Reconstruction 5.4 (Fall 2005)
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Pushing Containment: The Tale of the 1950s Science Fiction Vamp / Susan A. George
Abstract: Starting with the observations of Janet Staiger and others regarding the female vampire or Vamp character, who has sucked men dry physically, financially, and/or morally for centuries, this essay looks at the representation of the Vamp in three science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s—Them! (1954), The Wasp Woman (1960), and The Leech Woman (1959). The essay focuses on what the science fiction Vamp adds to the representation of the cinematic Vamp, first seen in films such as The Mothering Heart (1913) and A Fool There Was (1915), and how they represent age-old male fears regarding the feminine while at the same time commenting on the anxieties and concerns of the specific historical period that spawned them.
<1> The "bad women" of recent science fiction films including their technological and alien stand-ins, such as the TX3 in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Sil from Species (1995), Star Trek''s the Borg Queen and the Alien Queen from the Alien films (1986;1997), were not born full-grown from the heads of writers, but are the descendents of a long line of archetypal representations. Among these bad women, the female vampire characters or Vamps may be the most threatening as they have sucked men dry physically, financially, and/or morally for centuries on stage, in literature and more recently in film. As Janet Staiger notes in Bad Women: Regulating Sexuality in Early American Cinema, "'the fear of women has taken many forms in history,' including the archetypal figures of Delilah, Cleopatra, Carmen, Salome, and the Beautiful Woman without Mercy" (149). Staiger further notes that the Vamp appears as a staple in early U.S. films such as D.W. Griffith's The Mothering Heart (1913) and Frank Powell's A Fool There Was (1915). The Vamp is a strong figure that resists, disrupts, and challenges patriarchy.
<2> While the Vamp has never been completely absence for the silver screen, she returns with a vengeance in the form of film noir's femme fatale and is evident in 1950s science fiction films. The Science Fiction Vamp (SF Vamp), like the Vamps of Staiger's study, has "intelligence and will in her pursuit of men upon which to prey" and she "can be considered a projection of male fear or hatred of women" (149). Besides representing an age-old "male fear of women," the Vamp also has "specific cultural meanings" associated with her historical moment (Staiger 149). The SF Vamp is no exception as she takes on a variety of forms that are in direct response to the issues, concerns, and anxieties circulating in the 1950s cultural landscape. This essay focuses on how the representation of three SF Vamps—the Queen Ants of Them! (1954), Janice Starlin in The Wasp Woman (1960), June Talbot in The Leech Woman (1959)—open a critical space that begins to critique and comment on the anxieties concerning the role of women in the 1950s specifically while at the same time evoking or "tapping into" older western fears regarding the nature of woman (King 198).
<3> While many nostalgically remember the 1950s as a calmer, gentler time, as historian David Halberstam notes "Social ferment [ . . .] was beginning just beneath this placid surface" (preface). U.S. citizens were dealing with a variety of social and political changes such as the development and use of the atomic bomb, the beginning of the Civil Rights movement and McCarthyism. Social and political issues also affected gender roles and expectations. In Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, Elaine Tyler May notes that "fears of sexual chaos tend to surface during times of crisis and rapid social change" and this was true of the turbulent 1950s (93). Along with the efforts to push women out of the work force and back into the home after WWII, writers from a variety of fields such as Philip Wylie and Mickey Spillane were warning that female desire and sexuality, if not properly contained, could distract men, destroy families and make the nation weak and ripe for Communist infiltration (Tyler May 97).
<4> Containment, then, became not only a political strategy but a social one as well. For 1950s U.S. society social containment meant marriage and the establishment of the new "traditional" household, the nuclear family, with the husband as breadwinner and the woman as wife, housewife, and mother. The "proper role" for the 1950s woman was to stay at home, make sure the children were good citizens, show interest in what her husband was interested in and prepare the home for any emergency that the Cold War could deliver. Men's roles were also changing in the 1950s, as the archetypal image of the rugged individualist was becoming suspect and being replaced by the team player or "organization man." Conformity, maintaining the status quo and the norm were the new values of the time, standing in stark contrast to the residual U.S. values of individualism. The promotion and support for this new conformity appeared in a wide range of cultural texts in the 1950s. Stuart Samuels notes that
Popular books like Riesman's The Lonely Crowd, William Whyte's The Organization Man, and Vance Packard's The Status Seekers showed how the traditional model of the hard working, rugged individualist was being rejected for a world of the group—big universities, big suburbs, big business, and big media. (211)
This move to the group made many U.S. men feel powerless in the public sphere, so the renewed focus on the family not only worked to contain women within the home, but emphasized the importance of a man's role as breadwinner and ruler of the new suburban home.
