The books we read before our fall break all felt like they were missing something crucial to our reality and understanding of what life was like during the 20th century. The Noir content that we have consumed after Fall Break was our glimpse at the cultural revolution in the time of the 20th century which made the puzzles connect with each other. Black men have started to become the main characters in the books that we have read post-cultural revolution and these characters’ conflicts have been with other black men – and the white woman act as their prizes to be won. The cause of all of this is the scarcity effect, wanting something that you can not have. However, the question to all of this is where do black women fall into this weird forbidden marriage of a black man and a white woman? I have some theories about what’s going to happen to our future black female main characters. I would like to argue in this post that I think that black women are going to become our new noir characters that fall into the margins and descend into darkness and that they are going to be our new Femme Fatales
My reasoning for this is how we started our noir journey. Our Femme Fatales started off as an Irish woman, to a woman who climbs up the ranks in Farewell my Lovely, to pass and survive, to the grotesque Madge who flaunts what little power she has, to a white woman who haunts a black man from beyond the grave in Expendable Man. After the cultural revolution, things started becoming more complex and as can be seen in Never Die Alone our Femme Fatales evolved into a 15 year old who is used by black men to get what they want. I think it is about time that black women take the spotlight but there is still a sense of irony that black women were marginal characters to then being demonized. I would like to explore that progression in my next blog post.