At 07:21 AM 01/09/2005 -0700, you wrote:
>Just thinking out loud here, but...
>
>I guess one could aspire to being philosophically
hard-boiled, but what
>sort of sick annoying puppy would strive for
noir?
Um, I guess that would be me.
>The former is a way of thinking, an attitude; the
latter more a
>condition or atmosphere. Even in literature,
hard-boiled generally
>refers to the attitudes of the narrator or author;
the other more to
>the prevailing mood or tone.
You could look at it that way, but I've always felt there was
more to noir than atmospherics. It represents a point of
view, that you describe below.
>But assuming one would want to "be" noir, what would
a noir philosophy
>consist of? We're all fucked and we're all gonna
die
That sums it up nicely. Nobody said this was going to be
easy.
> so the hell with
>everything?
> In practice, it would seem like pretentious, glib,
and
>morally hollow cynicism, a quick cutting remark for
everything and an
>answer for nothing.
This may be your conclusion, but there are alternatives. One
would be persistence (if at first you don't succeed, etc.)
and another might be the mitigating power of a strong, dark
sense of humour. In fact, we see a lot of both in noir
fiction, sometimes to the point of obsession, and it seems to
me this reflects a certain reality found in life.
Another option is a greater tolerance for the foibles of
others. Seems to me that anything we might call human
advancement has been gained more through persistence and
learning from failure, than from knowing, and simply
applying, all the correct answers in the first place.
Experiment, fail, adjust, experiment again is the scientific
method, if I remember my high-school physics. Because the
strange thing is that despite failure, and despite human
corruption in ourselves and others, and despite the fact that
we all end up dead anyway, people, for some reason, aspire.
It is so much a part of culture that it is difficult not to
believe it's hard-wired somewhere in the old psyche. So why
knock it? Why ridicule failure? Are you now arguing that
crime, corruption and failure to transcend the human
condition do not make up a defining theme in what we call
noir fiction? In fact, I'd say the noir atmospherics stem
directly from this theme.
>Someone suggests to me (seriously) that they're
"noir," I'd suggest
>putting 'em on suicide watch.
Yes, well, people do commit suicide. They do become
depressed, often quite severely and without any help from
noir fiction. Why would that be? And why don't more commit
suicide than do? Seems to me that these questions, and many
like them, are implicit in noir fiction. Why are we
entertained by violence, but not much inclined to experience
it first hand? What does this tell us about ourselves,
regarding our ability to tolerate violence at a
distance?
We've talked before on this list about existentialism being
an underpinning philosophy of noir fiction. If you like, you
might consider noir more the point of view than a separate
philosophy. If so, then the reason your conclusions seem glib
is because you've moved too hastily to them. If there's an
answer in this philosophy, noir suggests to me at least, it
is the human drive to survive. I've no idea why, really. It
does not make any logical sense, as you point out, on an
individual level. It just seems, to me, most of the time,
better than the alternative. Or maybe, as some noirish wag
once said, I'd like to see what can go wrong next.
>Or in protective custody. Imagine living with someone
like that?
Well, you'd have to ask Marg about that.
Best, Kerry
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