<5> Besides doing its part to promote the "proper" role for women in the public and private spheres, 1950s Hollywood also produced cautionary tales regarding what could happen if female sexuality and ambition were not contained. Narrative containment became as important to the portrayal of female characters on the silver screen as it was for their counterparts in U.S. society. The solutions were similar, though far more extreme for the film characters. For film women, containment was achieved by the clear establishment of the heterosexual couple (that would lead, in theory, to marriage), marriage, or, in the worse case scenario, death. Death was usually the fate of the SF Vamp.
<6> While the SF Vamp has much in common with the Vamps that came before her, there is one significant difference. Most screen Vamps, such as the femme fatale, remain beautiful until their end. However, the SF Vamps's deeds and desires are inscribed on their bodies. The SF Vamp is either monstrous from the beginning or transforms into an invading monster. For example, the SF Vamps in Douglas Gordon's Them! are monstrous from the beginning and are explicitly linked to the specific historical moment—a moment full of fear, confusion, and anxiety concerning the development of nuclear technology and its effect on the environment.
<7> In By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, Paul Boyer notes that many science fiction films
had obvious psychological roots in the fear of genetic damage from radiation. This is quite explicit in Them! (1954), in which mutant ants big enough to ruin any picnic emerge from an atomic-bomb test site in New Mexico. At the end, the scientist-hero draws the moral: in the atomic age, this sort of thing must be expected. (354)
On one level, the giant ants of Them! are manifestations of the fears regarding the modern era's invisible enemy, radiation, as Boyer says; what he leaves out is that the central threat presented by the queen ants is their gender and their ability to reproduce, making them a danger to the nation and therefore to patriarchy. The connection between radiation and female sexuality was common in the 1950s. As Benjamin Shapiro writes, "[t]his link of atomic power with female sexuality has been widely noted as a broad phenomenon in American popular culture. The bomb dropped on Bikini Island, for example, was itself nicknamed for femme fatale 'Gilda' and adorned with a picture of Rita Hayworth" (109). Boyer notes that
Within days of Hiroshima, burlesque houses in Los Angeles were advertising "Atom Bomb Dancers." In early September, . . . Life fulfilled a Hollywood press agent's dream with a full-page cheesecake photograph of a well-endowed MGM starlet who had been officially dubbed "The Anatomic Bomb." (12)
One particularly poignant example appears in Tyler May's book. She reprints a cartoon that shows three women in bathing suits and sashes as if in a Miss America pageant. On their sashes is written Alpha, Beta, Gamma and the women "personif[y] the three deadly rays of radiation. The [civil defense] pamphlet explained that 'these rays are potentially both harmful and helpful,' presumably like the sexy women who represent them" (Tyler May 110). This connection between the danger of radiation and women, more specifically the feminine and reproduction, is foregrounded in Them!
<8> Early in the film the giant queen ants, like the alien in Alien (1979), are "reconstructed and represented as a negative figure, one associated with the dread of the generative mother seen only in the abyss, the monstrous vagina, the origin of all life threatening to reabsorb what it once birthed" (Creed 135). The threat of these female monstrosities is so strong that the two scientists of the film, the aging Dr. Medford and his daughter, Dr. Pat Medford, do not reveal their fears concerning the new queen ants' existence until they are absolutely sure. Dr. Medford (the father) quickly and directly links the ant mutation to the first New Mexico atomic bomb tests in 1945. He then frames the destruction the queen ants could bring in apocalyptical proportions, "We may be witnesses to a biblical prophecy come true; and there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation and the beasts shall reign over the earth." [1] Dr. Medford's comments directly connect the events of the film to the anxieties concerning atomic testing and the religious response to atomic technology. More importantly, however, his secrecy and fears regarding the queen ant peril links this technology to female sexuality and reproduction.
<9> The threat the queen ants represent to patriarchy is evident throughout the film. They are repeatedly represented as the "generative archaic mother, constructed within patriarchal ideology as the primeval 'black hole'" (Creed 136). For example, after discovering that the ants do, indeed, exist the group including both Doctors, the FBI agent Robert Graham and police Sergeant Ben Peterson, split up and search the desert for the colony—Graham with Dr. Pat Medford, since they will represent the heterosexual couple of the film, and Dr. Medford with Peterson. Dr. Pat Medford and Graham find the nest and from the helicopter, it is literally a black hole in the desert. As they observe it an ant's head emerges with a human rib cage caught in its mandibles. The mise-en-scene of the film makes literal the patriarchal ideology of the primeval black hole. In case the message is not yet clear, later Dr. Medford tells assembled officials, "unless these queens are located and destroyed before they've established thriving colonies and can produce heaven alone knows how many more queen ants, man as the dominant species of life on earth will probably be extinct within a year" (my emphasis). The representation of the evil feminine does not end there, however, as the mere act of looking upon the queen ants in flight, like looking at Medusa, can un-man even a tough Texan, let alone the average American male.
