Author: pcarles

In this final blog for class, I wanted to write about my experience and the topic of my paper. While the majority of the works we have read have been dominated by the male perspective, I was constantly intrigued by the women in the stories being caught between lives, and never being allowed to be comfortable in their own skin. The stories from the beginning of the course had the least developed woman characters that fit into the femme fatale description perfectly. They were dangerous women who tried to take advantage of the men they came across only to be bested by a real man when he caught wind of her devious plans. In an attempt to raise up the male dominance, the sexual power afforded to a woman was always stripped away from her, in the end, by the superior man. Her femininity was subverted and presented as a tool she could never effectively wield. As we progressed through time, the women began to be more developed characters, but they remained subordinate to their male counterparts. Women like Blanche had to deal with fighting against the patriarchy while subsequently upholding its values in order to survive. Because of this, she was forced to learn to use her stature as a black woman to move in and out of the limelight of society. This invisibility allowed her to operate as a detective within the shadows, but rendered her helpless against a few bounced checks caused by her unfair employers. Blanche fully accepted her blackness, perceiving herself as the night girl, but some of the other women we encountered could not so easily accept themselves as black women in a white world, especially when their skin allowed them a peek into the comfort that the white world enjoyed. The first person we see who struggles with being caught between two worlds is Alice, who is a light enough black woman to be mistaken for white. She has the opportunity to become something she is not if she sheds who she truly is, and that idea may be enticing when living in such a prejudiced world, but it is quite the act of self-hatred to turn against who you truly are. A similar character is Daphne, who we met in the final novel of the course. She was so traumatized by her childhood experiences and society itself that she had to completely separate herself into two identities. Daphne, the beautiful white woman who could ruin your life with a single kiss and Ruby, the abused black girl unwanted by men both black and white. The psychological damage that arises from such experiences is enormous, but these things are never explored in these stories because there are only men at the forefront. In my final paper, I hope to explore that female psyche a little more and all the components that make her up into the very shallow mirage we get in the stories of our noir fiction.   

In class this week we talked about the dichotomy between visibility and invisibility specifically for Blanche as a black woman in the south, and how both functioned as a disadvantage for her in society. As I was finishing the book, it was interesting to see the juxtaposition of her invisibility and visibility with that of Grace’s, who used her abilities in much more sinister ways than Blanche. From the beginning, there was a certain two-facedness to all the characters that nonetheless, surprised me in the end. In hindsight, Grace’s insanity should have been more obvious, but I still audibly gasped when I realized her evil hand in all the criminal acts. Putting up her facade of the helpless and clumsy wife allowed her to masterfully use that mask to her advantage. The meek, worrisome wife could never be involved in committing criminal acts with ease, and this assumption provided the perfect veil to the eyes of an entire society. Being a woman, Grace exercises her own visibility and subsequent invisibility in conjunction with the color of her skin, which opens a plethora of doors that would never even come into view for Blanche. It is interesting because as everything finally came to light, their similarities were obvious; both women snuck around and learned things about others in the comfort of their invisibility, but being from entirely different worlds, Grace was hardwired to use that for herself while Blanche committed herself to the truth against her own self-preservation. This distinction is important because it reveals the dichotomy between women in society and their uses of their differing visibilities in life. Grace and Blanche occupy two different ends of the spectrum, but their similarities are made incomparable in the difference of their intentions. Blanche is a woman who lives for others, who cherishes her relationships in her life, while Grace lives only for herself and her money.

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.

After reading the first part of “Never Die Alone,” it is my favorite novel that we have read so far. The different narratives occurring all at once provide a refreshing new lens to experience the noir genre, and Paul being a writer himself puts a larger emphasis on the storytelling aspect of the novel and the genre itself. Paul’s character intrigued me from the very beginning because his moral principles were obvious. Being the child of a Jewish woman in Nazi Germany, he has suffered one of the most horrible losses a child could, but is nonetheless a very good man. He is the first character we have been introduced to in this class that has a moral compass centered on being a good person rather than gaining the upper hand in life by any means necessary. Framing the narrative in this way opens up the noir world because we are able to view it from a much more relatable character. Not to say these characters are unrelatable, but for a reader, it is easier to enter the world through a character not yet driven to the edge. 

