One of the central themes behind Noir work is a character's inability to escape the past. Like the force of gravity, the past will always keep a character falling back down to Earth in an often tragic and almost fatalistic way.
This is almost a certain rule of Noir to me, one of those central tenets of the genre that define all works and how they are judged.
Why?
Noir deals with darkness, and you can think of our lives as people as lines created by dragging ourselves through the sands of time. Behind us lies the weight of our sins, black splotches on our lives that cause a deep sense of regret and worry. By acknowledging those sins as being inescapable, we recognize them and their power over us today.
Some of us may be able to walk away, to leave the past behind, but that is not humanity.
This world is defined by its past, and the sins of our ancestors. There is no escaping that. Like the force of gravity, the wars between cultures and nations hall always spill the blood of the innocent, and we will forever be tied to the past as it drags us down into the watery depths.
Noir simply recognizes this as the truth, and sticks it right in our disbelieving faces. Oh, we want to believe in a world where people can reconcile, the sins of what came before can be forgiven, and the past does not have to hold such an iron grip on the future - but it is next to impossible.
We need to have this ugly fact shoved in our faces again and again until we reach the point we deny it in spite, and we realize that maybe with great sacrifice and belief in the future, we can live in a better world.
But we are humans. That is not our nature. It is not hope, it is the past. Those sins which spread out behind us on the sands of time like great black ink blotches tie us to our sins, and the sins of those who came before and who are not even alive this day to understand what they hath wrought...
...with their sins, of the past, tying us to wrongs we never made.
This is Noir.
The genre recognizes that fact, that the past defines who we are in the future, as much as the central tenet behind the "action and adventure" genre is hope and the fact that bravery and the acts of one can change the world for the better. Noir is not hope. Noir is not action and adventure. Noir is the accepting the inevitability of death and loss and often continuing on in spite.
Noir can contain hopeful elements, and you can uplift and continue on in spite. Often you will see a Noir hero keep doing their job or working on that case despite the world around them. An audience member will be sitting there saying, "I would have been long gone by now," and yet the Noir hero will keep doing their job despite certain doom and an inescapable fate which they know is coming. There is a selflessness here which attracts us to these people who live in a world darker than our own.
There is a cathartic element to Noir, an understanding that by watching others suffer that they are the same as us, as tied as we are to our sins and their power over us these characters are as well. We are not alone in our suffering. We are not alone in our fates. We are not alone in our sins. There can be no hope because we have given up that chance long ago, and we are just living with the consequences.
It is, in a sense, accepting reality.
Some people can't, and thus, they will never get the appeal of the genre. Some people prefer to live in a fantasy world where heroics can change the world, but others know better. Others understand that the world isn't changed by the actions of one, it is kept as it is by the fates of billions. The world will keep turnign the same way tomorrow, and that is one more turn towards the eventual end.
Reality and its cold and uncaring face does not even acknowledge the 'heroes' of Noir, if you can even call them that. These are survivors, just like us. They are women and men with pasts and histories, however pure they are not, and all of them doomed to the same fate.
Just as we.
And in watching and reading Noir we understand. This is more than speaking like a gumshoe or letting the long shadows of the neon lights fall across the room split by Venetian blinds. Those are just window dressings to the darkness we seek, mere tropes of the genre. They mean nothing other than a writer's ability to mimic what came before. They are the elements of tributes and parodies, but they aren't real Noir and shouldn't be held up as the truths of the genre.
It is the darkness we seek, and this universal fate of being tied to the past is our truth.
Even if it is a past we had nothing to do with.
What we truly seek is the understanding of the genre, and why we are drawn to the darkness like moths to a flame. For the darkness is us, behind us and eventually in front of, and we seek works which acknowledge this basic fact of human life.
We cannot escape our pasts.
Why?
And that is the question that can never be answered, because there is no answer at all.
This is almost a certain rule of Noir to me, one of those central tenets of the genre that define all works and how they are judged.
Why?
Noir deals with darkness, and you can think of our lives as people as lines created by dragging ourselves through the sands of time. Behind us lies the weight of our sins, black splotches on our lives that cause a deep sense of regret and worry. By acknowledging those sins as being inescapable, we recognize them and their power over us today.
Some of us may be able to walk away, to leave the past behind, but that is not humanity.
This world is defined by its past, and the sins of our ancestors. There is no escaping that. Like the force of gravity, the wars between cultures and nations hall always spill the blood of the innocent, and we will forever be tied to the past as it drags us down into the watery depths.
Noir simply recognizes this as the truth, and sticks it right in our disbelieving faces. Oh, we want to believe in a world where people can reconcile, the sins of what came before can be forgiven, and the past does not have to hold such an iron grip on the future - but it is next to impossible.
We need to have this ugly fact shoved in our faces again and again until we reach the point we deny it in spite, and we realize that maybe with great sacrifice and belief in the future, we can live in a better world.
But we are humans. That is not our nature. It is not hope, it is the past. Those sins which spread out behind us on the sands of time like great black ink blotches tie us to our sins, and the sins of those who came before and who are not even alive this day to understand what they hath wrought...
...with their sins, of the past, tying us to wrongs we never made.
This is Noir.
The genre recognizes that fact, that the past defines who we are in the future, as much as the central tenet behind the "action and adventure" genre is hope and the fact that bravery and the acts of one can change the world for the better. Noir is not hope. Noir is not action and adventure. Noir is the accepting the inevitability of death and loss and often continuing on in spite.
Noir can contain hopeful elements, and you can uplift and continue on in spite. Often you will see a Noir hero keep doing their job or working on that case despite the world around them. An audience member will be sitting there saying, "I would have been long gone by now," and yet the Noir hero will keep doing their job despite certain doom and an inescapable fate which they know is coming. There is a selflessness here which attracts us to these people who live in a world darker than our own.
There is a cathartic element to Noir, an understanding that by watching others suffer that they are the same as us, as tied as we are to our sins and their power over us these characters are as well. We are not alone in our suffering. We are not alone in our fates. We are not alone in our sins. There can be no hope because we have given up that chance long ago, and we are just living with the consequences.
It is, in a sense, accepting reality.
Some people can't, and thus, they will never get the appeal of the genre. Some people prefer to live in a fantasy world where heroics can change the world, but others know better. Others understand that the world isn't changed by the actions of one, it is kept as it is by the fates of billions. The world will keep turnign the same way tomorrow, and that is one more turn towards the eventual end.
Reality and its cold and uncaring face does not even acknowledge the 'heroes' of Noir, if you can even call them that. These are survivors, just like us. They are women and men with pasts and histories, however pure they are not, and all of them doomed to the same fate.
Just as we.
And in watching and reading Noir we understand. This is more than speaking like a gumshoe or letting the long shadows of the neon lights fall across the room split by Venetian blinds. Those are just window dressings to the darkness we seek, mere tropes of the genre. They mean nothing other than a writer's ability to mimic what came before. They are the elements of tributes and parodies, but they aren't real Noir and shouldn't be held up as the truths of the genre.
It is the darkness we seek, and this universal fate of being tied to the past is our truth.
Even if it is a past we had nothing to do with.
What we truly seek is the understanding of the genre, and why we are drawn to the darkness like moths to a flame. For the darkness is us, behind us and eventually in front of, and we seek works which acknowledge this basic fact of human life.
We cannot escape our pasts.
Why?
And that is the question that can never be answered, because there is no answer at all.
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