<10> Alan Crotty, a Texas ranch foreman, encounters one of the queens and her consorts in flight. He loses control of his plane, crashes and when he tells his story to the authorities, they place him in a psychiatric ward for observation. Dr. Pat Medford and Graham go to see him to find out if his "flying saucers" are their queen ants. When they confirm the ant sighting, they tell the doctor in charge to keep him confined until the ant threat is over. Crotty's incarceration is a form of unmanning. They take away his clothes, his shoes, and even the tie to hold up his pajama bottoms. He is basically on suicide watch and stripped of all power and authority. This position of weakness was not a position that any post war U.S. male wished to occupy, for strength was what was needed in the Cold War era. As Tyler May notes, the rhetoric of the time stated that "National strength depended upon the ability of strong, manly men to stand up against communist threats," even if the temptation came in the form of a woman (94). The narratives and politics of the 1950s proclaimed that softness could be caused by female sexuality and often lead to subversion, communist infiltration or perversion (Tyler May 98). The queen ant represents and demonstrates this threat as her encounter with Crotty makes him "soft" and helpless. To reinforce the queen ants threat to patriarchy specifically, all the victims of the queen ants who are discussed, a police office, a father out with his sons, and Sergeant Peterson are men. Therefore, while the film starts and certainly can be read as a manifestation of fears regarding the genetic damage caused by atomic testing as Boyer suggests, it is also a tale concerning the threat of female sexuality and the need to contain it.
<11> Not all SF Vamps are giant insects or represent anxieties concerning atomic testing. Some are human women doomed to transform into the deadly SF Vamp because of their overreaching desire to regain youth, beauty, male affection and/or financial gain. All of these characteristics are fatal flaws in a woman—at least that was what 1950s films, novels, Federal Civil Defense Administration pamphlets, and articles in The Ladies Home Journal, Redbook and McCall's were telling the nation. Into this cultural milieu, enter The Wasp Woman's Miss Janice Starlin, the aging owner of her own cosmetic company. The first scenes at Starlin Enterprises reveal that there has been a 14.5 percent decrease in product sales for the Janice's company but not across the board for all cosmetic companies. Janice asks her top people—all men except for her secretary, Mary—what they think is happening. Finally, Bill Lane tells her what he thinks is the cause. She has stopped putting her face on the products. People trusted her, her face and, therefore, bought her products. Now that the different face appears on the products, people have lost that trust. The rest of the men agree. Janice thanks them for their flattery but lets us know the crux of the problem—no one, not even Janice Starlin, can remain a "glamour girl forever" and her power and financial security within the patriarchal system is based at least in part on her beauty.
<12> In this short sequence, the viewer has learned a great deal about Janice and all of the information points to poor Janice's eventual and yet certain doom. For one thing, she is a "Miss." She is a 41-year-old single woman. Janice clearly is not concerned with the family and the values attached to it during the 1950s, but with her own career, success, and survival. Her rejection of family and her refusal to stay at home disrupt 1950s notions of the proper arena for women, the sanctity of the male role of breadwinner, and defy the new U.S. project to revive family values and traditional gender roles. As Marynia Farnham and Ferdinand Ludberg noted in Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, women like Janice "who desire[d] to remain childless or single [were viewed as] abnormal" (qtd. Byars 83). However, the screen career woman was not always a threat or a monster. In All that Hollywood Allows: Re-Reading Gender in 1950s Melodrama, Jackie Byars notes that in the 1940s, when women's labor was in high demand, the independent working woman was vital and happy, but in the 1950s, when women's labor was no longer needed and the Cold War began to heat up, she was transformed into an unhappy, desperate, bitter, neurotic, and abnormal creature (75). The narrative progression of The Wasp Woman makes this transformation literal as the independent working woman, Janice Starlin, turns out to be not only "abnormal" but also monstrous.
