At 08:10 PM 17/02/2005 +0000, you wrote:
>I disagree. Noir need not involve a crime. To be
sure, there must be
>something
>threatening, but it can be self-inflicted or just in
the head of the
>characters. The threat
>may be anything, from a crushing bureaucracy that
destroys dignity and
>hope (as in
>Kafka's work) to drug- or alcohol-induced fantasies
that destroy the
>protagonist. Noir
>reaches quite far. Dino Buzzati's masterpiece, _The
Desert of the
>Tartars_, is noir, as is
>Adolfo Bioy Casare's _Adventures of a Photographer in
La Plata_. There are
>no crimes, but
>the atmosphere is ominous, and the doings, rummy all
the way to nightmarish.
Well, now we're back to atmospherics, and that's just not
enough to define the genre, in my less than humble
opinion.
> > And while it may be Hard Boil that's working
class, noir too looks at the
> > world, especially the exercise of power, from
the bottom up. Correct me if
> > I'm wrong, but might not even Captains be
existentialists?
>
>I don't think hardboiledness has to do mainly with
class. Hardboiled
>characters can belong
>to any social class.
Colloquial. Didn't we agree on colloquial as the
characteristic for hard boiled? Not that class entirely
coincides with colloquial, but we're getting awfully close.
So much of it is about the working stiff, or the
disenfranchised. I don't think we're talking Knob Hill
colloquialisms here.
Hoping this kicks off another round of "Definitions,"
Kerry
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