Author: camsalinas

    There is a saying in Spanish that goes like, Hay que mejorar la raza. This is a statement that literally translates to “You have to better your race.” Growing up in south Texas I hear this statement a lot from members of my community; not only from Spanish speakers but also from the white community. For example, when I was in high school on the night of homecoming or any sort of dance I would overhear white mothers telling their sons that they can fool around with their date but too not even think about marrying her. I think the damage of this statement is obvious and it should be said that this thought isn’t just a statement that belongs in the south it’s a universal one when it comes to interracial dating. I remember when I was helping a student at the writing center she was writing a paper on interracial dating and she quoted a study that stated that around only 40 percent of interracial couples end up getting married. I have many questions about this pattern: What are the implications of this ideology for women of color? How did this thinking even start? How did this belief evolve? And how can this ideology be seen in Noir and why is it important it is reflected in the Noir genre specifically? These are some of the questions that I would like to explore in my paper. I would hope to do this by addressing the interracial relationships that we see in If He Hollers Let Him and Devil in a Blue Dress. (Maybe Blanche on the Lam). What inspired this thought would have to be the constant frustration that I felt for the main characters when we read Noir literature and when watching Noir films. I could not ignore how the role of race in the 20th century caused many black women to be overshadowed by the statement mejorar la raza. I take this saying personally because it is not only an assault on Black women but Latin women as well. By exploring Noir I can see how this statement was inherently reflected in the culture at the time in books and movies. 

    I started this class absolutely confused and my first blog post reflects that. All I talked about were the struggles of defining Noir and did not really make an argument. I then started trying to grasp local patterns in Noir, not global ones. I was fascinated by the idea of nostalgia because it was the first thing I was able to identify with which prompted one of my Blog posts titled The Grass Is Not Greener On The Other Side. I won’t deny that this class was difficult for me but it was also difficult in a fun way. It was intellectually challenging and sparked very interesting conversations with my parents about the themes of the books. It really helped introduce me to the realities that other people experience that I will never have to go through. Some things might be similar to what my grandparents had to go through or my cousins, but it’s not the same. I have more of an appreciation for the adversities that the Black body has gone through. So to go back to this class was challenging but if I could go back to when I woke up at 7:45 AM last spring to register for my classes this semester I would register for Black Noir all over again. Going back to what I originally defined as Noir, I would definitely rule out some things like how I thought Noir had to include a crime. I would now define Noir as a journey into the margins with the purpose of pulling the sheet off the elephant in the room to benefit the main character. I also can’t forget to add,

THERE ARE NO HAPPY ENDINGS. 

In this class, we started reading classic Noir books with detectives as their main characters and had a big dark mystery that needed to be solved. We learned very quickly that “solving” a case does not really mean that the characters or the readers will receive or feel satisfied by the ending. The haunting “No happy endings” echoes as I write this. Throughout the Noir classics, it seems like the moral purpose of the main characters consists of the idea of keeping what’s in the dark hidden from society. Almost like keeping the elephant in the room – shoved in a corner with a huge cover over it so no one can see it. However things are changing, and now our main character is a black woman, not a white man or woman. How does this change things? I argue that Blanche in Blanche on the Lam is an inversion of Sam Spade in Maltese Flacon. When I use the word inversion I am referring to contrasting characteristics. 

Sam Spade is a detective that chooses to explore the darkness by trying to uncover the falcon that is in the possession of the “other.” It can be argued that he is only doing this because it is his job but I think in reality no one would put themselves in that much danger just for money. What is different for Blanche is that she is forced into the situation that she is in. She didn’t choose to be on the run from authority. Choosing to descend into darkness and being forced to descend are complete opposites of each other. This is just one of the examples of how having a white male main character to a black female main character invert each other. 

