Black Noir

In the article “Noir by Noirs: Towards a New Realism in Black Cinema,” Manthia Diawara introduces the idea of “noir by noirs” as “the redeployment of noir style by Black filmmakers [that] redeems Blackness from the genre by recasting the relation between light and dark on the screen as a metaphor for making Black people and their cultures visible” (526-527). Chester Himes and his literary works are cited as examples of noir by noir narratives influential for the ways in which they took the conventions of early American noir (dominated by stylized contrasts of light versus dark put forth by white authors) and recontextualized them to portray the realities of Black American life. Himes’ practice of subverting the expected relationship between light and dark/moral and immoral in his writing informed black filmmakers also working in the noir genre to take those same conventions and subvert in their own medium. “In a broader sense,” Diawara writes, “Black film noir shines light (as in daylight) on Black people” (527).

Diawara’s article was published in 1993, placing it in-between the publication of Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990 and its film adaptation starring Denzel Washington in 1995. Referencing films contemporary to the article, Diawara observes that “[t]he characters accumulate through the transformation of the consciousness of Blacks caring for Blacks, the resistance to colonizing structures, and the move toward a good-life society which is based on material conditions” (536). This shift in the telling of Black stories is attributed to the agency of writers and filmmakers working to maintain a sense of fidelity using Black realism within the genre of film noir. Given the period in which Diawara is writing, his analysis is aptly applied to Mosley’s approach to the genre while writing Devil in a Blue Dress.

The character changes identified by Diawara (Blacks caring for Blacks, a resistance to colonizing structures, and a move toward a good-life society) are based on character transformations in a number of films from the 90s: “Deep Cover, Do the Right Thing, Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads, Boyz N the Hood, and Juice” (536). At this point, Black filmmakers were promoting stories of emancipation and power within Black communities, often operating against the established narrative patterns and norms established within the genres they were operating within (obviously, film noir being the main focus of Diawara’s analysis). This approach to character, however, extends into the literature being written in the 90s, as evidenced by Mosley’s writing.

In Devil in a Blue Dress, Black characters to caring for one another is consistently seen. After losing his job with Champion for refusing his white boss’s demand to work extended hours, Easy is in danger of losing his home, as he can’t afford the mortgage payments. Joppy, for better or for worse, then sets Easy up with DeWitt Albright to help him make a quick buck and keep his house. Later, Easy visits John’s Place, an illegal speakeasy which immediately presents itself as fundamentally ingrained within Easy’s Houston-Los Angeles network and community. The woman working the front and her nephew, the bouncer, are friendly and familiar with Easy, offering him sincere advice and information with his safety in mind. Though this treatment is extended to Easy rather than enacted by Easy himself, his perspective on these events signify a shared ideology with each of these characters and their actions.

John’s Place then serves to represent a resistance to colonizing structures. Even though Prohibition has ended by the events of the novel, John continues to operate it illegally, as there is no question of the city government’s prejudice towards John and his business operations; the fact that his business is now legal makes no difference to those in positions of power. Easy’s assertion that he might meet the sheriff with a rifle if they attempted to evict him from his home also represents an abjection towards authority and the revocation of land Easy feels rightfully entitled to owning.

Easy’s house then also represents a move toward a good-life society based on material conditions. Home ownership is important to Easy, as it gives him something that is undoubtedly his, property that makes him as successful and in many ways equal to white landowners in the United States. It represents an emancipation from renting and being beholden to the whims of a landlord. To own land is to exert a right previously denied to Black people throughout the United States. For Easy, home ownership “constitutes a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, from chaos to organization, from powerlessness to empowerment” (Diawara, 536).

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.

This year, the post Eppler-Del-Rosario Thanksgiving movie was “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story.” The 12 of us that could still keep our eyelids from drooping after our feast piled into our various cars and traveled to the theater to settle in for two and a half hours of indulgence in a classic murder mystery.

As I met the mostly white, star-studded cast of the thriller, I thought about the ways in which the people of color operated in the Noir film compared to the white leads. “Glass Onion” is definitely Noir not only because of the classic detective mystery tale, but of the decent into darkness as (Spoiler Alert!) Detective Blanc delves deeper into the shrouded, convoluted lives of the eight other people on the island.

