Here's something for your noggin. I've adapted an academic piece I wrote back in 2011. It was pretty long, so I have broken it into pieces and done a bit of re-writing so it isn't the insomnia cure it was.
The Female Entrapment Thriller: Domestic space
Domestic space is the unifying convention of the Female Entrapment Thriller, serving the function of hampering and imprisoning the entrapped heroine. This domestic space is initially presented as safe but within the diegesis this sense of security is purely illusory. This erstwhile sense of safety is merely a projection of the entrapped heroine. This projection of safety is coded by the arrangement of the household objects which define this space as this familiar, and, therefore, safe. It is only when this mise-en-scene is rendered unfamiliar through the persecution of the entrapped heroine that the projection of safety collapses.
This belief that the domestic space is familiar and secure is based upon the expectations the entrapped heroine has towards the domestic space: that privacy equals safety. The focal point of the entrapped heroine’s expectations is the marital bedroom. However, within the diegesis of the Female Entrapment Thriller, even this most intimate of domestic spaces is not excluded from violation.
The entrapped heroine’s discovery that the domestic space has been compromised transforms the domestic mise-en-scene into an ‘uncanny’ environment in which the entrapped heroine is disoriented and isolated from the outside world. In simple terms, this sense of the uncanny is the result of the re-arrangement of household objects. This process of re-arrangement can take different forms, from a literal transformation of the mise-en-scene to knowledge which lends an otherwise innocuous prop new significance (thus rendering it uncanny).
The main signifier of this ‘uncanny’ domestic mise-en-scene is the telephone. In its function the telephone is singularly dangerous to the entrapped heroine, highlighting the permeability of the domestic space and its susceptibility to attack. In its role as technology, the telephone is revealed as an amoral object, which acts as the primary medium for the outside world to infiltrate the domestic environment. In its amorality, the telephone personifies the ambivalence of the domestic space: For the entrapped heroine it symbolises an unjustified sense of comfort, familiarity and security - such is not the case.
An analysis of domestic space is essential to readings of the Female Entrapment Thriller, especially in relation to the central notion of female entrapment. It is the relationship between the representation of femininity, as embodied in the entrapped heroine, and the image of a safe domestic space, which underpin the basic premise of these films, and thus the importance of diegetic space cannot be ignored. As Lee Wallace notes, “Narrative theory has long recognized that the place in which a story occurs is never a neutral backdrop but has an instrumental relation to the story it ostensibly foregrounds, overdetermining the possibilities of narrative development and causally linking character and action before the overlays of psychological motivation that dialogue belatedly bestows on plot” (Wallace, 2-3). Wallace uses Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the chronotope (and Vivian Sobchack’s use of it analyzing the diegetic spaces of film noir) to analyze the ‘social sites’ associated with filmic representations of lesbians in post-Production Code films. Chronotope refers to the way language acts as signifiers for the representation of space and time. The apartment space, which Wallace uses a chronotope for analysing the representation of lesbianism, can just as easily be re-coded for the representation of the entrapped heroine of the Female Entrapment Thriller.
In analyzing the transformation of the familiar domestic space into an unfamiliar environment which ‘entraps’ and disorients the entrapped heroine, this chapter is drawing upon Sigmund Freud’s notion of the ‘uncanny’ which he describes as “that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and had long been familiar” (124). However, in utilizing this concept, it is worth clarifying precisely what Freud meant in referring to the ‘uncanny’. In his article “The Uncanny”, Freud is working from the German equivalent to ‘uncanny’, ‘unheimlich’. Unheimlich is the opposite of the word heimlich, which Freud defines as “belonging to the house, not strange, familiar, tame, intimate, dear and homely...” (126). Of particular interest to this study is the phrase “belonging to the house.” In relation to the Female Entrapment cycle, the uncanny aspect of the domestic space is derived from household objects, the most obvious (and visual) aspects of the home. Drawing from E. Jentsch’s belief that a “sense of the uncanny” is the result of “intellectual uncertainty” Freud comes to a conclusion which seems especially relevant to the relationship between the entrapped heroine and the domestic space:
“One would suppose, then, that the uncanny would always be an area in which a person was unsure of his way around: the better oriented he was in the world around him, the less likely he would be to find the objects and occurrences in it uncanny” (125). One of Freud’s examples is worth quoting, for the way in which it foregrounds the familiar objects of the domestic space:
I read a story about a young couple who move into a furnished flat in which there is a curiously shaped table with crocodiles carved in the wood. Towards evening the flat is regularly pervaded by an unbearable and highly characteristic smell, and in the dark the tenants stumble over things and fancy they see something undefinable gliding over the stairs. In short, one is led to surmise that, owing to the presence of this table, the house is haunted by ghostly crocodiles or that the wooden monsters come to life in the dark, or something of that sort. It was quite naive story,but its
effect was extraordinarily uncanny (151).
