| Chapter Introduction: | Introduction |
|
|
reason that these critics read the sex goddess from a perspective of lesbian spectatorship.
Following Arbuthnot's and Seneca's attempt to reclaim the sex goddess as feminist, Susan Hegeman, in “Taking Blondes Seriously,” describes how, in a biographical statement, Anita Loos, the author of the original novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, “invariably described a situation in which she, a cute, clever brunette, discovered that the mere presence of a platinum-haired rival magically deprived her of masculine attention” (529). Here, Hegeman interestingly uses the term “archetypal blonde” to refer to the figure of the sex goddess, Lorelei, indicating a transhistorical aspect to the sex goddess (529). This archetypal aspect of the female protagonist is signaled in Loos’ text through her choice of the name Lorelei, which refers to a mythic Germanic seductress. While Hegeman furthers Turim's impression that the sex goddess represents an “anxiety over commodification of culture” (531), she also, a bit admiringly, describes her as the embodiment of “work that is not quite work,” rather insightfully suggesting that the sex goddess manages to transcend capitalistic modes of work (534).
Thus, instead of taking the more traditional feminist view of the sex goddess as abject, Hegeman recognizes that the sex goddess’ womanly or excessively feminine figure is a more complex, even ambivalent fig-ure: “Is she sexual predator, or is she an innocent party; does she coax men into recklessness, or is she the passive object of their dangerous passions?” (534).
Through Hegeman's recognition of the sex goddess’ ambivalence, her seductive, simultaneous ability to be both angelic and demonic, she conjures up a view of how the sex goddess accomplishes her “work that is not work.” By displaying sex as lure, while also playing the innocent, the sex goddess continually denies the viewer and her narrative objects any actual production of, or engagement in, sex. Thus, by objectifying both her narrative subjects and her viewers, who are usually presumed to be men, the sex goddess creates an enduring allure that functions in much the same way as does film: By endlessly sustaining desire, neither