Another example of their inversions compliments the question of choice that I mentioned previously. This has to do with the idea of chasing versus running. Sam Spade is a character that is relentless in his pursuit of the falcon. He goes out of his way in meeting with Gutman and gambling his safety by saying that he is in possession of the falcon or will be soon. He is the one that is actively chasing to reach his goal. While in Blanche’s case, she is on the run from being caught and thrown in prison. Her offense is also something as minor as bad checks while compared to the country commissioner accepting bribes. I think we should also note that both these characters’ offenses involve money, but Blanche is trying to get the money that she owed while the commissioner is trying to gain even more money. This moment and realization in Blanche are what causes her to go on the run. Making another point that proves how her character inverts Sam Spade.

Blanche moved from New York City to come to North Carolina while Sam Spade is in San Francisco the entire novel. With the characteristics of Noir, it makes it seem like trouble can only be found in big cities. While for Blanche, her trouble occurs in the south. I think the author purposefully made this choice for Blanche’s conflict to happen in the south to comment on how trouble follows women of color where ever they go. While through the white experience they don’t find the same trouble that people of color go through in the south. The inversion of Blanche and Sam Spade is an important one because it shows the differences in how Noir changes between gender and race, and it also demonstrates the cultural change of literature during the time period. I think an important question that we can start asking now is, how does Blanche’s experience in the 1990’s change in the year 2022?

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.

So I don’t think anything that I am going to say in the week’s post is something that we all haven’t thought about already. As it was pointed out in our last class, the momentum of the conversations has dwindled. The purpose of this blog post is to try to illuminate and put words behind what we are feeling in class to give reason to this “dwindle,” while trying to incorporate what the class readings have to do with it. Please don’t mistake this blog post for putting words in your mouth or thoughts in your head. I am writing this based on my observations and my own opinions. I am aware that our blog posts are meant to reflect Noir but I also think that the health of our conversations is something that should be addressed to keep this class fun and stimulate ideas that can contribute to this study.
This idea right here, trying to contribute to something greater, has to do with the problem. We are placing pressure on ourselves to say something so new, so fresh, and so niche to sound smart. I don’t think its to prove to others that we are brilliant students, but to prove to ourselves that we are capable of keeping up just fine. If we don’t have a new cool idea to share we choose to stay quiet because we were wired to believe that is the only thing that defines our worth as scholars. We shouldn’t have to have this worry just like “Trick Baby” doesn’t need to have a designated purpose. It is enough that we are trying to understand a world that is so different from ours today no matter how explicit. Just like it is enough for “Trick Baby” to just want to be proof of people’s existence.

I am a 2nd year English major so my experience in studying literature doesn’t compare to the seniors in the class pr our wonderful only grad student; however, I think it is fair for me to say that every single one of us, no matter the major and especially when we were in high school, has had our academic career built by studying white man’s literature. And this has had an effect on how we view every single thing we consume. We are trying to find what makes “Trick Baby” or “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” literary canon. When we forget that literary canon, as defined by a quick google search, is “the body of high culture literature, music, philosophy, and works of art that is highly valued in the West: works that have achieved the status of classics.” It is not fair for us to view these books and compare them to classics when classics were made by people that had different experiences than these characters and authors of the books we are reading. We grasp onto themes like nostalgia, descent into darkness, and femme fatale to define everything that we read and will continue to read for this class. The problem is that these themes don’t include everything and I can see how that is a reason for our struggle in communicating. However, I don’t think these are all the reasons for our silence.
The themes mentioned previously can’t answer everything that this field of study has to offer but when trying to broaden this idea of Noir our ability to understand it brings the question of: how do we rewire our brains to appreciate these books for what they are? I think we all have an idea of how to answer this question but since the content that we have read is so explicit we feel like we can’t add anything, and if we do add anything we are afraid that this thought will be challenged and we are unable to defend our opinions. This lack of defense or justification scares us into silence. We are the generation that was raised believing we are the “gifted and talented” and that our worth relies on our brains so when challenged sends us into a spiral of doubt, fear, and anger. The culture that we are brought up in has made us overly cautious of what we say and I am not saying that is a bad thing but I know for me as someone that can’t relate to the characters, I fear that I may say something that is insensitive and ignorant which contributes to the feeling of I have no place to say something. I know that I am not the only one who feels this. I don’t have a full solution to these problems and I may be leaving something out that is crucial to solving this, so please share your own ideas in the comments.

