Author: racheldegaugh

In the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II, a certain disillusionment with the status quo and a fascination with the darker, unknown borders of society manifested itself in the genre of noir. Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon centers on a straight white male detective who is able to trangress the borders of society due to his moral ambiguity; Sam Spade is able to descend into the darkness without being completely overtaken by it. Yet Sam also uses fear as an organ of perception to navigate the anarchy and disillusionment of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Hammett creates a sense of false anxiety that is mirrored by white male detective Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely. Both protagonists demonstrate how traditional noir is defined by the white male voyeuristic gaze; Sam and Philip treat the “other” in society–the non-white, seemingly-morally ambiguous characters–as caricatures instead of humans.

Yet when black characters are centered in the plot, noir evolves into black noir. This new version of the noir genre seeks to make black people and culture visible, not white. Chester Himes explores the themes of black rage and institutionalized social injustice in If He Hollers Let Him Go; popular concepts such as the talented ten and the color line come into play as the protagonist attempts to regain a sense of masculinity while completely negating the politics of race and racism. The intersection between class and race is examined in Dorothy Hughes’s The Expendable Man. What begins as attempts to shed light on the reality of black culture in the United States borders on appealing to the white voyeuristic gaze as the black underworld is revealed in Iceberg Slim’s Trick Baby. The line between black sleaze and ghetto realism blurs in Donald Goines’s Never Die Alone; he purposely employs the tactics of black sleaze to inform the black voyeuristic gaze. Barbara Neely’s Blanche on the Lam and Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress use the black voyeuristic gaze to shed light on the dualities of modern black life in America. All in all, black noir centers black characters not to ascend out of the darkness, but to reveal the light that already exists on the exigencies of society.

Traditional noir is based on the white male gaze; consequently, the black female spectator’s gaze was the masochistic look of victimization for the first few decades of this genre (hooks 121). Yet Barbara Neely’s Blanche on the Lam introduces the black female oppositional gaze to noir against structures of power that asked society–especially black women–to consume these images of race and racism uncritically and in highly circumscribed ways (hooks 123). Blanche is a black maid who navigates her unequitable circumstances in life with sharp wit and unwavering attention; she avoids a prison sentence for writing bad checks and finds herself peering into the lives (and secrets) of a rich white family from the outside in. Although Blanche is attempting to escape the law, her oppositional gaze is less rooted in fantasies of escape. Blanche’s internal quips about the evolved master-slave relationship and the eccentricity of the white people she works for serve to demystify whiteness and regain a sense of agency for herself as a black woman.

Neely explores how there is both visibility and invisibility in Blanche’s being black, referencing W.E.B DuBois’s concept of the color-line and the veil in his well-renowned novel The Souls of Black Folk. When Blanche first escapes from the courthouse after a random turn of events, she feels the urge to become invisible in the best way she knows how. “She wished she had a little white child to push in a carriage or a poodle on the leash so she’d look as though she belonged there” (Neely 7). Neely signifies that the white voyeuristic gaze of noir (as well as the societies the genre is focused on) truly sees the “other” only when they step out of their supposedly designated roles. Blanche becomes aware of her ability to disappear at a young age, embracing her alter-ego of Night Girl after her cousin explains the power of becoming invisible. “‘It’s only them that got night in ‘em can step into the dark and poof–disappear! Go any where they want. Do anything’” (Neely 53). Blanche realizes that the color of her skin gives her a sense of agency; as long as she fulfills her designated role, then she can exercise a certain amount of freedom within a white patriarchal power structure. It is only during twilight that Blanche truly feels at ease. This is because her dark skin allows her to become invisible in the view of others, yet she can identify and recognize her own self without the white voyeuristic gaze. Dawn breaks as Blanche dreams of escaping on buses several times throughout the novel and sees herself through the white voyeuristic gaze. 

Traditional noir is based on the white male gaze. Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and Philip Marlowe’s Farewell, My Lovely revolve around the white male protagonist’s descent into darkness without actually being overtaken by the physical and moral shadows of society. The “other” in society is defined as the opposite of the straight white male: women, foreigners, black Americans, and other non-white racial groups are pushed to the margins of society and relegated as morally dark if they do not stay in their neat geographical compartments. Yet black noir places black Americans at the center of these gruesome plots. It explores the relationship between moral and physical darkness, acknowledging the great evil that the inhabitants of the fringes of society are capable of while also revealing an exotic underworld’s separate system of justice. Chester Himes’s If He Hollers Let Him Go introduces the black male gaze as a voyeuristic yet powerful perspective that attempts to negate the politics of race and racism as well as that of the black female experience.

