You know, when I taught my class on noir last year, I treid
to avoid definition. Rather, I gave my students a list of
characteristics that were typical to noir-- femmes fatales,
dizzying camera angles, dark urban settings, etc. I
discovered that students tried to make these characteristics
into elements of a definition; thus, I had students writing
things like, "This film is not noir because it lacks an
effective femme fatale."
This year, I have hopefully learned from my errors, and I
instead give them a list of what I'm calling "symptoms of
noir" (rather than characteristics). In each class, some
student has said, "But that makes noir sound like a disease!"
I smile (rather pleasantly like a brown-haired satan) and
say, "Exactly...."
~Marc >:->
----- Original Message -----
From: Frederick Zackel
Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" is certainly a
working class tragedy. That
Everyman sense was one of JS's hallmark. And I
always see Charlie Chaplin's
Little Tramp on the lam from murdering some blind
skirt's old man. (I think
that's Cain's "Postman," actually.) Can we
consider "The Grapes of Wrath"
noir then? And whether "The Maltese Falcon,"
which both begins bored-stiff
in the office and ends bored-stiff in the same
office, is the working class
tragedy of a man who makes $25 a day....that
seems like a stretch.
How about "noir is naturalistic tragedy"?
For some of rara-avians Canadians, the principal
theme of Canadian Lit (as
outlined by Margaret Atwood in her non-fiction
book "Survival," 1972) is the
relationship of society to its landscape. That
the Canadian psyche is
indelibly stamped by living in a vast, sparsely
populated, inhospitable land
that will kill you if you simply stand still.
"You're gonna freeze in hell
forever," that sounds noir to me. Just by being
Canadian, one becomes noir?
Best wishes,
Frederick Zackel
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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