At 05:08 AM 24/02/2004 -0800, you wrote:
>I have been toying with the idea that without
a
>contrived definition restricting noir to the 30s
and
>beyond, the term is so generic as to be
worthless.
Sounds reasonable that noir may be defined as a twentieth
century incarnation of a tradition that goes back to the
Greek tragedies, and probably into pre-literate, oral
story-telling too.
>This is my problem with the famous Doherty
definition
>as "dark and sinister." It simply lets too many
cats
>in the door.
Such as all those dark & sinister yarns in which good
reassuringly triumphs over evil at the end. But I'm not sure
it's enough to say the characters are fucked, either. There
may need to be some notion that the characters aspire to
something better, a case of humanity's reach exceeding its
grasp, to provide the necessary dark humour.
We have Spade with his ideas of what a partner is required to
do, taking Brigit down, but the rest of those nasty
characters are left to continue their obsessive pursuit of
dross. And we have Ellroy's characters achieving a form of
redemption in L.A. Confidential, but it certainly seems small
and compromised, possibly even pointless given the context.
Even Cockfighter, with its elaborate social structure based
on the fighting ability of an animal with a brain smaller
than a pea.
> Using this definition, Hamlet is noir.
Yeah, and Macbeth, and man, if you've seen the movie Titus.
That Shaky Bill was something when it came to writing stories
readily adaptable to the screen. Leonard could learn a thing
or two, and probably has. But I see your point. Why not just
call it all tragedy and have done with it?
>So is everything from the Gothic
tradition.
Except Gothic has gone in a couple of different directions,
such as spook and vampire stories (they're dark and sinister
too, but not our idea of noir, I suspect.) And Gothic, while
like noir is grounded in location, that location is natural.
There's evil in the landscape. Twentieth century noir is
definitely urban, the evil in man. But wait! What about
country noir? Is it enough to say that these stories are
grounded in a rural landscape within an urban society?
And what to make then of Brian Moore's Black Robe? I've long
thought that noir. It was written in the 20th century, but
takes place in a pre-urban North American landscape.
Definitely Gothic in its outlook at a harsh environment, but
also a story line that suggests a human limitation to human
aspiration.
>Tightening the scope in an admittedly
contrived
>manner, noir is the bastard child born of
American
>Naturalism and fathered by the hardboiled school.
In
>it's inception it featured a doomed criminal.
LITTLE
>CAESAR, SANCTUARY, and SCARFACE laid the
foundation,
>and Cain's THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE is
the
>cornerstone.
Your precedents are too limited, but you've added one thing
to the definition that, surprisingly, we've overlooked in the
past. Crime. There has to be a crime involved. Noir is a
sub-genre of crimewriting, in my opinion anyway.
How about noir as the tragic sub-genre of post 19th century
crime writing? My Oxford (admittedly the bastardized Canuck
version) defines tragedy as
"1. a serious accident, crime or natural catastrophe" and "3.
a dramatic representation of tragic events and with an
unhappy ending, esp. concerning the downfall of the
protagonist."
Ah yes. The downfall of the protagonist.
Best Kerry
------------------------------------------------------
Literary events Calendar (South Ont.) http://www.lit-electric.com
The evil men do lives after them http://www.murderoutthere.com
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