. . . shooting from the hip, let me offer a somewhat underconsidered response to louie rayner's question about changes in the femme fatale over the past half century . . . . . . i venture that the classic noir babes [lana, rita, barbara] were NOT themselves interested in sex but used it as a tool for survival [GILDA] or, more commonly, for achieving wealth/power [DOUBLE INDEMNITY, POSTMAN, etc.] . . . the contemporary noir dame is, OTOH, an actively sexual creature who threatens the wholesome young protagonist not merely through her sexuality but with it . . . to this extent the contemporary version is less evasive about what in women threatens men . . . . . . it's possible to argue, though, that the change is more apparent than real, a function of changes in the various codes, formal or informal, that determine what can be shown on the screen and what can only be hinted at obliquely . . . a proof-text might come from comparing DOUBLE INDEMNITY with BODY HEAT . . in the former, and despite walter neff's inability to resist her, phyllis is not [i think] really sexualized . . . certainly it's hard to imagine her getting it on with her husband . . . and she seems to USE sex rather than indulge in it . . . maddy, in B.H., is quite different-- quite explicitly a highly sexual woman . . . . . . what remains to be determined is whether this is a change in the signifier merely or in the signified as well . . . or, to put it less stuffily, is maddy really more sexual than phyllis or is she, to appropriate jessica rabbit's wonderful formulation, merely drawn that way?? mike frank ---- To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]