SIGNS OF TRANSGRESSION: THE REPRESENTA nON OF WOMEN WHO KILL IN CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD FILMS Isabelle Doyle Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD Department of English Literature September 1998 CONTENTS Introduction Signs of Transgression p. 1 Chapter One "Kill the Bitch!": Women and Crime p. 10 Chapter Two "Where Did You Learn To Shoot Like That?" Thelma and Louise and the Rise of the Female Criminal p.64 Chapter Three The Spectre of the Other Woman: Single White Female and Lethal Femininity p. 116 Chapter Four "Blow-jobs and Homemade Lasagne": The Role of the Wife in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle p. 169 Chapter Five " ... And Woman Inherits the Earth!": Sex, Gender and Reproduction in Jurassic Park p.220 Conclusion p.270 Bibliography p.275 Filmography p.284 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: 'Smiling face of student's "wicked" killer' . p.30 Figure 2: 'Kinky killer'. p. 31 Figure 3: 'Road rage attack that never was'. p. 34 Figure 4: 'Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know'. p.35 Figure 5: 'Women killers'. p.38 Figure 6: Marcus Harvey's 'Myra'. p. 41 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the following: The British Academy for funding. Dr Sue Vice, for supervision beyond the norm. The Staff of the Department of English Literature, especially Dr Bryan Burns, for their support. Staff at University of Sheffield Library; Psalter Lane Library, Sheffield Hallam University; Sheffield City Central Library. Fellow post-graduates for encouragement and support, especially Annette Davison and the Hollywood Film team. All those who sent me newspaper cuttings, and those who lent me videos and books - especially James Rose, Ben Pinelli, Liz Quarty, Duncan Law, Tony Lowe, Ashley Barnes at Waters tones Bookshop, Helen Murdoch and Mariette Smit. Special thanks must go to: Paul Tyrer, for beer and sympathy; Marion Lamb, for being mad enough to offer; Louise, Nick and Jago Moore. for the rest. SIGNS OF TRANSGRESSION: THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN WHO KILL IN CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD FILMS SUMMARY In my thesis I argue that the representation of women who kill is a construction of female identity that serves patriarchal ideology. Hollywood films are ideally suited for examining the contradictory representations of the violent, transgressive woman. My introduction establishes the link between the cultural ideals of womanhood and those systems of representation that denigrate women who do not conform. Chapter One, a discussion of the relationship between women and crime, is a exploration of the meaning of the 'transgressive woman', using instances of true crime, film and images from the media. I discuss how these representations support the view of women in patriarchal ideology, and why the existence of women who kill is seen as socially and morally disruptive. The following four chapters deal with one film in detail. Chapter Two reviews the reactions to Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991) and discusses the film as potentially subversive in a male-identified genre closely associated with law­ breaking and criminality. Chapter Three on Single White Female (Barbet Schroeder, 1992) looks at the film in terms of its multifarious generic legacies. It . examines the two women characters as expressions of the problems of representing femininity in the genres of gothic and horror. Chapter Four looks at the role of the wife in recent Hollywood film. Using The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (Curtis Hanson, 1991), I examine the role of the wife as a figure who has the potential both to uphold and disrupt the nuclear family. Finally, Chapter Five is an analysis of Jurassic Park (Stephen Spielberg, 1993) that reveals that the film, while appearing to uphold family and paternal values, also provides a progressive and radical view of sex and gender. INTRODUCTION SIGNS OF TRANSGRESSION For everyone who watches Hollywood films, the 'woman as killer' is now such a recognizable figure that she can be found in every film genre. From femme fatale to action heroine, the figure of the killer woman can represent, on the one hand, the possibility of equality and progression, and alternately, a ratification of women's anti-social and threatening presence. She is therefore a useful figure of dissent, who can be used simultaneously to uphold and to destabilize current social values. My thesis is an analysis of the killer woman in recent Hollywood films as a representation of current social and cultural anxieties about the 'woman's role' and the 'woman's place'. How do these representations of women who kill inform and reflect recognised ideals of womanhood and femininity? How do they interact with contemporary social values? What makes the representation of the transgressive woman so meaningful in contemporary culture? I use the term 'transgressive' not simply as a useful all-encompassing term for female disorder, but also in the sense that it denotes the violation or infringement of rules and boundaries. The transgressive woman