Blog # 7 - The Gold Coast

The anthology, Los Angeles Noir, presents four subsets of its body, the last division referred to as “The Gold Coast,” which contains the four short stories: “The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones,” “Kinship,” “The Hour When the Ship Comes In,” and “What You See.” These short stories, as with all of the stories within Los Angeles Noir, attempt to fashion a noir-esque sensibility, transmuting the classic styles of narrative and character within a contextual update, that being modern day Los Angeles. The four of note, the aforementioned compositions of “The Gold Coast,” play advocate of noir in disparate and uneven degrees, one with high markings, one  with low, and the remaining two caught in the interim. So perhaps, in deepening examinations of these narrative ambitions, particularly the former two (the high and low), there may exist a constructive breadth, a conceptualization of what does and what does not make noir noir. 

The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones

The first selection within “The Gold Coast,” “The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones,” by Scott Phillips, is the most effective in its advancement of noir. At the onset, the reader is thrust into the mind of Tate, the main character, as he expresses in direct narration a key quality of a noir protagonist, that of solitary, “It’s 2:30 in the morning and I’m all alone,” (287). As described by Tate, even the atmosphere paints a noir picture, “the night air is cool and quiet [...] The shops and restaurants of the village are dark as I pass through” (288). 

Not long after, another trademark of noir surfaces, the femme fatale. Viciously alluring, Tate proceeds to describe her, “Cherie is the ur-cocktail waitress, tall and leggy with her hair dyed blond, hanging straight with an inward flip just below her jawline, and looking at her face and body you wouldn’t take her for more than forty” (288). Cherie, a fellow co-worker and former actress, is a vessel of seductive flurry, fanning the flames of lust, greed, duplicity and murder that comprise the crux of noir and, as a byproduct, a sense of jubilant raw intensity.

Cherie, a product of a bygone era, evokes actions and gestures of the classic femme fatale, although with less grace, “She’s in her uniform, and she sidles up to me and slops her mouth onto mine. Up close she smells like cigarettes and perfume and wine” (290). Wanting nothing more than to satisfy her own desire, she entices and ensnares Tate with sexual favors. Tate, playing off her sly feminine wiles (a requisite of femme fatale instruments), dances to the tune of her orchestration. Abrupt, she quickly seduces him by saying, “You want me to get naked, or are you one of those guys that gets turned on by the uniform?’ she asks, and by way of an answer I jump on her” (291). Tate, driven mostly by lust, is not as rigid and textured as past leads. He carries onward, not as a motivating mechanism, but rather as a reactionary element within the machine, an apparatus with murder in its circuitry.

Tate, euphoric from his encounter with Cherie, quickly loses civility at the sight of a dead man, an acquaintance of both of them. Killed by Cherie, her true motive for seducing him becomes apparent. “He’s not long for this world anyway. Just help me get rid of him, someplace where nobody’ll find him for a long time” (295). Now fragile partners in crime, a fragility noir dictates, both have become trapped in noir’s deathly promise. The end, of life and story, is close at hand. 

As the abrupt ending comes to fruition, the turnabout of conspirators, also indicative of the genre, comes into play. Tate inevitably becomes the victim of Cherie, delivering, in his final moments, a hint of fatalism and the irresistible allure of the femme fatale, “the face behind the wheel bearing down on mine, jaws clenched so tight they’re bulging, and all I can think is how pretty she looks” (298).

What You See

The final selection within the “The Gold Coast,” “What You See,” by Diana Wagman, although compelling and well written, does not serve as an effective base of the noir standard. The story does, however, have an intriguing set of characters mixed with a subtly compelling, yet surprisingly wistful narrative. The protagonist, Gabe, is partially shaded and ambiguous, as noir widely dictates, and somewhat split internally as noir’s update, neo-noir, commands. However, neither aspect is wholly conducive of either style. 

At the onset, Gabe, is in questionable mourning at the passing of his mother, but most of his thoughts are betwixt and between, always flung selfishly inward. He narrates, “Then she died and I stayed in my room and she went to Heaven. At least that’s where she always told me she was going. And I wasn’t. She would be singing in the Heavenly Choir and I would be roasting in the flames of Eternal Damnation” (331). The man, the one alone, is not sharply divided between ethical boundaries, as neo-noir would have it, or austere in personal ethic, as noir would suggest; his edge is not definitive, but rather mutable and dispassionate. Referring to the death of his mother, he espouses apathetically, “The first few days after she passed away I watched a lot of TV and didn’t eat anything. I wanted to see how long I could go without food. It was just something to do” (331). 

As the story progresses, and the elements of Gabe’s approaching conflict are presented, the narrative further skirts noir pathways and seemingly takes on a tone of post adolescent ennui. Gabe is mired in reflection, “I felt so sad. And old. Thirty-three and I felt like I was a hundred years old” (340). He yearns of time passed, a sense of regret buried between the lines, nevertheless, he lives on in persistent triviality.

This state of affairs, although mostly reflective of listlessness and apathy, does contain minutely woven threads of lawlessness and wrongdoing, catering to the aspects of crime and greed that noir often entails. A mysterious briefcase is introduced, an object common to classic and post-modern noir, but nevertheless, it is a mystery that requires delivery. Gabe is asked to deliver it and agrees, somewhat begrudgingly, only because modest payment is offered; a want that is not the height of avarice but rather proportional to Gabe’s newfound infatuation, an attractive young woman named Terrell. As he accepts, he thinks of her, “I shrugged, and then I thought of what fifty bucks would buy me and my pretty brown girl” (338).

