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This riff on the Femme Fatale archetype was uploaded to CharactersWelcome, a Youtube channel that archives character showcase performed in monologue at the Hell’s Kitchen Theater in New York City. Written and performed by Adrienne Iancciello, this “A Femme Fatale Fails” delivers a dry, witty parody of noir conventions.

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 The monologue begins as the unnamed woman sits preening in a veiled hat and reveals that, if things have gone according to plan, her lover and tennis instructor should have killed her husband by now. Much to her surprise, her husband Martin walks in. While we don’t hear Martin himself speak, the woman’s responses to his statements clue us in on what kind of a character he is. Instead of a hard boiled crime boss or gumshoe like so many Noir men, Martin bears an affinity with the stereotypically stupid and sloppy sitcom husband. He’s crude, having missed his train to finish jerking off, and gluttonous, having housed fourty hot wings for dinner and now needing to tame the fire. He’s also not the brightest tool in the shed, since he assumes his wife’s attempts at strangulation are a sex act and even helps her up when she attempts to shoot him, only to fart when pulled by the hand...loudly. This parody plays off ideas of traditional Noir masculinity and injects a sloppy archetype that doesn’t fit as a way to cause comedic confusion and subversion of expectation. However, this performance also highlights something about the Femme Fatale archetype that holds true to Noir expectations. 

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Femme Fatal Fatalism

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In Noir, characters are often required to end the film dead, jailed, or traumatized and spend the majority of the film circling those metaphorical drains. Nowhere is this seen more prominently than with the character type of the Femme Fatal. On the specific requirment of the Femme Fatal’s end, Dikos writes, “The femme fatale must inevitably die—or, at the very least, be mortally injured or be arrested for her crimes. The implication in her arrest is a moral one as much as a legal one: she has committed a crime against the healthy image of society's female, and she must be punished for it” (163). The Femme Fatale’s required punishment is on display in this parody even from the title itself. The protagonist in this performance must fail and inevitably be punished because the genre the performance is parodying requires it. However, the parody creates humor out of this convention through the dynamic between the protagonist and Martin. The protagonist is vicious, armed, and intelligent. Martin is a sloppy sheep for the slaughter. By all accounts, she should succeed. And yet, convention will not allow it. It’s this juxtaposition between characters and the lack of expected fulfillment that calls attention to the artifice of the genre’s fatalism--particuarly the fatalsim centering around the femme fatale’s punishment.