[Haskell-beginners] function parameter types after flip

Can anyone help me understand the behavior of the following expressions in ghci?  I was trying to construct a flipped function 'elem' that would accept a list of characters first but I ran into this problem with the type signature. Thank you. Prelude Data.List Data.Char> :t elem elem :: (Eq a) => a -> [a] -> Bool              -- OK Prelude Data.List Data.Char> :t (flip elem) (flip elem) :: (Eq a) => [a] -> a -> Bool       -- OK this is what I want Prelude Data.List Data.Char> let fElem = (flip elem) Prelude Data.List Data.Char> :t fElem fElem :: [()] -> () -> Bool                     -- ?? Function will not accept a [Char]