In digest #242 Michael Robinson admitted he (like me) is
fascinated by the mythological aspects of noir &
hard-boiled fiction.
Yes, the Greek myths are "ancient noir." Oedipus is the
original born loser, and the best you can say about him is he
is one sorry mother-(you can't say that!) But he finds a sort
of redemption & salvation along the way. Oedipus isoften
called the first detective. (Just as Pandora was the first
wife, the first bride, the first femme fatale.) Poor Orestes!
Mother-murderer on the run, with the Furies as John Law after
him. Redemption & salvation, 'cause Judge Athena casta a
vote of compassion. Big difference between ancient noir &
modern noir is kings and gods versus ordinary joes.
In the end no diff really between ancient heroes and modern
anti-heroes. Aristotle says the audience feels fear &
pity. You see the fate of the born loser and you feel pity
for the poor dumb slob; by the same token, you see the fate
of the born loser and you feel fear because YOU could just as
easily be that same poor dumb slob. Out of fear and pity come
compassion.
(Can you find the ONLY act of compassion in Joe Conrad's
Heart of Darkness? Hint: it's a cookie. And yes, Conrad &
Marlow are both racists.)
The fix was in from the gitgo. Because of who you are, you
act and you have no choice but you act that way. (The
official position of the gods in Oedipus is, hey, don't ask,
don't tell. You don't want to know. But Detective Oedipus
keeps asking questions.) The mythology part of it is the
story is endlessly recycled with slight variations. The Hero
has a Thousand Faces.
Back in the late 1920s & early 1930s, a college
kid-hitchhiker named Joe Campbell stayed in a Monterey hostel
next door to a Stanford college kid named Ed Ricketts. Those
two guys and a third college guy named Steinbeck partied like
college kids all summer. Steinbeck wrote Grapes of Wrath,
which is a mythological reworking of the Biblical story of
Moses, also wrote a book called Tortilla Flats, which is a
reworking of King Arthur's round table (i.e., Danny's table
with the pisanos,) among others. Oh, and Steinbeck died while
re-writing the Tales of King Arthur.
I too am reading Peter Spiegelman's Black Maps. A good book
where the Mean Streets is Wall Street. His lone wolf PI is a
loser . . . in the eyes of his family. But things will change
by the ending. Oh, and some rara avis folks (Bill Crider, for
one) like F. Paul Wilson's Lone Wolf hero Repairman Jack
stories. Welll, I rented the new "Midnight Mass" DVD of a
Wilson short story, about a lone wolf priest (" a blonde
Satan"?) who loses his faith when vampires take over the
world. Good hard-boiled horror movie. Yesterday morning I
didn't make it to church; instead I watched Mel
Gibson's
"Signs" about a minister who lost his faith and ETs take over
the cornfield. Gibson of course is making a new movie called
"Passion" about a lone wolf loser who gets crucified and on
the cross has this really great noir line:
"How come you forsaken me?"
The ancient Greeks had a story about the wolf and the
farmer's dogs. The wolf comes by the farmer's place, sees the
farmer's dogs all running wild and jumping around the meadow,
having the time of their lives, partying like crazy. The dogs
see the wolf, come running over. "See how free and wild we
are," the dogs all tell the wolf. The wolf don't say nothing.
In truth, the wolf sees the collars on the dogs' necks.
That's Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. Spade is pure mythology:
"the blonde Satan" is the Good Warlock in battle against the
Bad Wizards (i.e., Gutman as Appetite, Cairo as Homosexuality
and the dandy Oscar Wilde and Art for Art's sake, Brigit is
the Femme Fatale, Wilmer as the Punk who gets buggered by
Everybody Bigger than him, etc.) The Falcon itself is a
mythological
"rara avis," almost like something Sinbad the Sailor
discovered on one of his trips. If my bedraggled memories
serve me right, Marlowe in The Big Sleep is the Tarnished
Knight. Even the name Marlowe is mythological (and Conradian,
too.) Chandler went to a British public school.
Hogwarts?
All Ancient Tragedies are High Class Noir. Hamlet, too, is a
born loser. Well, he was born to be a king, but he got
cheated by Murder! (The Sword always trumps the Line of
Succession.) College kid comes home on spring break, finds
Dad is dead, & Mom and Uncle Claudius stinking up the
bridal sheets. ("Reechy!") Along the way, College Kid got
kicked out of the Family Business (King) and goes Goth in
black threads; the play ends in a replay of Columbine High
School. Medieval Noir?
Yesterday Terence Rafferty in the (July 27th) New York Times
Movie section was writing about the gloomy status
scriptwriters have in Hollywood and in the films, using Joe
Gillis in Sunset Boulevard as his anchor. Joe Gillis, you
remember, is the corpse in the swimming pool. Rafferty writes
that,
"The worst (disrespect) is that Norma Desmond gets all the
best lines. "I am big. It's the pictures that got small." "We
didn't need dialogue. We had faces." "All right, Mr. DeMille,
I'm ready for my close-up." All spoken by mad Norma, not
smart Joe, who narrates in the tough/florid style of the noir
hero - that is, in the defensive voice of the born loser."
What could be more mythological in 20st century America than
a movie star?
A born loser is a born loser in the eyes of his (or her)
Society. All that means is the loser has been marginalized.
Somebody oughta write a biblical PI story about Rahab the
hooker in Joshua's battle against the walls of Jericho. Yeah,
Joshua sends two men as spies into Jericho; they stay with
this hooker who is so marginalized in her society that she
lives (and works) in the margins of Jericho (i.e., within the
ten-foot thick wall itself of the city.) Rahab betrays the
whole city; in return, she becomes part of the family tree
for a guy named Jesus. What a deal! Dante says that
unbaptized hooker ends up super-close to God in Heaven. What
a deal!
Michael thinks of Greek heroes as immature children. How
smart was Spade fouling his own nest by balling his partner's
wife? Spade is nuts about pussy but a real wussy around
women. Spade KNOWS the only reason Archer died in Burritt
Alley is because Burritt talked faster than he did into
taking on the new client and following her scent across the
city. Spade goes after Archer's killer because, like any born
loser, he recognizes HE should been the poor dumb slob dead
with his gun in his holster. No match for a woman. A wussy?
Anytime he needs advice, he asks Effie first. He
strip-searches Brigit to see if she's carrying weapons.
(Well, of course she is; all women got them.) How
mythological is she? Compare Brigit's physical description
(the red nails, lips, etc.) with the Woman playing Cards with
Death in the rowboat in Samuel Taylor Coolridge's The Ancient
Mariner. They are mythologically identical. They each look
like the Hindu Goddess Kali the Killer and like Vampira the
Vamp. Each broad is a Man-Eater. And the last thing he does
in the book is "shudder" 'cause Archer's wife wants to see
him. After that we get The Silence of the Lambs from
Spade.
Mythology is not something you know in your head. It's what
you feel in your heart. Man, these stories are NEEDED!
"When there has been a long season of quiet, people are slow
to wet their hands in blood; but once blood is spilled,
cutting and shooting come easy."
~ Mark Twain, "Roughing It."
Well, that's outa my system now.
Frederick Zackel
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