In Freud’s story, the domestic object is a table. The transformation of a familiar household object is based upon a visible change in that its perceived uncanny properties are only revealed at night. This example of Freud’s is interesting in regards to this study because of the ways in which it echoes the significance attached to household objects in registering the transformation of the domestic space into a dangerous environment for the entrapped heroine. While the sense of uncanny related to the table is determined by a change outside the control of human agency, the sense of uncanny emitted by the domestic space is the result of intentional action on the part of the antagonist. The very act of invading the domestic space is, in effect, a catalyst for altering the representation of the domestic space from one of familiarity to uncanny and dangerous.
Illusion of the Domestic
The image of an idealized household is a recurring one in Hollywood thrillers. In his discussion of John Carpenter’s siege thriller Assault on Precinct 13, Eric Lichtenfeld refers to the “pretense of normalcy” used by the antagonists to hide their assaults on the police station (51). Establishing a precedent for this convention, he makes reference to the “noir invasion“ films of the Fifties, such as He Ran All The Way (John Berry, 1950) and The Desperate Hours (William Wyler, 1955), in which a similar illusion of everyday routine is maintained by the film’s villains in order not to arouse suspicions. A similar strategy is present in the Female Entrapment thriller, with the onus falling upon the entrapped heroine, rather than the antagonist, to maintain her domestic space against the threat of invasion (and contamination) from the outside. The ‘normalcy’ Lichtenfeld attaches to the suburban domestic environments in the ‘noir invasion thriller’ is merely an illusion emphasized by the ease with which the antagonists are able to replicate it. This convention echoes the similar illusions of domestic bliss present in the Female Entrapment Thriller - the difference being that the pretence is based around the familiarity associated with household objects which signify the space as both secure and feminine.
In the Female Entrapment thriller there are no safe spaces, only potential sites for danger to arise. It is only when the domestic space is invaded that this illusion of safety is finally dispelled. In Gaslight, this illusion is represented by the dichotomy of action between day and night. By day all is normal, while by night, Paula is plagued by trouble. By day she has the protection of a male admirer. By night the heroine is the victim of the dark intentions of her husband. While Paula hides in her bedroom her husband spends the night ransacking the attic for the jewels her aunt has hidden. In Midnight Lace, the interior of the apartment sees the breakdown of the domestic ‘bliss’ of the Preston’s marriage. Repeated references are made to the fact that they have been married for three months. Born out by the film‘s English setting, the maintenance of the domestic feminine situation is for the benefit of casual observers outside the apartment space, rather than the attentions of the antagonist. From the beginning, the film highlights this discrepancy between the propriety of the English characters and Kit’s increasingly fragile mental state. As the villain’s games escalate and Kit begins to mentally collapse, this need to keep up appearances remains a point that the diegesis continues to emphasize, compounding the heroine’s sense of entrapment. In Wait Until Dark, the illusion of domestic security in the previous films is reconstructed as literal performance, as the criminals enact a series of skits in order to gain both entry into the domestic space, and the trust of its frightened owner. Here the disparity between the reality of the domestic space’s desecration and the facade of the familiar is based on the difference between what is seen and what is heard. The third act reverses this process, and what is heard (Suzy’s strength) becomes paramount.
