Our initial introduction to Noir came in a very distinct, very easily identifiable and understandable package: a sly, white detective \u201cdescends into darkness\u201d through an encounter with the \u201cother\u201d as he solves a mystery. These stories were placed on the West coast\u2014a space where the \u201cother\u201d could interact with the akin easily as Los Angeles became steadily more infested with foreigners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At least for me, Noir became very closely related to its setting in the Western Coast. Here, interactions with Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Irish immigrants, and queer individuals were common due to proximity to the Eastern world and the influx of immigrants through California. From the introduction of Manifest Destiny, expansion into Western America became deeply entwined with the American Dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then came the blunt transition to Trick Baby<\/em>, set in the midwestern city of Chicago, which felt familiar and close to home, even including a character from my home town, \u201cSt. Louis Shorty\u201d (Slim 3). It was more difficult for me to identify the Noir in Trick Baby <\/em>and Never Die Alone<\/em> because they felt much more like stories of Chicago mobsters than a \u201cdescent into darkness.\u201d These novels felt much more similar to The Untouchables <\/em>than it did to the familiar, old-timey detective novels we read in the beginning of class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, if we think back to Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton\u2019s exploration of Noir, they did not identify the genre by a location, but by a couple of elements often found in Surrealism; Noir is \u201coneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel.\u201d All of these qualities are likewise captured in Trick Baby <\/em>and Never Die Alone<\/em>, and even Blanche on the Lam<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interactions with the \u201cstrange\u201d and the \u201cforeign\u201d are not only more easily accessible in the West (specifically in Los Angeles), but more controllable. One need only to walk down the street\u2014to head to Chinatown or Hyde Park to encounter the \u201cother.\u201d These interactions are intentional; Philip Marlowe deliberately heads to a Black club to search for a perpetrator. He knows where the \u201cother\u201d exists and then chooses to take this descent into the recognizable \u201cBlack World.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stories set in the Midwest, or even in the South with Blanche on the Lam<\/em>, interactions with the \u201cother\u201d must come in different, perhaps more hidden forms. For the King David, the \u201cother\u201d is a white Jewish man, inverting the idea of who the anti-other is. For Blanche, the \u201cother\u201d is Mumsfield\u2014a white man with a disability. Thus, a setting like Los Angeles or Arizona makes capturing the essence of Noir easier. However, other settings\u2014like the Midwest or the South\u2014can also encapsulate Noir, though it more take more effort to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our initial introduction to Noir came in a very distinct, very easily identifiable and understandable package: a sly, white detective \u201cdescends into darkness\u201d through an encounter with the \u201cother\u201d as he solves a mystery. These stories were placed on the West coast\u2014a space where the \u201cother\u201d could interact with the akin easily as Los Angeles … Continue reading “Noir Knows No Neighborhood”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4361,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4361"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions\/297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/blacknoir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}