Author: saravechinski

I was incredibly confused for a long time in this class. My first day was me “shopping” for classes after having a course cancelled a week into the semester. I did not have time to prepare, I did not know what noir was, and I felt like I barely managed to jump on the back of a train and was holding on for dear life. It took weeks for me to understand what noir was, and I certainly did not have anything to add because I felt like I was constantly trying to catch up. The second half of the semester things got better, but my lightbulb moment came over Thanksgiving break. For once I had time to just read all day and absorb the story slowly and analyze it, rather than trying to comprehend English, history, theology, and anthropology all at the same time. Devil in a Blue Dress connected everything. We got the classic femme fatal, the paranoia, the descent into darkness, the nostalgia, and the murder mystery. It embodied everything we discussed this semester, but it helped me realize the ways in which our other texts are still noir.

The other texts were not always as cut and dry as Devil in a Blue Dress, but the aspects I have been able to draw out highlight different aspects of black life and the realities of the darkness they live in. I came back to darkness many times in my posts because there was always some decent. That was the one thing I was able to pick out of every book. It defines the noir genre and the nature of humanity. Despite the way we think our life should go, other forces work to push toward the darkness. For the people that live in that darkness, they understand the relationship better. Sometimes they walk the line, sometimes they try to get out, and sometimes they descend further, but they all fight and intrigue and inspire this voyeuristic gaze that makes the noir genre impossible to ignore.

Easy is already a much more complex character than I was expecting. We get hints at his background, like how he once ripped the skin from a white boy’s face, that his parents were mere passersby in his life, and that he ran to the army to get away from Mouse. There is a long history that will slowly be revealed with the rest of this mystery. That, in my opinion, makes him the character I am most invested in, well that and that the line “They were just throwing money at me that day” made me laugh out loud for the first time reading for this class.

My only current observation that feels meaningful is that the only part of Mr. DeWitt that is not white is his gun. His whole business is sneaky and shady, so the white is masking a dark reality where the gun becomes the only visible sign of this dark truth. Daphne, Delia, Delilah, the one who cut Samson’s hair and brings about the downfall of a strong man. She is a treacherous and voluptuous woman, the perfect femme fatal. The femme fatal characters in the last few books have seemed less cut and dry like the ones we first read about. I do not know what she will be like, but it already seems to be more obvious and easier to root against her and for Easy.

The class dynamic in Devil in a Blue Dress will be worth noting, as they already stated the law was made by the rich to keep the poor down. Easy talks about how everyone works hard but remains on the bottom and goes to the bar to remember what it felt like to dream about California. In one of my classes, we talked about how when a lost home becomes part of your identity, you can never return there, or you will lose yourself to find it has been changed. The feelings toward California feel like a combination of this and of the nostalgia for something they do not remember correctly. I do not know how this will fit into the other Los Angeles narratives yet, but it will be interesting.

Throughout the semester we have discussed multiple times how various works were familiar or unfamiliar to us, and often when they were completely foreign the conversation lacked. We tend to find comfort in the known. It is the unknown, the new, the changing times, the incoming foreigners that are frightening to our characters, but us as well. I felt safe in our texts about southern California and the drive to Arizona that I knew well, or the love for a grandmother that felt familiar. We have been searching for something in each text in order to make us feel safe and confident to discuss it. We want both feet on the ground before we open ourselves up with ideas that invite counterarguments and criticisms. However, the short story Bulletproof felt familiar in a way that left me feeling completely exposed and unsafe.

Just like Lisa, I have been at a point where all I felt was pain, isolation, and a desperate need for someone to care about me, or just know that I existed for one night. While I never went down to the street of the working girls, I understand the feelings that drove her there. I know the desperation she felt as she got into Leon’s car. I know Leon too. I understand the frustration of love being conditional. I know the desperate hopeless game of vying for love from a mother that would only give it on her terms. Hearing, “I’ll love you forever if…” insert endless chores, grades, favors, and sacrifices. I know the desire to find someone who will love you as you are, no strings attached, no matter what you do, and the constant fear that this will be what finally drives them away forever.