It becomes clear in the genre of noir that there is immense power in looking; in fact, Bell Hooks links the traumatic voyeurism of the master-slave dynamic to the cultural dissonance–especially amongst younger and older generations–of black Americans in Black looks: Race and representation. Bob is a Midwestern transplant in Los Angeles, the supposed factory of the new American dream; yet he becomes aware of the different relations of power that create a sense of both tension and competition between women and black Americans as they enter the workforce during World War II. “We stood there for an instant, our eyes locked, before either of us moved; then she deliberately backed away from me as if she was scared stiff, as if she was a naked virgin and I was King Kong” (Himes 19). Madge is a white woman who realizes that the concept of power as a system of domination that controls everything and leaves no room for freedom (as defined by the master-slave dynamic) is in fact a system of relations of power. It becomes clear that there is power in Bob’s oppositional gaze, for the ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination opens up the possibility of agency (Hooks 116). Yet with this newfound (but flawed) agency, Bob negates the gaze of the black female. Ella Mae is a married black mother who shares a flat with Bob; she plays the role of the black castrating bitch who nags at the black man. “‘Good morning, Mrs. Brown,’ I said facetiously, then, lowering my voice, I added, ‘I was just thinking about you, baby.’ She smiled self-consciously, but her look made me button up my pyjamas. ‘Your clock woke the baby up,’ she said” (Himes 7). Ella Mae foils Madge as she is not an object of desire, but instead is an object that maintains the scopophilia of white women. In this way the black female body is denied so as to perpetuate white supremacy and phallocentric spectatorship where woman to be looked at and desired as “white.”

White fascination at catching a glimpse of the exoticism of the black underworld shot Iceberg Slim’s Pimp to stardom in 1967. Voyeurism–the love of looking–plays a significant role in the pimp figure transforming from an enemy to the black liberation movement to an icon of cultural fashion (Nishikawa 136). Yet Donald Goines animates the depravity that black sleaze gestures to in his novel Never Die Alone. In fact, Goines establishes a new genre called ghetto realism that rejects the whie voyeurism that black sleaze depends on; he evokes an insider’s sensation of despair–fueled by poverty and racism–instead of appealing to an outsider’s view of the black underworld.  

Goines introduces Paul Pawlowski at the beginning of the plot. Down of his luck, Paul is a Jewish writer in New York City who is struggling to make ends meet. Yet Paul vehemently turns down a publisher’s offer to write a by-line that espouses de facto racism for its primarily Southern white audience; he explains that the novel he submitted as a sample featured a black man as a serial rapist because it made it more realistic, not to stoke long-held racist fears (Goines 26). In this way Goines reveals the subconscious perception of black men that exists in Paul’s mind. He draws from the fear of black men raping white women and, consequently, cuckolding the white men who own them. Goines criticizes white liberals who love to gaze at the black underworld but continue to reinforce the negative stereotypes and perceptions that have caused the inhabitants of the ghetto to invent their own moral code.

After King David’s diary comes into Paul’s possession, he becomes fascinated by the black gangster’s larger-than-life stories of conning innocent people out of their money to rise out of his own social station. The cunning that King David employs keeps Paul reading late into the hours of the early morning. Not only that, but Paul feels a sense of pride in recognizing that King David was making an amateur effort to write a novel. The black underworld is exotic to Paul; he is tempted to rework King David’s stories and sell it off as his own because he knows that the white-dominated publishing market will devour them. Yet Paul’s fascination turns to disgust as he reads about how King David raped and murdered a woman who had insulted his masculinity, lacing cocaine with battery acid for revenge. The separate system of justice that King David swears by now holds no appeal to Paul; in fact, Paul donates all of King David’s money to a drug center. In looking at the black underworld, Paul discovers that an insider’s sensation of despair provides a stark contrast to an outsider’s view of the seemingly-exotic cityscape.

