...The hardboiled PI or cop or even
> criminal
> > inhabits a world of violence and is aware of
the possibilities,
the
> > noir hero inhabits an everyday world that
suddenly spins out of
> > control. That's the distinction I was trying to
make.
> >
>
>
> That's fine as a starting point, but it must be
remembered that
> individual noirs can inflect this schema in a
thousand different
> ways. In Edgar Ulmer's film DETOUR, for example, the
protagonist
is
> constantly moaning about his bad luck, about how an
impersonal
fate
> has reached out and put the finger on him for no
good reason at
all.
> He sees himself as an everyday guy whose world has
suddenly spun
out
> of control. Yet the film makes it absolutely clear
that this man
is a
> hypocrite who invokes the concept of 'fate' as a
means of denying
> what is blatantly obvious to anyone who looks
closely at the film -
> that he personally responsible for everything which
happens to him.
>
> Elmore Leonard's novel CAT CHASER works is a
somewhat similar way.
> The protagonist sees himself as an ordinary guy who
has somehow
> become involved with a noir world of violent thugs
and ex-
torturers.
> Yet the truth is that he is able to emerge
victorious (with two
> suitcases full of money) only because he is
ultimately capable of
> surpassing his enemies in calculated
self-interest.
Well I would say that with any genre (or sub-genre) you will
rarely
(if ever) find a text that perfectly fills all expectations,
and many texts will belong to more than one genre at a time
(I think that's especially true of the 2 we're talking about
here)--but usually you can say that it falls more into one
camp than the other. In regards to this aspect of noir, there
will certainly be some works that turn that expectation on
its head. That said, I'm not so sure about the 2 examples you
give. In DETOUR, the protagonist begins the movie (I haven't
read the book) as a poor schlep who gets a ride with the
wrong guy at the wrong time--from there he makes 1 bad choice
after the other leading him to a certain fate--but when he
hitched that ride he was completely clueless about what
"fate" had in store for him. It's been a while since I've
read CAT CHASER, but if I remember correctly the hero is an
ex-soldier who's been invovlved in covert action & as
such he at least has experience of the violent world of the
"hardboiled." The fact that he comes out ahead also suggest
that this isn't a "pure" noir--I'd say the real noir does not
have a happy ending (or such an ending doesn't really ring
true).
Max
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