At 08:25 AM 08/02/2007 -0800, Kevin wrote:
>My, what good taste you have. You nailed my
ambivalence about KISS
>KISS and BRICK.
>
>I loved them but at the same time I couldn't help but
feel a little
>disappointed and even woozy from being jerked out of
the story by all
>those sly winks and call-outs to hard-core crime
fans.
>
>I'm definitely going to have to check out UNKNOWN. I
don't mind
>cleverness; it's the constant looking in the mirror I
mind. Which is
>a problem I have with many crime flicks (and TV
shows) these days --
>the incredible, almost-incestuous self-consciousness
of them.
Kevin, love ya man but sometimes I think you argue both ends
against the middle. Aren't these sly winks and call-outs just
common, everyday allusions that in what the academics like to
describe as "great literature" referred to Greek and Roman
mythology, but in pop culture usually refers back to earlier
examples of the same pop culture? Either way, it's a little
gimmick to help engage the knowing audience, no? Or at other
times a kind-of short-hand for bringing the audience up to
speed as in "Okay you know that, right, now here's this."
Granted, it should not jerk you out of the story. Is it the
quantity, the lack of skill in application, or just your own
over-familiarity with the genre that makes the use of this
technique so distractingly obvious, do you think?
>Sometimes a guy just wants meat and potatoes. Sure, a
little parsley
>never killed anyone but half the time these days you
can't even see
>the meal for all the garnish. And every year it seems
like there's
>more and more parsely.
See here you seem to argue for the old tried and true instead
of the new with allusions to the old tried and true. Doesn't
that simply amount to so much allusion that the new is
undistinguishable from the old?
Either way, I expect I'm going to disappoint you with what
follows.
A friend recently loaned me DVD's of the first year of
television's
"House". We'd been watching the series for the past year, but
this marathon of House in our house had me both laughing from
one end to the other (to refer to another RA discussion
thread) and realizing how noir the thing is. Did I just
allude to another RA topic thread- noir outside of crime
fiction? Well, superficially it's a medical drama but it's
all about crime
(the lead character is a functioning junkie who frequently
breaks the rules, institutional, ethical and legal) and by
focusing on diagnostic medicine it becomes a series of
detective thrillers. These are usually resolved favourably,
but I don't think the over-arching plots are the least
transcendent. Come to think, in many of the shows the
challenge is overcome more favourably for the doctors than
the patients, who have had so many near-death experiences,
lost so many internal organs on the road to finding the cure
that those happy endings when patients are wheeled smiling to
the door defy credulity. If that doesn't make the point,
House's own dark humour drives it home. And that point is, I
think, "What did you expect? You're going to die. Live with
it."
I'd like to discuss this more, but unfortunately I don't
think the series is based on a book. I simply mention it to
point out that while we've been discussing the origins and
the mythology of the genre, it's possible the rest of the
noir world has moved on.
Oh well, Kerry
------------------------------------------------------
Literary events Calendar (South Ont.) http://www.lit-electric.com
The evil men do lives after them http://www.murderoutthere.com
------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 08 Feb 2007 EST