In American society millions of children and young adults read certain coming-of-age stories that. Translating to “novels of education” in German, bildungsromans often shed light on the trials and tribulations of becoming an adult. But bildungsromans are not just any kind of coming-of-age story; they focus on the social and psychological growth of a lost child who transforms into a mature adult. The stages of the bildungsroman includes loss, journey, conflict, and maturity. Iceberg Slim’s Trick Baby is best read as a formulaic bildungsroman that adopts a new moral order of the underworld instead of conforming to that of white mainstream society in the 1960s.

Even the title of Slim’s controversial yet captivating novel suggests that the protagonist has already lost something essential: his identity. Born as Johnny O’Brien Jr. to a thrill-chasing white drummer and a love-struck black mother, the protagonist is cruelly taunted by the black children in his South Side neighborhood of Chicago. The children dub him “Trick Baby,” a devious nickname that implies that he is the child of a prostitute and her client. Yet the protagonist protests that his parents were married when they conceived him. He soon loses the presence of his father, however; he and his mother Phala are left with nothing. After being ostracized by the black children in his neighborhood for passing as white, the protagonist feels a sense of longing for a paternal figure.

Yet the protagonist’s journey begins when he meets Blue, a seasoned con artist who christens him “White Folks.” To the two of them, this nickname affirms the protagonist’s identity as a black man as well as a black pimp, thereby affirming his masculinity and identity. White Folks leaves behind the stigma of “Trick Baby” and his supposedly-expendable black maternal figure Phala by accepting Blue as the paternal figure he has always longed for. In this way White Folks and Blue begin a decades-long con game that eventually reaches its climax as the former falls madly in love with “the Goddess.” Camille embodies the mythical angel version of the femme fatale and the feminine ideal in White Folks’ eyes; they reflect each other’s whiteness. Camille also represents the forbidden fruit for the black man. She is white, married, and older than him. Yet White Folks reaches maturity when he loses Camille; he allows her father to trick him into exposing his racial identity. Slim restigmatizes his blackness while lamenting White Folks’ loss of his white identity. Consequently, White Folks vows to view sex as transactional only. He truly becomes the pimp, and his bildungsroman completes its cycle.

In Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, the detective is the epitome of both the male persona and the mythic hero; yet what lies beneath these constructed identities is the opposite of what readers perceive. Iceberg Slim’s Trick Baby follows a similar cyclical journey toward securing the hero’s booty (both a sense of masculinity and identity as a black man). Both protagonists, Sam Spade and Johnny O’Brien (or White Folks), are constantly reminded of the femme fatale as their source of castration anxiety; they operate on the fringes of society yet maintain a stringent moral code that thumbs its nose at the anarchy and post-modernism of the mid-twentieth century.

The term “dame” is linguistically linked to “danger” and “domination” (Nesbitt). Both White Folks and Spade refer to the femme fatales they are surrounded by as “dames.” In The Maltese Falcon, the “legendary falcon” (Hammett 199) symbolizes the unattainable desire that men experience through the mystery of women. Yet this desire remains intact is the quest for the maltese falcon fails; it is for this reason that Gutman’s desire is reawakened as he decides to pursue the prized bird in Constantinople (197). In this way the oedipal child–Freud’s controversial concept of a child’s feelings of desire for their opposite-sex parent and jealousy for their same-sex parent–is linked to sexual fantasies and the primal scene. Spade demonstrates a moral ambiguity towards the three femme fatales that raise questions about his true sexual nature. 

Through the use of ambiguous bon mots such as “precious” and “angel,” Spade appears to overcompensate for a lacking sense of masculinity. Effie Perine, his secretary, is capable of luring Spade into any of her desires through her girl-ish mannerisms and appearance. Nevertheless, she is clever; her last name resembles “peregrine,” a North American bird that has highly-developed predatory skills (Nesbitt). Spade desires Iva Archer, the wife of his long-time partner, as long as she represents the castrating bitch. She is the forbidden fruit that Eve tempted Adam with; she is the prostitute who Spade feels he can dominate completely. Freud’s idea of male-object choice comes into play as Spade feels a Machiavellian cunning at cuckolding Miles by sexually penetrating his wife. Yet Spade brutally pushes Iva to the side once Miles is murdered as she becomes a dangerous and meddlesome component. Brigid O’Shaughnessy is a dangerous mix of the two extremes: she is both the castrating bitch and the mythical angel. Spade frequently uses the bon mot of “angel” to refer to Brigid; this reflects his desire appear to worship her as opposed to ravishing her. Nevertheless, his innermost desire appears to be the opposite.

