We tend to be drawn to the macabre and the mysterious in our lives because it invites a seductive change from the status quo of everyday life. Noir tends to deal with this a lot in the genre because the principal character gets to experience the upside down of this strange and dangerous world, while still being removed from it. In “Farewell, My Lovely”, Raymond Chandler creates this raunchy story of Phillip Marlowe and his encounters with the foreign underbelly of the grey world. He retains the Sam Spadesque persona in Marlowe, but adds a more human layer to him giving him sarcasm and only the driest of humor. This style allows the audience to dig deeper into the stories and the characters as we learn how we should take the words of our narrator. One thing the story does not shy away from is the side of the world we like to pretend does not exist. People like to pretend they have it all together, all the time, but the reality is everyone is vulnerable to a fall from grace.
In the era this book lives in, the foreign represents the best way to unveil the discomfort of vulnerability because these people entrenched in a new society where they are ostracized and pushed to the fringes are the most susceptible to danger. When confronted with the idea of flaws and imperfections, the audience conceptualizes these better when their protagonist is facing a world that feels far removed from the reality of everyday life. The jewel heist turned murder in a case of a secret identity seems entirely impossible, but nonetheless, beckons the audience to ponder the deeper moral and ethical iniquities that lie beneath the surface. Even if our imperfections never catastrophize into murder, they still taint and seep into the deepest corners of life. Being aware of the darkness within each soul is tantamount to understanding the idea of noir. There is an element of it in each of us, and I hope to dive deeper into what this genre truly means as we read the books that reach past the detective stories.
The reason this is so interesting to us, I think, is because we focus so hard on finding the diversity in today’s media. We celebrate these differences today, whereas these differences were supposed to be covered at all costs back then. Especially in the film industry, every actor with an ounce of non-european white complexions had to change their names and appearance in order to blend into society. This hiding in plain sight is another aspect people can strongly relate to today because of the new ways we are forced to conform to. More lies behind the facade of every pretty face, and skeletons will always come out of the closet. Experiencing these stories gives us a place to live out our imperfections without the consequences of our own vulnerability.