Davis Aurini - What is Film Noir?

May 6, 2014 - Davis Aurini

15:06

What is Film Noir?

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	Film noir.
	What is it exactly?
	Is it just a stylistic choice?
	Is it just the use of black and white, of particular costumes, particular settings, or is it more than that?
	Is it more than just a film genre?
	Is it a genre unto itself?
	Is it a way of storytelling involving specific characters and specific storylines with its own nature?
	Well, I'd argue that it's the latter.
	I'd argue that it's the perfect distillation of the post-World War II era.
	That there's a reason that The Matrix, despite embracing Film Noir stylistic choices, doesn't feel like a Film Noir movie.
	Whereas the novels by Michael Connolly, despite being novels and not really embracing all the important elements that you typically have with Film Noir, very much are a part of the Film Noir genre.
	And to explain what it is exactly, what film noir has become, it may have developed as a stylistic choice, but it has become a thing in and of itself.
	To explain what that is exactly, we're going to have to borrow from the writings of John C. Wright, the science fiction author.
	Link down below to him, but I'm going to be borrowing heavily throughout this video.
	And I think the best place to start is with analyzing the protagonist.
	Now the Film Noir protagonist is what John C. Wright would call the noble pagan.
	See, he differentiates between the Christian and the noble pagan.
	The pagan doesn't really know God.
	He knows the gods, the random forces of the universe.
	He understands hubris and nemesis.
	He understands karma, but he does not believe in a higher purpose, a destiny for mankind.
	Rather, he is entirely locked in with the cycles of the seasons, the cycles of history.
	And with the barbarian, his only future to look forward to is death.
	It is to be rotting in the grave.
	And so you get two types of barbarians.
	You get the hedonistic barbarian, the one who goes out and tries to live life to the fullest every single day, and don't worry about the morrow, for on the morrow we die.
	Eat, drink, and be merry.
	And then you get the noble pagan, the one who believes in the four cardinal virtues.
	He believes in courage.
	He believes in temperance.
	He believes in justice, and he believes in wisdom.
	He tries to live the best possible life he can, yet he has no hope for the future.
	The three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity, he has none of those.
	Because he knows he has an earthen grave that he's headed towards no matter how he lives, yet he chooses to pursue the virtues nonetheless.
	And that is the protagonist of the film noir genre.
	Living in a society that has fought its last war.
	The last war worth fighting has been fought.
	Will not see its like again for a minimum of 500 years.
	The Film Noir protagonist.
	He embraces the four cardinal virtues.
	Justice?
	The Film Noir story is always about justice.
	This is why it is so frequently a police officer or a private investigator pursuing some crime that has been committed, seeking justice for that crime.
	Courage?
	The Film Noir protagonist embodies courage.
	Getting involved in something that's bigger than themselves.
	It doesn't even involve themselves.
	They have the courage to fight for justice.
	Temperance?
	You better believe they have temperance.
	These are people living on the line.
	They live without hope.
	Most of them drink too much.
	They have troubles with love.
	They are very tempted to be just as bad as everybody else in their society, and yet they keep it in check.
	They have temperance.
	And finally, wisdom.
	The film noir protagonist is a man of the world.
	Maybe he's never left his hometown.
	Maybe he served in the military, then came back, and has just done what he was supposed to do his entire life.
	And yet he is a man that understands the world, who looks at people and is able to see through them, who is able to see into their soul, to see the consequences of their actions.
	He's a man who is quick on the draw and who can figure people out.
	But what about the theological virtues?
	What about hope?
	Well, the Film Noir protagonist doesn't have any hope.
	In fact, we'll get to that analyzing the story, but the Film Noir protagonist knows that all these people he sees are constantly damning themselves and that they're going to suffer the consequences.
	They're all going to wind up a cadaver in a morgue somewhere because of their own actions.
	And yet it's still going to be his duty to investigate these murders.
	Faith?
	The Film Noir protagonist doesn't believe in anything.
	If he's a cop, he knows how corrupt the entire police department is.
	If he's a private investigator, he knows how corrupt his very own clients are.
	As for God, well, we fought the last righteous war back in the 40s.
	We ain't going to see his life again.
