Black Noir

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.

I am sure, as we all know The Expendable Man was published in 1963 by Dorothy B Hughes but did you know that a book that most of us are familiar with, was also published around the same time? These two books have a lot more similarities and differences with each other that were hard for me to ignore after I finished The Expendable Man. That book is To Kill a Mocking Bird. I remember having to read To Kill a Mocking Bird in high school and all I can say is that there is a reason why this book is always read in high school and also why there are always people trying to ban this book. I am arguing that The Expendable Mand and To Kill a Mocking Bird have more similarities with each other than differences.
Before I go into their similarities I think it is important that I first call out their differences. First and foremost To Kill a Mocking Bird is not a Noir book. The genre, after a quick google search, is more of a Southern Gothic book while The Expendable Man is a noir book. Maybe, it can even be said that To Kill a Mocking Bird helped inspire The Expendable Man…with that being said what are the two book’s similarities?
The similarities I will talk about will read more like a list. Both books were written by white women in the 1960s – which may have helped contribute to the next point. Both the book’s main characters Hugh and Scout can be classified as vulnerable members of society. In the sense that they are always the most targeted. However, the difference between the main characters is that one is vulnerable for their race and the other is vulnerable for their gender. A black male and a female child in the 1960s. The Expendable Man and To Kill The Mocking Bird also deal with similar themes of race and injustice. Both lawyers are white men that seem to be doing this out of the goodness of their own hearts.
In conclusion, these books are very different from each other in terms of genre but they have more similarities with each other than we realize. The next question that we can ask is: why? Why do both of these women right similar stories with similar lessons?

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. 

In his essay “The Whiteness of Film Noir,” Eric Lott investigates the way in which film noir “constantly though obliquely invoked the racial dimension” of the figural, moral tension of light against dark (543). Racial exoticism and primitivism, cosmetic masquerade, literal and figural border crossing, verbal and visual coding, and endless examples of characters portrayed as the “other” contribute to works in which race is not blatantly explored or engaged with, yet relied upon to inform moral, ideological, or simply cultural aspects of the world within film noir.

In The Expendable Man by Dorothy B. Hughes, a medical intern named Hugh travels from California to Arizona to attend his niece’s wedding. On the way there, he encounters a pregnant, teenage hitchhiker named Iris who later turns up dead. Hugh’s connection to Iris, however brief, raises questions in the police regarding his possible involvement in her death.

In reading The Expendable Man, it becomes apparent that Hugh’s interaction with Iris, even prior to her death, has inspired feelings of anxiety and paranoia. When first stopping to check on Iris: “A chill sense of apprehension came on him and he wished to hell he hadn’t stopped” (5). As they drive, he is suspicious of her answers to his questions and refuses to stop anywhere but the bus depot, fearful that someone might see them together. Later, at the border crossing from California to Arizona, Hugh has an uncomfortable interaction with overly suspicious border agents. Iris is waiting for him and manipulates Hugh into giving her another ride. “There was absolutely nothing Hugh could do to escape her. To refuse would have been worse than to accede” (20).

Hugh’s anxiety and paranoia surrounding Iris and various law enforcement officials could be read as an older man uncomfortable with the optics of driving alone with a teenage girl. Combined with the visual cues to their respective class standings offered by Hughes (Hugh’s cadillac, Iris’s cheap dye job, etc.) one could be forgiven for interpreting Hugh’s anxiety and paranoia for feelings based on class and gender disparity.

However, though never explicitly stated, Hugh is a Black man. This is defined in contrast to Iris’s clear description as a white girl. Understanding this “constantly though obliquely invoked” racial dimension of the text creates a new layer of understanding in the reader. Instead of simply being a story about a well-off man encountering a poor young girl, we are exposed to the biases, tensions, and dangers that arise when a Black man becomes involved with the sordid, tragic circumstances surrounding a young, murdered, white girl.
Hughes’s approach to race differs wildly from Chester Himes’s exploration of the matter in If He Hollers Let Him Go. This is likely due to the fact that Hughes is a white woman and Himes is a Black man; their personal experiences inform different approaches to writing race and its effects

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.

I am from American flag bumper-stickered pickup trucks, from strip malls and Subarus, from parish picnics and poolside patio parties with the neighbors. In my Catholic grade school of 200 kids in a town of population 4,222, nearly every face I saw made me reflect on how different mine was, that is, after I came to realize I was different.

            Within my nearly entirely white hometown and fifteen minutes down the freeway to my all white all girl’s Catholic prep school, the question of “Do I fit in?” naturally arose. After the 2016 presidential election that tore my eighth-grade class apart and destroyed many of my parent’s long-term friendships, I began to think of this question in a new light: “Am I American?”

            What constitutes if someone is “American” or not? Clearly, it’s more than just a birth certificate or a voter registration card. When the idea of being an “American” is centered around the Anglo-Saxon citizen, how can the “other” possibly remain patriotic?

