Noir

Noir, the French word for "black", refers to genres or styles within film and literature. The term was applied by French film critics and scholars to American films of the 1940s and 1950s as an assessment of common features and themes.

In literature, noir is usually tied to the PI/detective genre: A mystery told from the perspective of a "hard-boiled" detective, and involving various sordid elements (crime, sex, violence). The story may also have some action elements. Classically these were stories aimed at a "men's audience", seen as too sordid for women. The stories themselves typically had lurid covers, as did other works of pulp fiction, often featuring a woman's leg and the edge of her (very often) red dress -- an homage to the earliest works by Dashiell Hammett (a former Pinkerton-turned-detective who became a leftist activist) and Raymond Chandler. The Maltese Falcon (1930 novel by Dashiell Hammett, 1941 film starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade) is perhaps the most famous example of the genre.

As with other pulp fiction of the time, noir novels often presented, in lurid and critical trappings, a socially and politically conservative message: a pessimistic and often racially cast view of human nature, a virgin/whore view of womanhood, and an emphasis on the need for authority and a few good men to stand against the tide of chaos. Sophisticated works within the genre cut against these trends in various ways: critiquing authority and power, showing people's flaws in connection with their social circumstances, humanizing the "sordid" elements of society, creating real and complex female characters, problematizing the central (male) protagonist in various ways.

The literary creation of the detective/PI needs to be placed in a historical context: Private detectives and agencies were seen as morally ambiguous entities from their inception; they were often known or suspected to be basically protection rackets, with their own ties to local crime syndicates. The late 19th-early 20th century use of Pinkertons & other "detectives" as agents of employers against their employees -- to sniff out embezzlement, to infiltrate union organizers, or as outright strike-breakers and anti-union thugs -- similarly gave PIs a negative cast. The pulp fiction portrayal, therefore, was not a new creation of an anti-hero, but rather almost a reclamation of the heroic from a historical trend that was viewed by most as very much not heroic.

In film, the genre -- usually described as film noir -- adapted the cynicism and pulp/lurid elements of the literary works, particularly emphasizing the ambiguity (in outcome, plot, human nature, etc.), and usually increasing the role of the female character(s), or at least the on-screen time. The genre had its roots in the period from the 1940s-1950s, but has influenced films and literary works since then.

Stylistically, noir films are most often in black-and-white; or at least with very muted colors and an overall darker tone. The visual style reflects the content, which, as with the literary genre, often offered a grim view of human nature, relieved by stark binary oppositions (good versus bad characters). Narration frequently involves voice-overs and flashbacks, sometimes creating ambiguity about the timeframe, and other times creating a sense of emotional distance and coolness towars the story. Fritz Lang's M (1931) was a major film establishing the noir genre, which also drew from many of the horror films of the 1930s. Many works -- most famously Roman Polanski's "Chinatown" (1974) -- have drawn from or attempted to re-envision noir. Re-uses of noir have brought human corruption out of the sordid working classes and into the highest echelons of society, revealing political corruption, domestic violence, incest, etc.

As SF has ported numerous other genres into SFnal settings, it has also ported noir. Blade Runner, for example, is an exposition of the classic noir film and noir detective story. The noir approach has been applied to non-detective works also, although usually some element of the criminal / authority dialectic remains; this is particularly the case for noir treatments of dystopian works. Noir elements have also blended with horror / dark fantastic works in many stories.

List of noir SF works

• Blade Runner
• "The Sticky Fingers of Time" is a lesbian noir time travel film.
• "Angel" episode "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?" is a noir treatment of a McCarthy era story; "Angel" itself, as a series, is an homage to and is influenced by noir genre and includes basic noir conventions: A (male) PI who is morally flawed and seeking redemption, solving crimes and mysteries. The noir influence and setting is established in the pilot, which starts in a seedy bar, with a voice-over; the heroic rescue is immediately problematized by the reveal of Angel's vampiric nature, which figures him as the prototypical noir protagonist, who may be as "bad" as his opposition. Angel's mixed-world of demons and humans allowed playing out of noir questions of ambiguity: humans versus demons is not always a black-and-white good/evil; demons as individuals and species turn out to be, like humans, capable of both good and evil, as are humans. Whedon's emphasis on solidarity and teamwork over individuality also cuts strongly against the noir feel of the work, as noir works place the protagonist not just in the center, but often alone and isolated in an alien, hostile, or threatening world.
• Frank Miller's Sin City was a series of interconnected vignettes in a noir world.

non-SF works of interest to feminist SF audience

• Veronica Mars, a non-SF detective / mystery series, self-described as a noir series; the term was particularly appropriate in season 1.
• Nicola Griffith's novels featuring Aud Torvingen, beginning with The Blue Place, Stay, and third novel (2007)