Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

I am obviously entering now into a new realm of qualities and attributes
represented by the femmes fatales in these noir films. The way these women exert their
control over men shows a gender role reversal (p. 175), which, in the light of Lacanian
theory, is manifested in “the Other’s gaze” that elicits desire. Fig. 113 below is an
interesting scene from Scarlet Street, as it represents Cross’s ultimate submission to Kitty
when she hands him a bottle of nail polish so he can paint her toenails. The scene is very
similar to fig. 112 above, even in artistic terms: the implicit sexuality is expressed with the
woman stretching her leg to the man. While it is clear that in fig. 112 the sexual charge is
transposed literally to “the other” (Diamond is attracted to Susan Lowell), in the scene
below Cross sees in Kitty’s “Lazy Legs” all he could desperately hope for: the fragranced
warmth and understanding that he thinks Kitty represents. In both cases, however, the two
male protagonists appear to be sexually frustrated and compensating for their own
impotence.
Just to conclude this comparison of sexual charge that is present in these two films
in particular and in film noir in general, it is important to emphasise from a semiotic point
of view that as substitution and displacement (the two axes of language mentioned on p.
262) correspond to the working of the unconscious, so do desire and sexuality and this is
the reason why sexuality cannot be considered the result of a need. The unconscious
manifests itself in these scenes in acts of courtly love and submission which, as Lacan
declared, “is an altogether refined way of making up for the absence of sexual relation by
pretending that it is we who put up an obstacle to it” (in Easthope 1999:68).
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