represents a suspect morality, a deviation away from the ideology of womanhood. The ideological processes that serve to inform us of women's position within culture also influence our recognition of such transgressions. These allow for a recognition of the horrors of anti-femininity: the witch, the lesbian, the prostitute, the femme fatale, the child­ killer. Such labels are not for the benefit of women, but serve to place women in 1 a negative position in terms of patriarchy. In other words, these labels show, primarily, women's relationship to men. Bill Nichols suggests that representations are useful points of reference that allow the individual to construct a coherent identification with social values: Ideology uses the fabrication of images and the processes of representation to persuade us that how things are is how they ought to be and that the place provided for us is the place we ought to have. 1 The ideological construction of the 'woman's place', however, tends to idealize some aspects of femininity while pathologizing others. The ideology that promotes the positive values of the essential nature of womanhood - nurturing, maternal and passive - at the same time warns of a dark side of dangerous, seductive sexual powers and a secretive and mysterious 'Otherness'. The femme fatale of film noir is a manifestation of deadly sexuality: the witch in popular mythology is an abject figure who threatens civilized folk with her mysterious powers. Figures of female transgression not only threaten to displace patriarchy but they typically do so in such a manner that their threatening natures can be applied to all women. Thus the tensions between the cultural ideals of femininity and the feared transgressive and antisocial properties that women are suspected to hold distorts the representation of the transgressive woman. For whom does she pose a threat? Yet, one person's transgressive figure may be another's feminist heroine. 'Re- reading the Bitches from Hell: A Feminist Appropriation of the Female Psychopath'3, the title (only slightly ironic) of a article in Screen, sums up exactly some of the dilemmas surrounding feminist critiques of transgressive figures. 2 Should we dismiss such figures as nothing more than misogynist representations of male paranoia, or should we attempt to rescue such figures from their texts, revealing some of their more positive elements? Diane Waldman, in discussing the problems of the concept of the 'positive image', argues that the recognition of both 'negative' and 'positive' images merely reiterates the problems of representation. 4 Recognition does not seek to establish the link between modes of representation and dominant ideological practices inherent in a capitalist, patriarchal, white- dominated culture. The theoretical position for feminism is, by definition, a reactive rather than proactive process, placing on top of the original meaning 'a further level of connotative reading'.s The ac+,ot'\ of appropriation implies that representations of women, whether transgressive or not, have a under~i~ meaning that can be separated from their modes of representation. When that mode of representation is Hollywood cinema, other complications arise. In Dykes to w~tdJ Out For, a collection of cartoons by Alison Bechdel, one particular cartoon sums up for me the problems facing all cinema-going women. 6 Two women are standing outside a cinema, which is decorated with posters for films called Rambo Meets Godzilla and The Vigilante, and one explains to"other /.. ~~ that she has three basic requirements for any film: (i) it must have at least two women in it, (ii) the two women must talk to each other, and (iii) the topic of conversation must be about something other than a man. Hence, the last film she saw was Alien. After looking at the films on offer, the two women decide to go home. This cartoon pre-dates Fatal Attraction (Adrian Lyne, 1987) and Black Widow (Bob Rafelson, 1987), which were both released the following year. Would these erstwhile filmgoers have greeted either film with enthusiasm? Given that both films - Black Widow more so than Fatal Attraction - match the criteria (which cannot be described as particularly stringent), can the Hollywood film 3 industry be seen as becoming more progressive and appealing to women? While the industry is supposed to provide popular entertainment, its products can often be remarkably unappealing: formulaic, uninspired, conformist, and repetitive. But simultaneously, certain films have the knack of tapping into the cultural psyche: Fatal Attraction is the most obvious example of the fear that transgressive women engender at the heart of patriarchal ideology. Can this film, or any film, tell us anything about the woman's place in patriarchy, or does it merely provide a certain cathartic pleasure in the destruction of the transgressive woman? Patriarchy, Adrienne Rich writes, is 'the power of the fathers', a universal system in which 'the female is subsumed under the male'.' Rich's analysis shows that the system is one which forces all women, whatever their class, race or sexuality, to live under male patronage, and with tacit male approval.