In class, this Monday was the first time that I ever heard of the term “blaxploitation.” After thinking about the meaning and about how cleverly coined the term was – I started thinking about how this word referenced the exploitation of African Americans in the 1970s, but I didn’t quite understand where the exploitation lay. At first, I thought it was a way for African Americans to work the system to their advantage – to make a place for themselves in society. But now I think that interpretation is not fully accurate. After reading the chapters provided in the book “Street Players” by Kinohi Nishikawa I am starting to understand why the answer is more complex. Blaxploitation also helped make white men richer because of the business and potential it held. Disappointed, yes. Surprised, no. However, I admit that it can honestly be both reasons working together. According to Nishikawa, despite the fact that Los Angeles was located in California it still behaved like the south. It might not have been the “in your face” racism that it was notorious for, but it still was reminiscent of what life was like during Jim Crow. Years of racism doesn’t just get healed quickly, in fact, I think the hateful culture of that time adapted to keep the same harmful beliefs forced on the people of today for an agenda. Today’s exploitation just wears a different mask for its masquerade. I would call this mask the fake woke era. As Nishikawa puts it, “masquerade was the object of readers’ fascination: a performance taken up by urban black man…to make a way out of no way…[and] was a way for white man to see themselves as black.”  I would argue that the era of blaxploitation is an example in our history repeating itself in today’s fake woke era – creating another mask to keep up with the test of time. I couldn’t help but think of a rap song that gained popularity in 2021 called “Fake Woke” by Tom MacDonald. He states,

They never freed the slaves, they realized that they don’t need the chains
They gave us tiny screens, we think we’re free ’cause we can’t see the cage
They knew that race war would be the game they need to play
For people to pick teams, they use the media to feed the flame

Noir is a portal to what life was like in our history. Some of Noir, or more like most of Noir, had moments that didn’t age well. Through Noir, other genres were created and others were able to be defined. Blaxploitation entered the stage through films like Sweet Sweetback’s badass song and was made for primarily black audiences, but just like all good things, it gets corrupted when money, power, and hate get involved. I think that blaxploitation was created for African Americans to make a name for themselves but was exploited by others for money. Now doesn’t that narrative sound familiar to today’s woke culture? Woke culture was created as a way to be alert to any form of discrimination. Anything good created has an opposite. So as a result the discrimination became like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. There’s a movie on Netflix that is a good example of “fake woke” called “Do Revenge.” (Highly recommend it) The fake woke era is just our history repeating itself. We have blaxploitation as our reluctant teacher.

I am sure, as we all know The Expendable Man was published in 1963 by Dorothy B Hughes but did you know that a book that most of us are familiar with, was also published around the same time? These two books have a lot more similarities and differences with each other that were hard for me to ignore after I finished The Expendable Man. That book is To Kill a Mocking Bird. I remember having to read To Kill a Mocking Bird in high school and all I can say is that there is a reason why this book is always read in high school and also why there are always people trying to ban this book. I am arguing that The Expendable Mand and To Kill a Mocking Bird have more similarities with each other than differences.
Before I go into their similarities I think it is important that I first call out their differences. First and foremost To Kill a Mocking Bird is not a Noir book. The genre, after a quick google search, is more of a Southern Gothic book while The Expendable Man is a noir book. Maybe, it can even be said that To Kill a Mocking Bird helped inspire The Expendable Man…with that being said what are the two book’s similarities?
The similarities I will talk about will read more like a list. Both books were written by white women in the 1960s – which may have helped contribute to the next point. Both the book’s main characters Hugh and Scout can be classified as vulnerable members of society. In the sense that they are always the most targeted. However, the difference between the main characters is that one is vulnerable for their race and the other is vulnerable for their gender. A black male and a female child in the 1960s. The Expendable Man and To Kill The Mocking Bird also deal with similar themes of race and injustice. Both lawyers are white men that seem to be doing this out of the goodness of their own hearts.
In conclusion, these books are very different from each other in terms of genre but they have more similarities with each other than we realize. The next question that we can ask is: why? Why do both of these women right similar stories with similar lessons?

