The Sex Goddess in American Film, 1930–1965: Jean Harlow, Mae Wes ...

While Marilyn Monroe's place in the popular discourse is the basis on which this project's treatment of its subject actresses is formed, this project will not include a chapter on Monroe in order to fulfill the desire to trace the less obvious background on the historical development of the American sex goddess. In the first chapter, I will argue that the actress Jean Harlow, in her acting and bodily presence, uses her sexual-ized body to affect and seduce viewers away from any primary identification with those characters and their plotlines that are supposed to lead the film, and to instead identify with the kind of sexual empowerment and self-possession her characters consistently display. This sexual empowerment allows Harlow's characters to manipulate the male characters to their own devices, thereby undermining previous feminist ideas about representations of women and audience identification in film only being constructed for the male viewer. Linking the idea of sexual empowerment to the filmic and public celebration of hyper-feminine sexuality, both heterosexual and homosexual, in the second chapter, I explore previous feminist discussions of Mae West's performances as feminist camp, as well as interpretations of her characters as being only prostitutes, turning to Kathy Peiss’ valuable historical research on the role of “charity girls” in the early twentieth century. I argue that West sought to both celebrate and embody for women viewers what she viewed as cultural ideals of femininity and women's sexuality. In doing so, West empowered herself, her feminine (hetero-and homosexual) viewers, while simultaneously disempowering a masculinist sexist culture by making its notions of superiority appear ridiculous. In the third chapter, which is on Lana Turner and the cinematic code, I consider the many problems inherent in both the filmic and public celebration of hyper-feminine sexuality in relation to censorship. Thus, chapter three considers the effects of the Hays Code on hyper-feminine sexuality as depicted in film noir, and the necessity of masking or veiling representations of feminine sexuality, not only in film, but in 1940s culture-at-large, and most particularly in Turner's own star culture. Finally, in chapter four I initiate a discussion on Jayne Mansfield, an actress previously ignored by feminist film critics,