| Chapter Introduction: | Introduction |
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goddess’ seemingly endless power to influence and fascinate, to achieve in a sense her own self-reproduction through many decades of “re-makeovers” reveals her positioning in American culture as not only a lasting image but also as a potentially powerful and subversive force.
The excessively or hyper-feminine woman (terms which I will use here interchangeably with sex goddess), as she has been referred to by feminists, is often thought by feminist film theorists to be little more than a projection of the male imaginary. This discussion, however, will make a necessary correction to this trend by demonstrating how the actresses performing the role of sex goddess in fact use the feminine imaginary to create their own agency. Through their performance of hyper-femininity, and with their seductive power, they exert control not only over their filmic narrative targets of seduction, but over their viewers as well. The ability to hold their objects of seduction in such thrall suggests that the image of the sex goddess possesses a power far more subversive than that which has been previously explored; in fact, to date, there has not been a critical study of the sex goddess in film. As an actress, the sex goddess is first a flesh-and-blood woman; as cinematic goddess, she is surrounded by an aura and possesses a great power. Her star image is a mystique that circulates within and influences the culture. As the sex goddess deploys her powers of seduction, depending on her viewer, she is perceived in different ways: for some, she can be perceived as threatening, for others, she is often seen as an ideal object of desire, and for still others as an image worthy of worship and imitation. The multiple meanings of her image thus tend to move along a continuum between such extreme perceptions that she is either dangerous, empowering, or sometimes, both.
By definition, her image is always heavily invested with and interpreted as an embodiment of some abstract idea of sex. A more explicit definition of a cinematic sex goddess is needed here before progressing further. For the purpose of this study, and in the most obvious sense, the cinematic construct of a sex goddess exists as a point of convergence of cinematic techniques conjoined with an actress’ own bodily presence and performance. A cinematic sex goddess is, of course, sexy, but how