Femme Fatale Research Paper

The Femme Fatale has been in society, whether from imagination or from women who were seen as taboo or different from the norm. Where did this title come from, and has it always been around? I will be examining what the femme fatale is, and why the title has stayed with us throughout the years. I will also be analyzing as to why the femme fatale’s brother, the homme fatale has not been as widely known as the former.

The idea of the femme fatale is everywhere within our media. Whether it be through the Vamps in film noir or the succubus in supernatural fiction or even the Dragon Lady in comic strips. But what exactly is the femme fatale? The phrase itself is French and directly translates to “dangerous woman.” The Cambridge English dictionary

In the nineteenth century, femme fatales were featured in the paintings and artworks of many artists, like Edvard Munch’s Madonna painting . The femme fatale then became a popular figure to have art surrounding of and she was soon fashioned to have but not to be. In the twentieth century, the femme fatale transformed into the vampire because she was supposed to have seduced men and use her charms to get the “blood” or energy out of them. This new title took off from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, The Vampire, and was eventually shortened down to vamp in the United States media . This new role became widely appealing in the film industry and gave way to new films surrounding this mysterious figure. This may have been because these women were eroticized to a point that no one could imagine a vamp coming from one of the “correct” women of the time, or that they were so widely known that people wanted to learn more about them, in these fantastical films . These vamps were women that were normally sultry and “dark,” as in they had dark hair and eyes, and were foreign in nature. The foreignness of these women may also have contributed to their popularity in American minds because they added mystery onto the title of “vamp.” This helped the role of the femme fatale last during this time period and