Time.news – The “femme fatale”? She never existed, headlines Paìs, citing an essay that dismantles her myth in literature and cinema, considering it instead as “a misogynist reflex to counter the historical fear of women’s liberation“. In a nutshell, it is a stereotype that reveals instead “a fatal conception of the desire on the part of men to control those who could not submit to their will”, underlines the newspaper.
The philosopher Elisenda Julibert, 48, from Barcelona, author of the essay in question, “Hombres fatales”, tells us that “in many years of reading, I realized that the femme fatale had no fixed traits, beyond her unfortunate character. She was blonde or dark, cold or warm, sincere or lying, shy or determined, fiery or cold. In reality, it is as varied and changeable as the desire of those who imagined these characters ”. Ultimately, their character was illusory, a product of the fantasies and frustrations of the writers who described them.
If we refer, for example, to the typical expression – “cherchez la femme” – here is also the key to understanding that “every difficulty in which a man is involved there is always the intervention of a perfidious woman” therefore “this cultural history of the femme fatale as a scapegoat begins with ‘Susanna and the Elders’ (1610), the painting by Artemisia Gentileschi which reinterprets the biblical story of two old men fascinated by a naked young woman”.
Observes the philosopher: “I had seen dozens of paintings on this story, but from his version I understood that he described an abuse of power and an attempted rape“, says Julibert, who assures that the artist has forced the viewer to identify with his protagonist. Almost a parable about the overwhelming power of beauty.
Elisenda Julibert’s essay ultimately aspires to impose a similar change of perspective through two pairs of examples that dialogue with each other: the first is a comparison between Carmen, “the mother of all modern femme fatales”, and Nabokov’s Lolita. Once again, in short, the narrator “is an accused man who tries to convince the reader of his innocence and accuses a woman who seduced him with evil arts”.
“It is a reinterpretation of Carmen in a grotesque and wild, but also very subtle version. I had to read Lolita three times to understand her parodic character ”, says the author, who concludes:“ Misogyny has the power to reformulate itself indefinitely. The femme fatale may disappear, but soon other terrible mythological creatures will appear. “