Kerry wrote:
Yeah, I'm finding it bogus too. Christian themes may be
raised, but I've not read anything where they are confirmed
by noir. Not that I've read everything, by a long shot, but
Nietzsche said god is dead, meaning the end of faith and
superstition as a guide to human behaviour, and the
existentialists wrote stories about how that played
out.
That's one of the things that appealed to the French
identified in film noir, isn't it? I mean, Spade, Marlowe and
others had their own values because religious (and other)
institutions had failed them, and modern man. In other
stories, such as The Postman Rings Twice, faith did not keep
man from straying. It didn't even enter into the
picture.
In the end Christianity, and all other western faiths,
are about transcendence. Noir is the opposite. Noir is about
life without transcendence. If there's transcendence, through
faith or anything else, it ain't noir in my books. Christian
noir is a contradiction in terms.
********************* As far as Christian themes that are
confirmed by noir, for a starting point I would suggest the
recurring theme of the emphasis on the high price paid for
moral transgression.
I don't see the significance in your point about
Cain's Postman not having any religious inferences. I don't
believe that anybody has stated that Christianity is
inseparable from noir, just that they share several common
themes and can play well together in a novel. At least,
that's all I'm saying.
Transcendence often is used in a spiritual context,
but in a more generic sense it can imply simply the act of
rising above. In this second sense, I would say that
Christianity shares much common ground with noir on the
subject, in that the struggle for transcendence is a
desperate, powerful, and frequently occuring theme. Whether
the characters actually ever reach this goal is moot. Whether
that transcendence actually exists is moot also. The striving
for it is the main focus.
miker
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