Janelle Monae plays the lead Helen Brand, donning chic, classy dresses and expensive bold suits as she investigates the mystery of who killed her sister. My family and I unanimously agreed that she was the most talented actress and most prominent face in the movie, save for Detective Blanc (Daniel Craig) himself.

Still, Helen’s success only comes after going to Blanc for help. She needs this powerful, important, smart white man to direct her, to formulate the plan, and to give her the clues towards answers he has already decided in order to take down her enemy. While Helen is smart, good-hearted, and tough, she is nothing without the rich, straight, educated white man who paves her path.

In Noir, black women and other foreign and “othered” characters exist because of the existence of the white person. Likewise, the white female cannot exist without the white man. Ellen’s purpose is to help Hugh—a man she’d only met hours before. Alice is in love with Bob, despite his beratement. And Brigid O’Shaughnessy comes to Sam Spade for help, and despite her intelligence, cannot outsmart Spade, and cannot survive without his protection. Blanche—while sassy, strong, and capable—needs the presence of a white family to keep her invisible from the Sherriff.

Noir exists in a place of fiction (or semi-fiction in the case of Trick Baby). Still, even in these fantastical worlds, the “other” relies on the aid of the “akin” to survive. Perhaps, then, Noir can never really be focused around the other. The white man and (and his world) are the other’s crutch they must rely upon to keep them relevant in the Noir world. Instead, it is a story about the white man, featuring the foil—the other. “Glass Onion” is Blanc’s tale, not Helen’s. Bob and Hugh’s stories are defined by the white men that hunt them down. Even Blanche’s story surrounds around the white family who she knows have the power to control the fate of her entire life (Neely 129).

For my paper I am going to be writing about the interaction of labels that are traditionally ascribed to people in the United States. In particular, I have chosen to focus on the labeled race and class of the characters in some of the books that we have read this semester. Of course, most of the characters that we have read this semester are considered black, so my paper will focus on the difference in experience for the “poor” and the “rich” black characters that we have read. For that reason, Hugh from The Expendable Man is going to be a pivotal character for me as he is really the only upper class black man that we get to know well in our books. Moreover, he is written by a white woman, which as we discussed can complicate whether or not the experience of the character can be considered even remotely authentic.

As I have begun to draft my paper, I think this has been the biggest point of consternation: how applicable are the experience of Hugh to that of upper class black men? How about King David’s experience for the poor black man? While my original thesis was that I would widely apply their experiences to the black experience, I have realized that this is mistaken, and that instead it is best to analyze the chosen characters’ experiences to determine what part of the upper or lower class black experience might be like while acknowledging that no character from a fantasy novel can perfectly encapsulate it. Essentially, the labels that I refer to in the title are too nondescript, yet in America we often feel like we know everything we need to know about that person when we know their race, class, and gender.

A final point that I have thought about as I am writing my drafts is that I do not feel that I have had the opportunity to consider the third label that I mentioned above: gender. By the nature of noir, women are certainly not given center stage, and it makes it difficult to compare the women to the men because they simply serve different roles in the genre. I briefly considered trying to do it, but it feels as if I would then be comparing apples to oranges because the fictional characters are not meant to serve the same roles within the novels; with such established roles in noir, it seems useless to simply explain a well-known paradigm.

Throughout the semester, as we are introduced to a new book under the genre of “black noir” we have been prompted to ask ourselves, “What is our definition of black noir?” As we read Devil in a Blue Dress, a book that touches on many of the themes and storylines that we have read in other works, I have come to the conclusion that black noir follows a descent into darkness in the search for power and control. In many of the novels, we have read this semester which we have categorized as “black noir,” we have looked at black characters and their attempt to establish agency and control over their lives, in a world where racism prevails, and they are seen as less than a person. While many of these characters take different approaches to obtain power and control of their lives, they can each be seen as sinking more into moral ambiguity and darkness in order to do so.

In If He Hollers, Let Him Go, it is clear that Bob already exists in a world of darkness, in which he is paranoid and scared for his life. He lacks agency and power and as a black man in the United States he is not treated as a human being, and this becomes clearer to Bob through his interaction with white women. In order to regain control over himself and his life, Bob attempts to establish dominance over women. Bob’s abusive actions towards Alice when she is interacting with Stella or his violent thoughts about Madge, could be seen as a descent into darkness in order to gain some sense of power, in a world where it feels like he has none.

