Extract: Postmillennial Cinema and the Avenging Fatale in 'Sin City'

A New Kind of Tart (With a Heart)

Sin City is based on a combination of graphic novels written and illustrated by Frank Miller. It is a place where most of the authority figures are corrupt, turning a blind eye to vile serial killers with a penchant for human flesh or torturing children; allowing them to run rampant because of their connections to the “right” people. The femme fatales of Sin City are gun-toting, action-heroine–style prostitutes. They have a fragile truce with the police, who allow them to control a section of the city called “Old Town” in return for a share of the profits and free entertainment at parties. Although they are potentially lethal, these fatale figures stand out in that they lack the essential trait of dishonesty that has traditionally formed the basic construct of the deadly woman. Uncharacteristically, they are not intent on underhandedly stripping men of their wealth and dignity; rather, they are more closely aligned to sex worker Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) in the 1971 thriller Klute, who has a very business-like attitude towards the men with whom she has relations. As Dwight (Clive Owen), an on-and-off lover of one of the prostitutes, explains: “If you’ve got the cash and play by the rules they’ll make all your dreams come true.” It is only if you cross them that “you’re a corpse.” Not only are they straightforward in their dealings with men, for some, the women are true heroines. In Marv’s (Mickey Rourke) opinion, Goldie (Jamie King) is an “angel of mercy” as well as a friend and more when he needed one, showing him kindness that he had never experienced before. For Dwight (Clive Owen), Gail (Rosario Dawson) is his warrior woman and his Valkyrie. And although Miho (Devon Aoki) is a lethal ninja killer, she has a compassionate side, rescuing Dwight from certain death as he drowns in a tar pit. As he thankfully gushes: “Miho, you’re an angel, a saint, you’re mother Teresa, you’re Elvis, you’re God.”

Much of the frankness surrounding the women in Sin City relates to the way the commodification of sex is presented. The fatale figure as prostitute is a motif that has been present since 1940s US cinema. Fritz Lang’s 1945 classic Scarlet Street is a notable example, although in such films the fatale’s occupation in seedy industries such as sex work serves to further cement the character as highly untrustworthy and criminal. This image of the prostitute is often at odds with other sex-worker representations in a broader range of cinematic styles and genres. As Tasker (1998: 93) argues, whilst the femme fatale and prostitute are both stereotypes that articulate gender identities in relation to constructions of independence, self-reliance, and sexuality, the prostitute is often depicted as selling her sexuality in a straightforward “down-to-earth” manner and is repeatedly invoked to signify a position of relative “honesty,” as a “tart with a heart”. 

However, while the women of “Old Town” lack the inherent deceptiveness often linked to classical Hollywood fatale incarnations, Sin City is also a place where all the women are whores (Bould, 2005: 110), as well as being literally reduced to bits of meat by cannibal Kevin (Elijah Wood). According to Diane Negra (2009: 86-87), contemporary postfeminist discourse is marked by a new respectability (and even at times idealization) of women who are employed in the sex industry: “What is certainly clear is that the female sex worker is becoming one of popular culture’s most regular archetypes of paid labour” (Negra, 2009: 100). Negra draws on the “teen romance” The Girl Next Door (2004), where an honors student falls in love with his glamorous porn-star neighbour, as one of many examples. By depicting the heroine in the role of sex- industry worker, the threat of the urban career woman is defused. Therefore, representations such as this undercut and repudiate feminism, ensuring the restabilization of gender order (Negra, 2009: 87; McRobbie, 2009: 18). As Coulthard argues, by situating women in Sin City as prostitutes, gender clarity is restored (2007: 169). This sits in contrast to fatale representations in 1990s thrillers, where gender equality is undermined (and male anxiety alleviated) by positioning the career woman as a greedy, isolated psychopath.

Extract from:
Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies Issue 26 October 2013
Postmillennial Cinema and the Avenging Fatale in Sin City, Hard Candy and Descent
by: Samantha Jane Lindop, University of Queensland