Noir? I barely know her! Why Neo-Noir is a Genre in its Own Way

Mallory Pendergast

Noir Film & Novel

Professor Sinowitz

15 December 2017

Noir? I barely know her! Why Neo-Noir is a Genre in its Own Way

Throughout the semester we have read and watched many noir novels and films, but at some point, there was a shift in the elements constituting noir, to what some refer to as neo-noir. This shift occurred around the 1960s, ending with Orsen Wells’ film Touch of Evil. After watching this film and then watching Chinatown, which is roughly the transition from classic noir to new-noir in our class, I definitely noticed the elements of classic noir shifting to a more modern style, and it was not just because the films were beginning to be produced in color. Some of the elements that have been transformed in neo-noir are violence, femme fatales, the chronological order and complexity of plots, false accusations, unreliability of narrators, sexuality, and the personal codes of protagonists (“The Elements of Neo-Noir,” 2014). The escalation of these elements in Chinatown, Devil in a Blue Dress, Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction, Gone Girl, and Memento mark the beginning of neo-noir due to Cawelti’s theory of generic transformation. 

Evolved Elements of Neo-noir:

            In the evolution from classic noir to neo-noir the elements have become less PG-13. Will Hays created a production code in the 1930s, commonly known as the Hays Code, as an attempt to censor films created in Hollywood (“Hays Code”). Because of this code, many of the classic noirs could not depict violent or sexual scenes, which meant that directors had to utilize angles, lighting, and scene cuts to depict these dramatic ideas. The Hays Code ended around the 1970s (“Hays Code”), which allowed neo-noirs to provide more graphic scenes in relation to sex and violence. These types of scenes can be seen in all of the neo-noirs we encountered. Some of the more erotic scenes being in Gone Girl and Devil in a Blue Dress, and the more aggressive scenes in Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction, and Memento. 

            Our class has discussed the violent trend of neo-noir, especially in regard to scenes in Chinatown, Taxi Driver, and Pulp Fiction. The classic noirs that contained fight scenes, such as Out of the Past or Touch of Evil, rarely showed the physical contact of punches or gun shots, and if they did the scene would quickly cut, avoiding the gore that follows, but neo-noir is not afraid of shedding a little, or a lot, of blood. Chinatown starts this trend with the graphic scene of two men approaching the protagonist Jake Gittes and slicing his nose open, forcing him to wear a goofy bandage throughout the film. The violence then escalates to Travis Bickle’s killing spree in Taxi Driver and the shit-show of Pulp Fiction. Almost every scene in Pulp Fiction involves violence and gore in some fashion, whether it be when Mia Wallace overdoses on heroin or when Vincent Vega and Jules Winnefield are soaked in the remains of their hostage whom they accidently shot in the head in the backseat of their car. The aggressiveness also ensues in Memento when Lenny Shelby punches Natalie in the mouth or when he slams Teddy Gammell’s head with his gun. The increase in gore was primarily due to an increase in passion. This same increase in passion led to an increase in sexual behavior.

Classic noir films and novels never displayed anything more erotic than a heated kiss or sexual physical description of a female character, with the exception of a few sections in The Postman Always Rings Twice in which Frank and Cora do kinky sexual activities such as lip biting. The heat cranked up a few notches especially in the novels Devil in a Blue Dress and Gone Girl. In Devil in a Blue Dress we first encountered this newfound provocatively with the encounter between Coretta and Easy. Mosely wrote, “She straddled me on the couch and whispered, ‘Oh yeah, daddy, you hittin’ my spot! Oh yeah, yeah (Mosley 88)!’” This is one of the first times we witness this type of highly sexualized dialogue regarding sexual activities in noir. In The Maltese Falcon, the romantic dialogue was imbedded in-between the lines of what was said between Spade and Brigid and conveyed through the childish manner in which Brigid acted, and Spade’s disinterested manner. Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep did not provide much passionate content because Marlow was not interested in either Vivian or Carmen. In Gone Girl Flynn openly writes about sex, even early on in the novel when Amy is self-reflecting on how her first impression of Nick is that he is, “a guy who would actually fuck me properly (Flynn 12).” Amy then goes on to describe her sex life by explaining how some previous partners “tend to be ineffectively porny in bed” and some “fuck like they’re composing a piece of math rock” (Flynn 12). Not only do the characters increase their sexual tendencies, they are more open to explicitly discussing them. Gone are the days of sneaking around like Samuel Spade, neo-noir characters tend to be verbal about their sexual encounters. One thing that is also strange about neo-noirs is that the females are the individuals we see discussing these sexual relations. This is not an uncanny coincidence seeing that the women in neo-noirs have also undergone a change compared to their classic counterparts.

