Historical Noir: the Foundation of a Genre

Shannon Swingley

Noir, Film and Novel

Professor Sinowitz

November 3, 2017

Historical Noir: the Foundation of a Genre

            The evolution of noir from historical construction to its postmodern ancestors has caused major debate in how to classify what exactly it means to be noir. Our undergraduate class put together a long list that was composed of factors that we saw to be important during our brief exposure to a collection of works. However, in creating the list, we found many things that varied through the films and novels, in fact, the only true consistency the class claimed to see was the “feeling.” This certainly lends some credibility to the argument that noir is more of a style that has changed from its historical foundations to match the tone of the current culture. However, throughout the course I have come to the conclusion that noir is more accurately termed a genre. Even the naysayers of noir as a genre such as Naremore who said, “every movie is transgeneric or polyvalent. Neither the movie industry nor the audience follows structuralist rules,” inevitably end up using the word genre to describe the collection of all things noir. This curiosity can be explained by the definition of genre itself. In M.H. Abrams Glossary of literary terms there is an evaluation of the word genre and its definition throughout history. The most notable thing about this collection of definitions is certainly that rigid definitions of genre based on strict archetypal tropes have been accepted during brief interludes between periods where the ancient philosophers conception of form is the leading factor in the definition of genre.

Through the renaissance and eighteenth century there was a biological definition that included emotional effect as a defining factor. In the nineteenth century genre’s definition became based in an expressive orientation. During the neoclassic period criteria such as sincerity, intensity, and organic unity became the model for genre. During the height of noir films, Aristotle’s poetics once again became the basis for genre where principles were organized in order to achieve a particular emotional effect. One of the more modern definitions by Wittgenstein’s takes all of these things into account saying genre is composed of family resemblance. All of this is to say that historically genre isn’t as rigid as some would like to think of it, so why would we need the things it describes to be rigid and textually identical? The answer is we don’t.

            So noir matches the definition of genre due to family resemblance in tone and feeling. This means that there does not have to be consistency in the minutia of the story, but the styles and emotions that they evoke in an audience. By that I mean that as time progresses a genre must adjust itself to maintain the same type of emotional connections with its viewers. To give a brief example outside of noir lets look at a classic that almost everyone is familiar with, I Love Lucy. This was clearly a comedy, and it still is because of its historical context but today the show would not meet the same massive success due to cultural changes in what is acceptably used I humor. Ricky’s machismo attitude and Lucy’s almost childish way of behaving along with the couple’s gender and racially based differences were meant to create a plethora of funny and relatable situations. However, as a woman raised in the 21^st century there are a lot of things in those shows that make me cringe as the comedy was derived from sexist gender norms and racial inequity. However, the different composition of comedy over time doesn’t change the feeling it evokes, when the audience it was written for views the work, it’s undoubtedly a comedy. In this we can see a clear example of generic transformation. With this being established, we can look at the transformation of noir and explain not only what the classical period was, but also why it changed. But first we have to discuss the feelings that noir is attempting to evoke from its audience as a genre. My classmates have aptly described it as a sense of impending doom, gloom, and mistrust. Some of the ways this has been achieved throughout noir’s history is by using the hardboiled detective character. Additionally things like darkness, rain, and constant misdirection during character interactions also plays a role. These things can be applied to both film and novel noirs as long as you take into account the different mediums. On screen we can see darkness and shadows and the score essentially tells us how to feel, but in novels we get descriptions of the setting and how things are said or done.

Now that all of this has been established we can finally discuss the historical context in which the classic period of noir emerged. Commonly cited as lasting until around 1958 with the film Touch of Evil marking its end, the classic period reflects attitudes and ideas that were very prevalent as a result of the events and social norms of the time. World War I, which ended in 1918, would have influenced some of the earliest noir writers; the rest of the classic period occurred during two of the biggest events in American history: the great depression (1929-1939), and World War II (1939-1945). These things left the country torn, jaded, and mistrustful of authoritative entities, which ruined countless lives during the depression. We can see this emerge in our hard-boiled protagonists who often present themselves as if there is not much to live even though they continue trying to find hedonistic pleasures to spite the unhappy world around them; they are tough, shrewd, witty, and alone.

We can see this particularly well in one of the first novels we read for this course. In The Postman Always Rings Twice, the protagonist is a drifter named Frank who stumbles upon a diner run by a Greek and his wife Cora. Frank quickly starts an unhealthy and oddly sadomasochistic relationship with Cora and the couple plans to murder the Greek for insurance money. The two are rather incapable, but the corruption of the law leads to them pulling of the “perfect crime” at least for awhile. Cora serves as an unconventional femme fatale, and Frank fits into the hardboiled character working outside the law. We can see the time period’s perspective on the law as the prosecuting and defending lawyers are not concerned with justice, but a bet over $100, “’What the hell. Once in a lifetime, isn’t it? Here. You keep it all. I don’t care about the ten grand. I’ve got ten grand. This [the check for $100] is what I want’” (Cain 82). The ten grand is about as significant to the lawyer as his investment in the law, they simply wanted to make a game of things rather than playing the role of justice that they are meant to. We can also see this protagonist outside of the law in The Maltese Falcon, where Sam Spade gets enveloped in a race to find a valuable statue. He becomes embroiled in this race after his partner is shot on a job for a treacherous woman that becomes Sam’s love interest. Sam operating outside of the law is obvious almost immediately in the novel when he interacts with the police who claim, “We’ve told you more than you’ve told us” (Hammett 22).