<13> Janice receives a letter from one Eric Zinthrop who claims that he has developed a compound from queen wasp royal jelly that can restore youth. Janice, in an attempt to save her company and regain her youthful vigor (she was only 23 years old when she started her company), sets up a meeting with Zinthrop. Though one of her staff members, Arthur Cooper, warns her to stay away from wasps, she decides to sponsor Zinthrop's research and be his first human guinea pig. In addition, she decides to bypass scientific procedure to hurry along her transformation and, behind Zinthrop's back, increases the frequency of her injections. Her transgressions against the 1950s patriarchal system, then, are many. She ignores and rejects the advice and opinion of the white male Cooper and flouts the rationality and logic of the scientific method. Janice's rejection of Cooper's advice and the scientific method not only challenges 1950s norms and values, but also reinforces the binary structure that aligns masculinity with science, logic, and reason and femininity with irrationality, nature, and emotion. Early in the film, Janice's transgressions already resonate on a specific historical level and tap into older notions regarding the feminine.
<14> Once she has regained her full youthful allure and sexuality, discarding or no longer needing her severe black-rimmed glasses, the trouble starts. It begins with headaches and ends with her rather corny and low-tech transformation into a queen wasp. The words of Arthur Cooper, who warned her to beware, are a clue to what happens next. He tells Janice:
I'd stay away from wasps if I were you Miss Starlin. Socially the queen wasp is on a level with the black widow spider. They are both carnivorous. They paralyzed their victims, then take their time devouring them alive. They kill their mates in the same way too—strictly a one-sided romance.
Though it is good advice, neither Janice nor Cooper can stay away from wasps as she transforms and he becomes her first victim. In this film, it is as clear as the bulging eyes and antennae on her head who the invading monster is—the independent working woman of the nuclear age that threatens the power and order of patriarchy.
<15> After Janice has started giving herself the additional injections, the power of her uncontainable ambition and sexuality puts yet another U.S. institution in jeopardy—the heterosexual couple. "Heterosexual bonding" was not only a 1950s strategy for domestic containment but it "occurs with such consistency [in science fiction films] that we may consider it an integral part of the generic formula" (Shapiro 108). The men at Starlin Enterprises are quick to notice the change in Janice as her youthful beauty is restored. Even Bill Lane, Mary's boyfriend, is affected and attracted to the radiant Janice:
BILL. I'm ready when you are boss . . .
she? Do you think Zinthrop would give you any of those treatments?
MARY. Hey, Bill, don't go getting any ideas about the boss.
BILL. What me? Don't be silly. I just want her to know I'm an eager member of the team. Still, she is looking much younger these days, isn't
Bill's brusque comments emphasize several points. First, they mark the point at which Janice begins to transform from a good working woman to the SF Vamp. Second, though her actual threat to the heterosexual couple of Bill and Mary is marginal at this point, her disruption of the narrative convention is significant. Third, his comments bring to the forefront 1950s's concerns surrounding the havoc that the uncontained female can cause. She can cause a good man to stray from the path of heterosexual coupling and the nuclear family that came to represent social and political responsibility for every middle-class (white) male as prescribed by the Cold War ideologies of the era.
<16> Finally, Bill's remarks uphold and promote popular cultural and media representations that display women as objects of men's desire, valued for their beauty, their bodies and their youth, or as Laura Mulvey would say their "to-be-looked-at-ness" (62). What Jean Kilbourne notes about the representation of women in advertising aptly applies there,
Women are shown almost exclusively as housewives or sex objects [. . .] The sex object is a mannequin, a shell. Conventional beauty is her only attribute. She has no lines or wrinkles (which would indicate she had the bad taste and poor judgment to grow older), no scars or blemishes—indeed, she has no pores. She is thin, generally tall and long-legged, and, above all, she is young. (122)
Though Mary is young and beauty, as Bill remarks, women can never be too beautiful or apparently too young.
<17> At the film's climax, Bill just manages to save Mary from becoming Janice's next victim thereby ensuring the continuation of the heterosexual couple. The film ends when the monster, Janice, is dead. She is killed with the help of Zinthrop, a bottle of carbolic acid thrown on her face (not a coincidence I think) and the physical prowess of Bill. In keeping with narrative conventions and 1950s norms, Janice's ambition is contained and her challenge to the patriarchal system punished. Her death ends the nightmare, restores the status quo, rejoins the heterosexual couple, and puts the power back in the hands of those most capable of handling it—the men.
