Table Of ContentFemininity and Domesticity in Panic Room and Fatal Attraction
Alexandra Helena Beeman
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Arts in Cinema Studies
At
The Savannah College of Art and Design
© May 2012, Alexandra Helena Beeman
The author hereby grants SCAD permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and
electronic thesis copies of document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter
created.
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Kathleen E. Newell Date
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Femininity and Domesticity in Panic Room and Fatal Attraction
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of Cinema Studies
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Master of Arts in Cinema Studies
Savannah College of Art and Design
By
Alexandra Helena Beeman
Savannah, GA
May 2012
Table of Contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................................................1
Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 2-3
Previous Research ........................................................................................................................ 3-7
The Brownstone as Nest .............................................................................................................. 7-9
The Panic Room as Shell ........................................................................................................... 9-13
The Loft as Lair ....................................................................................................................... 13-15
The Madwoman, Patriarchy, and the Nuclear Family ............................................................. 15-16
The Reagan Era and Anti-feminism ........................................................................................ 16-19
The 9/11 Attacks and War-era Machismo ............................................................................... 19-22
Urban and Suburban Conflict .................................................................................................. 22-24
Home Invasion and the Nuclear Family .................................................................................. 24-26
The Female Voyeur and Spectator Identification .................................................................... 26-29
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 29-31
Works Cited ............................................................................................................................. 32-33
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Femininity and Domesticity in Fatal Attraction and Panic Room
Alexandra Helena Beeman
May 2012
This thesis discusses femininity and domesticity in two films: Panic Room (2002),
Fincher, and Fatal Attraction (1987), Lyne. The central focus of the examination is how the
domestic spaces in both films and the interactions of the female protagonists with these spaces
illustrate the anti-feminist sentiments of the films. Both Panic Room and Fatal Attraction at
some point portray their protagonists as strong, independent females. Yet, in the end, the female
characters are put in a submissive position to their male counterparts, eliminating the threat of
the independent, single woman to institutionalized patriarchy. This transformation is linked to
the social ideologies of the contemporaneous eras of the films. In addition, home invasion and
the threat of violence within the home serve as metaphors for the break-up of the nuclear family.
The transformations of the female protagonists coincide with the removal of the threat to the
home, subtly implying that the women were also threats to the nuclear family. However, at the
same time, the domestic spaces allow their protagonists the opportunity to be voyeurs of men, an
unusual and powerful position for female characters in traditional film. This anomaly in the
primarily anti-feminist films demonstrates how challenges to a culture’s doctrine may appear
even in films that seem to be fully immersed in that doctrine.
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I. Introduction
In many films within the horror and thriller genres, the house is represented as an
extension of the characters. In these films, the representation of the feminine is a topic of much
debate and exposition. However, the relationships between the domestic spaces and the feminist
motifs of such films are rarely discussed. In two thrillers, Panic Room (2002) and Fatal
Attraction (1987), the domestic spaces inform and relate to both the female characters and the
feminine issues. An examination of the homes of each film’s central female characters, in the
phenomenological tradition of Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, provides a basis for and
new perspectives on the anti-feminist sentiments attributed to both films. It also reveals some
traditionally overlooked aspects of the female leads, some of which are distinctly feminist.
Despite being released fifteen years apart, Panic Room and Fatal Attraction share several
similarities. Clearly, both films feature female leads. Fatal Attraction was one of the first thriller-
horror films to feature a female killer (Rapping 45), spawning several more films such as The
Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and Single White Female (1992) and, to a degree, Panic
Room. Fatal Attraction and its offspring also belong to the yuppie movie genre, which originated
during the Reagan era of the 1980s (Jordan 3). The blending of the thriller with the upwardly
mobile resulted in a hybrid form, the “yuppie in peril” movie, which is clearly an antecedent to
the “extremely-wealthy in peril” theme of Panic Room (Swallow 169). In another similarity,
each female lead resides in an exceptionally distinctive home that relates to her character in
significant ways.
