Jim:
"Whoever coined the word gets to use it to describe what s/he
wants described. Whoever uses it to describe something else
is misusing the term. That, I think, is pretty much
unassailable."
Only if you believe that words cannot evolve, as you clearly
believe. I believe they can, and do.
Also, you said no film past 1964 can be noir because after
that year, any filmmaker who attempted it was self-conscious
in his or her attempt to make a noir film. So you are locking
the word down to a very specific meaning, bound not just by
style, but also by time and production values (AND adding
self-consciouness to the definition). Well, let's go to the
extreme and look at David Lynch's Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks,
both of which are filled with self-conscious reference to
classic noir films. Are you actually saying they are not dark
and sinister, even though they were not filmed in B & W
pre-1964? If "dark and sinister" are the only requirements,
how can they not be?
And if self-consciousness is a deal-breaker, why does it not
apply to modern writers, who are just as aware of their
writing noir books as filmmakers became after the French
retroactivity declared a cannon of films noir? Are you really
saying that Pelecanos, Max Allan Collins, Lawrence Block,
Jason Starr, Robert B Parker, etc., are not awarely writing
noir? Parker wrote a dissertation on it and Pelecanos was
inspired to try it after taking a college course on noir
writing. So why isn't self-consciousness a deal-breaker for
writers?
And if "noir" is just a brandname and marketing tool, as it
was for Duhamel, then can't it evolve through marketing, and
the buying public? The closest analogy I can think of is with
punk rock and new wave. A bunch of bands in a handful of
local scenes started crudely playing a particular type of
back to basics music in the mid-'70s. At first, any band who
played particular clubs -- 100 Club (London), 9:30 (DC),
CBGB
(NYC), Rat (Boston), etc (fill in your city's club or clubs
here) -- was labeled punk. This led to a very disparate
collection of bands -- Pistols, Clash, Ramones, Dead Boys,
"one chord wonders," to use the Adverts exaggerated label,
but also Stranglers, Suicide, Blondie, Television, Talking
Heads, Cars and Police, some with very accomplished musicians
who did not stick to 2 minute-two chord songs. At first, all
of these bands were labeled punk (as were many pub rock, even
metal bands like Motorhead), as much due to proximity as any
musical commonality. However, the marketers at Sire were
afraid that the term punk might be offputting to consumers,
so they coined the term "new wave rock and roll" and, on a
promo double single, applied it to several bands they had
recently signed, whose first albms ey were marketing -- Dead
Boys, Talking Heads, Saints (their first album in the US, at
least) and Richard Hell. (I guess they were okay with the
Ramones being called punk.) In 1977, these bands had more in
common than they later would, but even then they were pretty
different from each other, both in subject matter and in
instrumentation, as well as locale, even nationality. So if
we look at the commonalities of Seymour Stein's marketers'
term, all we have is guitar based (although TH and the Saints
both had prominent keyboards), male-fronted, relatively, for
the time, low production value rock and roll. Not very
helpful. But then critics came along and wrestled the terms
from marketers and started drawing very fine distinctions
between punk and new wave, in retrospect -- for instance, the
Ramones were punk, but the Cars were new wave. I, for one,
found those distinctions very useful, both for classification
and consumption.
And that's how I think of hardboiled and noir. The latter, in
particular, may have started as a marketing term, meant to be
very inclusive, but through use by critics, writers and
readers, the terms have taken on more distinctions and become
more tightly defined (though obviously far from unanimously).
And I, for one, find that very useful, both for discussion
and for deciding what new books to buy from today's
marketers.
By the way, although I'm not sure, I'd hazard a guess that
all of Duhamel's original noir writers were male. So if we
are using that original roster to define any and all common
noir traits to be used for all time, why isn't that one of
them?
Mark
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