Introduction: Noir didn't give our society what it wanted, but what it needed. Our world is filled with mystique and uncertainty. To live is to work, to survive. We do not live on an Earth in which we can blindly trust. Noir represents this dark and gritty world, in which customary ethics and morals are disregarded and pushed aside. Noir showed our society what life after war was really about. Those in the earlier generations who survived to experience noir did not want to be confronted with hopeless tales about flawed protagonists, but needed to, in order to face themselves. Paragraph 1: In Noir, there are three main archetypes which are meant to be reflective of those who survived the outcomes of war. These archetypes are the flawed male …show more content…
Spade is a character whose morals are blurred ambiguously throughout the movie, disrespecting the law and disregarding human life. The flawed male protagonist was reflective of the men who came back from war. These men had to leave their morals on the battlefield, they lived in a kill or be killed society. Moving on, the femme fatale personality is reflective of the women who had to work while the men were away at war. An example of a femme fatale character would be Brigid O'Shaugnessy in "The Maltese Falcon". In this movie, Brigid was cunning, two steps ahead of everyone else for the majority of the movie. This was one of the first times women had been able to work, and it empowered them. This led to a number of movements which gave women their independence. The correlation between reality and fiction is the observation most men have. Women having independence was dangerous, and men feared it. The final archetype is the corrupt aristocrat, and is best portrayed *in my opinion* as Assistant Vice Principal Trueman in "Brick". Despite Brick being part of the neo noir subcategory of noir, it still captures these archetypes extraordinarily
Throughout the film of Smoke Signals, the story centers on two characters, Thomas and Victor. Thomas, through his storytelling shows Victor that there's more to life than cynicism and pure anger, while Victor let's Thomas know what it means to be a real Indian. We can see this in the scene where Victor tells Thomas that Indians are not supposed to smile to white people and that Indians always should look mean in order to gain the respect of white folks. However, we can see that after they return to the bus their seats have been taken by two white men and neither did Victor’s mean face and faded smile help him gain their seats back. This scene shows us that those stereotypes about how what an Indian is supposed to act are not in fact true because
In “The Thematic Paradigm,” University of Florida professor of film studies, Robert Ray, defines two types of heroes pervading American films, the outlaw hero and the official hero. Often the two types are merged in a reconciliatory pattern, he argues. In fact, this
Mr. Leo wrote this piece not only for informative purposes, but also to convince a particular audience that, whether intentional or not, characters have taken on harmful images some may find offensive. He is not speaking only to his fairly educated, loyal readers, but also to those who may have taken part in producing the movie. Mr. Leo makes visible to his readers what he believes to be stereotypes in the film. People may not have noticed these before, so he makes clear definitions and comparisons. To the rest of the audience, those who had a hand in making the movie, he makes a plea not to redevelop these characters in future films.
In the article “The Thematic Paradigm” exerted from his book, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, Robert Ray provides a description of the two types of heroes depicted in American film: the outlaw hero and the official hero. Although the outlaw hero is more risky and lonely, he cherishes liberty and sovereignty. The official hero on the other hand, generally poses the role of an average ordinary person, claiming an image of a “civilized person.” While the outlaw hero creates an image of a rough-cut person likely to commit a crime, the official hero has a legend perception. In this essay, I will reflect on Ray’s work, along with demonstrating where I observe ideologies and themes.
I can relate to your initial thoughts of the film McFarland, USA. Often, the “savior” of a group deemed troubled tends to be of different race and ethnicity. There are many stereotypes perpetuated in American Society. However, I appreciated the fact that Jim White genuinely cared about his students. I loved how he immersed himself in the townspeople’s culture and was willing to pick crops with his students if it meant they would keep competing in cross country running.
... out of a 1950s woman's film. The melodramatic influences of the film continue to manifest themselves in the newer release, just as Apocalypse Now continues to influence the epic movies of contemporary filmmakers. The unison of operatic spectacle and personal conflict spawned an original genre in the 1970s that remains an effective method of addressing social concerns. As we enter another period of political unrest and social change, it is likely that a new wave of melodramatic films is beginning to form on the horizon; there are certainly parallels between a government that declares war on terrorism and the U.S. army in Vietnam, who "knew everything about military tactics, but nothing about where they were or who the enemy was" (Cowie 143). From Conrad to Coppola, nuclear family to nuclear terrorism; never get off the boat, unless you're willing to go all the way.
