Getting a fix on what Film Noir is

By Xoic · Jan 14, 2022 · ·
  1. [​IMG]
    I've seen many Films Noir now, and read several articles. I was thinking through the themes and how they relate to the sociological trends of the 4os and 50s which they were a product of. Suddenly it coincided with Jungian thinking and it all made perfect sense.

    First I must do a bit of disambiguation though. I'm not including the hardboiled PI movies, because they're fundamentally different from 'real' Noir. As explained in this Wikipedia entry, both kinds of movies take place in a world of crime and moral ambiguity, but the true Noir protagonist is a doomed antihero who is corrupted, often by a Femme Fatale, and becomes hopelessly tangled in a web of fate that will destroy him. And while the Philip Marlowes and the Mike Hammers exist in the same corrupted world of crooked DAs and bad cops etc, and they often encounter femme fatales, they remain stainless. They're not doomed, they're somewhat akin to Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirrot, in that they represent logic and reason defeating the corrupt forces of darkness and crime. They have a flat character arc, relieving the world around them of the lies it labors under. The real Noir protagonists follow a negative growth arc of tragedy.

    The hardboiled movies are usually called Noir because they share so many attributes, and they use the same dark atmospheric lighting and Expressionist-derived cinematography. In literature the distinction is more clear between the two, and it needs to be understood in the movies as well.

    With that explained, I'll move on to my point:

    True Noir is the dark underbelly of the classical Hero's Journey myth that lies at the center of any classical civilization (during its classical phases). It explores male vulnerability and female cruelty and power.

    Among other themes of course, but these are 2 of the big ones, and in Hollywood outside of Noir they're generally swept under the rug. These are the failed heroes, the fallen ones. Like Odysseus if he had never escaped from the island of Circe, or had succumbed to the seductive song of the Sirens.

    I also have a vague hypothesis that the upswing of optimism and frivolity of entertainment in the 80's was mostly just gloss, a necessary break from the pessimism and cynicism laid bare by WWII and compounded by Vietnam, a loss of trust in government, and the massive growth and callousness of corporations. It seems to me that as a society America grew up in the 40's and shed its naivety, and that those naive periods were breaks in the unrelenting starkness of what was revealed.

    Oh, how did Jungian theory alert me to this? I was thinking about his revelation that progress and growth happens in cycles involving upswings followed by a fall into darkness, and that growth happens only through suffering—an idea shared by many religious and spiritual systems.
    Set2Stun and peachalulu like this.

Comments

  1. Xoic
    Books I've now bought on the subject:
    • New Hard-Boiled Writers 1970s-1990s
    • The Film Noir Reader
    • Out of the Past: Adventures in Film Noir
    • The Philosophy of Film Noir
    • The Philosophy of Neo-Noir
    Some time back, when I was engaged in a deep study into the show House, I bought House: The Philosophy and House: The Psychology, and both were excellent. I looked into other books in the series and they seemed not to be nearly as good. But the Philosophy of books on Noir and Neo-Noir are getting amazing reviews across the board.

    Apparently there's controversy about the status of Noir as important existential works that predate European Existentialism, but it all comes from elitists and Continental highbrows, who believe nothing important can come from America.

    To which I give the most Existential answer possible—

    whatever :cool:
  2. Friedrich Kugelschreiber
    so The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon aren't film noir by your definition?
  3. Xoic
    That's an oversimplification. Yes, they are called Film Noir, because they're filmed according to the same visual conventions and because in the world of movies the Hard-Boiled stuff is just lumped in with Film Noir. But it's very important to note that the protagonists are not doomed antiheroes. They don't succumb to the manipulations of the femme fatales, even if they do fall in love with them. In the end they're immune to the corruption and the moral degradation that befalls the true Noir protagonists.

    Also important to note, it isn't just my definition. Did you look at the Wikipedia article?
  4. Xoic
    Ah crap! I linked to the wrong Wiki page above! (Fixed now)

    Here's the relevant passages from the right one:

    "In its modern form, noir has come to denote a marked darkness in theme and subject matter, generally featuring a disturbing mixture of sex and violence.[1]

    While related to and frequently confused with hardboiled detective fiction—due to the regular adaptation of hardboiled detective stories in the film noir style—the two are not the same.[2] Both regularly take place against a backdrop of systemic and institutional corruption. However, noir (French for "black") fiction is centred on protagonists that are either victims, suspects, or perpetrators—often self-destructive. A typical protagonist of noir fiction is forced to deal with a corrupt legal, political or other system, through which the protagonist is either victimized and/or has to victimize others, leading to a lose-lose situation. Otto Penzler argues that the traditional hardboiled detective story and noir story are "diametrically opposed, with mutually exclusive philosophical premises". While the classic hardboiled private detective—as exemplified by the creations of writers such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane—may bend or break the law, this is done by a protagonist with meaningful agency in pursuit of justice, and "although not every one of their cases may have a happy conclusion, the hero nonethless will emerge with a clean ethical slate."[3][4][5] Noir works, on the other hand,

    whether films, novels, or short stories, are existential pessimistic tales about people, including (or especially) protagonists who are seriously flawed and morally questionable. The tone is generally bleak and nihilistic, with characters whose greed, lust, jealousy, and alienation lead them into a downward spiral as their plans and schemes inevitably go awry. ... The machinations of their relentless lust will cause them to lie, steal, cheat, and even kill as they become more and more entangled in a web from which they cannot possibly extricate themselves.[3]

