Jim wrote:
"You separate character from noir by looking at the stories
that were originally classified as noir, and the movies that
were originally classified as noir, seeing what they had in
common, and concluding that those common elements must be the
defining elements."
However, in an earlier discussion you drew a very strict
distinction between noir movies and books, saying that, by
definition, no film released past a certain year can be noir,
that, by definition, no contemporary film can be labeled
noir. However, your use of noir when referring to books
embraces books of any era. That tells me you do not see noir
ooks and films as entirely comparable.
You also consistently confine darkness to atmospherics and
rule it out as indicative of characters or actions (you've
said no movie set in sunlight can be noir; does that apply to
books, too? I guess much of Thompson is not noir), hence you
always refer to a "noir world," never
"noir stories." And that is my main problem with your
definition. Yes, Marlowe may walk down mean streets in a noir
world, but I don't think of Chandler's books as noir. I am
far more interested in finding the distinction between
Chandler's work and, say, that of Goodis. They are not
writing the same kind of stories. I don't think they are even
writing about the same world. And any label that equates the
two is of limited value -- yes, the Stooges and the Monkess
both played rock (and I really like them both), but any term
vague enough to accurately include them both is not much help
in classification.
Mark
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 14 May 2004 EDT