At 01:48 PM 08/01/2007 +0000, you wrote:
>No matter, this sport is not a _crime_ in the sense
in which we talk about
>"crime fiction".
For me it is. I like to read stories that question these
parameters, and even delve into that area of what a crime is.
For some it is absolute, some behaviour has been declared
illegal and therefore the people who participate in that
behaviour are immoral and disreputable. But then we have
behaviours that were legal, made illegal, and made legal
again. In cockfighting we have behaviours that are illegal if
done in one place, but legal if done in another. I think it's
this ambivalence that makes the activity of smoking still
show up, perhaps disproportionately, in crime and noir
fiction.
Often this leads me to suspect that some bahaviours are
labelled criminal because it serves the purposes of a group
who have gained the political power to make such declarations
as much or more than it serves to protect innocents from
victimization.
I'm not always convinced that criminalizing certain
behaviours actually changes the incidence of those
behaviours, so much as it allows us the satisfaction of
punishing our lessers. This might be one of the vicarious
thrills that come from reading crime fiction.
>Think of what would happen if suddenly boxing was
outlawed... would you
>say that a story
>involving boxing was criminous?
Yeah, and there has been some great noir set in that
environment. More for the activities that went on around the
sport itself, I admit, but they were criminal.
> I think that _the_ archetypal crime in crime fiction
is murder.
>This includes the threat or the suspicion of
murder.
It's pretty definitive for the victim, I agree. It's also the
biggest crime, as we've defined it in Western cultures. It
gets the biggest penalties, for instance. So I enjoy most
reading about people who kill without consequence. I'd have
to be elected to office to enjoy such opportunities
directly.
>A noir novel without any crime whatever is Patricia
Highsmith's _Edith's
>Diary_, one of the
>bleakest cold showers I have ever read. It's really
nasty as well as scary.
We did at one time on this list define noir as a category of
crime fiction. In so doing, did we just dodge the
question?
Best, Kerry
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