FEMME FATALE REPRESENTATION IN THE CONTEXT OF GENDER; BECKY SHARP (1935) MOVIE

Yıl 2024, Cilt: 3 Sayı: 1, 12 - 27, 13.10.2024

Serbay Çelebi

Öz

In the history of literature and art, the representation and construction of women is often characterized by their gender by male artists and writers. Until the 19th century, the representation of women in western culture was characterized by intensely hegemonic cultural creations, traditionally struggling with the power of the unequal sex, within male-defined spaces. Cultural creations, and more specifically representations of women, are based on or serve to recreate ideologies that are accepted but not questioned by society, such as the assumed power and superiority of men over women. The function of ideology is to curb overt power relations in a society at a given point in history and to portray them as part of the natural, eternal order of things. The representation of women in Victorian literature and art was closely linked to broader themes of femininity, gender roles and social expectations. The femme fatale is seen as a symbol of power against male-dominated ideologies and goes beyond normative female sexuality. In this respect, Becky Sharp (1935) is one of the films in which the ideological function is reproduced
and the femme fatale representation emerges. In the film, Becky Sharp is often associated with sexuality, manipulation and power. Through her sexual appeal and manipulative actions, she controls her chosen victims and bankrupts them by causing them to break away from society. This article examines the characterization of Vanity Fair in nineteenth-century England, particularly in Victorian art and literature, as depicted in William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero by William Thackeray and the film Becky Sharp (1935) adapted from the book by Rouben Mamoulian, this article examines the representation of the femme fatale from an ideological perspective with visuals from the film and excerpts from the book. The aim of this study is to trace the major social and historical changes of the Victorian era in the context of film and literature, and to examine how they affected the construction of the femme fatale in the context of gender. The study explores the concept of femme fatale in a feminist context, demonstrating that while women use female sexuality to challenge the dominant ideology of men, they are still bound by the limitations and expectations of society. Holistically, this article aims to explore the construction and development of the femme fatale representation in film, and the formal and historical transformations of this image.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Femme Fatale, Becky Sharp, Woman, Representation, Gender

