Kerry says:
...miker does say: "the implication is that stan's dilemma
just might be a result of the evils of capitalism, and thats
pure rubbish."
So I'm curious if that's because of the structure of the
story, or if miker finds the idea itself to be pure rubbish.
Then I might know whether I'll enjoy the book.
****************************
hi kerry,
mario is correct. i was not waving the glorious green- back
flag of capitalism. i did not intend any comment on the pros
and cons of the two economic systems.
in the admittedly small amount of noir that i've read,
socialistic/communistic themes pop up every so often. its a
natural. a very common plot in noir involves a crime
committed by a poor person in a desperate hope to escape a
life of miserable poverty, such as cain's
_postman always rings twice_, or anderson's _thieves like
us_. the plight of the working class in a capi- talistic
economy is a recurrent theme in marx's _the communist
manifesto_. superficially, there appears to be a correlation.
and you will indeed often read noir dialogue where the poor
guy complains about the unfair- ness of it all.
but here's the irony. marx's suggestion is that the worker's
standard of living could be raised by sharing the wealth. but
i don't see any noir characters that would go for this
slightly elevated standard. they want a considerably larger
slice of the pie, and pre- ferably without the idea of actual
"labor" entering the picture at all. bowie, in _thieves_, at
first entertains the idea of becoming a simple farmer with
his share of a bank robbery, but with a couple more robberies
and all the easy money, he forgoes the idea of actually
working for a living.
when gresham's stan is on the downhill slide, he shares a
boxcar with a black fellow who is filled with the marxist
spirit. he states, "You can't get nothing in this world by
yourself." (aside: this remark is surprisingly similar to
harry morgan's tor- mented last words in _to have and have
not_) gres- ham himself furthers the socialistic theme by re-
ferring to the mark in stan's last con as a "capi-
talist".
please remember that i am a noir newbie, so anything i write
should be taken with a grain of salt.
see you all on monday! the lake beckons...
miker
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 11 Jul 2002 EDT