    Author and academic Megan Abbot described the two thus:

    Hardboiled is distinct from noir, though they’re often used interchangeably. The common argument is that hardboiled novels are an extension of the wild west and pioneer narratives of the 19th century. The wilderness becomes the city, and the hero is usually a somewhat fallen character, a detective or a cop. At the end, everything is a mess, people have died, but the hero has done the right thing or close to it, and order has, to a certain extent, been restored.

    Noir is different. In noir, everyone is fallen, and right and wrong are not clearly defined and maybe not even attainable.[6]

    Andrew Pepper, in an essay published in The Cambridge Companion to American Crime Fiction, listed the major thematic commonalities of noir fiction as “the corrosive effects of money, the meaninglessness and absurdity of existence, anxieties about masculinity and the bureaucratization of public life, a fascination with the grotesque and a flirtation with, and rejection of, Freudian psychoanalysis.”[7] Eddie Duggan discusses the distinction between hardboiled and noir fiction, claiming that "psychological instability is the key characteristic of the protagonists of noir writing, if not the key characteristic of the noir writers themselves".[8]Similarly, Johnny Temple, founder of Akashic Books, observed that noir fiction tends to be written by "authors whose life circumstances often place them in environments vulnerable to crime."[9]"
  5. Xoic
    In fact I'd say the hard-boiled stories and films follow the model of the hero's journey, since the PIs and detectives make it unscathed (relatively) through all the traps and dangers. More like Odysseus than Oedipus.
  6. Friedrich Kugelschreiber
    thanks, the new article makes it clearer
      Xoic likes this.
  7. Xoic
    Bought 2 more books:
    • Hardboiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories
    • The Best American Noir of the Century
  8. Xoic
    "The protagonists are not doomed antiheroes. They don't succumb to the manipulations of the femme fatales, even if they do fall in love with them. In the end they're immune to the corruption and the moral degradation that befalls the true Noir protagonists." (Quoted from above)

    I just had some insight into this (05 29 23) while reading through the entry again.

    Suddenly it occurs to me—and this is just a hypothesis at this point—that the hardboiled MC has to resist the temptations of the feminine, inside himself as well as externally (in the form of a femme fatale). This parallels Loki in Norse mythology as a symbol of narcissism both internally and externally—in family, friends, co-workers etc. As I wrote about here: The symbolic meaning of Loki—the dangerous narcissist within us all.

    In other words watch out for the femme fatale, and the only way to do that is to beware of her inside your own psychology. For a heavily damaged hardboiled PI that might mean what Jung would call the shadow form of the Anima, the inner feminine who shows herself as an alluring woman in dreams and fantasies. When she shows up most men will give themselves over to her without much of a struggle, but a hero is the man who can resist, by symbolically having himself tied to the mast as Odysseus did while sailing past the island of the sirens. He also had all his men's ears plugged with wax. As always in mythology and dreams, we must figure out what underlying psychological factors are referenced by the symbolism.

    Jung talks about anima possession, because every man, no matter how masculine, has an inner woman in his psyche, who can take pssession of him at times when he becomes overwhelmed with emotions or moodiness. This isn't the anima in her good form, it's her shadow form, her evil manipulative side.

    What finally killed Loki was Heimdall, the watcher at the gate, with incredible powers of visual acuity. Poised at the entrance to Valhalla (the psyche) on the rainbow bridge, and able to see into the hearts of all who enter. But unfortunately he was looking the wrong way—outward, while Loki festerd and grew ever wickeder, already inside and among the gods, welcomed as one of them. (In reality he was half Frost Giant, and resentment simmered in his breast because he grew up watching his half-brother Thor get all the chicks and win all the prizes he thought should belong to him. Very much a Caine and Abel pairing). If intense watchfulness is what can destroy narcissism, what can destroy the inner shadow feminine? Perhaps the same?

    Odysseus used physical tricks to overcome the charms of the Sirens, but then those were symbolic. You figuratively tie yourself to the mast and plug the ears of your sailors. Meaning don't listen to any of her seductive songs, and take no action to do her bidding if it goes against what you know is right. I'm just speculating here, developing the hypothesis. Must dwell on the ideas and write about them (not here) for some time to ferret out the secrets (if I'm able to). It begins with formulating some kind of hypothetical answer, testing it, and gradually improving on it.
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