Miker,
Re your comments below:
"I'm OK with you calling The Big Heat noir. I know the movie
is, but the truth is that the plot is a tough guy avenging a
wrong and coming out triumphant at the end. Personally, I'd
rather not call it noir."
Of course you'd rather not call it noir. Beause if you called
it noir, you'd have to conclude that something other than a
"screwed" protagonist is the defining element of noir. Like
maybe a dark and sinister atmosphere?
Your post reveals two major fallacies. First, you admit that
the film version of THE BIG HEAT is noir, while resisting
applying that label to the novel.
The film is a very faithful adaptation of the novel, in its
plot, in its depiction of the characters, in its dialog (some
of it lifted right from the book), and, most importantly, in
its atmosphere and tone. So if the film is noir, the book
must be noir, unless noir has two completely different
definitions depending on the medium.
But the only reason the films we call noir are called noir is
because they tell the same kind of stories in the same way
that noir books do. In fact, they were often based (as THE
BIG HEAT was) on books that had already been labeled noir. So
the notion that noir has two separate meanings, one for film
and another for prose, is fallacious. And not just
fallacious, but clearly and self-evidently fallacious.
The second fallacy is implied by your statement "I'd rather
not call it noir." This betrays the initial error you're
making when you try to define noir. You decide what you want
it to be first, then construct a definition based on that
desire.
The reason I hold so steadfastly to my notion of "a dark and
sinister atmosphere" is not because that's what I want noir
to mean, but because that is what my objective observation of
the many disparate novels, stories, films, etc., that have,
by a fairly broad consensus, been labeled noir, suggests to
me are the only common elements. It may, as Kerry suggested
when he grudgingly admitted that public opinion seems to be
on my side, not be particularly useful, at least for certain
purposes, but that doesn't make it incorrect. It does,
however, make narrower definitions, even if they seem more
useful, incorrect.
The only thing that could make it incorrect is if someone
more discerning than me made a similar objective observation
of those stories, novels, films, etc, and found defining
elements, common to them all, that I missed. I certainly
admit that this is possible, but no one's done it yet.
Instead, every argument against my suggested definition has
had as its underpinning, either stated or implied, "I can't
accept your suggestion because this is what noir means TO
ME." In other words, precisely the faulty premise your
statement "I'd rather not call it noir" reveals.
And the problem with the narrower definitions you prefer is
that there is always the temptation to make them narrower
still. Eventually, "screwed" isn't enough, and we end up
having a long discussion over whether a story is truly noir
if the hero is doomed because of circumstances beyond his
control, or if some moral failing must be the cause that
inevitable doom in order to be truly worthy of the
label.
Actually, just as no filmmaker during the classic
"noir cycle" ever set out deliberately to make a film noir,
it strikes me that Burnett, Goodis, Cain, Woolrich, etc,
never set out to write noir prose fiction. They simply set
out to tell a particular story in a particular way, and noir
is what happened. There was no common philosophical
foundation. There was no conscious literary "movement." There
were just professional storytellers, telling their stories
professionally, and, in retrospect, we can now see common
elements.
JIM DOHERTY
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