The more detailed look at this, along with a few wisecracks just to stay in practice, can be found at the blog (the direct link to the article is provided below).
on 3/26/2021, 9:15 am
They've called it "March Badness" and it pits 16 legendary noir villains against each other in the familiar NCAA-style elimination engine. (Actually, 15 legendary noir villains and Peter Lorre as "M": it matters not, as Lorre's opponent, Robert Mitchum's "bad preacher" Harry Powell, send him down to commune with Shelley Winters at the bottom of that river.)
It's the epitome of "barroom, not classroom" but it does have some interesting elements in terms of determining what drives the outcome of the polling. Over at the Blackboard/"Noir-o-Meter" blog I've identified two factors and the analysis related to it suggests a strong pattern, which some of you might figure out simply by viewing this diagram:
The "NM" column in this refers to the "noir-o-meter" character element some of you may remember that rates the intensity/danger/peril, etc. of the "fatal(e)" character. The factor codes (xx, xy, yx, yy, etc.) capture the conditions applying to each film in conjunction with how well-known the films are (as measured by IMDB rating numbers).
The anomaly in the voting, as should be discernible from the diagram, was Veda Pierce beating Kathie Moffat in their first-round matchup. I would like to be able to say it was Veda's zone defense that made the difference, but I might be accused of sexism, or senescence, or possibly both--but in any case it was a stunning result.
And I think I figured out why that might have happened, thanks to another woman vs. woman matchup in the poll: Vera (DETOUR) vs. Annie Laurie Starr (GUN CRAZY). What Laurie and Kathie have in common is that despite their treachery and/or volatilty, they do really seem to be in love with their male counterparts. It may be this aspect of their characters that causes voters to discount their other less-than-sanquine characteristics in search of a more completely hard-boiled character. If such is the case, then both Dan H. and I will be filled with danger, despair and some amount of disgust, as it will be telegraphing that the "hard-boiled paradigm" is alive and well at the center of "noir discourse" and continues to dominate people's "thinking." (That, and--as I note at the blog--the world's continuing fascination with teenage vixens, a sure sign of a society that's way too comfortable with its own decadence.)
https://bboardnotw.blogspot.com/2021/03/using-noir-o-meter-for-factor-analysis.html
Responses