The interweaving stories being told add a mythologizing aspect to the world of pimps and hustlers. There is a question as to whether or not any of these stories are real, and even Paul questions the truth of King David’s words in his diary. People even lie to themselves he finds, when truly alone. As a coping mechanism, King David fantasizes his life into this exciting new world where pushing everyone away wasn’t a mistake to hide the true hurt he is grappling with being alone in this unforgiving society. While not explicitly explored, there is a greater emphasis on the emotional baggage that comes with the life. Mike is tortured by his mother’s beating and cannot move on with his life until achieving vengeance, King David found his success, but had to give up everyone in his life to do so. Paul has a good heart and saves King David from dying alone, but obtains the greater baggage of inheriting his story. As the story goes on, it will be interesting to see how these ideas develop. 

In this class so far, the books we have read tend to undermine the women in the story to better highlight the masculine superiority and subvert the importance of women in society drawing clear divisions between the gender roles. These clear lines constantly place women in a subordinate role tomen, and more often than not, they only represent a road block for the men to overcome. The femme fatale is a staple of the noir genre which portrays women as temptresses who causes disaster for the man she sets her sight on, but in “The Expendable Man” we do not really have a character who fits into that femme fatale description. The book is ambiguous about gender stereotypes in the same way it is ambiguous about racial descriptions. Bonnie Lee Crumb does not embody the typical femme fatale, even though she causes disaster for Hugh and Ellen does not cause disaster, but is too beautiful for Hugh to ignore. The other women in this story are not pushed to the fringe supporting roles, but are portrayed as their own individuals. With a woman writing the story, Dorothy B. Hughes give her audience a new perspective of society within the genre of noir. 

While Bonnie Lee, or Iris as Hugh knew her, takes advantage of Hugh using her age and her race, she does not operate as a conventional femme fatale. Hugh only acts to help her out of pity rather than any fatal attraction. Playing with how Iris uses her youth and innocence more than her femininity, Hughes is demonstrating to the reader, the other ways a woman can function within her society and manipulate her surroundings. Racial differences play a huge role in Iris’s ability to take advantage of Hugh, but there is much more to her than her fatal interactions that lead to her death. She is a child, still in highschool, with no real experience in the adult world, but she is able to make her way through it with success until she places her faith in her naive love story. Restrictions of gender placed on women severely limits her autonomy and independence, but nonetheless, Iris finds a way to get what she wants until the end. 

Similarly, Ellen is restricted by her race, but since she boasts the advantage of a higher class family, her connections allow her a much higher level of individuality. Her beauty and status afford her a certain level of fatal attraction, but instead of causing the disaster for Hugh, she is the catalyst that saves him from becoming the expendable man that gets framed for murder. Bringing in a white lawyer with incredible ambitions was her idea, and Skye’s work keeps him out of the press and preserves his future. Iris leads Hugh to disaster, but her naivety prevents her from the full embodiment of the femme fatale. Ellen embodies the dangerous beauty of the femme fatale, but her presence saves Hugh’s life and career changing the perspective of gender roles, and allowing for women to take more control over their identities in society without totally deviating from the noir genre.

In my home country of Panama, the color of your skin has little to do with how natives will judge you. Since most citizens are a menagerie of every color of skin imaginable, none of the racial stereotypes hold true. Instead, class and familial status are where all judgement and discrimination comes from. Similarly, in “The Expendable Man”, Dorothy B. Hughes is trying to highlight the importance of class in a society obsessed with the racial binary. She takes the racial hierarchy of color and inverts them in terms of class. Hugh is a successful man, on the cusp of becoming a research doctor, while Iris is a poor white girl with no prospects and an unwanted pregnancy. This difference between Hugh and Iris is revealed to have heightened importance because Hughes is so ambiguous about their race and the color of their skin. 

