After finishing “Never Die Alone” this week, it has become my favorite book we have read this semester. Maybe it is the story telling aspect, or the way it reads like a movie progresses, but this short novel drops you right into the heart of the action from the very beginning. One interesting aspect that I wanted to explore in my blog this week was the implications of King David switching out cocaine and heroin throughout the novel, and fooling his various customers with the false coke. I did not even realize a potential connection to the hiding in plain sight theme we have explored in other stories until we talked about it in class.
The high from the drugs is equally addictive, but the only indicator for the dope heads is the white color that cocaine generally has. We see David get around this issue by adding white powder to the heroin or grinding it into an even finer powder. Regardless of his methods of whitening the product, this necessity for whiteness is reminiscent of different characters we have encountered throughout the course. Alice from “If He Hollers” is a perfect example of this facade because she emphasizes her light skin in order to mask the fact that she is a black woman. She is hiding in plain sight, but also using her color to her advantage in the same way David uses the colors of his heroin for his own advantage.
Both drugs in this story are highly addictive, but cocaine is perceived as a better alternative to being a heroin junkie. This is an interesting comparison to the perceived differences of the black and white races even though they are the same at the core. What looks different on the surface still creates a high, just like the people who look different can still be both equally good or bad. The whitening of the heroin acts as a bandaid for the people addicted because it makes them feel better about their problem, in the same way the lighter skinned characters must use that to their advantage to rise above their societal fates and escape the systemic racism and prejudice their darker counterparts are. This blending of colors and mixing of people complicates the black and white world society tries to portray in when, in reality, things are much more gray than we like to admit. I think this is a core component of the noir genre because it seeks to emphasize the grayness without any clear hero or villain, but simply people trying to survive in the gray areas.
I like your analysis of this point. I think the varying levels of gray, black showing as white, and white showing as black could make for a really interesting comparison of all the works we have read/viewed. I need to completely reevaluate how I think about morality and light verus darkness in view of recent texts, like Trick Baby. None of this is easy to think about, but your point is very enlightening.
I thought this was a really interesting point that you made in class, and I enjoyed your expansion on the topic in this blog post. Alice is a great example of this, but I think another good example is the film Murder, My Sweet. The character of Helen Grayle is dressed in all white and a lot of bright lighting is used to help her blend in and give off the impression of innocence. This then connects to our earlier conversation and the idea that colors hold significance.