TOPLUMSAL CİNSİYET BAĞLAMINDA ÖLÜMCÜL KADIN (FEMME FATALE) TEMSİLİ; BECKY SHARP (1935) FİLMİ

Öz

Edebiyat ve sanat tarihinde, kadın temsili ve yapısı genellikle erkek sanatçı ve yazarlar tarafından toplumsal cinsiyetiyle karakterize edilir. 19. yüzyıla kadar batı kültüründe kadın temsili, yoğun hegemonik kültürel yaratımlarla tanımlanmış, geleneksel olarak eşit olmayan cinsiyetin iktidarıyla mücadele eden bir düzlemde; erkek tarafından tanımlanan alanlar içinde ele alınmıştır. Kültürel yaratımlar ve daha spesifik olarak kadın temsilleri, erkeklerin kadınlar üzerindeki varsayılan gücü ve üstünlüğü gibi toplum tarafından kabul edilen ancak sorgulanmayan ideolojilere dayanır veya bunları yeniden yaratmaya hizmet eder. İdeolojinin işlevi, tarihin belirli bir noktasında bir toplumdaki açık güç ilişkilerini frenlemek ve bunları şeylerin doğal, ebedi düzeninin bir parçası olarak göstermektir. Viktorya dönemi edebiyatı ve sanatında kadınların temsili, kadınlık, toplumsal cinsiyet rolleri ve toplumsal beklentiler gibi daha geniş temalarla yakından ilişkiliydi. Femme fatale, erkek egemen ideolojilere karşı bir güç sembolü olarak görülür ve normatif kadın cinselliğinin ötesine geçer. Bu yönüyle Becky Sharp (1935) ideolojik işlevin yeniden üretildiği ve femme fatale temsilinin ortaya çıktığı filmlerden biridir. Filmde Becky Sharp, genellikle cinsellik, manipülasyon ve güç ile ilişkilendirilir. Cinsel çekiciliği ve manipülatif eylemleriyle, seçtiği kurbanları kontrol eder ve toplumdan kopmalarına neden olarak onları iflas ettirir. Bu makale, on dokuzuncu yüzyıl İngiltere'sinde, özellikle Viktorya dönemi sanat ve edebiyatında ortaya çıkan; William Thackeray'in Vanity Fair: Kahramansız Bir Roman kitabındaki Becky karakterinde ve daha sonra Rouben Mamoulian'ın kitaptan uyarlayarak beyaz perdeye taşıdığı Becky Sharp (1935) filminde; femme fatale temsilini, ideolojik bir perspektif çerçevesinde filmden görsellerle ve kitaptan alıntılarla birlikte detaylıca ele almaktadır. Bu çalışmanın amacı, film ve edebiyat bağlamında Viktorya döneminin önemli toplumsal ve tarihsel değişimlerinin izini sürmek ve bunların toplumsal cinsiyet bağlamında femme fatale inşasını nasıl etkilediğini incelemektir. Çalışma, femme fatale kavramını feminist bir bağlamda ele alırken, kadınların erkeklerin egemen ideolojisine meydan okumak için kadın cinselliğini kullanırken yine de toplumun sınırlamalarına ve beklentilerine bağlı olduklarını ortaya koymuştur. Bu makale, bütünsel olarak; film özelinde femme fatale temsilinin inşasını; gelişimini ve bu imgenin biçimsel ve tarihsel dönüşümlerini araştırmayı amaçlamaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Femme Fatale, Becky Sharp, Kadın, Temsil, Cinsiyet

