S4E2: Hollywood's Other Women - Femmes Fatales, Females Villains, and 'Nasty Women' Who Defy Hollywood Stereotypes

History Behind News Program

Not the damsel in distress. Not the desirable woman who will raise your kids and take care of the home. These are the stories of the nymphomaniacs, the nasty and creepy women, the Femme Fatales.

A string of recent films are casting prominent actresses, in dark, creepy, nasty characters. One example is the movie May December, which received four nominations for this past weekend's Golden Globe Awards.

You can read more about cinema actresses in this recent WSJ article: "In Hollywood, It’s the Golden Age of the Creepy Woman".

So to better understand the history of women in Cinema - not just in Hollywood, from their stereotypical roles to more creative and perhaps more liberating roles, I spoke with Prof. Thomas Doherty and Prof. Maggie Hennefeld, who essentially ran the program by asking each other wonderful question that, frankly, I hadn't even thought about.

Prof. Doherty is a cultural historian with a special interest in Hollywood cinema. He is a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. He guest-participated in our program last year and talked about the Magic of Hollywood, and also compared TV's disruption of Hollywood in the 1950s with AI's disruption now.

Prof. Hennefeld is a McKnight Presidential Fellow and Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

I hope you enjoy these episodes.

Adel, host & producer

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1. Image attribution: The "Vamp" (Theda Bara) in "A Fool There Was", a 1915 silent film drama in which she seduces and ruins a wealthy family man, John Schuyler (Edward José). Public Domain.
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3. Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. This piece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. ⁠⁠https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ ⁠⁠ Music available on ⁠⁠https://freesound.org/⁠ ⁠Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) ⁠ ⁠https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ⁠
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