Re: RARA-AVIS: blonde vs. dark haired

From: Ed Lynskey ( e_lynskey@yahoo.com)
Date: 12 Jan 2008


You've got me, Patrick. I haven't read Cooper's novel in 35 years, at least. Maybe I saw the movie. I just recalled the sisters' hair differences. I agree such hair symbolism in noir can be treated heavy-handedly.

Ed

--- Patrick King < abrasax93@yahoo.com> wrote:
> But in Cooper, the dark haired sister was an adopted
> native American and Chingachgook recognizes this. In
> Cooper the hair color represents the talents of the
> two races, not good or evil. In most noir, blonds tend
> to be alluring and ultimately bad luck. Cora in
> Postman, Phyllis in Double Indemnity, Kathie Moffat in
> Out of the Past, Blanche Du Bois in Street Car Named
> Desire. Of course we can't generalize about ALL noir
> writers, but blond women tend to be the cause of the
> trouble in many of them. I think, in noir anyway, the
> very obvious blond=pure, dark=evil type of "symbolism"
> is reserved for poor examples of the genre. The better
> ones tend to be a little deeper in the process.
>
> Patrick King
> --- Ed Lynskey < e_lynskey@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > --- DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net wrote:
> > > Has anyone else paid more attention? Is this
> > typical?
> > >
> > >
> > IIRC, Cooper did this in LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Cora
> > was the
> > dark-haired sister and Alice the fair-haired. Maybe
> > he was a
> > prelude to what the noir writers did.
> >
> > I read Brewer's THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN recently but
> > didn't pick
> > up on the hair color code. Intriguing idea, though.
> >
> > Ed
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
> > Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
> > http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
> >
>
>
>
>
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
> Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
>
>
> RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

      ____________________________________________________________________________________ Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/newsearch/category.php?category=shopping



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 12 Jan 2008 EST