The Maltese Falcon of course holds other trappings of the social pressures that created the golden age, one being the femme fatale character. Even when the women in noirs are not purposefully endangering themselves and others they tend to complicate the situation and pull the protagonist onto the path that leads to their downfall. This is likely a result of the change in women’s rights during this time period. Flappers were bringing in a more sexually awakened era for women, and the war pulled women out of the home and into factories. The empowerment of women is a moment of social change that is inherently uncomfortable for men; men happen to be the writers creating these stories that paint powerful women in a dangerous light. A good example of this is in the film Out of the Past when Kathie kills a man and says “[I had to kill him because] You wouldn't have killed him. You would've beaten him up and thrown him out.” In this moment she stands with the gun above the protagonist and holds all the power in such a way that the audience knows that eventually it will be him on the receiving end. This depiction of women is a spiteful result of social change.

Another mark of the classic noir period is the commercialization of the entertainment industry via large studio productions. Directors were given little power over how the films was made and corporate powerhouses made decisions based off what had done well in the past. This type of production takes some of the uniqueness from film, as it’s a conveyer belt rather than carefully crafted product. This led to the type casting of people like Humphrey Bogart, John Huston, Lauren Bacall, and many others who eventually had parts written for them rather than adapting their acting skills to a part. The things that were received well by the audience were pushed to get favorable responses in future films. For example, in the film adaptation of The Big Sleep there is an entire romance concocted to pander to the audiences love for the married actors. Some might say that this compromised the films ability to fit into genre noir because of the change in emotional connection between characters, but I would say changes like these are direct links to the classic noir period because of the studio production style. It did exactly what it takes to fit something into a particular genre by adapting itself to the audience.

            The type of production is a big factor in the change from the classic period to the postmodern period. We cannot define a classic period in a genre without understanding how it changed making that portion of the genre unique. Around 1960 (give or take a few years) directors began believing firmly in auteur theory. This is the idea that the directors are artists of sorts, and the careful creation of their films allows them to have a specific feel that lets the audience know exactly who made it. With this change in all of film came a change in genre noir as it adapted to the expectations of the audience. Film as a whole left behind some of the stage acting techniques and developed a more authentic and nuanced style. The introduction of color also helped bolster the audience’s suspension of disbelief during film. Some would say that this change made films feel less noir, but once again I would argue that it is a generic transformation that happens with time and social expectations of both content and creation in entertainment.

Along with the technical march of time you can also begin to see changes in the way noir films produce the same emotional response in their viewers as we move into the more contemporary era. In China Town we begin to see a deviation from the hardened tough guy as our main detective. The protagonist is a PI that mostly works infidelity cases; he isn’t suave or witty, and he becomes entangled in a complicated, scandalous, and dangerous case purely by accident when he is hired by an imposter to investigate an her “husband.” Jake Gittes spends the majority of the film with a large and ridiculous bandage on his nose and only plays the tough guy with people who are clearly significantly weaker than he is. But somehow, through persistence he still gives the same noir like feeling that we come to expect through lines like, “But, Mrs. Mulwray, I goddamn near lost my nose. And I like it. I like breathing through it. And I still think you’re hiding something.” Another example of this change in noir over time is in the most contemporary novel we have read so far in this seminar, Devil in a Blue Dress. This novel is about Easy Rawlins, a black war veteran who lost his job and in desperation takes work from a imposing white man, DeWitt Albright. If he locates a woman called Miss Daphne and gets the DeWitt’s money back he will be paid respectably so he can keep his house. This novel has many deviations from the traditional noir tropes that the studio productions repeated incessantly through the classic period. Our detective grows into the role rather than being born into it; in this we see that he is relatively social and lacks confidence in comparison to the classic noir protagonists. Additionally, readers can see that his inner voice is more hardboiled than his exterior actions, but the most significant deviation in his character is that he is black. This puts him at a major social disadvantage in interacting with other characters throughout the novel compared to the white detectives. Though the classic period made us fairly comfortable with a white protagonist that commands some form of respect, Easy, however, has an internal monologue throughout the novel that narrates his struggle with being black in a white man’s world. Once again, despite these major changes in our protagonist it does not detract from the genre, rather it gives representation to different people and a different perspective on this type of story while producing the same emotional response from the readers.

            The periods of noir are defined by the culture that produces the works in the first place. We see change in all genres through time, and we can see from those deviations that classic noir is in fact distinct from the rest of the works that have proceeded them while maintaining the family resemblance that allows them to fall into the genre noir. Classic noir was made during the studio golden age of Hollywood, and heavily reflected the male stereotypes that arose from the war and depression torn era, and the projections of discomfort with change in women’s social status. Some may say that this idea of genre evolution is problematic for Frederick Jameson’s concept of pastiche, however I disagree. Pastiche is imitation with no affect, in other words, telling a story in the same way as it would have been told by the creator’s predecessors. It was suggested to our class that China Town is pastiche, but as I have already mentioned, this film shows marks of the new age while maintaining the story telling style of the past to create a specific set of emotions that are in a sense noir. Assuming that China Town is a good example of what Jameson was talking about, then we can see both an example of pastiche and the transformation of the genre to suite the audiences emotional needs in the same work. Small debates like this are the problem with trying to define something as nebulous as genre while explaining how different periods and phases fail to disrupt the essence of the thing itself: genre noir. It is almost reminiscent of presocratic issues that deal with change and constancy. This is the idea of “explaining how things remain constant as they change over time. Not only are there many kinds of things in the world, but each one is subject to change... As things go through changes, there’s still something about them that enables them to retain their identity” (James Fieser: Presocratic Philosophy from The History of Philosophy: a Short Survey). Constancy exists within the noir genre even as it moves from the classic to contemporary period that serve their respective audiences.