White Folks frequently refers to his mother Phala’s angel face (Slim 39). He describes her as unnaturally beautiful, yet her horrific gang rape transforms her from a mythical angel to a castrating bitch in his eyes. Upon visiting her at a mental facility, Phala attempts to literally castrate White Folks after he gently kisses her on the mouth. She presents a threat to his growing sense of masculinity and self-righteousness he gains from taking advantage of people’s vices. Midge serves as his unattainable “play sister” who he both worships and reviles for her queerness. After witnessing Midge make love to Celeste, White Folks tempts a married woman on that he encounters on the street to try the same sexual positions that the lesbians used. He playfully guesses that her name is Angel, yet he desires her because she is the forbidden fruit that he should not taste.

Even the phrase “black noir” has a double meaning. “Noir” describes both the moral and physical essence of the mostly-white characters that occupy the exigencies of society in noir. Yet “black” is used to describe the ideological implications of the duplicitous lives led by black Americans in response to social injustices. This signifies that the sign and signifier do not always equate each other. In The Expendable Man, Dorothy Hughes utilizes this slippage of language to shed light on the evils of racism, not that of racial ambiguity.

Class and race play integral roles in the way in which the characters navigate the crumbling social structure of the 1960s in the United States. While Bob becomes paranoid in response to the unrealized racial anxiety of If He Hollers Let Him Go, Hugh has a security of self that reflects a specific identification of the catalyst for his anxiety: racism. Hugh feels a sense of innocent guilt–an important slippage of language–after being freed from any charges of wrongdoing; he had played only a minor role in Bonnie Lee’s ultimate demise, yet he realizes that his inaction was also a choice. As a doctor, his innocent guilt derives from the realization that he could have performed a safe abortion.

As a female writer of the 1960s, Hughes leads the reader to believe that the root cause of all evil is abortion; yet it becomes clear through this slippage of language that the root cause of evil is instead motherlessness and broken families. Noir employs the age-old fear of a black man sleeping with a white woman. Black noir transforms this concept into the fear of a black man killing a white woman’s baby. Bonnie Lee was a motherless child who slept with a supposedly-married man; even though she was white, she was also poor. She had few chances to advance in her social station and was not guided in her decisions by a responsible, loving parent. Even the title of this novel indicates that a lack of structure and care during childhood permanently injure the growth of people; these “others” are viewed as expendable. They live in the shadows of society and are used for others’ benefit. They are not necessary to save. 

Although it seems simple, defining justice has always been a contentious issue in the United States. Some define justice as a set of rights and laws that all citizens are entitled to; it is upheld by the rule of law and the people who have sworn an oath to defend it. Others consider justice to be a constant push and pull between the dark and the light, each balancing out the other in a system that is already pre-determined. The protagonists of noir descend into the darkness of the world, playing with but never becoming completely caught in the shadows of the underworld. Yet Hugh only descends further into darkness despite seeking the light in Dorothy Hughes’s The Expendable Man. 

While many works of noir employ visual and moral blackness that culminates in double-sided racism, Hughes covertly forces the reader to discern between their preconceived notions of justice and race. After the newspapers release an article confirming Iris’s death, Hugh dares not come forward to identify the young teenager’s body because it would pose too great of threat to his own wellbeing. Not only that, but Hugh knows that he would not be believed (Hughes 44). In attempting to navigate the segregated society of the United States in 1963, Hugh realizes that he is forced to choose between pre-imposed moral codes that were formed to visually and morally discern between the races. It may not have been completely clear to a reader of that time period that Hugh is black as he is portrayed as a concerned citizen; the noir novels of the time often intertwined physical darkness with moral darkness.Despite this, Hugh is determined to maintain his moral code and ascend into the light. “If he were to emerge from this grim geste unharmed, he must walk through it the same man who walked into it. He, Dr. Hugh Densmore, product of his heredity and environment, sufficiently intelligent and well adjusted to his mind and body and color and ambition” (Hughes 63). The privileges that Hugh’s class has afforded him have instilled a sense of pride in both his heritage and his moral code. He is part of the black burgeoisie class. Yet the harder he tries to ascend into the light, the more darkness he seems to be shrouded by.