The Femme Fatales are fascinating characters and their portrayal in the time period really gives 21st-century readers an insight into what it was like to be a woman during that time period. 

In my last blog post, I argued how Madge is the femme fatale in If He Hollers Let Him Go is still a Femme fatale by her purpose in the story but is portrayed differently when compared to the other Femme Fatales we read in class. I would like to extend that argument and confront the deeper implications that white women carried at the time and still carry today. For this blog post, I want to argue how the character Madge, in If He Hollers Let Him Go, confronts the violent history of white women.

I was really fascinated by this idea and did some outside research. According to, Dr. Apryl Williams, to summarize the long quote she said, a white woman’s word was more valued over a black man’s because they are seen as the mother – they are seen as more virtuous. She also states that this victimhood goes back to American slavery where black slaves were posited as sexual threats to their slave owners, when in fact the opposite was true. The combination of a white woman’s word being held at more value than a black mans and it is expected that white men have to protect white women. This creates an eruptive combination. A modern example of these power dynamics is the white Karen meme when the cops are called because a black or brown man is assaulting them.

White women do have power and they exercise that power by playing the victim. I think it’s fair to say that we were all disturbed but not surprised by Madge begging Bob to rape her. Bob’s description that Madge would look at him like he was “king kong” plays into the common card of victimhood that white woman play.  And we can’t forget that in the tacker scene she looks at white men to come to defend her from Bob and it is white men that beat Bob when Madge claims that he raped her. These are just some examples of the white woman’s power in the book. The history of white women is a violent one and the character Madge can be on the magazine cover of their history.

The Femme Fatale is a character that started appearing on the silver screen during the 1940s. However, the characteristics of the Femme Fatale (beauty, destructive, seductress, temptress, leading the main character to a trap) have been around since ancient stories like Genesis. The Femme Fatale has evolved over time to keep up with the times. In the books that we have read so far regarding the Noir genre, I would argue that in the book If He Hollers Let Him Go, the femme fatale has changed her approach to achieving what she wants, but still holds on to the characteristics of the archetype.
What do I mean by changing her approach? Well if we take a look at Maltese Falcons’ Bridget O’Shagnessy and Farewell My Lovely’s Velma both characters were introduced to the main character by asking him for help. Bridget wanted help by having a private investigation, and Velma wanted help in finding her jade necklace. Both of these characters utilize their feminine allure, to attract the main character. Now if we take a look at the first introduction to Madge in If He Hollers Let Him Go, it is evident that she takes pleasure in making Bob’s life difficult, and contrary Bob is the one who has to ask Madge for help when he needed a tacker. What makes Madge so different from Velma and Bridget is that her character is not a woman that is taking advantage of the patriarchy to get what she wants, she is taking advantage of the next best thing – her race. Bob is aware of this, he states, “I was used to white woman doing all sorts of things to tease or annoy the coloured men…”(Himes,19)
Madge is not the typical femme fatale that we have read so far in, class but she still poses a threat and traps the main character like the femme fatale archetype. Why is this? One thing is that this book is told from a black man’s perspective while the other noir books are told from a white man’s. The white men have nothing to fear like Bob does because they are on top of the food chain while Bob is at the bottom. He can see the threat for what it is and unlike Marlow and Spade, he has a lot to lose and an actual chance to lose it.