Reading Bulletproof was suffocating. It was everything I felt in the darkest moment of my life. For the first time this semester, I was right there in the darkness with them. I knew what that darkness looked, sounded, and felt like. I lived in that darkness for a year before I dragged myself out, with the man I was made to love as my anchor. I was excited for Leon and Lisa. I thought their story could end the way mine did, but it didn’t. The darkness claimed them in a way it could have claimed me. Therefore, this text is the most familiar to me, but the least safe. It makes me regret looking for familiarity. Maybe I should be grateful for the distance I have from some of these texts, or maybe I should embrace the darkness and see where it takes me.

Violence and drugs have always been a central theme in the noir novels we have read so far, but in this book, the messiness of the situations is born from relying on these things. What was supposed to be an easy job of collecting a debt becomes the catalyst for the unraveling of the lives of all the characters. King David loses everything to the life he claims to only have dabbled in, but this dangerous game eventually seeps deep into every pore of his being until neither can live without the other. This messiness comes out of the mutual reliance on each other for life. Without the bookie or the trigger man, the drugs never sell, and the gun never fires. Even though he is not addicted to these things, David cannot live without them, ultimately bringing about his death. The life lived in these noir novels is itself an addiction. The danger and risks that come with such a life is exhilarating when you win, but when you lose, the consequences can be deadly. This novel does a great job of dismantling this fascinating attraction to the violent life when living on the edge and emphasizing the consequences that come with it. Holding grudges, cleaning up your messes, and trying to clean up your life all come at a cost. Most of the time, these people are unwilling to pay the price, which costs them their lives. Instead of giving his readers an upfront cautionary tale of this kind of life, Goines ventures to subvert their narratives with the bitter end everyone meets. Those we see fall prey to their own vices are the ones who fail to center themselves around a certain set of life rules, other than the sad fact that life is every man for himself. When you make a mistake, it will come for you. It may be a few hours, days or even years, but it will always come. David’s motto for using drugs applies in all aspects of life. One hit is too much, but many is never enough. When the judgment day comes the only thing these people can wish for is to die in the company of their limited acquaintances.  

Trick Baby felt different than the other noir texts we have read this semester, primarily, as we discussed, due to the fact that the darkness was completely in our face. We did not need to go looking for it, and there was no way to avoid it. The whole book dripped with the darkness of Chicago, leaving your hands dirty after you set it down. You could not avoid it, and reading it felt voyeuristic. However, I did enjoy it. Our texts frequently watch the decent into darkness and stop right when they get there, but I want to see what it is like in this darkness. What happens to a character completely born and raised in this darkness? What do they look like compared to one that stumbled into this world?

White Folks was not what I expected of a man born in the darkness. He loved his mom, adored his grandma, looked up to Blue and refused to leave him behind even after learning the real reasons Blue took him on as an apprentice. He was not quite innocent, but not cynical like I expected. He still had compassion for people, trying to protect Midge even though he views her as a freak. There was a comment in class about how someone started with a list of what they thought noir was and the list keeps getting shorter, and I feel the exact same way. I crossed cynical off the list because White Folks has a plan for escape and cares about his people. He does not sacrifice bodies for his gain. I am not sure what is left on my list besides a vague “darkness” at this point. Without the decent, mystery, and cynicism, I am left confused on how to think about this genre. What connects these characters and how do I view them in light of each other?