            During the shift from classic noir to neo-noir, the femme fatales have also undergone an evolution of sorts. Femme fatales from earlier novels and films such as Out of the Past, The Maltese Falcon, and The Big Sleep have smaller roles than the women in neo-noirs. The femme fatales in neo-noirs are more frequently present and have stronger roles that causes them to potentially be seen as protagonists who tend to pull the strings even more than their classic counterparts. This idea is particularly seen in Gone Girl and Memento. Amy Dunne is one of the leading characters in Gone Girl, but is also a femme fatale because she is a danger to herself and others. Amy proves that she is dangerous through her incrimination of Nick for her fake death. Natalie from Memento is also a leading character. She is pulling the strings by feeding Lenny false information that prompts him to murder his untrustworthy associate Teddy. Femme fatales in classic noirs do pull the strings of the men surrounding them, but not to the extent that the neo-noir ones do. For example, in The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon both Carmen and Brigid, respectively, are manipulating their men by planting lies and being deceitful, but the men are able to escape these women. Spade and Marlowe are both able to see through their women’s charades and turn them over to the authorities. Lenny and Nick are unable to see that their female counterparts are deceiving them; the females of neo-noir have more control and are more discreet about their manipulation. Kathie from Out of the Past is an exception since Bailey was unable to escape her, but he was able to see that she was no good from the get-go, which is something that Nick and Lenny were unable to do. 

            Another transformed element in neo-noir is the more complex plotlines in correspondence with achronological narrative. The more recent works have plotlines with more complexity which leads to more conflicted opinions from viewers. The plots of neo-noirs explore themes of marital issues, technology, life’s purpose, race, self-determined fate, justice, and the inconsistency of memory. Taxi Driver is one of these films that leaves the viewer with conflicted opinions because of the complex topics it touches on.  Some, like myself, feel sympathy for Travis because he was so disassociated from society that he did not know proper behaviors, which therefore limited his ability to assimilate back into society. Taxi Driver also inspired real-life murders to follow in Travis’ foot-steps regarding his vision to rid the world of “evil people” in the hopes to better society. This resulted in more controversy surrounding the film of whether the director is at fault because he made a film that could be interpreted in such a variety of ways.

Plot complexity can also be attributed to an achronological narrative such as in Pulp Fiction, Memento, and Gone Girl. The chronological order of these neo-noirs is purposefully jumbled up to create more confusion in the audience. Not only is the audience trying to decide who to trust and determine what is happening in the film, but they also have to deal with the bouncing from present to past. Gone Girl displays this through the back and forth chapters between Amy’s perspective, which for the first part of the novel focuses primarily on the past, and Nick’s perspective which focuses primarily on the present. Pulp Fiction is split up into three episodes that intertwine to reveal the entire story, but leaves confusion in viewers since the entire story is not known until the end of the film. Memento is the most confusing of them all because the scenes are continuously alternating from past to present to future, with some of them being repeated. The classic noirs do not implement this achronological plot structure. Flashbacks are a recurring theme, but it is told in the style of the protagonist narrating the past as opposed to scenes cutting from past to present. 

The achrnological order of the scenes creates an uneasiness for the audience; similarly, the audience is often unsure of the reliability of the narrator. Our class has questioned the reliability of the narrators in the neo-noirs we have seen and read far more frequently than the narrators of the classic noirs. Of the classic noirs, I only remember questioning the reliability of Franks narration from The Postman Always Rings Twice. Out of the more recent films and novels we have questioned the reliability of the narrators from Gone Girl, Taxi Driver, and Memento. We doubted Nick and Amy’s narrations because Nick tended to withhold information from us and Amy turned out to be lying to us for half of the novel. We questioned Travis’ narration because he saw the world in such a cynical viewpoint and he blamed people who were not necessarily to blame. We questioned Lenny’s narration because of his amnesia and his distortion of memory. However, we did not question the narration of earlier protagonists like the hard-boiled Spade and trustworthy Bailey.

Some of this doubt stems from the abundance of false accusations that take place accompanied by the personal codes that the protagonists are striving to uphold. Nick, Travis, and Lenny either falsely accused others or were falsely accused by others. Nick was falsely accused of Amy’s murder by everyone, which caused us as readers to distrust him. Amy’s unreliable narrations from her diary also catalyzed this distrust by painting him in a negative light. Travis falsely accused people who he labeled as scum to be the reason the world is evil and wanted to eliminate them. Lenny falsely accused an abundance of John G.’s of being his wife’s killer, resulting in their deaths, when his wife wasn’t even murdered. All of these false accusations were due to personal codes that they were trying to withhold. Nick was so focused on trying to act innocent and seek approval from others. His sister Margo even says, “You’d literally lie, cheat, and steal-hell, kill-to convince people you are a good guy (Flynn 44).” His preoccupation with appearing like a good guy to the police and public, and even us as readers, resulted in withheld information. Examples of this are failure to inform us of his mistress, failure to be honest about the clues Amy left for his treasure hunt with the police, and his inappropriate smile during the press report. Travis was trying to uphold his twisted idea that it was his personal duty to rid the world of “evil”, and Lenny was obsessive about avenging his thought-to-be-murdered wife. Personal codes were also upheld by the various protagonists of Pulp Fiction. Marsellus Wallace, a local gang boss, is one example who upholds his code in regard to justice. After Butch, a boxing champion, kills Jules, one of Marsellus’ hitmen, Marsellus orders his gangsters to find him and kill him. When Butch ends up saving him from the cop, who may or may not be an actual cop, Marsellus calls it even with Butch, re-concentrating his focus on the cop in a new attempt for justice. 

