WOMAN TROUBLE
Total Film explores the shifting role of the transgressive woman, a cinematic staple that has been causing trouble on screen for decades…
Way before Eve slipped Adam that apple, the dangerous woman was a cultural archetype, and the advent of moving pictures gave her new life. The vamp (derived from ‘vampire’) sunk her teeth into ’20s cinema, while the smoking hot femme fatale set the screen alight over the next few decades of film noir. Whether portrayed by Mary Astor, Rita Hayworth or Anna May Wong, she was perfectly coiffed, in control and morally ambiguous at best. She was also independent, tapping into the fears of the men who came back from war to self-sufficient women. This new breed was as alluring as she was scary. She would tempt the hero with her feminine wiles, but she was frequently punished. Meanwhile, he could be morally complex without reprisals.
Like the evil stepmother of fairytales, this woman was typically unmaternal, and was finally given power over her own reproductive system in the 1960s. The contraceptive pill allowed more sexual freedom, and the real-life sexual revolution was reflected on screen with a mixture of excitement and moral panic. You can see girl gangs in ‘tight pants’ running riot in Roger Corman’s Teenage Doll (1957), while Teenage Gang Debs promised/threatened ‘the go-go girls who go too far… always reckless – and willing…’
In 1978, Grease heralded the teen movie, and the delicious but bitter Rizzo, the ‘whore’ to Sandy’s virgin. Rizzo only just escaped an unhappy ending – meanwhile, bad boys like John Travolta’s Danny not only got away with appalling behaviour but were rewarded for it, the prize being the virgin herself. If you were being generous, you could see Grease as an indictment of gender inequality, but while creator Jim Jacobs claimed elements of it were a spoof, lyrics like, “Did she put up a fight?” still sting.
Rizzo was followed by a host of mean girls, from Amber Von Tussle to Regina George. Popular with girls and sometimes even – gasp – directed by women, some teen movies took a more thoughtful approach to the ‘bitch’, giving her a backstory that explained her behaviour and an arc that allowed her to grow. In 1996, the high-school movie also reclaimed the ancient, most loathed of bad girls: the witch. The Craft cast a spell over a generation of wand-weaving semi-goths and echoed more grown up predecessors such as
The Witches Of Eastwick (1987).
But the ’80s also saw the rise of Aids, and a stern warning against extra-marital sex. Enter Glenn Close in 1987’s Fatal Attraction, the archetypal ‘crazy stalker’ bent on threatening the monogamous domestic idyll. Michael Douglas – for some reason the lead of choice at this point – came up against an even more powerful foe/lover in Basic Instinct (1992). Sharon Stone’s Catherine Tramell was part Hitchcockian heroine, part dominatrix – let’s not forget, this was before internet porn became widely available. She was a possible killer, but even more terrifyingly, she was highly intelligent. She was also bisexual (a threat to the hetero norm) and a recreational cocaine user (hang on, don’t women just pop valium while the man drinks whisky?).
This femme fatale had a ’90s spin, as did Linda Fiorentino’s Bridget in The Last Seduction (1994), another smooth-talking liar who went by several names. Here was a manipulative, clever, stylish woman who used her sexuality to get what she wanted. No wonder a lot of nice girls wanted to be her, or at least elements of her. She was the extreme fantasy of female power in a patriarchal society. Nicole Kidman channelled this quality
in To Die For and, more recently Rosamund Pike in I Care A Lot, although, progressively, Marla Grayson doesn’t use her sexuality to exploit men, and reserves her passion for her female partner. Where there is no male hero, a bad girl often has room to breathe outside the sexual stereotype – from sympathetic partners in crime (e.g. Thelma & Louise, Bound); to the antiheroines of horror and dark comedy (Raw, Prevenge, Young Adult).
Typically, the bad girl conforms to the Hollywood dictate that all women are beautiful, and relatively young, while men can have a whole variety of features that women are denied, from wrinkles and beyond. Just compare Bond antagonists like May Day (Grace Jones) to male baddies such as Jaws or Blofeld. Even if she is ‘ugly’ underneath, like Anjelica Huston in
The Witches, the villainess is glamorous on the outside. Both cartoon and live action Disney films revel in the grace and striking beauty of characters such as Maleficent and our cover star, Cruella. Marvel’s first female villain, Hela, drew style inspiration from these prototypes, from the pronounced shoulders to the horny headdress. She also had the requisite deep voice, something actress Cate Blanchett has lent to many a baddie, from Cinderella’s Stepmother to Irina Spalko in Indy 4.
As we enter a more thoughtful era, when equality is finally part of mainstream film discussion, perhaps the best depiction of a transgressive woman is a complex one that explores her mental health and doesn’t sexualise her. But it seems unlikely that the bad girl will ever disappear from our screens. Where would be the fun in that?
ANNA SMITH IS THE HOST OF THE FEMINIST FILM PODCAST GIRLS ON FILM. FIND IT ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS AND ALL OTHER MAJOR PODCAST APPS