<18> June Talbot in The Leech Woman shares Janice Starlin's problem—age. From the beginning of the film, June's age and her aged appearance are the central issue of the film. June is married to Dr. Paul Talbot, an endocrinologist, who has been working on a way to slow or reverse the aging process in women. When the viewer first sees June, it is clear that she is older than Paul and they are in a loveless marriage. Paul has wanted a divorce for some time but June has refused to agree to it. Though we learn that Paul is only ten years younger than June, she looks significantly older, at least 20 even 30 years older. Her hair is completely gray and pulled back severely into a bun. Age make-up adds dark circles around her eyes and exaggerated wrinkles to her discolored face and hands. She is a self-hating woman who is desperate for the love of her husband, and when it is not returned, she turns to a bottle of whiskey for consolation. Paul, on the other hand, is tall and distinguished with slightly graying temples as the only sign of his age. For Dr. Paul Talbot, women are objects not of desire but as a way to financial gain and acclaim as he tells June:
PAUL. Unless of course you've changed your mind about helping me with my experiments.
JUNE. (laughing with a glass of whiskey in her hands). You need more than me to be successful in whatever you do. Just go on butchering guinea pigs. They can't put you in jail for that.
PAUL. As a doctor I resent the word butchering almost as much as I resent looking at you. I don't know why you came here today but whatever it was speak up and then GET OUT.
JUNE. You know something, I've just decided to do you a big favor. I'm going to give you that divorce so you won't have to look at my face any longer. Tried making it over for you. Plastic surgery can't bridge that ten years between us. Only love could make you look at me differently and you never had that, not even in the beginning.
Paul is an unethical doctor and a reprehensible husband who has no qualms about using June as a guinea pig to reach his goal. Paul has nothing but contempt for June and all old women; as he tells his young, attractive nurse, "Old women always give me the creeps. But remember, it's worth millions if I can ever find a way to make them young again."
<19> After June leaves Paul's office, an ancient African American women and ex-slave, Malla, enters Paul's office and tells him that she has a special powder that extends life. She asks him for financial support so she can return to her tribe to die. In exchange, she will give him the secret to rejuvenation: when the powder is mixed with another ingredient, it not only retards the aging process, but reverses it completely. When Paul comes home that night, his attitude toward June has completely changed. He is attentive, loving and no longer wants a divorce, but invites her to go to Africa with him and she agrees.
<20> When they arrive at Malla's village as captives, Paul, Betram Garvey (the safari guide), and June are allowed to witness Malla's rejuvenation. Before she is transformed, Malla sums up the double standard that exists in society then and now regarding age and gender—a scenario the viewer has seen played out between the "old" June and the "distinguished" Paul from the opening sequence:
MALLA. For the man old age has rewards. If he is wise his gray hairs bring dignity and he's treated with honor and respect. But for the agéd woman there is nothing. At best she's pitied. More often, her lot is of contempt and neglect. What woman lives that would not give her remaining years to reclaim even a few moments of joy and happiness to know the worship of men. For the end of life should be a moment of triumph, so it is for the agéd women of the Nandos—a last flowering of love and beauty before death.
Besides aptly summarizing the double standard, this sequence reveals that the secret ingredient is a hormone taken from the pineal gland of a man. The fluid is taken by thrusting a pronged ring into the back of the man's neck. While the procedure returns Malla to her youthful beauty, it leaves the male donor dead.
<21> Once Paul is convinced that the young beautiful woman is Malla, he insists that June try the concoction. Malla agrees to let June undergo the ritual. June's comments to Paul at the beginning of the safari resound at this juncture:
JUNE. Of course I'm important to you. And you really do need me, don't you? Where else would you get a guinea pig who could talk, who could tell you how she feels. Oh, how desperate I must have been to listen to your lies and believe them.
June realizes that her importance to Paul is solely as a vehicle for his own means. He will rejuvenate her and make her into the ultimate "trophy wife," or should I say, "cash cow." Malla presents June with just the opportunity she needs. Malla tells June that she must chose the man to be sacrificed and wisely she chooses Paul so she can have both "youth and revenge." After taking the mixture, June lifts her head and she is completely rejuvenated. Her gray frizzy hair is now dark, smooth and shiny as it falls loosely about her shoulders. The age make-up of the earlier sequences is replaced with full Hollywood glamour make-up. Paul's death has fully restored June's youth and beauty.