The domestic spaces of both of the female protagonists provide a microcosm of the views
and issues regarding gender that were present during the eras each film was made, the late 1980s
and the early 2000s/post-September 11th respectively. This analysis of the individual
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characteristics of the homes, as well as the actions of the characters, both male and female that
occur within the domestic spaces, reveals each film’s predominantly anti-feminist, patriarchal,
and pro-traditional family sentiments, which have roots in the gender norms of the day. This
examination also addresses commonalities between Panic Room and Fatal Attraction regarding
their use of urban and suburban spaces and the importance of home invasion in both films. In
addition, this analysis considers the role the women’s houses play in the voyeurism by both
protagonists and how this act affects the overall anti-feminist tone of both films.
The methodologies utilized in this analysis include critical feminist studies, cultural
studies, theories of representation, and some psychoanalytic methods with regard to voyeurism.
This examination focuses on social and cultural questions, predominantly, with some attention to
the aesthetic features of the films.
II. Previous Research
In the thriller and horror genres, a significant part of the scholarship that discusses
cinematic spaces focuses on the haunted houses of horror films. Of this scholarship, many texts
discuss the houses all being haunted by the same thing: memories. Barry Curtis’ Dark Places:
The Haunted House in Film refers to the haunted house as “a scenario of confrontation between
the narrative of the inhabitants and the house” (Curtis 34). He adds that what haunts the houses is
something that was lost. Something is unresolved within the house and that something
necessitates an intervention in the present. Other scholars, such as Cyndy Hendershot, analogize
macabre houses like the mansion in House of Usher (1960) to the female body. As the house is
inevitably explored, it is similar to the curiosity and exploring of a young boy’s first sexual
awakenings. As the history and memories contained within the house are revealed through
exploration, the mysteries of the house, like the mysteries of the sexual experience, are clarified.
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Much of the scholarship on the genre of Gothic fiction discusses its preoccupation with
enclosed spaces or physical incarceration. In his introduction to the anthology The Oxford Book
of Gothic Tales, Chris Baldick examines how Gothic fiction uses the claustrophobia of enclosed
space to help create a feeling of descent into disintegration. Baldick states that the house of
Gothic fiction is a site of degeneration whose living-space changes and contracts to become a
space of death, like a tomb. A similar motif is seen in Panic Room in which a luxurious
brownstone is transformed into a death trap by means of home invasion.
In spite of Panic Room being set entirely within the confines of one house in Manhattan,
little of its critical discussion addresses the symbolic and metaphorical significance of the home
featured in the film. Perhaps due to the classification of Panic Room as a commercial or
“popcorn” film, as David Fincher calls it, most of the in-depth study of the film limits its
discussion almost exclusively to issues of class or gender with more emphasis placed on the
former than the latter. For example, Mark Browning’s David Fincher: Films that Scar deals
almost exclusively with the central character of the film, Meg Altman, and her evolution
throughout the narrative. Films that Scar touches on some anti-feminist issues in Panic Room,
but does so frequently only in relation to points of comparison with Alien3, Fincher’s directorial
debut.
One of the only scholarly works that discusses Panic Room’s house is Peter King’s
Private Dwelling: Contemplating the Use of Housing, a social and philosophical study of
housing that includes some film criticism in its discussion. King, a Reader in Housing and Social
Philosophy at the Centre for Comparative Housing Research at De Montfort University,
examines in detail the house’s features, including the panic room, as well as some of the familial
issues within the film. King’s work focuses primarily on interpretations of the limiting and
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infantilizing nature of the technology in the brownstone and the interaction of the characters with
said technology. His analysis rarely delves into the metaphorical symbolism of the panic room
and the brownstone, dealing instead with more literal investigations of technology.
Several works discuss Panic Room peripherally, usually citing the film’s relationship to
the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Chief among these is a compilation of essays edited by
Wheeler Winston Dixon entitled Film and Television After 9/11. The collection discusses Panic
Room as being one of the most prophetic films in recent memory, as well as one of the films that
speaks most to the anxieties and fears that gripped the nation after 9/11. In addition, the essays
examine the film’s relationship to the political climate post-9/11 and how the film’s protagonist
fits within the governmental doctrine of the time.