In Gaslight, the domestic space is a London town house. The house is divided into several different levels: The ground floor living room is the place associated with Paula’s childhood trauma. When its contents are packed and moved into the attic, the trauma itself is not removed, but merely transferred to a different space - where it continues to exert and influence the entrapped protagonist’s psychosis. Guy Barefoot compares this house to a museum dedicated to the traumas of the past: “It is a museum both in the sense that it exists as a storage space for the preservation (if not always for the display) of objects, and in the sense that it is sealed off from genuine change” (114). The bedroom is the site of Paula’s breakdown. It is the space in which her husband exerts his most powerful influence (through the dimming of the gaslight and the noises coming from the attic). Ironically, it marks the space of the dissolution of the marital bond, as Paula’s growing ‘incontinence’ drives the couple apart.
The focal point of the entrapped heroine’s expectations of a secure space is the marital bedroom, but this also turns out to be the least secure of the spaces in the domestic environment. This misguided belief in the security of the domestic is established at the beginning in Gaslight, as a young Paula is forced to relive her memories of the murder of her aunt in the London townhouse she now owns. However, this traumatic return is combined with an enduring desire for a return to a past in which the home’s status was still respected and uncorrupted. Barefoot notes that “Paula’s looking back implies a sense of nostalgia for a better world. And if, in one sense, that world has gone... in another sense it remains perpetuated in the mise-en-scene of the film” (112; author’s emphasis). Not only is the security of the domestic space under threat, but the entrapped heroine’s sense of the familiar is under threat.
In Wait Until Dark, the illusion of domesticity is re-interpreted as a form of performance confined almost exclusively to the confines of Suzy’s home. The diegesis serves as the medium for several different types of illusion at work in creating this image of a safe domestic space. There are the visual disguises for the benefit of the sighted, such as Suzy’s young neighbor Kathy, and the verbal performances the villains carry out for Suzy’s benefit in their attempts to find the hidden drug stash. The apartment also serves as a space for creating an illusion of familiarity for the villains. The film’s chief antagonist, Mr. Roat initially makes use of the illusion of domesticity to blackmail his accomplices into helping his scheme. When they initially make their entrance into Suzy’s home Mike Tolman and Sergeant Carlino believe the apartment belongs to their ex-comrade Lisa. Proceeding to make themselves at home, they unintentionally leave their finger prints all over the space. Discovering Lisa’s body in the closet, they realize that they have incriminated themselves at the site of a murder. The illusion of domesticity in this sequence covers the fact that the apartment serves as a trap for them as much as it does for their victim. This manipulation of the visual is reversed at the climax. By destroying the lights Suzy is able to destroy the familiar image of the space established by her antagonists, re-arranging the environment to suit her new understanding of the superficial comfort provided by the domestic environment.
Uncanny space
From the Victorian town house in Gaslight to the basement apartment in Wait Until Dark, the domestic space of the Female Entrapment Thriller evokes a sense of the uncanny through the mise-ene-scene. This sense of the uncanny is not established from the outset, as in the gothic structures associated with the female gothic films of the Forties, but comes about as the result of a catalyst - the invasion of the home space by an unknown intruder. The uncanny is a process of transformation, involving the violation of the domestic space by an antagonist previously unknown to the heroine. In this respect the threat is completely unknown and unexpected, therefore the impact of his appearance proves to be completely unpredictable in its effects upon the domestic space and the entrapped heroine. In shattering the image of the domestic space as a safe and secure environment the domestic environment is transformed into an uncanny space. This sense of the uncanny is based upon the re-arrangement of previously familiar household objects which convert the domestic space into an alien environment which creates the heroine’s sense of entrapment.
The intruders alter the space in various ways: in Gaslight, this is through a literal re-modeling as Anton removes every trace of Paula’s aunt’s possessions and has them transferred to the attic. In so doing, he is also removing Paula’s sense of familiarity of the house in which she had once lived as a child. The removal of her aunt’s belongings thus transforms the space of the town house from one of childhood trauma, to a new setting geared toward adult trauma.
In relation to Gaslight, the sense of the uncanny which pervades the London townhouse could be regarded as originating from the entrapped heroine’s childhood: Freud’s ‘return of the repressed’. Analyzed in this way, Paula’s return to her uncanny childhood home triggers a regression from adult to child as she is overcome by an unknown form of mental instability, and her husband assumes a more patriarchal position in caring for her.
