The Ethics of Levinasian-Derridean Hospitality in Noir

THE STRANGER IN THE DARK: THE ETHICS OF LEVINASIAN-DERRIDEAN HOSPITALITY IN NOIR Stephen Swanson A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2007 Committee: Donald Callen, Advisor Phillip Peek Graduate Faculty Representative Erin Labbie Vivian Patraka ii ABSTRACT Don Callen, Advisor The meaning of what identifies film noir from other stories has plagued scholars of literature and film for decades. Some argue that film noir existed for a set period of time due to particular cultural, historical, and aesthetic reasons and that all similar narratives today represent just pale copies of copies, while others present noir as distinct stages. Few examine a range of these cultural texts to find the threads that bind them together and continue to make these dark tales of urban crime interesting to audiences over fifty years after they began. The tools and contexts alone do not rest at the heart of what defines noir. Noir, this genre-like cycle, is not the end in and of itself but rather the cultural and philosophical questions behind the grouping provides the real impetus to study. On one hand, James Naremore in his book More Than Night refers to the need to explore the ideological center of noir. On the other hand, Jacques Derrida requests in Of Hospitality further analysis of ethics based on narratives that problematize binaries such as citizen/foreigner, master/stranger, and friend/enemy. Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics establish a new critical framework that describes the world of noir and its protagonists in valuable ways. Discourses of ethics as responsibility to the other and questions of hospitality identify the dark core of noir from the early hard-boiled novels, like Chandler’s The Big Sleep, to the losers of the Coen’s The Big Lebowski, the protagonist’s struggles for identity in Soderbergh’s The Limey, and to the growth of the noir in television series such as Rob Thomas’ Veronica Mars. These theorist/philosophers expand the general understanding of our role in a difficult world, and their observations about relations between individuals and between individuals and iii their world give a new way of examining the actions and motivations of noir protagonists. Derrida and Levinas put forth critical perspectives that allow for these sorts of quests and threats while also allowing for an agent’s actions to fall outside the traditional ethical rules based on a set of practical principles, rules, or codes. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS So many people deserve thanks for their help with this project. Don Callen worked with me to develop the idea for the study as a whole, beginning with an independent study and continuing in many conversations over three years ago. His constant support and ability to talk out problems, while also seeing the big picture, have been invaluable. Erin Labbie has provided a tremendous amount of guidance and suggestions for me in my research and professional pursuits. I cannot thank her enough for her attention to detail and for pushing for me to be exact and write from a more authoritative position. Vicki Patraka provided me with her ability to look over the huge morass of my writing and come up with the crux of my point that I wanted to make but obfuscated with language and style. Outside of my committee, I want to acknowledge the assistance that Thomas Hibbs gave me while I was still putting these ideas together. Our discussion of his work on noir and the quest of the protagonist helped me to position myself in a larger framework and convinced me that this work needed to be done. Many other faculty members have helped to shape my thinking, and to name them all would take pages. Rest assured that your time and efforts have not been wasted. To my friends and colleagues, I want to thank you for allowing me to practice on you in my attempts to focus my descriptions of the ethics of hospitality and its relationship to noir. You were good sports and always gave great advice and support. To my family, I want to say that without the constant push to explain, critique, and explore culture and narrative, I would probably never have seen the importance of story and belief in society. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Jenna. It has been a long and hard road to this point, but you have always been there beside me. You have put up with so much and always prodded me to v take myself both more and less seriously when I needed it. I know that this is only the first of many works that we have before us, but I am supremely thankful for you everyday. I could not imagine a more beautiful, caring, intelligent, and wonderful partner for life. You constantly remind me of the infinite possibilities of life when I focus on the limitations of this world. You are indeed my lobster. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: REDEFINING NOIR .........................................................................................1 INTERLUDE ONE: A FEW NOTES ON THE DETECTIVE AND GENRE.............................49 CHAPTER TWO: RELATIONAL ETHICS IN CLASSICAL NOIR..........................................57 CHAPTER THREE: OF THE LIMEYS AND THE LEBOWSKIS .............................................94 INTERLUDE TWO: THE STRANGER IN FICTION...............................................................134 CHAPTER FOUR: “THAT GIRL OF YOURS…SHE’S PRETTY HARD-BOILED”- NOIR IN EPISODIC TELEVISION ...............................................................................145 CHAPTER FIVE: WALKING INTO THE RAIN-SWEPT STREETS......................................170 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................181 Swanson 1 CHAPTER ONE: REDEFINING NOIR Defining Noir As a generic term, “Noir,” appears in texts, reviews, and promotional material for upcoming films’ releases.1 Almost everyone recognizes and uses the term, but few actually define and explore how noir, as a descriptor and a generic structure, fits within the cultural meanings of the beginning of the Twenty-First Century.2 Despite the volumes of books, articles, and columns that tackle noir’s place in the last century, most do not acknowledge its continuation as a powerful force in American and global culture.3 From the point of view of usage, noir appears to have lost little potency as the decades have passed since its first coining, but at the same time, most scholars consider noir, that is “true” noir, a thing of the past, something that can only be reflected palely in contemporary homages to a time and style that cultural producers use but can never fully reclaim. Symbols such as the man in the trench coat, the blonde femme fatale, dark, wet streets, and a city fully of twists and errant shafts of light still hold power, but the nature of that power eludes definition. Whether individuals call these narratives noir, film noir, detective stories, pulps, or hard-boiled fiction, the styles and symbols clearly indicate a belonging to the genre. However, the locations in media of these sorts of scenes move beyond the novels, pulps, and 1 When speaking of the overarching concept that transcends historical and stylistic borders, I will use the term “noir”. When referring to the more traditional and bound term that refers primarily to films of the 30s through 50s, I will italicize the term and use, “noir” or “film noir”. 2 The texts that cover the importance of noir in defining the beginning of the Twentieth Century are numerous, the most notable being Silver and Ursini’s Film Noir Reader. 3 While not a comprehensive list, the University of California, Berkeley Library has a strong bibliography that includes most of the foundational texts on noir at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Noirbib.html. Swanson 2 films where some argue that they were perfected and originated.4 These signs can equally point towards television shows, music videos, comic books, video games, or advertisements for perfume, furniture, or liquor. Beyond being a genre, based in particular styles and settings, which continues to pervade American culture, what some call “noir” represents more than external style, a series of archetypes, or plot points that audiences easily recognize. The cultural attraction to these crime stories calls out to something essential in readers and viewers of the past eight decades in such a way that continues to pervade popular culture. More than the collection of the objects and plots, noir touches on something fundamentally important in the minds of those who encounter it. From a cultural and literary perspective, noir speaks of and to a changing world growing increasingly technological and impersonal while also appearing to shrink smaller and smaller in terms of connections, relationships, and responsibilities. Noir, with its tales of lone gumshoes, corrupt politicians and cops, gun molls and femme fatales does more than capture a fantasy of masculinity or preserve a view of a particular moment of American narrative history. This is not to say that noir does not do these things. A long history of scholarship shows that it does.5 Yet, the central concept binding all of these narratives together still remains to be defined. There is something broader and deeper that noir was and continues to be about. What this “something” is remains an issue of contestation among philosophers, film and literary scholars, and cultural critics. As a term for a distinct genre made up of certain narrative structures, noir emerges in the French film criticism of the late-1940s through the mid-1950s. Following the end of the Second World War, French cinephiles found a large number of films 4 For a more complete explication of the origins of film noir look to Silver and Ursini’s foundational collection, Film Noir Reader. 5 E. Ann Kaplan’s edited volume, Women in Film Noir (1978), continues a thorough and ongoing exploration of gender in noir.

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