Before taking this class, I had encountered Noir and film noir. Having read The Maltese Falcon and watched movies such as Sunset Boulevard, I was under the impression that the noir genre depicted dramatic, yet unrealistic stories. Having read The Maltese Falcon now for the second time, and as I begin to read Farwell, My Lovely, I would argue that while these stories are dramatic, they attempt to show the darkness and imperfections of reality and human nature through their morally ambiguous characters.
One of the first things that I learned about Noir in high school was the translation of the word which means black. The noir genre then reflects the darkness which exists in the world; a world where there is death, corruption, and morally ambiguous characters. These characters aren’t trustworthy, are selfish, and are often making decisions that are not necessarily right, yet I would argue that noir is attempting to reflect the harsh reality that we live in. I would like to think that people are inherently good, and it is always easy to make the right decision, but unfortunately that is not the world we live in. It’s difficult to do the right thing, especially when the “right thing” counters your self-interest. Being heroic and doing what needs to be done in the name of morality is not as easy as the protagonist of other pieces of fiction show it to be, and the world of noir reflects that.
When discussing the character of Sam Spade in class, we tried to discern if we trusted him or if we thought he was a good guy. Although it would be easy to classify Spade as someone who only cares about himself and doesn’t do what is morally right, I think it is important to remember that he is human, and in a world plagued with darkness, we are all just trying to do our best. Noir captures this complexity of human nature. Some people are selfish and are just doing whatever they can to get ahead, like Gutman or Joel Cairo, but there are also people like Spade, or even Jules from Pulp Fiction, who may at first glance be characterized as immoral characters, but rather in reality and the context of noir, they simply people attempting to do what they think is right and trying to survive, just as we the readers are.