In Never Die Alone, the character of King David can be seen descending into darkness as he is tricking people into being addicted to heroin and then exploiting their addiction to obtain money and sexual favors. King David does all of this to obtain power. King David’s approach to power and his willingness to take advantage of others to get this power, shows that in the black noir genre, characters have to sacrifice something and enter a world of moral ambiguity in order to obtain some sense of control in a world that is already, for them, quite dark due to the evils of racism and persistent socioeconomic inequalities.

Finally, in Devil in a Blue Dress, we once again see this descent into darkness as Easy is trying to maintain his power or control, which he attributes to his house and owning property. In the novel, it is clear that Easy sees owning property as his power: “I felt that I was just as good as any white man, but if I didn’t even own my front door then people would look at me like just another poor beggar, with his hand outstretched” (9). As Easy lost his job, the only way in which he can maintain his power is by working for Mr. Albright, therefore, descending into darkness and moral ambiguity.

This definition of black noir may not be applicable to all the books we read this semester, as The Expendable Man may be seen as an exception; however, I think that this definition exemplifies the distinction between black noir and noir, as these characters have to sacrifice a lot and a certain sense of morals in order to gain even the slightest sense of control or power over their own lives, unlike characters like Sam Spade, who have power thrust upon them by 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. 

“Blanche on the Lam” has been a welcome break from the heavy reading of my other classes. As we discussed in class, it was refreshing to read a noir text that had innocence at its heart. I welcomed Blanche’s concern for her niece and nephew, and her interactions with Mumsfield as a new take on the dark, grim atmosphere of the novels we have read. Because of its innocence, “Blanche on the Lam” has felt different than our other noir novels. Nostalgia, however, is one part of noir that exists within this text, and is consistent with our definition of noir. Nostalgia is defined as, “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”  It is having a desire for a past that never existed.  Looking back to “Farewell, My Lovely” and “The Maltese Falcon” , each text engages with its past in a way that there comes a disconnect between reality and the imagined past. The first line of “Farewell, My Lovely” is  “That area of Central Avenue that wasn’t yet all negro.” Noir, as a genre, allows the reader to glimpse how a culture of a certain time viewed itself relative to its own history. 

When we place the Black body into the space of nostalgia, current realities of racism towards the black characters give way to an examination of the inception of American racism – slavery. “Blanche on the Lam” is set in a rural town in North Carolina, and examines the dynamic of African Americans performing domestic work in the same setting of their oppression post-emancipation. Neely uses humor to articulate the disconnect that her white characters have between the history of slavery and the reality of race relations in the early 1990s. These affluent white in the American south are living a life of nostalgia in assuming superiority over black people, holding onto a glorified past in the present. Blanche’s use of humor within the text adds another dimension to this nostalgia, as she critiques this false history her white bosses have created, while simultaneously removing the power this history has on her by attributing it to humor. In her article “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators”, bell hooks writes that black women are looking back at history and reframing it in a way where they can see themselves within it.  She says at the end of the article, “looking and looking back, black women involve ourselves in a process whereby we see our history as counter-memory, using it as a way to know the present and invent the future.” So by making these quips at how white people view race relations throughout the text  in “Blanche on the Lam”  Barbara Neely is able to create a space where in slavery does not hold the weight that it does on black people, especially the black woman,  allowing Blanche to navigate her situation freely. 

After Mumsfield confirms to Blanche that Aunt Emmeline has been replaced and presumably killed, Blanche’s first course of action is to make a phone call to Archibald, the lawyer who witnessed and accepted the falsified signing of the will. “He had some stake in this, too. Her only other choice was to call the police. The idea of voluntarily putting herself in the hands of the sheriff’s office didn’t warrant a moment’s thought. She went to the phone and dialed” (179). In my initial reading of this passage, I allowed myself to forget the narrator’s previous focus on Archibald and expected the next paragraph to lead into Blanche’s phone call with the police, as if her self-sacrifice was her “only choice,” a moral act that “didn’t warrant a moment’s thought.”

When thinking of Blanche on the Lam as a work of noir fiction, it’s useful to remember that this is a story about subverting figures within established systems of power. Like the protagonists of other novels that we’ve read throughout the semester, Blanche as a noir heroine is tasked with seeking justice outside the boundaries of the established legal system. 