Unlike Panic Room’s scholarship, feminist issues are the emphasis of most of the works
written on Fatal Attraction. Suzanne Leonard’s Fatal Attraction, for example, examines several
aspects of the film, including genre, historical ties, as well as its anti-feminist sentiments.
Leonard also focuses attention on the promotion of family values and the resulting contempt for
single, working women that occurs in the film.
Other works that deal with trends in filmmaking during the 1980s discuss Fatal
Attraction as a classic example of the undermining of feminist values in films at the time. Fatal
Attraction is part of a series of films that supported the Reagan administration’s social policies
regarding the return to the traditional family and suburban conformity. Many of these films
portrayed strong, single women who were in trouble for various reasons, but the implication was
that their troubles stemmed mainly from not having a husband and children. Considering most of
the scholarship written on Fatal Attraction involves anti-feminist issues, it comes as no surprise
that there is little written about the film’s domestic spaces themselves. While there is some
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scholarship relating to the dichotomy of the suburban and urban areas that are crucial in the film,
there is not much discussion of the physical residences themselves.
For both Panic Room and Fatal Attraction, Laura Mulvey’s essay, “Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema,” provides a lens through which to read one of the only feminist aspects of the
films: woman as voyeur. This extremely significant element goes unexamined in the previous
scholarship on Panic Room and Fatal Attraction. Mulvey’s theories help illuminate both the
importance of voyeurism in these two films and the significance of these voyeuristic moments in
traditional narrative filmmaking. While her theories do not specifically discuss the relationship
between structured space and voyeurism, Mulvey’s concepts are especially helpful in
highlighting the subtle feminist aspects of Panic Room and Fatal Attraction, rather than just the
more recognizable anti-feminist sentiments.
French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space is the inspiration for this
analysis of domestic space and its theoretical framework. Originally published in France in 1958,
Bachelard’s work examines every aspect of a house, from basement to attic, explores how
humans perceive houses and shelters, and how those shelters affect the human experience. The
work also compares human shelters and houses to some of their animal counterparts, such as
nests and shells. Bachelard also integrates mythological tales and historical facts into his analysis
in order to ground his thoughts in historical context. While his phenomenological study does not
delve into negative connotations of space, it does provide a critical framework that is applicable
to investigations of any type of space, regardless of whether its connotations are positive or
negative. Bachelard’s methods of studying subjective sensory experiences of objects is well-
suited to application in film study, as films are entirely defined by the viewer’s sensory
experience. For this examination, The Poetics of Space provides a template for the analysis of
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Panic Room’s domestic space as a nest and the panic room as a shell, as well as supplying the
foundation for the analysis of Fatal Attraction’s featured domestic space as a lair.
III. The Brownstone as Nest
Bachelard’s metaphor of the house as a nest, as seen in Fincher’s Panic Room, is an
analogy featured throughout history. The film begins with newly divorced Meg and her daughter
Sarah looking at and purchasing a large Manhattan brownstone. Among other motivations for
buying the house, Meg is trying to make a nice home for her daughter. She feels guilty for
dragging Sarah out of the suburbs of Greenwich and away from her father and is desperately
trying to win Sarah’s approval by buying the expensive house (Swallow 153). The film endorses
Meg’s guilt through the comments of other characters to her, such as the realtor’s remark “You’ll
have another family”, that clearly favor the traditional family rather than the single mother.
Meg is presented as being highly protective of her daughter, as a mother bird protects her
chicks. When Sarah informs her that she is going to “take a cab” and meet her father at a tour of
her new school, Meg insists that she will ride with Sarah. Despite her protectiveness, Meg is not
expecting Sarah to be in danger in the home/nest that she has just created. In The Poetics of
Space, Bachelard discusses the presumed safety of a bird’s nest and its similarities to the
presumed safety of a house:
And so when we examine a nest, we place ourselves at the origin of confidence in
the world, we receive a beginning of confidence, an urge toward cosmic
confidence. Would a bird build its nest if it did not have its instinct for confidence
in the world?…The nest, quite as much as the oneiric house, and the oneiric house
quite as much as the nest … knows nothing of the hostility of the world. (103)
Description:The Madwoman, Patriarchy, and the Nuclear Family . domestic spaces in both films and the interactions of the female protagonists with these
