So, I’ve been loving We Have Band’s song “Honeytrap” this month, and although the lyrics don’t suggest the scenario, it’s had me thinking about what a honeytrap is, too.
The definition of a Honeytrap is:
a scheme in which a victim is lured into a compromising sexual situation to provide an opportunity for blackmail
I can think of lots of movies and shows that have used this plot but all the examples I can think of have a woman do this to a man.
There have to be examples when the victim is a woman of a man (or another woman), though, don’t there? The closest I can think of is Cruel Intentions, but that’s a pretty convoluted situation going on there.
Frederick Forsyth gets a lot of mileage out of male-targeting-female honeytrap operations in his books, using Markus Wolf’s real-world employees as the jumping-on point for spy fiction where an attractive young man will be tasked with seducing a lonely spinster who has secretarial access to confidential information.
I’ve read every Freederick Forsyth novel, and I can’t recall a single one in which this happens. Are you sure you have the right author? What are some titles?
Not exactly a honey trap, but there was an episode of Glee where the recently divorced male choir teacher (Will) decides to get revenge on the scheming female cheer coach (Sue) by vamping her, asking her out on a date, and then publicly standing her up to humiliate her.
Given the number of ridiculously convoluted love polygon storylines on Glee there may be a better example than that from the same show, but I can only think of examples where the blackmailer/troublemaker is a third party and not the “honey”. There was a more traditional honeytrap plot where Sue drugged the male principal and took a compromising photo of him for blackmail purposes.
The heroic undercover S.A.S. agent gains access to the violent lefty-radical gang after he gets the female gang leader (played by Judy Davis) to fall in love with him. It all starts when he “picks her up” in a bar.
Fist of God has the Israelis pull this on Edith Hardenberg, after the mission controller recalls how the commies had sent in a stunning young Yugoslav to seduce a lonely spinster (and noting that the judge had been sympathetic at her trial). In no time flat, they call in a specialist: “Because of his good looks and the deceptively shy and diffident manner he could affect when he wished, the Mossad had twice used him for honeytrap operations.”
At that, The Deceiver goes on for a bit about how Wolf excelled at recruiting the prim spinster secretaries at the elbows of bigwigs in general – with specific mention of his success against Chancellor Brandt’s secretary in particular.
The trap. In S&H, it was Hutch who was undercover (he was of course given a female instructor/dance partner.) In CA, it was Sabrina who was undercover. That was a good episode, highlighting Kate Jackson’s acting ability. A nerdy, bespectacled heiress, wrapped up in a ton of clothes, walks in face-bowed and declares, “I wanna learn how to dance.”
I can think of many instances in which a male spy or a male villain seduces a woman in order to use her for his own purposes (it happens regularly in Tom Clancy novels), but none where blackmail is the seducer’s ultimate goal.
Since the OP mentions Cruel Intentions, I suppose it’s fair to point out that Valmont, in Dangerous Liaisons, regularly seduces women and then dumps them, but he’s not a blackmailer. He just gets a kick out of cruelty and out of ruining the reputations of seemingly virtuous women and girls.
As mentioned by Astorian: In Tom Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger, the drug cartel’s intelligence guy seduces the FBI Director’s secretary and sets up the Director’s assassination after figuring out his schedule (IIRC).