Serving as the driver of the third act, the contents of the briefcase have little importance, as does its final destination, as the acts and transpirations of the nefarious become ancillary of Gabe’s reverie. Constantly living in his own mind, he barters reality with fiction. “The glass poodle broke [...] It sounded as if I were walking on potato chips. That made me laugh. I pretended I was an explorer in the Amazon and I was crunching cockroaches the size of hamsters. I imagined I was king of the world and I had jewels strewn before me wherever I might walk” (331-332).

The shadow of death looms early (the death of his mother) and does play a factor in the climax of the story, coalescing to form a slight degree of inevitability. However, this feeling, along with the MacGuffin-like magnetism of the briefcase, are sterile in comparison to Gabe’s own flights of fancy, skewing the story’s through-line and acting as interruptors. In the second act, Terrell’s friend Chara becomes involved, and in a moment of increasing intensity, as the recipient of the briefcase begins to curtail Gabe’s want of a smooth transition, he conjures another fantasy to get things back to the status quo, “Couple of silly females, I’d tell him. Chara just fell out of her goddamn shoes. Marcus and Terrell and I would laugh about Chara later. I’d sit on that creamy Naugahyde with my arm around her and we’d be drinking a beer and laughing about poor Chara and her stupid shoes” (346).

However, all is for naught, as the climax unravels and the established supporting characters, mere innocent bystanders, begin to die. As Gabe’s own death approaches, there is a sense of calm but nothing fatalistic. “I was way up high. I saw it. I saw it all. [...] My house on Orange Street. The coffee table still on the front lawn. I was sorry. I was so sorry” (348). Gabe’s last thoughts are apologetic and longing, not fatalistic. 

Throughout the story, there was never a genuine sense of noir. The woman of desire, although captivating, was not diabolic. The scheme, although promising money, wasn’t followed through by its attainment alone. In the end, the story reflects its main character, listless, full of dreams and not wanting to accept that actions have consequences.

Blog #6 - “Space, Time, and Subjectivity in Neo-Noir Cinema"

Neo-noir, as established by Jerold Abrams in “Space, Time, and Subjectivity in Neo-Noir Cinema,” exists as progeny to the classic noir era, a permeation of the parent body, yet with common identifiers. “This new noir-this ‘neo-noir’-still had all the old trappings of classic noir, like detectives, labyrinths, and femme fatales,” observes Abrams, “but then any new growth always bears the marks of its beginnings.” Observing further, his analysis constructs a bridge connecting methodologies, the old with the new (the neo), bending existentially, exemplifying the traits of the self, with relation to time, to define the latent noir condition. “The character is ‘divided’ against himself,” Abrams notes, “although not so much emotionally, as in Shakespeare, as epistemologically: divided in time as two selves, and one is looking for the other.” An engaging proposition that molds noir traditions with post modern amalgamations and that of the space-time continuum, acting as a demonstration of the genres present state, an evolutionary step with its own set of born derivations.
 
Abrams denotes that as the focal point of society shifted from the heart of the cityscape, societal unity dissolving in the successive generations, so did the centerpiece of noir, the detective. The new center has become the self, “the king of its very own mind,” notes Abrams. However, the traditions of the noir protagonist have not been lost, but rather modified. His search is now largely internal, with his former adversary, the external, an adjunct to his quest for his own identity. The searching man has become split, harboring a divided ego, a refuge of both detective and villain; two disparate factions compete, never reaching reconciliation, but in some degree, understanding.
 
In further deconstruction, this postmodern outlook of noir is being described as having three distinct subsets, of and relating to time, crossed with the self. In reference by Abrams, they are known as past neo-noir, present neo-noir and future neo-noir.
 
The detective, although not explicit to the profession, remains the seeker within the noir maze, theological pathways abounding the past division. Abrams cites several examples of this, Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981) being one of them. Abrams concedes that the film is hardly considered a noir staple; nevertheless, it has correlating elements. The main character, Indiana Jones, plays a detective-like character in search of the Ark of the Covenant. This material search, however, is secondary for the search for his own faith, or lack thereof.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, or continuum, lies the future. Future neo-noir, or simply future noir, is less theological and more sci-fi. “God and the Devil are replaced by science and technology,” Abrams proclaims, citing Dark City (Alex Proyas, 1998) as an example. The protagonist and man alone, John Murdoch, is pursued by mysterious figures in fedoras and trench coats. Murdoch flees from his pursuers as he attempts to unravel the mystery of the dark city he lives in, as well as attempting to reconstruct his own fragmented memory. Actually, Dark City is referred to by Abrams, in an unnecessary aggrandizing way, as alien noir, a sub section, less future noir than other films such as Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), but still considered part of the future oeuvre.

In the middle lies the current time period, present noir. A genre piece that is less removed from the present time as its opposites, but “that’s hardly to say that time is not ‘of the essence’--far from it,” say Abrams. He uses The Bourne Identity (Doug Liman, 2002) to highlight the present. Also, like past and future contexts, the searcher is in search of himself. However, there is a twist; the protagonist suffers from memory loss. Of note, the character of John Murdoch in Dark City also suffers from a form of amnesia, as does Leonard Shelby in Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000). Memory loss is often used as a device in these new noir films, having the characters in search of themselves, constantly asking-who am I?
 
This piece of deconstruction by Abrams, examined between the lines, could suggest that the term noir is being applied far too liberally. This illustrates that the definition of noir is, perhaps, too vague, and at the same time far too dense. Noir, as it was in its first generation, is dead and gone. What exists now, this neo-noir, is dark, yes, but by whose sensibility? The definition is not universal. Neo-noir is being used to darken so much light that the term could be applied to almost anything, projecting an umbra so wide that every film ever projected lies with its kitchen sink.