Generic Transformation:

            In class, we discussed two ideas that can account for this reinvention of noir. Fredric Jameson is a Marxist critic who proposed that neo-noirs are just pastiches, meaning neo-noirs are parody like imitations. The difference between pastiche and parody is the absence of “parody’s ulterior motive” and “satirical impulse” (Jameson 25). This means that pastiches fail to create any affect. Another critic, John Cawelti, had a different idea referred to as generic transformation. Cawelti’s idea goes further than to just imply imitation but growth of the genre. Generic transformation as described by Cawelti is composed of four parts: burlesque, nostalgia, demythologization, and reaffirmation of the myth (Cawelti).

            Similar to Jameson’s idea of a pastiche, burlesque is also representative of the aspect of parody in neo-noir, but with the distinguishable trait of having a purpose. There are two types of burlesque; the first is exaggeration of conventional elements with the result being laughter, and the second comprises of these conventional elements being inverted (Cawelti 201). Pulp Fiction displays the first category of burlesque. Many aspects of the film are exaggerated versions of conventional elements. Violence and substance abuse are both present in classic noirs, but in Pulp Fiction the violence is a more frequent occurrence accompanied by lots of blood, and the substance abuse involves more dangerous drugs. Chinatown provides an example of conventional elements being inverted. Classic noirs contain the typical manly, hard-boiled detective who is suave while being physically imposing. The detective from Chinatown, Jake Gittes, does not display these attributes. Instead he is not a skilled fighter, is incapable of being witty, and looks goofy due to the nose bandage he wears throughout the movie (Cawelti). 

            Nostalgia refers to the recreation of “the aura of past time (Cawelti 203).” Memento and Pulp Fiction both create this aura of nostalgia in various ways. Memento creates a feeling of nostalgia through the stock filters used in the film. Scenes in black and white not only represented the past in Lenny’s memory, but also incorporated the black and white aspect of classic noirs, creating nostalgia. Pulp Fiction creates a stronger sense of cultural nostalgia. With so many cultural characteristics of the time period incorporated, such as style, language, and heavy drug use, one watching could be thrown back into that time frame. 

            One of the more powerful parts of the four is demythologization. This means to invoke “the basic characteristics of a traditional genre in order to bring its audience to see that genre as the embodiment of an inadequate and destructive myth” (Cawelti 204). Chinatown does this with the traditional hardboiled detective that always reoccurs in the noir genre (Cawelti). Gone Girl demythologizes a more universal theme of marriage through the relationship between Nick and Amy. Flynn writes about the “cool girl” and how many takes on this persona without realization they are doing so, therefore causing their partner to fall in love with them with the impending result of future unhappiness. This happens in Nick and Amy’s relationship; she was the “cool girl”, and after they were wed she stopped projecting this persona, resulting in marital issues. 

            The fourth part of generic transformation, reaffirmation of the myth, can also be seen in the example with Gone Girl presented above. Flynn’s cynicism of the idea of what the characteristics of a good relationship are the idea of the “cool girl” push her toward the breakdown of this idea, but Flynn ultimately affirms the idea of marriage. She does this by making sure that Amy and Nick are together in the end, with the looming presence of a child to solidify their marriage-something that babies typically do, but joy is usually associated as well.  

Conclusion: 

After considering the variations between classic noir and neo-noir and how Cawelti’s generic transformation prompted these shifts, I restate my argument that classic noir has evolved to what is referred to as neo-noir. Neo-noir is a more evolved version of classic noir, and should be recognized because the elemental evolutions between the two. Neo-noir is not just a pastiche of its classic counterpart, but the generic transformation into something new. I realized the shift after watching Taxi Driver, and knew that noir would no longer be comprised of the same black and white detectives that it used to be; this change warrants the title neo-noir because of this evolution. 

Works Cited

Alchin, Linda. “Hays Code.” American historama. Siteseen, http://www.american-historama.org/1929-1945-depression-ww2-era/hays-code.htm. Accessed 9 December 2017.

Cawelti, John G. “Chinatown and Generic Transformation in Recent American Films.” Mystery, Violence, and Popular Culture. University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.

Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl. Random House LLC, 2014.

Jameson, Fredric. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” Postmodern Debates, edited by Simon Malpas, PALGRAVE, 2001, pp. 22-37.

Miller, Darren. “The Elements of Neo-Noir.” Geekcentricity. WordPress, 24 April 2014, http://geekcentricity.com/the-elements-of-neo-noir/. Accessed 12 December 2017. 

Mosley, Walter. Devil in a Blue Dress. Washington Square Press, 1990.