Modern Noir and the Fluidity of Genre
At work last week, during one of the rambling intellectual discussions that tend to come up in our office, one of my coworkers dropped a bomb and said that “there’s no such thing as modern noir.” Said person then followed up with “I might go so far as to say that noir isn’t a genre, but rather an aesthetic” before walking out of the room, leaving me flabbergasted. In this person’s defense, there was a great follow-up conversation (mostly involving me and Russell explaining why this is quite wrong), but it’s not the first time I’ve heard this.
First, let’s get the second question cleared up: noir is a genre. Specifically, it is a genre of crime dramas, primarily in the 40s and 50s. Hollywood crime dramas from the time are more formally “films noir,” and literature in the genre is more often called either “hardboiled fiction” or “American detective fiction,” but such movies and literature can be correctly categorized as noir.
The first question, the existence of modern noir, is a bit trickier. In poking around, it seems the generally accepted term is actually neo-noir, and it’s loosely applied. Basically, if a movie or piece of literature has a detective, moral ambiguity, or even a dash of the stylistic tropes of noir, people try to classify it as neo-noir. This extends to, essentially, most fiction ever.1 I would personally require that a piece of fiction be a crime drama at core before there can even be a consideration of whether it qualifies as neo-noir or not (which is why I still think that Inception qualifies, although perhaps just barely), but the value of the label has certainly been diluted.
I’ve seen the same thing happen to cyberpunk – any fiction that is near future sci-fi tends to get slapped with the label. Worse are the variations of “punk” that came afterwards that have increasingly less and less to do with the core of cyberpunk.2 I notice this because cyberpunk is, itself, neo-noir, and so you can start to see how insidious it becomes.
The real issue is that the concept of “genre” has become so diluted and amorphous that any attempt to keep things distinct is doomed to hair-splitting. For years I resisted this, even as vampire fiction moved from the shelves of horror into young adult. The turning point for me was when SyFy (previously “Sci-Fi”) tried to market Battlestar Galactica as a drama instead of a science-fiction show in a press release which, sadly, I cannot find again on the Internet. I realized then that genre has evolved from a rigid set of reliable tropes and expectations into a loose collection of stylistic guides. I can accurately describe the Dresden Files books as modern fantasy crime fiction (and yes, even “neo-noir”) and be correct.
As a writer, this is actually a good thing. This means that I can just write whatever the hell I want, and know that the market will bend and twist to find some way to incorporate it. I might envision my story as crime fiction and find that it’s been shelved under science fiction/fantasy (or its more hipster cousin “speculative fiction”), but the point is that genre now bends to the artist, instead of the artist having to bend to genre. As a fan of noir, though, it sucks that I’m in a position where I have to defend my completely arbitrary distinctions with other people’s completely different arbitrary distinctions.
But at least it gives us something to argue about at work.
- To be fair, I’ve been guilty of this as well, so I’m certainly not pointing fingers. Or rather, I am pointing fingers, but at one is pointed at me. Which is pretty painful, since my hand doesn’t bend that way. ↩
- And again, before y’all jump on this, “gothic-punk” is just as bad, but I believe it’s far closer to cyberpunk than, oh, “steampunk.” ↩
I think you are mixing two issues here, Eddy.
1. The real academic/theoretical problems of the genre concept, troublesome issues in labeling and categorization, etc
2. The social tendency to ignore academic/theoretical constructs and impose a blunt categorization in it’s place.
You struggle with #1 throughout most of the post, but mix in the problem of #2 (in your comment on cyberpunk, for example).
Either there IS a definition of noir that is acceptable from a theoretical standpoint or there is not (i.e. the genre itself is too loose to really be quantified). I think that such a definition exists and it should be discussed. However, what society writ large determines they are going to call Noir is really irrelevant to that, in my view.
Take the original Star Wars trilogy, for example. A sophisticated critic can see the movies as the classic heroes journey with opera elements (particularly in the musical composition, but also in the complexity of family issues and emotional tension). The layman may simply see flashing lights and action. Does that layman’s view undermine the critic? I dont really think so.