            I think I relate to Hugh and Bob in their questioning of where they belong in America and how they operate as “others” in society. While I recognize that I do not face, nor will never have to face, a plethora of prejudices and struggles they have, I also understand their feeling of discomfort and cynicism towards patriotism.

“It was just that [the average over patriotic American] didn’t think I out to have these feelings. They kept thinking about me in connection with Africa. But I wasn’t born in Africa. I didn’t know who anyone was,” Bob says. Even after generations of living in America, working at American companies, speaking with Californian slang, and even, later, joining the army, Bob is not seen as fully American because of his skin color and heritage. But oddly enough, those who are white are no longer associated with their heritage. “…the aristocratic blue bloods of America have forgotten what they learned in history—that most of their ancestors were the riffraff of Europe—thieves, jailbirds, beggars, and outcasts” (Himes 152).

            America, then, sits at an oddly hypocritical crossroads: it is both a melting pot for cultures who are lured in by a shot at “The American Dream,” and standoffish to those non-whites who try to grasp it.

            Even Hugh, who has most certainly captured as much of an “American Dream” that could be possibly for a dark-skinned family in the 1960’s (they are well educated, stay in well furnished, “elegant” and “large” hotels, and have homes with guest rooms), acknowledges that despite being American, his system will not serve him in the same way it would serve a white man. His mother is “convinced that only Arizonans were to be esteemed,” and has a certain sense of “loyalty” towards the desert state (Hughes 29). How can people manage to remain loyal to a place that is so built against them?

            This makes me think of La Casa de Amistad where I volunteer every Thursday, helping Spanish speaking immigrants with studying for their citizenship test. The students’ first question is always, “Where are you from?” When I reply, “St. Louis,” they want to know where my parents are from. And when I reply again, “St. Louis,” they are unsatisfied. What they really mean is, “Why do you look like that? Where is your heritage?” I am not a midwestern girl to them, I am Filipina, and when I relent that my mom was born in Manila but came here when she was 2, they nod in understanding. One man followed me up with asking about the history and politics of the Philippines, to which I admitted I knew roughly nothing about. “I am American,” I announced firmly. But I could say it as many times as I wanted to—the fact of the matter was that like Bob, I was associated with the country that my features reflected, not the country I was raised in.

            My personal experiences and the books we have read have assured me of this: Everyone, even those desperate to be an American citizen, sees the concept of “American” as white. Patriotism for a non-white American is either a denial of the prejudice and “othering” they face, or a stubborn attempt to prove that they belong, which will, as seen with Hugh and Bob, not succeed. Stubborn as he was, Bob could not defeat the system that was inherently pitted against him, shipping him off to the army for a crime he did not commit, even when the system knows that he is innocent. Similarly, Hugh acknowledges that in America, “[his] color is…against [him]” (Hughes 131).

            Hugh and Bob prove that to be patriotic for a person of color in America is to live in a false reality. I think of the love that I have for my hometown despite all of the discomfort and often blatant racism I faced there. But this love isn’t patriotism for Missouri or for midwestern America, it is a sense of nostalgia for the picket-fenced farm my house sits behind and the memories my sisters and I made chasing the geese that sat by the lake.

            I think this is where Bob and Hugh sit as well. They can be nostalgic for their experience in America, for the homes they have forged despite obstacles, but they can never be truly patriotic for a country that does not love them back.

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?

The Femme Fatales are fascinating characters and their portrayal in the time period really gives 21st-century readers an insight into what it was like to be a woman during that time period. 

In my last blog post, I argued how Madge is the femme fatale in If He Hollers Let Him Go is still a Femme fatale by her purpose in the story but is portrayed differently when compared to the other Femme Fatales we read in class. I would like to extend that argument and confront the deeper implications that white women carried at the time and still carry today. For this blog post, I want to argue how the character Madge, in If He Hollers Let Him Go, confronts the violent history of white women.

I was really fascinated by this idea and did some outside research. According to, Dr. Apryl Williams, to summarize the long quote she said, a white woman’s word was more valued over a black man’s because they are seen as the mother – they are seen as more virtuous. She also states that this victimhood goes back to American slavery where black slaves were posited as sexual threats to their slave owners, when in fact the opposite was true. The combination of a white woman’s word being held at more value than a black mans and it is expected that white men have to protect white women. This creates an eruptive combination. A modern example of these power dynamics is the white Karen meme when the cops are called because a black or brown man is assaulting them.

White women do have power and they exercise that power by playing the victim. I think it’s fair to say that we were all disturbed but not surprised by Madge begging Bob to rape her. Bob’s description that Madge would look at him like he was “king kong” plays into the common card of victimhood that white woman play.  And we can’t forget that in the tacker scene she looks at white men to come to defend her from Bob and it is white men that beat Bob when Madge claims that he raped her. These are just some examples of the white woman’s power in the book. The history of white women is a violent one and the character Madge can be on the magazine cover of their history.

