Ciao miei amici di 396a!

Hello 396 friends. Welcome to another femme fatale blog.

In today's segment we're looking further into "The Cult of Domesticity"! Yay!

I was fortunate enough to take a wonderful women's studies class at UA a few years ago. After I began researching the idea of domestic perception of my femme fatale character(s), I decided to consult back on my texts and information from that WS class to help guiding me towards helpful sources. Thankfully, I am one of those people that tends to keep text books from past courses, unless of course I have serious mental trauma or lingering feelings of hatred from the content. So, I found both some helpful information in Women's Studies: Gender in a Transnational World, as well as an article that touched on Early Industrial Development.

The text that really got me thinking into the Cult of Domesticity was within the Journal article mentioned above. Within it states, "the cult of domesticity developed as an ideological justification for separation of the genders and for the relegation of women to the domestic sphere. [...] Men are assigned responsibility for providing material support for their families; women are suited to perform domestic tasks. " The article goes on to talk about women being seen as "innately nurturing and passive" and men being "competitive and aggressive". These justifications were put in place to show that men were much more adept at succeeding in the public sphere, while women were more suited for the domestic sphere.

What I also found extremely interesting was the use of Darwinian theories which many used to justify these separations. Because of evolution and the competitive nature of men, they became the idea species to be within the workforce, and thusly women needed to be within the domestic sphere. This article touched on a great deal of information regarding the urban, economic and industrial states of the early period of the 20th century.

I really am in the early stages of putting together my research in regards to the gender dynamics in relations to Film Noir and the femme fatale, but I am extremely excited as to this new avenue of theory that has popped up! I think I need to organize my thoughts a little more, but I promise more is to come on this gender front. Also, I have a great friend and former water polo coach that graduated from U of A two years ago with a JD and a Master's in WS who I have set up a phone call with for Sunday. She will hopefully give me some good theorists to look into for my new research angle.

I've been really worried about my project in the last month or so because of my lack of focus. This renewal in research avenues has been refreshing and I can not wait to keep going! Hopefully I will have more to post in the coming days.

Prison...

Have you ever been to prison? Have you ever known someone in prison? Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be in prison? Yeah, me either...

This past week I have been researching some of the fabulous women of the Film Noir genre. As I said before, or at least I think I said before, I have switched my focus from all of the women that depict femme fatales in Noir Cinema, to one lovely lady, Phyllis Dietrichson from Double Indemnity. I watched the movie again this week, for the 20th time I'm guessing, and again something new emerged! (I just love finding new and interesting moments, themes, motives, etc. when I reread or re-watch something)

So, the new theme that has emerged... drum roll please... DOMESTICITY.

In particular, Phyllis mentions, both directly or indirectly, the home as a prison. She brings up her domestic life as a wife and how depressed she is in her current state of affairs. Hence the murder plot...

So, I've begun to wonder if there isn't a link between Phyllis and other femme fatales in terms of their view on marriage, the home and domestic life. Phyllis compares being a married housewife to prison. I have a book I have been reading called "100 Film Noirs," which is done by the British Film Institute and put together by Jim Hiller and Alastair Phillips. This book looks into the progression of the genre through history, evaluating and presenting 100 pictures by name and director, while briefly summarizing each film.

After I watched DI this week, I went to this book and read DI's entry. Right there in the short summary was a bit about the home being a prison for Phyllis.

This is obviously a very important aspect of the film, and I can't believe I actually let myself go this far into my research without picking up on it. Phyllis talks about prison sentences for women who commit murder and in the same moment talks about the home being a prison. Then the real kicker... prison might be better than the prison she currently inhabits by being married to her husband! Yes, she really did say that.

So, back to my point of domestic roles and the femme fatale. I can't help but jump to something I have always been fascinated with known as the cult of domesticity. I am going to have to do some research, because I apparently have come down with a case of early onset Alzheimer's (thanks grammy), but I think that this term was coined during the height of the Film Noir Genre, the 40's and 50's. The idea behind the cult of domesticity: women were to be the ideal homemaker and wife. Her domain, the home. Her job, caring for the children and taking caring for the home. Women were in charge of the domestic sphere...

Again, I need to do more research and look back at some of my older textbooks, but I think this may be a very good jumping point to better link Phyllis the femme fatale to her Noir counterparts. I'm not going to put all my eggs in one basket, but I would be willing to wager a hefty sum that Phyllis is not the only femme fatale that hated the domestic life.

So, this is where I am progressing to... Fingers crossed this will help to open up some new avenues of research...

Till next time, stay classy my blogging friends.

