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Seduction and Mutually Assured Destruction: The Modern “Femme Fatale” in “Gone Girl”

Seduction and Mutually Assured Destruction: The Modern “Femme Fatale” in “Gone Girl”

Ana Cabral Martins
Copyright: © 2017 |Pages: 22
ISBN13: 9781522505259|ISBN10: 1522505253|EISBN13: 9781522505266
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-0525-9.ch005
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MLA

Martins, Ana Cabral. "Seduction and Mutually Assured Destruction: The Modern “Femme Fatale” in “Gone Girl”." Seduction in Popular Culture, Psychology, and Philosophy, edited by Constantino Martins and Manuel Damásio, IGI Global, 2017, pp. 90-111. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0525-9.ch005

APA

Martins, A. C. (2017). Seduction and Mutually Assured Destruction: The Modern “Femme Fatale” in “Gone Girl”. In C. Martins & M. Damásio (Eds.), Seduction in Popular Culture, Psychology, and Philosophy (pp. 90-111). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0525-9.ch005

Chicago

Martins, Ana Cabral. "Seduction and Mutually Assured Destruction: The Modern “Femme Fatale” in “Gone Girl”." In Seduction in Popular Culture, Psychology, and Philosophy, edited by Constantino Martins and Manuel Damásio, 90-111. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-0525-9.ch005

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Abstract

In cinema, the most prevalent representation of the figure of the seductress has been the femme fatale or the “vamp”. This chapter will explore the femme fatale in various incarnations in American cinema throughout its history. This chapter will also overview several definitions of femme fatale, and its connection with sex, seduction and destruction, in cinema's history, principally the American silent film's “vamp”, personified by the actress Theda Bara; and the 1940s filmnoir's femme fatale, personified by actresses such as Rita Hayworth and Barbara Stanwyck. In an attempt to trace a connection between different embodiments of the femme fatale in American cinema, this chapter will focus, in particular, on David Fincher's cinematic adaptation of the pulp fiction novel Gone Girl (2012), by Gillian Flynn. Not only does Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014) offer one of the most recent interpretations of the traditional film noir trope, it also provides a modern update of the femme fatale.

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