Imagery Throughout History Has Been A Big Factor In Creating

Along with chiaroscuro, lighting a dark weather, the femme fatale is one of the main traits of film noir. It is the femme fatale that excites and draws in the audience.

A woman was once looked upon as a healer, ancient persist, mid wife, therapist, cook, sever of goddess, a positive figure, etc. As time went on, women were not seen as they were originally portrayed. Women were eventually viewed as a witch. Each culture had a different perception on what a witch looked like, but each represented the same thing. In essence, the witch craze brought about the “dark side” of a female. Some causes of “witch craze” in the fifteenth century would include hallucinations, people not wanting to be tortured and people needing something to blame misfortune on.

How do the works of Yasumasa Morimura, Julie Rrap and Anne Zahalka challenge conventional ways in which gender has been depicted historically in the visual arts?

The classic femme fatale in forced to resort to murder to free herself from an unbearable relationship with a man who would try to possess and control her, as if she were a piece of property or a pet. According to Sylvia Harvey, author of Women's place: The absent family, the women of film noir are "presented as prizes, desirable objects" for the leading men of these films. The femme fatale's unique power is her brazen willingness and ability to express herself in sexual terms. By this the femme fatale threatens the status quo, and the hero, because she controls her own sexuality outside of marriage. She uses sex for pleasure and as a weapon or a tool to control men, not merely in the culturally acceptable capacity of procreation within marriage. Her sexual emancipation commands the gaze of the hero, the audience, and the camera in a way that cannot be erased by her final punishment. Attempts to neutralise the power and blatant sexuality of the femme fatale by destroying her at the end are usually unsuccessful, because her power extends beyond death. Noir films immediately convey the intense sexual presence of the femme fatale by introducing her as a fully established object of the hero's obsession. Since the camera often represents the hero's subjective memory, revealed

Discuss the use of imagery in two stories of your choice. How do the various images work in a particular story to bring its subject matter into focus? Is there a central image? And how does this enhance or confuse or complicate the effect of the story?

Throughout history, violent women and women with violent intent have starkly emerged from many countries, carving their niches in myths and legends. The creation of these stories suggests that men began to notice lethality in feminine charm centuries back.

Symptomatic of a society suffering from a Virgin/Whore complex; meaning women are categorised into “good girls and bad girls”; the ideal being virtuous, pure and fertile in her motherhood, wifely duties and devotion to God i.e. Virgin Mary. Eve, on the other hand, symbolises corruption, immorality, disobedience to wifely duties and defiance to God. Poetry written by the fourteenth-century writer Petrarch described the ideal woman and her beauty: the ideal woman had blonde hair, a high forehead, pale skin, and a long neck. She was to be educated but only to provide conversational fodder for the entertainment of men. She was to be devoted to God and to her husband.

The “femme fatale” was a common theme in the 1940’s it is a female lead who uses sensuality and mystery to seduce and manipulate the male character of the film. No American detective novel written in the thirties would be complete without the figure of the "femme fatale," a French term meaning deadly woman. A femme fatale is an irresistibly beautiful woman who uses her sexuality to seduce men and lure them into dangerous situations to serve her own selfish interests. There is a fair few of these in The Big Sleep, but none of them is quite the dynamo that Vivian turns out to be. I also believe that Carmen Sternwood could be considered a femme fatale as well.

Throughout the world women are depicted to be oversexualized among forms of media such as video games and comic books. The idea of oversexualization towards female characters is that they have been often drawn and animated in hypersexual ways. Even going as far as viewing them as a sex object, their revealing body images are eye candy through the eyes of men. Hence women found in comic books and video games are frequently emphasized by their excessive physical appearances, objectification, portrayal, and character role.

The question that I will be researching is: “To what extent does do gender stereotypes influence how women’s suicides are portrayed?” Females are often expected to be submissive, dependent and youthful. These stereotypes are perpetuated in Western literature that is dominated by white, Christian men; a woman who killed herself is either “deserted or ‘fallen’” or “the conventional aftermath of seduction and betrayal”. As humans, we have and innate fascination with this topic: Albert Camus once said “that there is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide”. Female suicides are stigmatized by society but it are romanticized in literature, art and fashion. For an instance, “... Lucretia piercing her bare breast with a dagger, to Cleopatra clutching the asp to her milky bosom, to Ophelia floating weightlessly in a flower-filled stream…” . In some cases, when a woman kills herself, she is externalizing her

Another criticism of Alison's character as one representing feminist ideals is that she gains her power through acting out stereotypes of women as well as violence. The criticism of women began with Eve eating the apple, which caused the downfall of mankind (meaning solely men). Hereby, women were the downfall of men. Wives were thought to be nagging, vicious, and yet in complete subordination to their husbands. In the case of her first three husbands, Alison commands power by acting out these aged stereotypes. She tells the reader:

Westerns connote images of dirt, dust, guns, horses, cowboys and heroes: physically strong, iron-willed, independent, resourceful, quick-witted men. Although the modern Western (the writings of Louise L’Amour, Zane Grey and the numerous films starring John Wayne, Roy Rodgers, Gene Autry) seems to focus on this ideal hero, the genre actually also provides women with strong, self-reliant, active roles. In fact, many texts that precede the typical modern Western had females as the main characters. However, the role of the heroine still differs from that of the hero; the role does not defeminize women but gives them depth as characters. These women still retain their femininity and domesticity, but they also rescue those around them, take care

Phedre illustrates the attitude of men toward women in the Age of Reason and political Absolutism, in which men represent logic, order, and strength while women represent emotions, weakness, and disorder. Using evidence from the play, discuss how Racine’s Phedre reinforces the stereotype of woman as a destructive force in nature, known as a femme fatale.

In the Middle Age literature, women are often presented or meant to come off as an unimportant character; which can also reflect on how the author wants the women character represent. Women are usually shunned, have no say or control in what they do; due to what men desire; like Ophelia and Gertrude did in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But these female characters that I will discuss are women with power, control, and a voice. Majority of the female character’s appearances are made to represent wickedness, evil, or a seducer who challenges a man belief; and does not symbolize perfect women.

While the idea of the femme fatale came to a peak in the 1940’s, the femme fatale idea is ageless. Famous actresses such as Lana Turner and Ava Gardner built careers on being a sexy, seductive women, who ultimately spelled disaster for the men they became involved with. They were seen as temptresses and enchantresses who ensnared men into a dangerous web; this stereotype has been perpetuated for ages and accepted by many. In 1677, Jean Racine wrote the play Phaedra. In this play, the character of Phaedra embodies the stereotypical femme fatale.