Frederick Zackel wrote:
>Throughout the novel Marlowe and Nulty will crack
wise. When Marlowe asks
>when "the inquest on the nigger" is coming up, Nulty
sneers, "Why bother?"
>
>On another occasion Marlowe will say, "Well, all
(Malloy) did was kill a
>Negro . .
>. I guess that's only a misdemeanor."
I've always read this episode as Marlowe pointing out, wryly,
the injustice of it all - hardly a racist sentiment.
>Marlowe states, "I saw a Jap gardener at work weeding
a huge lawn" on a rich
>white man's lawn. "He was pulling a piece of weed out
of the vast velvet
>expanse and sneering at it the way Jap gardeners
do."
This uses the language of the time, which definitely IS
racist, but Marlowe is here clearly on the side of the
gardener, a practical slave.
>Marlowe goes up against a self-proclaimed "Hollywood
Indian" villain who
>goes
>by the name Second Planting. This villain speaks in
guttural pig Latin,
>smells
>"the earthy smell of primitive man, and not the slimy
dirt of cities," looks
>like a
>bum, wears clothes two sizes too small for him, has
"the short and apparent
>awkward legs of a chimpanzee."
Marlowe's comments about Mexicans and "Wops" I'll give you,
but I think this just shows Chandler's (and Marlowe's) rather
confused moral code. As for the "Hollywood Indian," I read
this as Marlowe bemoaning the way all that he sees as pure,
moral and good in America's past having been corrupted.
That's not to say he isn't pretty nasty about Second
Planting, but even the name suggests a manufactured "fake".
I'm not happy with the way he does it, but this is entirely
consistent with Marlowe's worries about the loss of
"authenticity".
>The Chief tells him that "Trouble . . . is something
our little city don't
>know much
>about, Mr. Marlowe. Our city is small but very, very
clean. I look out of
>my
>western windows and I see the Pacific Ocean. Nothing
cleaner than that, is
>there?' He didn't mention the two gambling ships that
were hull down on the
>brass waves just beyond the three mile
limit."
>
>Neither does Marlowe.
Yes he does - right there.
I think the exercise of trying to put our standards on the
past is ultimately hopeless. Sure, Marlowe is racist in his
way, but he lived in unenlightened times. He didn't use the
Internet either - that doesn't make him a technophobe. I
actually think (and your final comment suggests you might
agree) that Marlowe is actually quite enlightened overall.
It's just that his agenda very often doesn't take into
account the ideas of racism, sexism and homophobia that many
of us have been weaned on. And why should it?
Cheers Chris
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