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song obviously had a starkly different approach to noir than the previous films we have watched. The fact that it was not based on a book led to some of these liberties, but mostly it varied in the way decent into darkness (or lack thereof) was depicted as well as the differences in main characters. In The Maltese Falcon (1946), the classic macho Sam Spade never loses or has anyone question his worth or masculinity. He starts at the top, but he descends into the darkness and moral ambiguity of noir. However, Sweetback was never at the top, or even close. He lived in the margins his whole life, first as an orphan and then as a prostitute. However, he lived as a black man in a society controlled by white people, and that is what truly marginalized him. Therefore, he never really descended into darkness, as he lived in it his whole life. Instead, the noir lies in the hopelessness of the characters. The constant shots of running and the abuse suffered by the black community as the police tried to find him show the unjust and dark place they live, where they can face beatings and torture, and no one cares.          

In Murder, My Sweet (1944), the detective Philip Marlowe has a lower economic status, so while he is not on top, he is white and that gives him advantages Sweetback does not have. Marlowe has the ability to investigate a crime he has been told to keep out of and even though he gets beaten up, he does not fear his safety that much. However, Sweetback was taken as a fake suspect to show the police were looking into a black murder. However, when the police begin to beat Mumu, he defends the one he believes will really bring about change. That makes him an actual desired suspect and now he must run from the police. While he his running for his life to Mexico, the police interrogate the community. The scene with Beetle was incredibly upsetting as the abused him, permanently deafened him, and you could see the fear in his face that he was not sure he would be allowed to walk out alive. The black community lived in the darkness and those crimes would never come to the light. Therefore the differences in the way Sweetback descended into darkness and how his character had more to worry about than the white leads of the other films led to a different type of noir, but one still impactful and marked by the grayness of morality in a changing world.

What makes a man expendable? Why can we write off other humans so easily? How has this society turned into one so self-preserving that we cannot extend basic decency to another person?

In one of my classes, we talked about the craze surrounding helping children in impoverished countries, and how often the tag line would be something to the effect of “one million children,” as if the trauma and abuse suffered means less if it isn’t an outrageous number. One child forced into prostitution in Thailand is too many, but why do people only care if it is so large a number you can take out personal choice and personality?

Fred Othy murdered an innocent girl after taking advantage of her and lying to her, then had no problem letting someone else take the punishment, so obviously he isn’t a good person. There is a lack of guilt and shame that makes him able to look someone in the eyes and destroy their lives. However, Hughes makes an interesting case that it could be easier for Othy to pin it on a black man. Venner wanted Hugh to be the culprit because it made him fit nicely into the preconceived notions he had of black men. It was so easy for Othy to get away with, that he himself might believe Hugh deserves it. The deep racism makes Hugh less human in his eyes so Othy believes why should he not pin his crimes on Hugh. The law wants it to be him, Othy does too, so it just makes sense

Even today we see these repercussions of destructive stereotypes and the injustice in legal systems around the world. Preconceived ideas of what people are capable of lead to innocent people going to jail for decades. Society needs to move past stereotypes and generalizations. Problems for an individual are still problems, we don’t need to wait until one million people are affected before we try to fix it.

I am currently taking a class called “Children, Youth, and Violence,” where we have looked at the different definitions of children depending on societies, the marginalization of people who don’t accept the white middle-class ideas of success, and the harmful discourse of “at-risk youth.” While there has been decent overlap already, our topic for this week connected well with the ending of If He Hollers Let Him Go.

This week, we began learning about the way France excludes populations of people that do not fit their perfect mold of being French. In order to be considered French, you must look like you are of French descent, live in Paris, as well as dress like and enjoy the culture of Paris. Many immigrants live in the outside neighborhoods of France, where there are possibly two trains a day that bring them into the city. Recently, their international airport made a new program to hire more ethnically diverse people called Papa Charlie, in order to promote the “internationalization” of the airport. This program infantilizes them through the name, keeps them away from Paris, as the airport is outside of Paris, and further denies their French identity by claiming them as international. However, this is the only job many can get, as a train ride to Paris takes upwards of three hours and often people who do not have a Paris address, French name, or look French (France requires headshots on their résumés) will not be hired.

