“I know who you are,” the young woman said evenly.
She wouldn’t or didn’t want to meet their gaze.
She looked at the water as if deriving composure from its tumult.
“How did he die?”

from page 23, Basic Instinct, Richard Osborne 

.
Introduction to this series

Welcome reader.
I am studying the wisdom and lifestyle of the Femme Fatale, because this has been the closest to the lifestyle I have chosen.

The Femme Fatale stands for being a solitary, sexually active woman, who sees the men in her life as equals and the relationship, friendship or affair as playtime, where they challenge each other.

I will investigate the lessons of this archetype using the movie Basic Instinct. This series will contain spoilers, and will probably also be incomprehensible if you have not seen the movie.

I have no idea how long this series will be.

My ultimate goal is to rewrite it and publish the lessons as a short manifesto.

But until then this series will be the long-form version of the lives and loves, of The Femme Fatale.

.
lesson 1: become a woman without small talk

.
Over the years I wrote many things about Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell. But despite three decades of conclusions in the media, that Catherine Tramell was the killer;
The only thing I have found her guilty of is that she refuses to engage in small talk.

She’ll do jokes, she’ll do irony, she’ll do sarcasm and she will not hide her intelligence.
She will overtake another car in a curvy road, driving at full speed next to a cliff, and she has convicted murderers as friends;
But she does does not engage in conversation without substance.

For Catherine, interaction is a game that can only be played with people who raise the stakes together with her.
People who immediately understand life is too short to play it safe.

But I am getting ahead of myself, because that last bit, about the Femme Fatale or Catherine Tramell, having an actual connection to life being short, and the inevitability of death?
I didn’t realize that.
Not until yesterday.

.
lesson 2: play with death

.
Yesterday, I wrote the post “Why Femmes Fatale are so powerful“
And the Why, is because they are not afraid of death, and train themselves to be in its presence.
Catherine’s reckless driving and choice of company, are not just signs of how powerful she is;
They are the reason she has that power.

She trains herself to never be afraid.

Catherine acknowledges fear of any kind takes away your autonomy and that if you want to play life at the level she does, you have no other choice but to overcome them.
And this will automatically influence your desire for small talk (lesson one), because the purpose of small talk is to give yourself and the other a sense of safety.
Which contradicts the unspoken rule that she, as well as detective Nick Curran, and also other femme fatales live by;
That we are all responsible for conquering our own fears.
Including our fear of death, our fear of being rejected, our fear of being excluded, our fear of not belonging, our fear of being outcast.
Our fear of being thrown into jail.

And the perfect way to train that, is to refrain from small talk, in particular in situations where the other person has more power than you do.

Small talk and social skills are functional if you need them to survive. But applied habitually without being mindful of what your endgame is, small talk and being social become a cover up of a deep existential fear that no spiritual practitioner will want to miss out on.

Learning to be with someone without small talk, is a spiritual practice much like meditating is.

.
lesson 3: Treat Fear as an obligation to rise

.
Femme Fatales and those playing at her level, can distinguish between good and bad, and desirable and undesirable.
But they also recognize that before acting, before doing anything about it or doing something in pursuit of getting it;
The fear to never be able to attain a certain outcome,
or the fear to suffer a certain loss or doom,
must be met first.

“the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933

The Femme Fatale notices fear (of rejection, of loneliness, of poverty) and recognizes her first job is to accept all realities that might happen.
And being okay with it.

Just like a player in sports, she must keep her cool in order to play her best game.

.
.
lesson 4: only play with those who play with you

.
On the deck of Stinson Beach, overlooking the ocean, Catherine Tramell disempowers the two detectives by not being moved by their presence, nor by the news that her lover has been murdered.

In a later scene in the police station she does the same thing with a whole team interrogating her.
Leaning back into her chair, not hiding behind a lawyer, she tells a completely transparent story, taking away all their intimidating power and instead making them uncomfortable.

But to Gus, Nick Curran’s partner, she cheerfully says “Hi Gus.”
Even when she has just asked Nick:
“Why doesn’t Gus like me?”
To which Nick has replied:
“I like you.”
“You do?” she asks.
“Yes. Do you want to go upstairs and have a drink?” 
“I didn’t think you’d ask me.”

And it is after the following scene in Nick’s apartment that she walks down the stairs, cheerfully greeting Gus as he comes up, carrying pizzas.

Catherine has not complained to Nick about lack of warmth coming from his best friend. Being cold-shouldered by Gus was merely an interesting conversation topic to her.

This illustrates Catherine only plays with those who have moved themselves into the game with her. She respects that Gus wants to keep to himself and does not hold grudges.

.
lesson 1-4: recap and practice

..

Catherine’s opening scene reveals lesson one to three, which are all related:
lesson 1: become a woman without small talk
lesson 2: play with death
lesson 3: treat fear as an obligation to rise

Small talk and the larger desire to be part of a community, is how we cover up fears, including our fear of dying. 
Being a Femme Fatale means understanding you must be completely okay with death, isolation, loneliness, pain;
Before you act and do anything to prevent it.

The coolness Catherine displays in the opening scene, displays a mastery of the deepest and most primal of human emotions.
It displays, what we all know under the term:
Enlightenment.

And the scene in Nick’s staircase where she stays polite to Gus, gives us number four:
lesson 4: only play with those who play with you

Catherine is kind to Gus, and also to her two friends who are both convicted of murder; Roxy and Hazel Dobkins.
There is no judgement of Gus’ choice to not like her, nor is there judgement over her friends being murderers.

Whether she is with friends or foes;
Catherine is transparent, open, and unjudgmental.

Her dominant spiritual practice is to be at ease, whatever happens.

It is that which she has trained, and it is that what we can learn from her.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living