In class, we talked about how many of us did not even realize that Hugh and his family were black until a couple chapters in. All we knew about him was of his success and the comfort of his family being able to support him in his medical endeavors. Conversely, Iris is described as a dirty young girl, with no respect and no prospects in her life. They have many stark differences that go way beyond the color of their skin, which serves to emphasize another, less obvious, facet of discrimination in the American society: the distinction of class. This secondary discrimination in society works in conjunction with the racial discrimination to create a complex web of stereotypes being perpetuated throughout American history. Hugh, being the compassionate person he is, stops to help this young girl obviously in need. Unfortunately, she throws him into a situation that is much more than he bargained for. The color of her skin puts him into a distorted power dynamic, not being able to refuse her at the border because of the white patrolmen watching, but Hugh is able to exercise his own class power over her in the privacy of his home. She thinks she can use him for an abortion, but being the respectable man he is, and being of a much higher class than her, he can afford to refuse such an absurd request. But in highlighting this, Hughes is posing the question of how these differences interplay with one another in society. It will be interesting to see which one wins out in the grapple for power. The officers are unconvinced that the black man did not take advantage of this vulnerable little girl, but he garners more power than a lower class black man, with connections to many more powerful people. The policemen with their racial biases can only go so far, but then again, class may only go so far for a black man in the segregated world. Which one wins?

Shocked would be an understatement for my initial feelings about the ending of this book. I think a more apt name for the book would be “If She Hollers, Let Him Go” because of the pure wretchedness of this ending. Even though Bob is not a very good man, the audience is rooting for a happy ending for him after experiencing the torture of his mind and the racism of society. The world he lives in is diametrically opposed to the very idea of his happiness, but it is hidden under the facade of a peaceful coexistence. The collective white society thinks of their actions against the black population as nothing but a game, while in reality, they are stripping the humanity from the lives of these oppressed people. Games become physically deadly for Bob when Madge pulls her final trick and locks him in the closet with her to cry rape. Here the gender roles are reversed in the most dignity stripping way because Madge is wrenching Bob’s manhood away from him in a twofold: by exercising her power over him and physically trapping him with her and overpowering him. She wins the game in horrifying fashion and almost gets Bob killed, locked away for 30 years, and throws his weakness in his face with only one word. 

The idea of Bob’s manliness is constantly intertwined with these different games being played by the different characters of the book. It is threatened by Alice’s relationship with Stella, by the mere presence of Tom Leighton, by the demotion from leaderman and subsequent loss of his job, and most prominently by the game of the Jim Crow laws. In the constant struggle for some semblance of control, Bob spirals deeper into this shattered perception of himself needing to feel like a man, but the game itself is stacked against allowing this perception to prevail. By trying to step out of his defined role in society, Bob is inviting these attacks on himself. Madge knows full well what kind of a man she was dealing with and adjusted her game accordingly. Even Alice knew what would threaten his masculinity best and brought him to her friends whose queer presence alone threatened his masculinity just like with Tom Leighton and his white male “superiority”. The problems of these games stem from the inherent racial bias, but most importantly the misconception that these actions are harmless. The book ends with the terrifying repercussions of Madge’s game, and our protagonist is shipped off to the army to die for his country that has done nothing for him in return. The game of life is a minefield when the game board is built for you to lose.

Starting this week, we were introduced to an entirely new version of Noir from what we have read so far. Gone is the rugged detective who is always one step ahead of the others dipping his toes into the nitty gritty world of darkness. Now, we are immersed in the reality of that darkness. The opening of “If He Hollers, Let Him Go” begins with Bob waking up from a dream with nothing but terror filling his heart. Unlike our protagonists before, Bob is not invulnerable to the consequences of this black world. In fact, the racial divides of the warring Jim Crow world permeate through his entire being, consuming him with an uncontrollable hatred. Instead of being on the outside looking in, this new perspective gives us the experience of what it really feels like to belong to this peripheral world. 