As a result of this constant othering, many of the immigrants in the outlying neighborhoods are viewed as criminals and frequently harassed by the police. Everything came to head in 2005, when three boys ran into a power station to hide from police who were stopping them for a random search. Two of the boys were electrocuted to death and the third suffered severe injuries. The neighborhoods, outraged at the constant injustice, fear, and lack of help from the police, erupted into three weeks of rioting. One boy looked into a camera, held up his French ID and said, “I am French. What more do I have to do?”

Bob felt similarly marginalized from being American. He stated “They kept thinking about me in connection with Africa. But I wasn’t born in Africa. I didn’t know who anyone was.” Because he isn’t white, he doesn’t fit the mold of being American in his society. Therefore, he is not considered American. Alice can pass, and she knows how to play the game to acquire acceptance. Just as one black woman in France stated that she puts a Paris address on her résumé in order to become more favored in job searches, and it works. However, Bob cannot pass. There is nothing he can do that will grant him acceptance in his society. They will never allow him the status of being an American, which means he doesn’t get the same rights as an American in the justice system, even in a state like California. He will always be viewed as the other, the immigrant, the darkness, the one that doesn’t fit. Now he will be sent to die for a country that refused to claim him.

                  The power struggle seen within If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes speaks to the limited social mobility within marginalized communities that pervades even modern society. While Bob focuses on the materialism of Los Angeles as an indicator of status, he also looks to make gains socially over his peers. Bob feels completely emasculated in his society; therefore, he looks to distinguish himself from women. When he felt Alice had gained power over him, he slapped her in an attempt to retrieve that power. Alice also seeks to make these gains in her desire to “go slumming,” as it allows her to feel powerful over her darker-skinned peers. However, these small gains in power can easily be lost by moving to a more white male-dominated crowd or by other grabs of power by their peers. In the end, social mobility remains limited.

                  In The Making of a Teenage Service Class: Poverty and Mobility in an American City by Ranita Ray, she investigates the way in which lower-income communities face structural violence and inflammatory labels like “at-risk youth” that prevent them from elevating their economic status. As such they seek out social distinctions that make them feel as though they have gained some footing, but family crises, unemployment, and other results of the uncertainty of their lives cause significant setback. Therefore, they relish every small gain. Ray brought some of the youth to a sushi restaurant, and because sushi had the ability to elevate them over their peers who only ate fast food, the teenagers posted pictures of it all over Facebook, disregarding the fact that they frequently rely on fast food as well due to living in a food swamp. Himes and Ray reveal that little has changed throughout the past several decades. The small gains amount to little in a society that limits mobility, but it does not prevent the attempt and the desire to distinguish oneself in a society that claims everyone can have a piece of the American Dream.

Throughout Farewell, My Lovely, the white citizens consistently other the foreigners, making them distinct from the main characters. Malloy laments that Florian’s changed from a white bar to a colored bar. This change causes him anxiety and factors into his fear of a changing world. While fear of change and xenophobia play into the noir genre, the more pressing issue remains that noir centers on darkness, and darkness cannot exist without light. Therefore, creating the other becomes essential, regardless of how it plays out within the genre. This frequently manifests as a fear of foreigners entering the city, however in If He Hollers Let Him Go, Bob does not possess the same anxieties because he is a part of the new wave of people entering Los Angeles. As such, he must find a new way of distinguishing himself, so he turns to the materialism of Los Angeles. Bob owns a car and uses it to set himself apart, even reflecting on the inability of rich white people to purchase a new car during the war. He buys into the materialism so completely, that the fear of losing his car keeps him from killing a white man. He does not care about losing his job or facing prison because those do not set him apart, only his car and other similar material possessions can do that for him.

            Noir’s fascination with the other manifests in varying ways, but I think it plays more deeply into the othering within people’s own persona. They focus on external image and an external fear of others in order to ignore the darkness within themselves. They fear becoming the other and facing the isolation and loneliness, but they continue to divide. Therefore, the physical darkness becomes representative of the journey people will take within their own mind, and that which they fear most becomes their destiny.