group of male youths
      standing at the tram station, whose outfits mark them out a what Goths tend to call 'townies'. I
      overhear how one of them, a tall guy with a white baseball cap and baggy jeans, tries to talk the
      others into chatting up the girls. They ogle the one in the PVC bodice, making saucy comments
      about her body and dress. Prompted by their obstrusive stares and sexual banter, all of a sudden
      she walks up to them and starts eying the tall guy in a confident, almost aggressive way. I think I
      can even see a slight smile around her eyes. The boys instantly stop their boastful banter and fall
      silent, seeming rather uncomfortable with the situation. The tall one tries hard to avoid the
      woman's gaze and obviously does not feel like showing any more interest in the ample cleavage
      displayed right in front of him. As she walks back to her friends, her subdued smile turns into a
      broad grin--a contagious grin, it seems, as I still have it on my face when the tram finally comes
      (p. 59)

So when the female 'object' becomes an 'actor', the male viewer is no longer in possession of the view. And that inverts the object-objectifier relation. What does that have to do with the hyperfeminine? Or the femme fatale?

In many ways, the hyperfeminine turns the femme fatale on its head. It is a self-reflexive 'masquerade' of the most extreme signs of femininity turned against male-imposed stereotypes. As Brill writes, the 'feminine masquerade...stresses the subversive, disruptive potential of women who reappropriate traditionally feminine clothes with an ironic twist (p. 60).' As the anecdote above illustrates, '[f]launted as a masquerade, such a parodic excess of femininity can work to disrupt the male-defined scopic regimes of voyeuristic and fetishistic looking at women so deeply ingrained in our visual culture...This line of argument suggests that hyperfemininity can be a form of resistance, a strategy for deconstructing the patriarchal ideal of femininity from within rather than from an impossible position outside gender discourse (p. 60).'

As an ironic masquerade, the hyperfeminine walks a fine line between parody and parade. Porn and the male gaze can colonize anything. Feminine goth style can easily degenerate into mere stroke material. The ambiguous nature of the hyperfeminine is pretty clear. So while Joshua Gunn writes, 'gothic women deliberately warp dominant images of the female sex-object as a strategy of empowerment. As the goth female confronts women's traditional role as an object of male fantasy, the subculture helps her to devise ways to gain more control. As the most conspicuous example of resistant femininity found in the goth scene...the female dominatrix takes charge of her objectification by turning the sadistic gaze back upon itself, averaging voyeurism with (consensual) teasing and abuse (p. 52).' Dunja Brill reminds us that goth women self-report that the main reason they choose to dress in hyperfeminine styles is to 'look pretty' (Brill, p. 60). And that in itself could mean many things, some rather positive. Some male-centred and negative. But then that is what ambiguity means.

These very ambiguities, however, can be explored and exploited in a particularly subversive, brilliant and uncanny way by a skilled artist like, say, Emilie Autumn. If the hyperfeminine turns the stereotype of the femme fatale on its head, then Miss Autumn takes on both and twists their heads right off! Her campy eroticism is so ironically aggressive that it is disturbingly antisexual. She takes a stereotype and she takes it just a little too far beyond the sexy. Like a doll doing a lap dance.

For example, she dresses like a deconstructed Victorian school girl in ragged overly skimpy outfits that underline the pedophilia theme behind this whole 'fetish'. The thick clownish-girlish makeup has the same kind of innocence a zombie has when it feasts on its prey. The overall effect is not sexy because it identifies every 'normal' trait of sexiness--revealing clothing, bare skin, come-hither posturing, exaggerrated makeup--and vamps it up so the erotic gloss is ripped off . And 'nudity' becomes true nakedness. Something just a little too real for comfort. Or patriarchal re-appropriation.




Source: Battered Rose




Source: Battered Rose

 Miss Autumn does much the same with other iconic male chauvinist tropes and stereotypes. Each one equally broken down to the leering mocking mask that conceals nothing for desire to latch onto. And thereby defies and confounds the consuming/objectifying lust of the male viewer. There is no understood game here between the audience and the actor. The rules that normally let a man act out his fantasy are not followed. The puppet has cut its strings. And nothing is more terrifying and discomfitting than an autonomous automaton...which Miss Autumn pretty much represents in this image:



Source: Battered Rose

And as for tearing up iconic images, here is Miss Autumn's demented take on the showgirl:

Source: Battered Rose



Source: Kerrang

 And her subversive verion of the sexy woman in an animal costume writhing around as a rat:


Source: Battered Rose



Source: Battered Rose

 Or the sexy woman with an animal burlesque routine...repeated with that mostest sexy animal, the rat!



Source: Bizarre Magazine



Source: Bizarre Magazine

 And from here to the just-not-right scene at the little girl's tea party:



Source: Battered Rose

 Oh, and what about the innocent girl playing with her dolls in her toy room?

Source: Battered Rose

Or that same innocent girl now trapped in a madhouse?



Source: Battered Rose

 Or that most sacred stock character of male romance--the damsel-in-distress?



Source: Battered Rose

 I could continue and show you more and more icons cut up and rewired but the above twists and turns demolish heteronormative sexiness. The semi-nudity is not titillating but aggressive. And anti-sexual. Beyond the sexual. Outside sex. However you want to describe a body that doesn't conform to the dictates of 'sexuality' as we know it.

Common criticisms of burlesque performance do not work here. While it is often true that one person's irony is another's pornography. Miss Autumn's appropriation of male supremacist stereotypes works because her versions are sarcastic, mocking and sardonic takes on the standard pin-up cliches. She demon sings of how she wants her innocence back. Not like a victim. But like a monster avenger. For contained within each of her versions of these sexist cliches is this wicked Joker smile:

Source: Battered Rose

Miss Autumn's performance is about taking back power for women. Power to define their own feminine symbols. Power to present their own aesthetic, social and political agenda. Power to control their own bodies and what they do with them.

And she defines her goal in as Gothy a way as possible. Speaking of women in general, Miss Autumn says in an interview with Curve magazine: 'we can't just sit and wait for our freedom and our right to live without fear to be handed to us by anyone. We need to demand it, and we need to be prepared to fight.

'We need to get scary.'