on 7/27/2021, 10:00 am
Nothing really new here; possibly some fodder, however, for an ongoing discussion of particular structural modalities within the universe of film noir. "Alienation that manifests itself in ill-fated actions within a socioeconomic system that tends toward a corrupt oligopoly" is probably the best definition of film noir that we're going to get--but that's quite a mouthful, and it underplays the romantic/psychological/melodramatic aspect that often gives the films their peculiar intensity (as ChiO would say, noir is the incendiary agent that can set any domestic melodrama ablaze); so the writer here, like so many analysts before him, simply treads water and settles for a series of oversimplifications about noir and class.
The hidden motive for this post is mostly to see if it will rouse Mike (Solomon) from an absence that is, if not linked with, at least adjacent to time of the Capitol insurrection--a "noir event" in its own right. We will have to wait for a definitive film depiction of that sinister, highly curious day--one of the strangest in the history of America; it might inspire someone to more forcefully reintroduce some of the notions discussed in Leonard Pierce's essay into an updated American neo-noir.
Mike may have "hit the wall" around that time--either in terms of the engagement here, or he may simply have passed away. At any rate, this essay is of a type that in the past would have strongly motivated him to post, so we'll see if it does just that...
...or not.
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