<22> June's decision to exact her revenge on Paul to regain her youth is her turning point and her crimes against patriarchy are even worse than Janice Starlin's many transgressions. June dares to kill her husband. From the ancient Greek plays through film noir to 1950s science fiction films this crime against patriarchy has only one remedy—the death of the offending woman. This pattern is established early in western culture and remains a viable plot device. For example, Aeschylus's extant trilogy the Oresteia (458 B.C.) is not only concerned with the establishment of the court system and the replacement of the older Chthonic gods with the younger Olympian gods, but also with the question of which is worse, a wife killing her husband or a son killing his mother to avenge his father's death. The court's decision in the play is clear and the same is true for popular culture narratives. Killing your husband, the king of his castle (if not the city as in the trilogy), is much worse. Eventually June, like her predecessor Clytaemestra in the Oresteia, will pay the ultimate price for her crimes, but first June has more havoc to wreak.
<23> The rejuvenated June posing as her "niece" Terry Hart makes her way home. June's young attorney, Neil Foster, comes to meet her at the airport with his fiancée and Paul's nurse, Sally. He expects to meet the grieving June and instead meets her young and sexy niece. He is clearly taken with her, almost mesmerized, as he cannot take his eyes off her even with his fiancée standing beside him. June/Terry's seduction of Neil does not take long, as he does not put up much of a fight. Knowing that chivalry is not dead, June/Terry quickly maneuvers Neil into her bedroom by asking him to carry her suitcases upstairs. Once in the bedroom, she shuts the door and leans against it so Neil cannot get out except through her. Sally, still in the car, blows the horn and Neil moves to the door and June/Terry. He reaches for the doorknob, then he places his other hand against the door and leans into June/Terry, putting his body only inches from hers. Neil then mounts his weak defense:
NEIL. Sally is outside waiting. [. . .]
JUNE. Do you think I'm attractive?
NEIL. You know you are.
JUNE. And perhaps a little aggressive?
NEIL. I don't know you well enough to answer that.
JUNE. Would you like to?
NEIL. Uh-huh (he is already slipping his arm around her waist and pulling her toward him and they kiss) .
While they kiss, June/Terry starts to transform back in to June. She sees the skin of her hand and pushes Neil out the door, ending the seduction for now. By the time Neil descends the stairs, Sally is in the foyer. When she confronts him he says, "Now, don't start imaging things." And what does he think she is imagining—what actually took place perhaps? Neil not only easily succumbs to June/Terry's seduction, but he takes part of the initiative even though his fiancée is just outside in the car. Like the rest of the men in the film, Neil is a slave to his hormones and attracted to the rejuvenated June not because of who she is but what she is—the image of sensual ageless youth.
<24> In the next scene, June/Terry, skin looking like papyrus, goes to get her jewelry from Neil's office. Now dressed in a form fitting black dress (though she ages she never loses her figure), a hat with veil to hide her face, a fox stole and her large diamond earrings, necklace and bracelet, she is prepared to go trolling for her next victim so she can regain her youth and continue to pursue Neil. She goes to the bad part of town sure that her diamonds with attract some man who thinks he has found an easy mark. It does not take long before she is leaving with a small-time con man named Jerry. As they are parked in his convertible, Jerry spends most of his time openly eyeing June/Terry's jewels. When he tries to strangle her for her jewelry, she strikes back and gets the precious liquid she needs. Rejuvenated, she continues her pursuit of Neil.
<25> Once on this road, there is no return for June/Terry. She must keep renewing her youth, since each time the process fades she is left looking older than the time before. It is as if the process is burning her out. As she becomes more desperate to regain her youth, her crimes escalate. When Sally comes to see her about Neil, June/Terry kills her. With Sally's body stashed in the closet, June/Terry entertains Neil. Before the evening's festivities get too far along, however, the police arrive looking for June/Terry in connection with the murder of Jerry. When the police start to search the house, they find Sally's body. June/Terry tries to explain, "she tried to kill me. I had to kill them it was my only chance to stay young. We really did find the secret to rejuvenation." June/Terry then looks at her hand and notices what the men already have—she is aging rapidly. She runs upstairs to restore herself in an effort to explain her monstrous actions. When she takes the mixture with the hormone she has taken from Sally, it does not work. She looks at herself in the mirror then at her hands, which now look more like claws, and realizes that she "killed Sally for nothing." When she cannot stop the aging process, she jumps out of the bedroom window. The film ends with the men and the viewer looking down at June's body, now little more than a mummy, wrecked and surrounded by shattered glass.
<26> Although June is not an independent working woman, she is no 1950s model of womanhood either; she is no Donna Reed. She is a clinging, alcoholic, older woman who turns into the invading "monster" of the film. Nevertheless, the men in the film do not escape criticism either. The different male characters—Paul a successful doctor, Garvey a rugged individualist adventurer, Jerry a small time con man, and Neil an up-and-coming young professional—represent different examples of masculinity and the film is critical of them all. They are all shallow and their actions, attitudes, and values reprehensible. Women are for their pleasure, consumption, exploitation and when they are done with them, the women are disposable. None of these men seem to love or care about the women in their lives. They only care about but their sexual needs and/or financial gain.