Quantitative Research

Oh, To Blog:

First, I am actually very happy for the newly instituted blog deadline of 9pm. I think this will help me greatly on keeping my research on the straight and narrow. I like freedom, but sometimes I can take advantage of a lack of structure, thusly transferring that into laziness and procrastination. A sad panda face for the new deadline for those that were actually keeping up with the blogs regularly. I was getting behind, as I am sure most others were, so happy day for our renewed chance at blog obedience. I look forward to keeping my research going, as well as reading the new blog posts from Courtney and Ben.

Ok, on to Quantitative Research...

I think quantitative research can be helpful in some projects. The right artifact research could really be moved forward using the quantitative approach. I for one, don't see a whole lot of room for it in my particular study, but that is not to say I do not think it could be beneficial.

I think, if someone was looking to use this in their study, you would have to be careful not to get skewed numbers. For instance, I think surveying people and then potting their responses in a quantitative, mathematical approach could be great. I liked the example of looking at responses to Poe's 4 works. But, even in a study like that you would most likely have to involve the elements of the IRB formatting, so as to not offend, hurt or do any other kind of mental of psychological harm to those that you wish to survey. (Granted, those pieces alone could scar someone or greatly hinder their psychological and mental health standing as is, but Poe started that ball rolling...)

Personally, I think it could be really easy to manipulate numbers to get the response you wanted, which really is a disadvantage in my mind to using this method. Someone could theoretically throw out certain studies or number finding; a survey, a percentage, whatever the quantitative material, so as to drive their research in their "right direction." That aspect really makes me frown. If you were to survey people, you could make up any excuse you wanted to shrink the spectrum you are looking at, changing the results. And personally, this kills the research and the reason for doing the research in the first place. Finally, that makes the whole shebang unethical!

If you think about if for a moment, it could be argued that we can unethically change/skew our research using any and all methods of research. We have to rely on our own moral conscience to stay ethically honest and authentic.

Let us get down to the nitty gritty of this project. First, I got a super crappy grade on my Article Review. It was totally deserved. Although I spent a lot of time attempting to write it, it was crap. I got a C+ which was totally deserved. I am not one to get bad grades, but this review grade was totally warranted. It sucked to be perfectly honest. I went back and re-read it after I got it back, with a glass of wine in hand, and was extremely embarrassed. It was so incoherent it was ridiculous. My ideas were scattered, the summary was decent, but I did not accomplish anything other than making sweeping generalizations. This was totally due to the fact that I have not had a clear path towards where I was starting and where I was attempting to go. First, just looking at the femme fatale in film noir is so large that I could spend a lifetime just looking at that. I also had no overall ideas as to where I wanted to end up. This was all reflected in my craptastic review.

In revision, I settled down on one femme fatale. Phyllis, the blonde murderous wife in Double Indemnity my target. This woman is evil. Pure and simple. She plots and uses her sexuality to seduce Neff, an insurance salesman, to take out a life insurance policy on her husband , and then proceeds to have Neff kill him. Poor pitiful Neff is the pawn on the story. He does what Phyllis wants just because he believes they are in love. In actuality this woman uses her overt sexuality to seduce Neff into a lustful state and then uses his weakness for her to her advantage. Pathetic.

Anyways, this woman is my new focus. Her characterization of a strong, sexually charged woman with purely greed and lust on her mind is the ultimate Femme Fatale in a classic Film Noir feature.

Rhetorical Precis

Hi!

Ok, so I've been a little bad about keeping up on my blog since getting sick and then becoming overwhelmed with my project. I should have talked out my problems with my research and Femme Fatale project here, but I did not. So here is to a new start, and a new attempt at catching and keeping up!

My rhetorical precis was a bit of a challenge. Over the last few weeks I had been trying to get my sources together. I found an overwhelming amount of relevant information about Film Noir and the use of the Femme Fatale in these features. I think in part I have not had a very clear understanding of where I wanted to begin and what I wanted to accomplish in this semester, so my research has been far to vast. I was looking at any and everything that had content regarding Noir Cinema and women. I failed to see that searching this would bring up about a million scholarly articles. I then attempted to sift through these, which seemed like an endless project in itself.

Finally, after exasperating myself, I settled on 4 sources to start. One was an article that I had been looking at from Film Quarterly and the other three were reviews in Film Quarterly of the books I wanted to check out, but that were already in the possession of some other lucky scholar. While waiting to get my hands on those books, I found the book reviews extremely helpful. Instead of stressing beyond belief about reading all 3 books, these reviews helped give me great insight from someone already well versed in the contents.