While they act as an index of the entrapped heroine’s expectations toward her home, the familiar props and mise-en-scene associated with the domestic space become signifiers of the unfamiliar and the uncanny. Disorientation within the familiar space through the re-arrangement of household items is present, in different contexts, in all the films: In Gaslight the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of household items is the primary signifier of Paula’s ‘madness’. In Midnight Lace, Kit Preston loses control of the mediums linking her to the outside world - the telephone and the elevator of her apartment building. The elevator scene in Midnight Lace is an especially strong example of the ways in which familiar objects and spaces are re-coded as unfamiliar and threatening, turning them into the domestic signifiers of the uncanny. The elevator in Kit Preston’s building is an old-fashioned model comprised of steel bars which resembles a cage. It becomes an uncanny object when the lights go out and it breaks down, literally entrapping the heroine in a once-familiar space.
A more sustained example of this transformation is provided in Wait Until Dark. Since the familiarity of household objects is essential for Suzy to overcome her lack of sight, her antagonists’ deliberate re-arrangement of the furniture transform the one place she knows into an unpredictable and disorienting one. Charles Derry observes, “it is precisely the empty spaces that are terrifying to the blind heroine; the empty spaces are blank, and she is unable to maneuver herself from place to place without the help of the anchored objects which make up her world” (26). Her loss of control of this limited environment mirrors her loss of control over the series of events she finds herself trapped in. By contrast, her breaking of the lights at the climax symbolizes Suzy’s growth of character, as she takes back this home space altered by Mr. Roat, and is able to defeat him.
Wait Until Dark serves as a summation of the various aspects of the domestic space utilized in the processes of female entrapment. Unlike the previous films, the characters of Wait Until Dark are restricted to a basement apartment. There are few excursions outside of this central setting, only focusing on the movements of the antagonists. By contrast to the other films in this study, this location is far less urbane and more urban. The film’s art direction emphasizes a sense of verisimilitude in regards to the details of its primary spaces, both Suzy’s apartment and the street outside. Any sense that Suzy’s home environment is safe is removed at the outset. Sited in a rather seedy New York street, the film “characterizes St. Luke’s Place as exceptionally quiet and almost completely vacated...” (Wojcik, 208). Outside the skies are grey, the street faded and dirty, and the apartment is a combination of bland, washed out browns and yellows. This is not a welcoming environment to begin with. According to Pamela Wojcik, the film “plays into views of the city as threatening the sanctity of the home, as overly dangerous for women, and as lacking in an appropriate sense of community or surveillance” (210). Wojcik notes that while “Suzy’s apartment is shown as isolated, it is also overly porous and vulnerable to danger” (209). In Wait Until Dark the link between the home setting and the mindset of the heroine is emphasized through Suzy’s disability. The basement apartment is arranged to complement her blindness. The gradual re-arrangement of household objects metaphorically and literally reinforces the collapse of Suzy’s familiar space. This collapse of the familiar space is present in all the films yet Wait Until Dark, in its portrayal of the intimate relationship between its blind heroine and the domestic mise-en-scene, emphasizes just how interlinked the role of the housewife and the image of the domestic environment as an essentially feminized space are in the Female Entrapment cycle.
The telephone
The telephone is an object within the private sphere that ensures its permeability. In the Female Entrapment Thriller the telephone serves as a medium to the external world (and a way for the outside world to get in). While Gaslight does not use it (for obvious reasons) the telephone becomes a major signifier of the porousness of the domestic space in Sorry, Wrong Number. As the Female Entrapment Thriller traded in the trappings of the female gothic for the urban milieu of the then-contemporary crime film (latterly referred to as film noir) the telephone becomes a medium for the heroine’s fears rather than an escape from them. This linkage of the telephone with terror is immediately established in Sorry, Wrong Number. Over a shot of telephone operators at a switchboard, there is super-imposed a scroll of text: “In the tangled networks of a great city, the telephone is the unseen link between a million lives... It is the servant of our common needs -- the confidante of our inmost secrets... life and happiness wait upon its ring... and horror... and loneliness... and... death!!!” This text, however unintentionally, emphasizes the contradictions of the medium as an impartial piece of technology. Leona is confined to her bed as an invalid, a situation from which she escapes via tantrums on the telephone. This notion of the telephone as an instrument for transforming the domestic space recurs in Midnight Lace. The telephone becomes the intruder’s surrogate, his way of invading Kit Preston’s domestic space without the knowledge of the inhabitants. Kit Preston’s opponent is able to attack her through the phone, leaving Kit’s mind to turn this benign and rather plush home environment into a threatening and claustrophobic prison. Thanks to the telephone, every object and space in the domestic environment becomes a threat, from the elevator where she is trapped, to the construction site next door.