Perspective plays a critical role in the context of a story because from Bob’s view, everything must revolve around his race because that’s what the world identifies him as. The binary of black and white prevents him from being allowed to think in other terms. For example, when he picks up the white hitchhiking boys, they have a great time talking and chatting about the women they see, but when an ugly black woman finds her way into their conversation it stalls because of the discomfort of these racial divides. Bob wants the conversation to continue, but unfortunately, the divisions win. The color of your skin determines your societal fate before you take your first breath in this world. Bob’s perspective of life cannot escape the fear that is simply living in his skin. When the only world available is the world of the other, there is an inherent inescapable vulnerability he tirelessly works to push out of his mind. This is why we see Bob succumbing to his violent desires and fantasize about killing Peckerwood and raping Madge because it provides a way for him to wrestle power from the oppressor and shift his perspective from fear to triumph over the villains. He lives squarely as the “other,” but he desperately wants to define and legitimize his place in this world.

Conversely, Chester Holmes gives us a glimpse into the white world, where the coloured folk are nothing but tools at their disposal. It’s in the way Kelly orders around Bob and his crew. It’s in the way Madge uses her feminine figure to lure black men into her twisted plays for power, and almost blatantly in the way her sister-in-law declares that the coloured people were placed in the world to simply fill the space after God created the white race in his image. It’s also in the way Leighton always gives Bob those curious looks whenever they meet. It is the inherent belief of superiority from one look. These people get to live free of the constraints of being explicitly defined by their color. Although the implicit white identity is perpetuated throughout their daily lives, they get to live with no concept of what that identity entails, other than their own advantages. 

As the story progresses, it will be interesting to discover how these clashing perspectives will play a role in the fate of Bob. At some point these intersections must go head to head, and when Bob finally gathers his courage the aftermath cannot end well because of the vulnerability that follows him around, like a shadow he just can’t shake. When his vision burns blue with rage, he forgets these tragic truths and when one forgets, real tragedy ensues. 

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.

Real life is a myriad of grays that rarely fall into the binary of black and white. Contrasting from “The Maltese Falcon,”  “Farewell My Lovely” dives much deeper into the underbelly of real life, and the inherent biases of the white middle class in the wake of the wave of immigrants coming to the United States for a better life. We talked about the opening scene of the book with the complete depersonification of the black boy thrown out of the bar by Moose Malloy. Instead of a “he”, the boy is described as an “it” even though the only thing different about him from the neighborhood of the past is the color of his skin. The issue of race goes deeper than simply the color of your skin. Simply because the receptionist on the phone has a thick accent, Marlowe feels the need to belittle her by spelling everything he says over the phone, even when unnecessary. The assumption of lesser education and language proficiency is an inherent racial bias. Similarly, when Marlowe visits Amthor, the psychic, he is completely occupied with the smell of the Indian bodyguard who picks him up. While the smell may be something he is not familiar or comfortable with, Marlowe solely characterizes the man by the smell that follows him around in pure Chandler fashion. The “occasional whiff of his personality,” drifts unpleasantly around Marlowe, but Amthor recognizes his value saying, he is “rare” like diamonds and “like diamonds, sometimes found in dirty places” (Chandler 144, 150).  Amthor’s race is unclear from his description, but it is clear he lives on the fringes of the acceptable allowing him to see past the unfamiliar smell, whereas Marlowe is consumed with the foreign odor. Marlowe is the status quo of the grizzled white man, while Amthor is delicate and beautiful, which is the antithesis of what a man should be in the 1930’s. This earns him a place with the misfits, ostracized for Western society because they do not fit the mold. The world becomes a tiny place when society decides the world is only made for a select few. In order to cope with being strangers in the white world, the identity of the “other” forms, and we can begin seeing this camaraderie between people in the pages of the book as Marlowe dives deeper into the case of the missing Fei Tsung Jade.