Kaynakça

• Braun, Heather. (2012). The Rise and Failure of the Femme Fatale in English Literature. Maryland: 6-7. Fairleigh Dickinson UP.
• Derman, Deniz. (1989). Jean-Luc Godard’ın Sinemasında Kadının Yeniden Sunumu. Ankara, 34-35, Değişim Yayınları.
• Dijkstra, Bram. (1986). Idols of Perversion: Fantasies of the Feminine House in Fin-de-siecle Culture, 116-117, New York: Oxford UP.
• Foucault, Michael. (1990) Cinselliğin Tarihi, 81, Cilt I: Giriş. New York: Random House.
• Nead, Lynda. (1998) Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian Britain. 27 - 29. Oxford, UK: B. Blackwell.
• Showalter, Elaine. (1990) Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture in the Fin de Siecle. 39. New York, NY, USA: Viking.
• Weeks, Jeffrey (1989). Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800. 5, 161. Landon: Longman.
• Thackeray, William (1848). Makepeace and George Saintsbury. Vanity Fair: A Novel without a Hero. 16, 17, 19, 174, 187, 354, London: Oxford Up.
• Zizek, Slavoj. (1999) Elizabeth Wright and Edmond L. Wright. The Zizek Reader. 139. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
• Arpacı, Murat. (2019). Cinsiyet, Kötülük Ve Beden: Femme Fatale İmgesinin Kültürel İnşası. Fe Dergi 11, No. 1, 140-154. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/federgi/issue/45889/579206
• Berktay, Fatmagül. (2010). ‘‘Yeni Kimlik Arayışı, Eski Cinsel Düalizm: Peyami Safa’nın Romanlarında Toplumsal Cinsiyet’’ Kadın Araştırmaları Dergisi, (9), 77-90. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/iukad/issue/728/7863
• Boyd, Jason. (2008). ''Staging the Page: Visibility and Invisibility in Oscar Wilde's Salome'' Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 35.1 (2008): 17-47. https://doi.org/10.7227/NCTF.35.1.4 Averbuch, A. (2019). The theurgy of impurity: Fin-de-race and feminine sin in Russian and Ukrainian modernisms. The Russian Review, 78(3), 459 - 485. https://doi.org/10.1111/russ.12240
• Bakır, B. and Onat, E. (2015). The transformation of the seductive woman figure in Hollywood cinema. Uşak University Journal of Social Sciences, 2014 (19). https://doi.org/10.12780/uusbd.17976
• Bell, A. (2011). Falling in love again and again: Marlene Dietrich and the iconisation of non-native speakers of English1. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 15(5), 627-656. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2011.00516.x
• Boucher, A. (2019). The disembodied and the controlled: Aristocratic female bodies and the gaze in the works of Mrs Henry Wood. Women S Writing, 28(1), 90-106. https://doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2019.1640936
• Cuzovic-Severn, M. (2017). The geopolitics of Emilia pardo bazán's la quimera: femme fatale as divided feminist subject. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 8(5), 31- 40. https://doi.org/10.1515/mjss-2017-0021
• Deutsch, F. (2007). Reclaiming gender. Gender & Society, 21(1), 106 -127. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243206293577 Egan, S. and Perry, D. (2001). Gender identity: a multidimensional analysis with implications for psychosocial adjustment. Developmental Psychology, 37(4), 451- 463. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.37.4.451
• England, D., Descartes, L., & Collier-Meek, M. (2011). Gender role portrayal and disney princesses. Sex Roles, 64(7-8), 555-567. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-011-9930-7
• England, P., Levine, A., & Mishel, E. (2020). Progress toward gender equality has slowed or stalled in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(13), 6990-6997. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1918891117
• Farrimond, K. (2012). 'be still so we can see who you are': anxiety and bisexual activity in contemporary femme fatale film. Journal of Bisexuality, 12(1), 138-154. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299716.2012.645725
• Frable, D. (1997). Gender, racial, ethnic, sexual, and class identities. Annual Review of Psychology, 48(1), 139-162. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.48.1.139 Greene, A. and Robbins, M. (2015). The price of a calling? Women clergy and work in the Church of England. Gender Work and Organization, 22(4), 405-420. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12101
• Goss, B. (2020). Neoliberal-spotting: read the socioeconomic symptoms oftrainspotting(1996) andt2: trainspotting(2017). Journal of Communication Inquiry, 45(2), 159-177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0196859920961042
• Holdier, A. (2021). Kierkegaard's three spheres and cinematic fairy tale pedagogy infrozen, moana, andtangled. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 33(2), 105-119. https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.2018-0027
• Jancovich, M. (2010). Ghost women: war worker, slacker and 'femme fatale'. New Review of Film and Television Studies, 8(2), 164-178. https://doi.org/10.1080/17400301003700277
• Liu, S. (2023). A research on the representational strategies of femme fatale in contemporary Chinese film-noir. BCP Education & Psychology, 8, 314-322. https://doi.org/10.54691/bcpep.v8i.4346
• Lucas, J. and Ordeniza, S. (2023). The representation of women in literature in different periods. Technoarete Transactions on Language and Linguistics, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.36647/ttll/02.01.a002
• Minowa, Y., Maclaran, P., & Stevens, L. (2019). The femme fatale invogue: femininity ideologies in fin-de-siècle america. Journal of Macromarketing, 39(3), 270-286. https://doi.org/10.1177/0276146719847748
• Martin, C., Andrews, N., England, D., Zosuls, K., & Ruble, D. (2016). A dual identity approach to conceptualising and measuring children's gender identity. Child Development, 88(1), 167-182. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12568
• Martin, E. (1991). Egg and sperm: How science constructed a romance based on stereotypical male-female roles. Signs, 16(3), 485-501. https://doi.org/10.1086/494680
• Monzavi, A. (2021). Gender, fashion and representation in nineteenth-century British art. https://doi.org/10.32920/ryerson.14665572
• Moraes, R. (2017). Femmes fatales: representation and the spectrum of modernity in films. Revista De Letras, 19(25). https://doi.org/10.3895/rl.v19n24.2893
• Murphy, B. (2011).Gender identities and discourse, 53-78. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214420.53