In Wait Until Dark the presence of the telephone is expanded to turn it into a medium based on reshaping the entrapped heroine’s perception of her environment. Echoing the “tension between isolation and porousness” which Sorry, Wrong Number and Midnight Lace hint at, the telephone becomes both a “weapon, an intrusive force”, in allowing the antagonists to reach Suzy, while at the same time “cutting her off from any connection to the real world” (Wojcik, 210). Unlike the other films, where the telephone is used to destroy the heroine’s sense of safety, in Wait Until Dark the phone is used to “create a false reality” for its heroine (210). This builds upon the antagonist’s use of the medium in Midnight Lace, using the phone to alter the heroine’s perception of the spaces both within and outside the domestic environment. Wojcik points out that, in this film, the telephone “heightens the fissure between sight and sound that is characteristic of urban living” (210). In these films, the telephone’s capacity as a form of communication is secondary to its potential as a weapon. As with the other elements of the domestic space, nothing is allowed to be as it seems. Everything in the domestic space has a double meaning and a dual function. The sense of paranoia about the domestic space extends to the objects within it, especially the technologies which link it with other spaces. The ‘fissure’ represented by the telephone is a weakness of the protagonist in Wait Until Dark, and the way in which it is used against Suzy Hendrix emphasises how the systems which are supposed to bring people in closer proximity can be exploited to perform the opposite function.
The Female Entrapment Thriller’s conception of domestic space highlights such ‘fissures’, portraying urban living spaces such as the basement apartment in Wait Until Dark and the Victorian town house in Gaslight as unsuitable for habitation. These films obsess over the potential of the urban domestic space for invasion and violation by outsiders. More importantly, they highlight the ease with which these spaces can be converted into dangerous environments that imprison and even enable the death of their female occupants.
Conclusion
The entrapped heroine’s disorientation within the familiar turns the family home into a prison. It underpins the entrapped heroine’s struggle against her duplicitous antagonist, as his machinations are directly responsible for converting the familiar mise-en-scene of the domestic space into an uncanny site of danger. The diegetic component of space to the Female Entrapment Thriller is essential to the central concept of female entrapment.
The central character is an image of femininity who is only workable in relation to the domestic space. The destruction of this space as a site of femininity essentially destroys the entrapped heroine’s sense of her role. This relationship is highlighted in Wait Until Dark where the arrangement of the mise-en-scene complements the disability of the entrapped heroine. This notion of domestic space sets up a notion of interiority that is frightening and alien. This sense of interiority is permeable. It is not separate from the events taking place. The attack is not on the domestic space, it is against the heroine. The destruction of the domestic space merely reflects the real damage taking place - the destruction of the entrapped heroine’s sense of security and safety.
In its violation, the familiarity and security of the domestic space environment is replaced by a sense of claustrophobia and danger, marking the transformation of the domestic space into an environment in which the familiarity associated with its mise-en-scene is replaced by a sense of the uncanny. The re-arrangement of household objects signals the entrapped heroine’s loss of control over this space, and the loss of its image as a space designed to be occupied and maintained by the female protagonist.
The most significant of these uncanny household objects is the telephone. While it would appear to be the medium which would be of the most help to the entrapped heroine, in the diegesis of the Female Entrapment Thriller, its function is reversed. It becomes a proxy for the antagonist’s violation of the domestic space and dominance over the entrapped heroine.
The role of the housewife is attached to the image of the home as a safe and secure space. Though the mise-en-scene the domestic setting acts as an extension of the housewife’s personality, a private space in which she can be comfortable and secure from the outside world. While the domestic space is initially aligned with the image of the housewife, it comes to be aligned with her antagonist. The domestic setting thus becomes the space of her antagonist, an external malignant force manifested within the space which embodies the self-image of the entrapped heroine.
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