The Madonna Whore Archetype in Film
The Madonna Whore Complex is a psychological complex often perpetuated by heterosexual, cisgender males which places women into two categories the “Madonna,” based on the Christian idea of the Virgin Mary, a woman who is pure, virtuous and nurturing, or a “Whore,” based on Mary Magdalene, and Eve - who ‘disgraced mankind’ a woman who is deemed overly sexual, manipulating, and promiscuous. the dichotomy of MWC creates a rigidity that limits women’s sexual expression, agency, and freedom by placing their sexuality into one of two categories.
Sigmund Freud coined the term to describe men in heterosexual relationships who no longer viewed their partners, for whom they had romantic feelings, as sexually attractive. It was Freud’s theory that men with MWC could not differentiate between their love for their mother and their love for their romantic partner. To cope with these feelings, they compartmentalise their romantic love for women they deem to have the qualifications to be a wife and mother, but have little to no sexual arousal and devalue women they consider promiscuous, but who they sexually desire. In other words, they can only become fully sexually aroused when reducing their partner to a sexualised object, degrading her in the process.
This archetype is heavily used in media and literature. It is one of the most common and familiar tropes in storytelling to this day. Since the Me Too movement, there has been an increasing number of female-led, written and directed works becoming mainstream, the trope is being challenged. Movies such as the recent Barbie film have confronted female portrayals in media and societal ideals perpetuated by the patriarchy and how it deeply affects women and girls in being perceived by others and themselves.
In the show Sex and the City, the storyline of Charlotte and her husband Trey is a good example of this trope. As their marriage was beginning to fail, she tried to show him her “sexual side” to get him sexually interested in her. Charlotte believed she needed to stop him from seeing her as his wife and instead see her as a sexual object because he didn’t believe or feel he could be promiscuous in his marriage.
Film critics have applied this concept to the portrayal of women in early film, and have found an alarming pattern of women cast as either the chaste “damsel in distress” or the immoral temptress. It is shown in children’s entertainment from an early age, such as Disney movies, with the princesses being pure, nurturing and home-making types, such as Cinderella or Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. Hitchcock used the MWC as a mode of representing women. In his film Vertigo, Kim Novak portrays two women that the hero cannot reconcile: a blonde, virtuous, repressed “Madonna” and a dark-haired, single, sensual “fallen woman”. Here are a few examples of these types of characters in films.
Madonna Whore Complex
Madonna Representations in Film:
Cinderella
Jane Bennet from Pride & Prejudice - typically ‘perfect’ females, as seen by men in search of a wife, particularly in the early 19th century.
Bella Swan in the Twilight films
Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films
Belle in The Beauty and the Beast Disney film - is dedicated to her father and nurses the beast back to health and eventually falls in love with him despite the fact he treats her callously at the start
Persephone in Greek mythology
Whore Representations in Film:
Amy from Gone Girl. The ultimate Whore archetype: psychotic, beautiful, deadly.
Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones
Kathryn from Cruel Intentions, a manipulative, overtly sexual, spoilt woman who treats other people like toys.
Cleopatra - a well-known powerful seductress
Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind is a typical ambitious, sexy, unstoppable woman who is ready to kill, lie and cheat to get what she wants.
‘Madonna turning into Whore’ trope:
From an innocent child to a mature, experienced adult - the most popular trope of all. Just like the hero’s journey trope, Madonna’s experience their downfall - and it is often the whole point of their story.
Cady Heron in Mean Girls
Kat in Euphoria
Laney in She’s All That
Sandy in Grease
Nina in Black Swan
In the 1950s Film Noir, the “femme fatale” and “blonde bombshell” characters were played by actresses such as Marilyn Monroe in films like Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1953). This character of the blonde bombshell often portrayed naive innocent women (sometimes wilfully unintelligent) as happy housewives or seeking to be. The unifying theme of all these films was that a woman’s place is in the home. Into the 1960s, sexploitation films became popular. These films such as Single Girl (1964), embraced a small part of the movement, the sexual liberation of women. These films managed to undermine the movement by using sexual freedom as an excuse to further objectify women’s bodies, and conveniently ignore every other issue important to second-wave feminists. In 1975, film theorist Laura Mulvey wrote “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, a pivotal essay that helped clarify how hegemonic patriarchy worked, specifically in cinema. She gave this theory a name, The Male Gaze.
Some films point out the Madonna-Whore dichotomy and actively play with it. Sometimes you have Madonna and Whore characters clash - and some films use the archetypes to point out the ridiculous double standards forced on women by those who think in these terms. Easy A is a film based on satirising this binary seeing of women. Olive pretends to lose her virginity in order to save her friend from bullying and ends up the target of hatred herself - so she embraces her newly acquired ‘Whore’ persona. She pretends to be the sexy seductress while in reality, she is a loyal, honest and fun person - and a virgin. In Black Swan, an evil twin story of sorts, Nina learns from her far more seductive rival for the lead part and gradually embraces both the Madonna and Whore sides of her personality. As she shifts from one to another, it becomes more and more difficult to draw the line between her real self and her evil side’s projection - she ends up fighting and stabbing herself, imagining it is her evil rival.
In dissecting the Madonna Whore Complex, we uncover not just a psychological phenomenon but a pervasive societal construct that shackles women’s identities and sexual agency. By deconstructing and challenging this, we pave the way for a more nuanced understanding of female identity and sexuality - one that transcends limiting binaries and embraces the full spectrum of human experiences. It’s a journey towards liberation, where women and girls can define themselves beyond archaic tropes and societal expectations, reclaiming agency over our bodies and narratives.
