At 06:37 AM 06/04/2004 +0800, you wrote:
>I'm not sure if Lou from The Killer Inside Me counts
as a genius, though I'd
>like to mention it anyway since it's my choice for
our new theme.
>
>When I think of murderous geniuses, I think of films,
actually, especially
>the original version of The Vanishing.
I'm not sure this is a topic related to noir and hardboiled
fiction, whether in movies or text.
Psychological mysteries carry many of the trappings of our
genre (dark and spooky, or something like that,) but in the
end, like earlier churches, psychology is the enabling
institution for our faith in science and technology. The
validity of genius has been discredited, I believe, by its
evident cultural specificity, but it is still politically
useful. In the end, it's a bunch of guys saying "Here are the
things (especially abstract things) that we do well. If you
can't do them too, then you're dumb and can have the hard,
physical jobs that we don't want, or you can be drugged, or
institutionalized, or written off entirely." Better to define
the dumb when they're young so the mandate can be
fulfilled.
Okay, this is one of the mules I choose to whip. But the
notion of a criminal genius defines someone with all the
skills to fit in and prosper among the dominant culture, yet
for some reason this person rejects the culture's espoused
values. That reason is usually implied, or even stated as the
psychological equivalent of "evil". Catch the evil monster,
exterminate it and all is right with the world. That's not my
idea of noir
(though I am given to understand some may disagree with my
definitions.)
It's the same reason I don't think of most serial-killer
fiction as noir. I suppose stylistically it could be
hardboiled, but even that goes against the grain. There's
something too democratic about the genre to allow its heros
and villains to be so easily categorized. Hardboil is more
likely to view the geniuses from the POV of the rejected, and
question the differences between espoused values and human
behaviour.
I dunno. Spade and Gutman both seemed to be reasonably smart
guys to me. I can't think of Silence of the Lambs as noir.
Not so sure about Hitchcock's Rope, though. Iceberg Slim laid
claim to a genius IQ, but Pimp is not fiction, if we're still
putting our faith in official categorizations.
Best Kerry
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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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