In a way that wasnt really possible with print media, I think the internet has made it possible to have multiple independent contexts that allow simultaneous discussion of issues on an extremely complex and sophisticated level with the mundane layperson gushing about the sparkling lights and action. Those conversations occur independently in totally difference spaces, just like someone can play hack-and-slash D&D at the same convention as someone playing highly nuanced political intrigue with WoD.
The same person can even move between the two levels at will, even when discussing the same media. I have a discussion about how I think Firefly represents a revolutionary advance in science-fiction by seriously contemplating the social consequences of having frontier regions in space, or how I think that the scene with Jayne in the airlock represents exceptional screenwriting in how it interplays complex emotional nuance with group loyalty while actually putting very few words into the film. The next second I can call it a space-western, even though I dont think that it is a legitimate genre, that it is a piss-poor solution to when pieces of art dont really fit into established genres, and that Firely is full of extremely complex moral situations that are totally un-Western.
But when I use the term space-western, I am talking to a totally different audience and that is the key. I wouldnt use space-western in a serious discussion but rather to try to explain what Firefly is like to someone who has no clue. In the same way that I suspect there are people who actually know what Cyberpunk means and there are those that simply toss the term about to express some kind of intangible concept to others without having to get into a complex discussion.
My…. I am rambling. Sorry
Those are some fair points, but I think the post accurately reflects my own viewpoints, which have been a mix of academic and colloquial observation. Further, I don’t think there’s nearly as much separation. For example, my wife is an anthropologist, and frequently gets annoyed at the colloquial use of “theory” when people really mean “hypothesis.” And yet, she herself uses “theory” in that way when it makes sense in context — her academic brain isn’t engaged during that comment. So we have a case where the meanings of words are constantly shifting on a case-by-case basis, and it’s really just a matter of one person’s arbitrary opinions over another’s.
Even on an academic level, though, noir is often misused (as the use of “neo-noir” indicates), primarily because it is applied both as purely an aesthetic and as a genre. Cyberpunk is used in the same way. Role-playing games are particularly bad about this — many “cyberpunk” games probably only feature cybernetics and a near future timeline without any real resonance with the core of the genre.
Anyhow, the point of the post wasn’t to be definitive or academic. Rather, it was to demonstrate that when people say “genre,” there are so many different interpretations and opinions on the topic that it’s hard to realize that you’re not actually talking about objective truth, but rather subjective opinion.
I’m not fond of the term “Genre” fiction mostly because I hear it used to discredit any form of fiction that is not to the taste of the person who said it.
When I was in the writing program at Purdue, most of the teachers there viewed any form of fiction that had something exotic about it as “Genre” and would come down hard on anyone who tried to write it. I’m quoting this teacher from memory so I’m probably skewing her words a bit, but here goes…
“Why can’t we use horror or science fiction in our work?”
“Because when you write “Genre” fiction, you stray from the true goal of being a writer which is to document the human condition.”
“So you cannot write about what it’s like to be human if you write about humans dealing with the extraordinary events around them?”
“Yes. They have to deal with real issues, like going through a divorce or loss of a family member for it not to be genre.”
“…can’t I just call that “Real World Genre?”
That teacher didn’t like me and swore I could never earn money being a writer. Her husband though was a delightful professor who was much more helpful to me.
I had a very similar experience. My only advantage was that I was published before I took the class, so when the professor spent pages and pages lambasting me for my choice of using horror and supernatural elements, I just dropped a copy of Know Your Role on his desk and said “I’ve got several credits to my name. According to the Internet, I’m published as much as you. Let’s put your biases aside and talk about the story itself.”
Ballzy Eddy, Ballzy
very little intelligent to add to this, except that I continue to be amused that, since I work for a major book store chain, the dresden files are actually classified as ” fantasy noir” in our systems.