<27> For example, except when he needs her for personal gain and advancement, Paul treats June with nothing but contempt, wanting to use her as his human guinea pig. After having his way with the rejuvenated June in Africa, Garvey, the safari guide, acts like a frightened child and runs away abandoning June in the jungle when he sees that her youth has faded and she looks even older than before. Jerry thinks he has found an easy mark, as he tries to strangle what he believes to be a lonely, rich old woman for her jewelry and furs. Neil is not much better when he gives into his sexual desires the day he meets June/Terry. He may be the worse of the group, as he cannot even be honest with June/Terry, himself, or Sally. He claims that he has told Sally how he feels about June/Terry, but in fact he has not even had the nerve or consideration to do that, leaving Sally to figure it out for herself. Neil, the wayward young white male, represents those who need warning regarding the dangers of bad women and uncontrolled sexual desire. His inability to control his libido serves as a lesson and therefore does not lead to his death, but the death of his fiancée, the good woman, Sally. All the men in The Leech Woman, then, seem fitting victims for the SF Vamp, victims for whom few viewers would feel much sympathy. The film also makes it abundantly clear that the women in the world of the film and in society at large as well had few options and no matter how "eligible" a man may seem—a doctor, a lawyer—men are all the same when it comes to gender relations. They believe a woman's value is as a sexual commodity or as a financial boon.
<28> However, it is not just the men who buy into dominant ideologies regarding gender and beauty in the U.S. June herself buys into the ideologies regarding women and youth. As the film progresses, she becomes as aggressive and dangerous as any gun wheedling femme fatale. She feels that she cannot live without a man and that her only power is in her youth and beauty, as the exchange with Paul in the opening sequence demonstrates. She cleaves to whichever man is available and is unable to face the idea of being alone even if the alternative is constant verbal abuse and physical rejection. June's dedication to the U.S. beauty standard and ageism leads to her killing repeatedly without remorse. Though these men are certainly not princes, the fact that their deaths mean she will stay young is the only justification for homicide that she needs. Her murder of Sally is completely out of selfishness and self-interest, for Sally has done nothing to deserve her unceremonious death and June could easily find another young man to seduce. The only time June shows anything close to remorse or introspection is when she uses the liquid she obtained from killing Sally and even then her concern focuses on the fact that it does not restore her youth, not on the moral implications of her murderous act.
<29> That being said, of the three films The Leech Woman is the most critical of the double standard that Malla speaks about regarding beauty standards, ageism, and the pressure on women that has only increased to stay forever beautiful and young, thereby, resisting dominate ideologies and values. June's comment early in the film to Paul that she "Tried making [her face] over for [him]. Plastic surgery can't bridge that ten years between us" briefly raises the issue of body image and beauty standards that have and continue to be central issues in feminist discussions. As Susan Bordo comments, "I think about how we are rapidly creating [through plastic surgery] a world in which a Martian, leafing through a magazine or catalog from earth, would come to the conclusion that human men and women are two different species, one of which ages and the other of which doesn't" (14). More importantly, as Bordo writes in "'Material Girl': The Effacements of Postmodern Culture," the discussion of plastic surgery as a matter of choice and something as easy to acquire as a fashion accessory
efface[s], not only the inequalities of privilege, money, and time that prohibit most people from indulging in these practices, but the desperation that characterizes the lives of those who do. 'I will do anything, anything, to make myself look and feel better' says Tina Lizardi. [. . .] Medical science has now designated a new category of "polysurgical addicts" (or, as more casually referred to, "scalpel slaves") who return for operation after operation, in the perpetual quest of the elusive yet ruthlessly normalizing goal, the "perfect body." (267-269)
<30> June's desperation throughout the film is certainly similar and as intense as that of Tina Lizardi's quoted above and is indicative of how many women feel about the quest for the perfect body. While the film falls short of a full discussion of the consequences surrounding people's beliefs in the promise of cosmetic surgery, such as botched surgeries, the cost, and the risk related to multiple surgeries, it does offer one important critique. It acknowledges that plastic surgery cannot make you permanently younger and can never completely deliver on its promises. For instance, it cannot make Paul desire June as she had hoped. In addition, as with the use of June's potion, plastic surgery fades and needs to be renewed through what is now termed "maintenance" plastic surgery. Ultimately, however, the feminist issues are undermined not only because of the lack of a thorough discussion of the consequences of striving for the perfect body, but by June's transformation into a driven, ruthless killer. In the end she becomes a desperate rather than a tragic figure.