I have always associated the word “nostalgia” with familiar scented candles, music that is forgotten until when it is not, or my favorite blanket that I dragged with me everywhere. All these sentimental moments and objects have the same thing in common each other and that is the past. I want to know, why is that? Why do we have a connection to the past? Why do we curate a way of punishing ourselves by living in the past? These questions can only be answered with speculation and the answers also differ between every individual. I want to take attempt at answering these questions. I argue that our longing for the past not only has the deeper implications of violence and death but also entertains the human quality of wanting something that we can not have.
Before I move on and bring examples to help justify my claim, I would like to first define what I mean by “human quality.” I am referring to ordinary human elements that can be described as less than perfect. These elements are essential to living a normal human life that we will be forced to experience at one point in our life.
In Farewell, My Lovely, the notorious opening scene objectifies a human being just for the color of his skin. The readers in this time period wouldn’t have given much thought to the language of objectifying a black man. This opening scene allows insight for the readers of today to see how life was back then, how it is different from today, and how the cultural values have changed over time. The first line of the book states, “It was one of the mixed blocks over on Central Avenue the blocks that are not yet all negro.” The writer is characterizing black people as an invasive species that is taking what belongs to the whites. When in reality that was never the case. Black people have always been around Central Avenue, but why does the author feel that something is being taken from him like it was better before the “negros” came to central avenue?
That is the toxicity of nostalgia. Where you lie to yourself that everything was better back then. I believe that people do this because it has to do with the fact that we want something that never was. Wanting something that never existed in the first place already dooms the fulfillment of this expectation, which can make people lead to violent outbursts. Which can lead to no happy endings. Like the black man that was killed by Moose. A modern example is the White Christian Nationalists rioting at the capital on January 6th, because they believe the “Christian values” are gone in the USA. As stated by Professor Samuel Perry of the University of Oklahoma on CNN news, when white Americans hear the language of Christian nationalism they feel a sense of nostalgia for a time when the “right kind of people” had cultural-political influence. When minorities hear this language they gain hope for a chance of accountability for the past. So to sum White Christian nationalism wants to “take back America,” to satisfy their nostalgia for something that never was.
What’s more tragic than living in the past? What is more heartbreaking than thinking that the grass is greener where you once were compared to where you are now? Why can’t people ever be satisfied with what they have? Nostalgia is meant to reminisce on good memories. It is not meant to torture us and force us to lie to ourselves to the point of destruction.

In my last post, I emphasized the difficulty in defining Noir, the origin of the term Noir, and I brought up how it is a term that does not help the readers or viewers understand the genre. I would like to retract my statement. I disagree with myself from a week ago. I argue now that the word “Noir” is the most perfectly coined term to describe the genre and its themes. It’s more than just about dark corruption among the characters and their world, it is about the false hope of receiving justice. The characters chase the light but keep finding themselves pulled into their darkness.
Noir is starting to feel like a walking paradox with the stories being full of absurdity, but still being plausible. Let’s take the Femme Fatale as an example. These female characters are always draped in white from head to toe with bleach blond hair to represent their innocence and purity when in fact their characters cause the most harm to the main character. They are a walking contradiction. Let’s take a look at another example, the detectives in the Noir books we have read so far are meant to be upholders of justice when in reality they give the reader an uncanny feeling and have this moral ambiguity. This character complexity brings realistic characters to life.
I still stand by what I said last week that Noir is difficult to define, and in my opinion, the reason for this has to do with defining abstraction and making the abstraction tangible. When that really shouldn’t be the way of addressing Noir in the first place. Before I elaborate let me first define abstraction or abstract. I’m using these words to reference the concepts in Noir like psychological violence and warfare, hopelessness, and corruption. These concepts don’t feel tangible and when trying to do a deep analysis of Noir, it becomes difficult. An example, of tangible themes, are the anti-hero, the femme fatale, greed, and the want to have the “unattainable.” We should try approaching Noir as books for pleasure to understand it deeply, not as a class assignment. A “class assignment perspective” has the potential to dull the mind when trying to take in the themes and culture of the books. Let’s Keep in mind I’ve only read two books of Noir some of these themes might change or take more of a shape later on. This feels a bit ridiculous to talk about as an English major when all we deal with is abstraction but isn’t that what makes our field of study a paradox in itself? We try so hard to define and make palpable what we read and study for our own understanding when some things are just never meant to be put in words. Not every feeling has a word to define, and Noir is a genre with abstractions that I am barely beginning to understand.