	He has faith in nothing, except his own pursuit of the virtues.
	Charity?
	Absolutely not.
	The film noir protagonist, he might feel empathy, he might feel pity for these people damning themselves, but charity?
	No.
	He's not a bleeding heart.
	He does what is righteous because it is what is righteous.
	Because he himself is a man that pursues virtue, not because he has charity for all of these other people who have damned themselves.
	Just as the style is very black and white, the storylines of Film Noir are extremely black and white.
	The Film Noir protagonist is the noble pagan.
	Now let's consider the storyline of the film noir genre.
	The most classic storyline of film noir is that the protagonist, the investigator, the detective, he gets involved in a case about a dead prostitute.
	Just another dead prostitute.
	Nobody cares about prostitutes.
	It doesn't matter.
	Except he cares about justice.
	He investigates this crime because it is a crime.
	He puts his energy into finding out who did it.
	And in the process of investigating this crime, he winds up getting embroiled in this giant conspiracy.
	He gets embroiled with Paula, the last politician that slept with this prostitute.
	And then he finds out this politician was bought off by the mob.
	And so now he has organized crime after him, trying to silence his voice.
	He fights off all these corrupt, venal degenerates, only to find out at the end the dead prostitute, it was her ex-boyfriend that killed her.
	The society he lives in, it has corruption at the highest levels.
	The politicians, the organized crime, the whole thing is corrupt, even his own trade.
	And yet, the solution to the crime is corruption at the lowest level.
	It's venal, evil people doing evil to one another, and even the prostitute.
	Well, she was no saint, because there are no saints.
	Not even the protagonist himself, who's just another alcoholic womanizer, trying to do the best he can in the broken world.
	So the Matrix, despite having the stylings of film noir, is not film noir.
	Whether you take the standard interpretation of the Matrix, where it's Jesus, where Neo is Jesus, where Neo is the chosen one, where Neo redeems both mankind and the machine race.
	No, there's no redemption in the Film Noir story, because the next chapter is exactly the same as the first.
	If you take the alternative interpretation, where Neo is still in the Matrix, where this whole ridiculous thing where he had magic powers in the real world, well, that's just part of his delusion.
	He's still part of the Matrix.
	Except it's not Film Noir because he's not aware of that fact.
	The Film Noir protagonist knows perfectly well that his struggle is futile.
	And yet he struggles nonetheless, because courage is a virtue.
	And so for Film Noir, we need to look in other directions.
	Michael Connolly, as I mentioned.
	His detective Hieronymus Bosch, whose one calling in life is to listen to the blood music, is to solve the crimes that nobody cares about.
	To find murderers and bring them to justice.
	And yet, in one of the novels, he comes across the La Brea tar pits, and they just unearthed the body of a woman drug out of them, whose skull was smashed in in what was clearly a murder 5,000 years ago.
	And for all he knows, that murderer escaped.
	And yet he continues to fight on and solve these murders, these murders that nobody else cares about.
	because that is what he does.
	We've got Decker.
	We've got the novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
	We've got the film Blade Runner.
	Which is a movie all about living life during the brief period that you have it.
	These artificial people that have been created, whose job it is, Decker's job, to hunt them down and retire them with his gun.
	These people who know that they're only going to live for a few years, three or four years maybe if they're lucky.
	These artificial constructs created by humanity to do their dirty work, they're only going to live for a few years and they're rebelling to try and experience life during that brief period of time and to do something that matters.
	They are the hedonistic pagan.
	And Decker himself?
	Well, Decker, it turns out, it's heavily implied, it's in the subtext.
	He himself is not a real person either.
	He just thinks he is.
	And he eventually comes to suspect that fact.
	That he likewise is an artificial person who's going to die in a few years.
	And yet he struggles on and he finds what virtue he can before the grave.
	Unlike regular people, these symbionts don't have souls.
	And yet, even without those three theological virtues, they still can follow the four cardinal ones.
	And so this is why I say that film noir is the modern society summed up in narrative.
	Because we've got no hope and no direction.
	And yet we continue to struggle to do what is right in a world that doesn't believe in right or wrong anymore.
	Ready out, folks.
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