While reading the Noir genre, we are also exploring the intersection of race, class, and gender. In the novels we have read this semester, these three groups can be seen as somewhat conflicting in terms of which takes precedence in the hierarchy of power. In If He Hollers, Let Him Go, the character of Bob feels that gender is “ranked” first on this hierarchy, as he is a man and should have power over women; however, he is reminded by the racial hierarchy that he is not a man and rather race is indicative of how he is treated and his place in society. In The Expendable Man, readers can see the role of class taking precedence as the main indicator of how people are treated in society. While the character of Dr. Hugh Denismore may seem that he has the ability to avoid many of the harsh realities of racism, his class can also be seen as drawing attention to his race, further reinforcing the importance of a person’s race in society.

Hugh Densmore is a doctor and comes from a wealthy family. He drives a white Cadillac and is interning at UCLA Med Center. This higher economic status allows for Hugh to be treated differently by society, but also impacts his view of the world, especially that of the lower class. In comparison to other protagonists like Bob, who is not as wealthy, Hugh is able to navigate the world with more privilege than Bob, as provided by his class. Even in his current situation as a possible suspect in the death of Iris, Hugh’s family and personal connections allow him to somewhat navigate this situation with less anxiety than a character like Bob: “You [Hugh] needn’t worry. He [Judge Hamilton] knows everyone in law worth knowing. He’ll find us the right man” (99). In addition, Hugh’s life or privilege has allowed him to avoid many instances which could have led him to experience the same type of racism that was experienced by Bob. For example, Hugh explained to Marshal Hackaberry that he had never been in a police station before, and when he did get a ticket, he would pay for them through the Auto Club, allowing him to avoid interactions with the police and possible racism: “…But I always pay through the Auto Club.’ And realized at once that he’d done it an again. Not for using the service but by taking for granted the use” (93). Hugh is very much aware of the privilege that his class provides him, but at the same time, is also aware of the racial hierarchy, and how in combination with his wealth this could also draw attention to him.

In the novel, Hugh’s car, a white Cadillac, can be seen as an indicator of his class. It is referenced multiple times throughout the book and can be seen as drawing further attention to Hugh and can possibly be seen as connecting him to Iris. When attempting to put together the pieces of Iris’ murder, Hugh seems to be somewhat under the impression that the married man who possibly murdered Iris identified Hugh by his car when framing him for the crime: “It’s the car,’ he reiterated. ‘He waited for the car. The timing isn’t coincidental” (140). As race and class are very intertwined, and during this time people of color were often of lower socioeconomic status due to generational wealth inequality, the fact that Hugh went against this stereotype, was a doctor and had the status symbol of his white Cadillac, could be seen as putting a target on his back. While class does play a very important role in this book, race is still central and the most important indicator in the hierarchy of power.

Because The Expendable Man was the first book we read by a female author, I took an immediate interest in how Hughes’ writing might differ from that of the previous male authors. Early on, the book confronts the topics of pregnancy and abortion. Although still presented somewhat discreetly, these themes have not been previously mentioned. Not only are they considered taboo subjects, but especially taboo subjects for men to be discussing. However, as a woman, especially a white woman, Hughes is less hesitant in writing about these topics. By including them in her book, Hughes forces all readers, regardless of gender, to contemplate these topics and the issues surrounding them. In a time period before the overturn of Roe v. Wade, illegal abortions were very much a terrifying reality. A reality that many men never had to think about the dangers of. Yet, Hughes gives these hidden real world issues a public place to exist so that they become less avoidable. This is why it was especially important to give women a platform such as books to speak or else these concerns would stay lingering in the back of all women’s minds. In the other books we have read written by men, all the women featured seemed more simple-minded. However, Hughes begins to dive into the complexity of a woman’s mind and the many anxieties that often plague her mind; especially ones that men do not care to think about much less write about.

While Dorothy Hughes is a woman, she is still a white woman, giving her a level of privilege. We briefly questioned whether Hughes wrote her own personality into the book at all. While we determined that as a professional writer, she most likely did not, I believe that she wrote in some of her own privileges that she is entitled to as a white woman. Iris Croom is a young white girl who is seemingly from a lower class family. However, she is still able to exert a power of Hugh who is a black man from a higher class family. For example, at the state inspection, Hugh is under an extremely watchful eye and has no choice but to act friendly and candidly towards Iris. She fully took advantage of the power dynamic that existed between Hugh, herself, and the inspection officers. Whether it be subconsciously or not, Hughes includes a privilege she can take advantage of as a white woman in her writing.

Dorothy Hughes’ perspective, as a white female writer, offers benefits such as shining a spotlight on topics that many men would avoid but also limitations, for she can claim privileged blindness to many issues that white women are not subject to.