Blanche, as the title so plainly communicates, is on the lam from law enforcement after being sentenced to 30 days in prison for writing bad checks. From the very first page of the novel, the American legal system is challenged by Neely and our protagonist for its adoption of legal equality over equity; Blanche’s difficult circumstances aren’t taken into account during her sentencing. Beyond questions of equality and equity, Neely goes a step further, introducing race, class, and power into the story when Blanche makes her escape. Sitting on the toilet after her sentencing, Blanche fumes over her employers and the carelessness with which they wielded their power over her livelihood, the:

 …so-called genteel Southern white women for whom she currently did day work… she’d intended no crime. If four of her employers hadn’t gone out of town without paying her, she’d have had enough money in the bank to cover the checks (3-4). 

Soon after, the matron accompanying Blanche to the court’s restroom is distracted by the commotion caused by a county commissioner accused of taking bribes. “She was positive he wouldn’t get thirty days. A little bad publicity, and a lot of sympathy from people who might easily be in his position, was about all he’d get” (4-5). Here, a man in an appointed political position is accused of a white-collar crime with effects more far-reaching than Blanche’s bad checks; however, based on the assessment given by our narrator, he will face less severe punishment than Blanche punishment due to his higher, more powerful position in society. Though his race isn’t explicitly stated, “people who might easily be in his position” suggests other politicians or people with power, which in 1990s rural North Carolina probably means white.

Being that this is a noir text, Blanche must seek avenues towards justice that skirt around the restrictive and at times corrupt boundaries of the law. By the time she calls Archibald, the sheriff has already been revealed as having involved himself in Grace and Everett’s crimes. So, using her quick wits and knowledge of the corrupt figures around her, Blanche identifies a way in which she can manipulate/pressure Archibald into helping her help Mumsfield in a way that helps himself.

However, we must not forget: Blanche is a Black noir heroine. Where Sam Spade might cockily use law enforcement as a pool of bumbling, but useful tools, Blanche knows to be wary of white men in positions of power. “Now she could only wait. It was a hard prescription. Waiting for some prime-aged white man to show up and set things right had the ring of guaranteed failure” (180).

In class on Wednesday part of our discussion focused on the unique setting in Blanche on the Lam that is unlike any we have encountered in this class before. Farleigh, North Carolina is described as a rural town that is even less of a city than place like Durham or Chapel Hill which are said to at least have academics. Adding to the nuance about why such a setting may have been chosen by the author, Blanche is said to have spent time living in New York City, from where she moved back to Farleigh. As a black woman, the conventional thought from an outsider’s perspective would be that she would do better in the large city than the rural southern town, the likes of which are often perceived to be “behind the times” allowing for the legacy of southern slavery to live on in discreet but signifiant ways.

Interestingly, Blanche is said to have comparatively thrived in New York City economically speaking. The city provided more opportunity for her to hold down a job that paid well, and had opportunities for advancement. However, the good of the city seems to have been outweighed by the downsides because she moved her and her two children back to Farleigh after they were approached by a man in a van promising Run-DMC music for them. In comparison, the troubles she faces in Farleigh appear much greater. She is not nearly as economically secure by her own admission, and she faces the more imminent threat of overt racism in the rural area; even if it was not necessarily a more historically racist area, she cannot blend in nearly as well as she would be able to do in a crowded and diverse city. Such an issue is highlighted as she flees the courthouse – she describes wanting to walk at just the right pace so as not to stand out as a black man or woman would if they were running in that area. To think that someone had this sort of concern in America in the 1990’s (and perhaps still has the same concerns in many parts today) is terribly sad, and makes the reader wonder what motivated the move back to Farleigh.

As I said in class, and have thought about since, I truly believe it comes down to familiarity with the worst of what each setting has to offer. As awful as some of the things that Blanche has to face as a black woman in the south, she at least knows what they are. When someone approaches her children offering Run-DMC music from a sketchy van, she is shocked mostly at the unfamiliarity of the relatively normal incident. While I am not sure that this will play into the rest of the reading, I think it is an interesting thing to note about humans in general that we are willing to deal with objectively worse situations because we are familiar with the pitfalls they have. In this way, I think we can be more tolerant of people’s decisions that we believe to be poor from the outside. Change is not easy, and familiarity (even with the worst of situations) will cause people to make seemingly irrational choices.

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?