<31> Although the stories of SF Vamps, such as the queen ants, Janice Starlin and June Talbot, bring feminist issues to the forefront, as with most mass media products, the critique of dominant ideologies cannot be sustained. In the end, the political issues raised by the texts are transformed into the personal issues, problems or shortcomings of over-sexed, ambitious or predatory females. In the case of the queen ants of Them!, they become completely negative constructions that represent all of patriarchy's fears regarding the monstrous feminine. In The Wasp Woman and The Leech Woman the political critique of the systems that oppress and give 1950s women few options in the pubic sphere are lost and explained as personality flaws of the individual characters or because of the very nature of "woman." When the woman turned monster dies, the disruption of dominant systems ends and so does the political critique. Therefore, like the femme fatales of film noir, Janice Starlin and June Talbot represent the most dangerous of women: beautiful, clever, crafty, sensual, sexual, deadly, and finally contained.
<32> On a cultural level, the tales of the 1950s SF Vamps suggest few alternatives to the prescribed role for U.S. women. Their representations suggests that a woman cannot be an independent working woman who has ambition and wants success on the same level as her male counterpart. The films also suggest that a woman cannot get old and if she does, she can expect rejection and abuse. In effect, her usefulness as a woman (or a beauty icon as with Janice) is over when her youth is gone. The SF Vamp tales are evidence that there was a great deal of anxiety surrounding the strong woman, her intelligence, her opportunities in the job market, and the power of her sexuality. These films along with other cultural artifacts promoted the sanctity and benefits of heterosexual bonding hoping that a return to the new traditional family would lead to a more stable country. Besides helping stabilize the country the nuclear family would, in theory at least, make the home a safe haven for the U.S. male who was experiencing many changes in the public sphere. At work, the U.S. male may have to be a team player or virtually a powerless cog in a larger bureaucratic system, but as the breadwinner he could still be the king of his new suburban castle.
<33> On the mythic level, SF Vamps tap into and perpetuate negative stereotypes or tropes about the dark woman, who is, as Janey Place notes,
among the oldest themes of art, literature, mythology and religion in Western culture. She is as old as Eve, and as current as today's movies, comic books and dime novels. She and her sister (or alter ego), the virgin, the mother, the innocent, the redeemer, form the two poles of the female archetypes. (35)
What Place says about film noir's femme fatale also applies to the SF Vamp. They both represent "the dark lady, the spider woman, the evil seductress who tempts man and brings about his destruction" (35). The SF Vamp's story serves as a cautionary tale for the unsuspecting men they may seduce and as a warning to women to stay in their place or they will, literally, turn monstrous and be dispatched without mercy.
<34> If, as many film theorists argue, Hollywood genre films are a space where the U.S. tells stories about itself to itself, then film such as Them!, The Wasp Woman and The Leech Woman added their voice to the chorus of voices that were warning against the disruptive power of U.S. women specifically and of "woman" generally. The films suggest that if the 1950s woman is allowed to function and participate in the public sphere unchecked, she will transform into a Vamp. Like the stories concerning her older sisters of film noir, the tale of the SF Vamp
is hardly 'progressive' in the these terms—it does not present us with role models who defy their fate and triumph over it. But it does give us one of the few periods of film in which women are active, not static symbols, are intelligent and powerful, if destructively so, and derive power, not weakness, from their sexuality. (Place 35)
Though these films and representations momentarily open a space to critically engage gender issues, in the end the blame and punishment falls back onto the troubled and troubling woman turned monster.
<35> What is most disturbing about this image of the SF Vamp is that she has not disappeared from cultural narratives in general or from science fiction films. Instead, the SF Vamp's offspring have continued to appear in both monstrous form and contained within the beautiful body that will eventually turn monstrous as evident in the Alien films, Lifeforce (1985) and Species, to name only a few examples. Even with decades of work by cultural, film, and feminist theorists and critics both male and female, the archetypal Vamp remains a fixture of popular culture that promotes narrow and negative representations and ideologies regarding women. The SF Vamp continues, as other Vamps before her, to lead men astray, jeopardize the heterosexual couple, undermine the political and social stability of the country, and threaten patriarchal systems. Why, she may even sprout antennae.
Endnotes
[1] All dialogue and stage directions transcribed from video versions of the films by author. [^]
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