The constant push and pull between darkness and light, the descent into the exigencies of society, the persistence of religion in the lives of people in all areas of gritty Los Angeles–these are essential facets of Himes’ If He Hollers Let Him Go. Black noir evolves the righteous male protagonist in that instead of merely playing with the shadows of society like Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, Bob Jones is unable to shake free these chains. Yet he is able to navigate the anarchy of the 1930s and 1940s in a way that the white male protagonists of noir cannot. Bob is excluded from the “traditional” white nostalgia as he is the one who is changing the metaphorical and literal face of LA; nevertheless, he adopts the role of the Christ-like figure.

It is obvious that Bob is excluded from the religious nature of white nationalism; this is evidenced by the reaction of the white male workers after Bob curses Madge for refusing to work with him. At first, they hesitate to come to Madge’s defense, yet one of them invoke the name of God and appear to threaten Bob with a metal bar after she chastises them (27). The divide between white and black religion is solidified when Elsie, Madge’s sister-in-law, expresses her beliefs on black people and the way that Jim Crow religion views them. 

‘… the sooner you understand that God made you coloured folks ‘cause he wanted to, ‘cause when he made us in His image He had to make somebody else to fill up the world, so He made you. Not that I say coloured folks should have to serve white people, but you know yo’self God got dark angels in heaven what serve the white ones–that’s in the Bible plain enough for anybody to see’ (Himes 133).

Himes reveals the inherent bias that Jim Crow religion maintains against black people by referencing the infamous Mark of Cain and the rigid hierarchy of races. It is made clear that Bob does not belong to this religion, and he declares that he does not wish to either (153).

Yet Bob adopts the role of the Christ-like figure who usurps the authority of the majority religion. After Judge Morgan declares that Bob will receive a so-called “gracious” punishment by being drafted into the Army, two Mexican men who have also been imprisoned join him in his fate, making cracks about his appearance in an attempt to distract themselves from the loss of their freedom. “They fell in beside me and we went out and started up the hill towards the induction center, the three of us abreast and the cop in the rear. Two hours later I was in the Army.” (203) Himes alludes to the two thieves who were crucified alongside Jesus; their journey to hell is compared to the three men’s forced service in the Army. The Mexican youth mock Bob at first, just as the two thieves mocked Jesus. Yet all three accept that they are excluded from the Jim Crow religion, searching for God in the darkness of their own world.

Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe are pioneers of the noir protagonist; with their grim assessments of human nature and honesty that borders on cruelty, these straight white male protagonists laid the groundwork for the aloof yet somehow righteous upholders of justice. Bob Jones adopts this identity and morphs it into an alarming yet fascinating character, plagued by the relentless racism of World War II as a black man. All three noir protagonists navigate the anarchy of the 1930s and 1940s in the United States by using fear as an organ of perception and justice. Noir is grounded in gritty urban settings–namely San Francisco and Los Angeles–in order to express the loss of connection between the social classes. 

Spade and Marlowe assume the role of the detective who can travel between these geographical compartments and the social classes that inhabit them without ever truly being connected to any of them. They feel a sense of nostalgia–a temporary relief from the trials of the present by imagining a past that never truly existed–as they travel to places that remain the same save for the people who live in them. Although Spade never explicitly names what is different about these places, it becomes clear through subtle nuances that people who are considered to be “other” have replaced the traditional white population. Jones is part of this group; consequently, nostalgia has little to do with his cynicism about the world around him. 

Jones buys into the promise of materialism that has overtaken California, using his car to navigate the disconnected parts of the unforgiving city. Unlike Spade and Marlowe, Jones feels the need to constantly prove himself as the constant threat of racism is always at hand. All three noir protagonists are obsessed with having been done wrong, and for this reason, they adhere to strict moral codes that ultimately lead to their downfall.

The femme fatale is a facet of noir that plays a significant role in the actions of these three protagonists. Spade, Marlowe, and Jones view sex as a power struggle that can only be engaged in with the most poisonous of women. The femme fatale is a symbol of male castration who is fatal not only to the men she uses her sex appeal to win over but ultimately to herself. She lives on the exigencies of society just as the protagonist does. Yet Jones becomes aware of a contentious dynamic between black men and white women; both groups are considered to be “other,” and both are vying for power in the emerging workforce of the 1930s and 1940s.