--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, Michael Robison
<miker_zspider@...> wrote:
>
> Killing as a solution to problems permeates
hardboiled
> and noir.
So does brutal interrogation, but I hardly see the hot lights
and rubber hoses of a Gold Medal classic as an appropriate
jumping-off point for a debate about Abu-Ghraib or Gitmo.
Why? Because fiction is fiction. It's make-believe, no matter
how "realistic" it pretends to be. That's why I read it. I
enjoy reading about tough cops working over slimy crooks. But
I hate real torture, and when I want to upset myself about
it, I go read political blogs.
I love the screaming tag-line for Flynn's Deadly Boodle:
HELL-BENT FOR THE GAS CHAMBER!! You gotta love that! But I'm
a lot less enthusiastic if you ask me what I think about the
death penalty, for real. I'm not wholeheartedly opposed, but
my feelings are a lot more mixed in real life than they are
when I'm reading something hardboiled or noir, where part of
the fun is in watching tough or desperate characters gamble
with their very lives against a highly stylized, mythologized
legal/penal system.
I don't want to suggest that discussions of real topics that
were almost certainly on the minds of various hardboiled
authors shouldn't be indulged in, but I do experience a
strong disconnect between my attitudes as a reader of fiction
and my attitudes as a concerned real-life citizen, with
respect to a lot of those issues.
I think, as someone else mentioned, it would be nice if the
hardboiled/noir frame of reference remained firmly in the
foreground of any such discussions, so they don't just become
banal, interminable squabbles over insoluble hot-button
issues.
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