Maneaters: aka Femme Fatales
You know the type — the kind that Hall and Oates sing about. The kind that’ll chew you up. There aren’t just songs about them; there are movies, books, paintings, sculptures, late-night diner conversations!
Cleopatra is one of the famous, but certainly not the first. When it came time to make a movie about her, studios turned to her Hollywood heiresses: Theda Bara and Elizabeth Taylor. (Oh, and they asked Claudette Colbert, too.)
They even created some excellent film posters using Egyptian elements (hieroglyphics as backdrop; font used in the title), regal colors, and the Cleopatras themselves in dominant and/or seductive poses.
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Maneaters such as these come in all shapes and sizes, as Vladimir Nabokov knew. The book jacket designers for Lolita try to capture the obsession and fascination of Humbert Humbert through the use of playful typography and images of youth and innocence.
Watch out, boy.
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