--- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Frederick Zackel" <fzackel@...> wrote:
>
> I have resisted … But when Albert Camus gets trotted out …
>
> Like a lot of folks, I love reading noir. Watching interesting people make
> one dumb decision after another. Like watching them falling down a
> staircase, going faster and faster until they go splat. Noir is Inexorable
> and doom is Inevitable.
>
> Methinks, a noir protagonist thinks with his willie, or rather lets his
> willie think for him, and that dooms him.
>
> Our society celebrates – DEMANDS -- male self-control.
>
> And noir is a morality tale about men who can't control themselves.
>
> A man enters the Universe of Noir when he lets his willie do his thinking
> for him.
>
> Think Bill Clinton. Eliot Spitzer. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.
> Mark Foley. Newt Gingrich. John Edwards. Jesse James.
>
> Tiger Wood anybody?
>
All these people strike me as very ordinary folks, very normal. What's weird about politicians consorting with whores? It happens all over the world. What is really noir is not the actions of these guys but the hypocritical attitude that labels them freaks. I recall one television moron admonishing Elliot Spitzer and suggesting he has some kind of "problem" and needs "treatment". If men can't decide who they want to fuck, what freedom do they have? By the way, Spitzer's setup would make very nice material for a novel.
Best,
mrt
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