The 'fatal femme' in contemporary Hollywood film noir: Reframing gender, violence, and power

This thesis examines the articulations of gender, power, and violence in relation to a recent cycle of Hollywood films which feature women who kill. This cycle presents a striking exception to the cinematic and general socio-discursive rule which typically figures women as passive victims of male violence. Through this emphasis on the exception, I choose to follow the productive potential routes of change which flow through any cultural field. The analysis incorporates two overlapping methodologies: "immanent textual criticism," and discursive analysis which is rooted in the regularities of film and genre. The moment of textual analysis draws out the complexities and textual openness within the case study of Basic Instinct. In the subsequent discursive analysis, I follow selected "lines of flight" out from the immanent analysis to examine key themes which relate to gender, violence, and power within this cycle of films in general. These themes include transgressive sexuality, violence, narrative containment, psychoanalysis, and the gendered gaze. Ultimately, the thesis moves beyond the exception/rule dialectic, into a more complex and contingent understanding of the shifting ground of gendered power in contemporary Hollywood film.