destructive, exotic and a self-determined independent who is cold hearted, immortal and less of a human. The females portrayed in the noir were primarily of two types - either projected as ethical, loyal loving woman or as ‘femme fatales’ who were duplicitous, deceptive, manipulative and desperate yet gorgeous women. In
The noir style is showcased in Sunset Boulevard with its use of visually dark and uncomfortable settings and camera work, as well as its use of the traditional film noir characters. In addition, the overall tone and themes expressed in it tightly correspond to what many film noirs addressed. What made this film unique was its harsh criticism of the film industry itself, which some of Wilder’s peers saw as biting the hand that fed him. There is frequent commentary on the superficial state of Hollywood and its indifference to suffering, which is still a topic avoided by many in the film business today. However, Sunset Blvd. set a precedent for future film noirs, and is an inspiration for those who do not quite believe what they are being shown by Hollywood.
Together they radically reworked the metaphorical figure of the city, using the crisis of the middle class (rarely the workers or the poor) to expose how the dream had become nightmare. . . . It is hard to exaggerate the damage which noir's dystopianization of Los Angeles, together with the exiles' [European intellectuals living and working in L.A.] denunciation of its counterfeit urbanity, inflicted upon the accumulated ideological capital of the region's boosters. Noir, often in illicit alliance with San Francisco or New York elitism, made Los Angeles the city that American intellectuals love to hate (although, paradoxically, this seems only to increase its fascination for postwar European intellectuals). As Richard Lehan has emphasized, "probably no city in the Western world has a more negative image". . . . It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the paramount axis of cultural conflict in Los Angeles has always been about the construction/interpretation of the city myth, which enters the material landscape as a design for speculation and domination (Davis, 20-21).
The history of Afghanistan influences the way Amir’s life develops by affecting his relationship with himself, Baba, and Hassan. People are greatly influenced by the culture that they grow up in, and a community’s culture is shaped by the events that they go through. Throughout the book, the reader can see that Amir struggles with his self-confidence and often-times looks down on himself as a weak and unworthy human being.
In the classical Western and Noir films, narrative is driven by the action of a male protagonist towards a clearly defined, relatable goal. Any lack of motivation or action on the part of the protagonist problematizes the classical association between masculinity and action. Due to inherent genre expectations, this crisis of action is equivalent to a crisis of masculinity. Because these genres are structured around male action, the crises of action and masculinity impose a crisis of genre. In the absence of traditional narrative elements and character tropes, these films can only identify as members of their genres through saturation with otherwise empty genre symbols. The equivalency between the crises of genre and masculinity frames this symbol saturation as a sort of compensatory masculine posturing.
Film Noir was extremely trendy during the 1940’s. People were captivated by the way it expresses a mood of disillusionment and indistinctness between good and evil. Film Noir have key elements; crime, mystery, an anti-hero, femme fatale, and chiaroscuro lighting and camera angles. The Maltese Falcon is an example of film noir because of the usage of camera angles, lighting and ominous settings, as well as sinister characters as Samuel Spade, the anti-hero on a quest for meaning, who encounters the death of his partner but does not show any signs of remorse but instead for his greed for riches.
Adapted from the novella written by James M. Cain, Double Indemnity is a melodramatic film noir that highlights the conflict its characters face through adultery and murder which develops from the dissatisfaction and alienation that arose in the era of modernity as shown in most noir films. Unlike most noir films, Double Indemnity set the bar in terms of structural themes to follow and elements that eventually came to be considered essential in the noir genre. The film was seen to be a full embodiment of what the genre should be. Double Indemnity is an archetypal noir film, which portrays noir elements through its style, the characters, its writers’ backstory and the history of Los Angeles, the city in which it is set. This essay will examine how Los Angeles is integrated not only into the location but also into the storyline of the characters and their motivations but also the filmmakers’ lives. It does this through characteristic noir motifs like “the urban cultural landscape, the lack of rootedness of the characters, and the self-deceptions that center their world” (p. 437) affect the protagonists in the film. Double Indemnity’s use of Los Angeles as its primary location exposes the innate decadence and decay of the city through film noir stylistic elements. Billy Wilder directed Double Indemnity and the film became the archetypal noir film because it embodied all the characteristics of a typical noir film, which include “claustrophobia, paranoia, despair and nihilism” (Place and Peterson, p. 327) course kit source. Los Angeles, the city used primarily as the location in the film becomes not merely a backdrop but a character in the film through its physical and implied characteristics. The context through the stories of Wild...
Throughout this movie each race was symbolized in how society views race's today. Caucasian people that have money, big houses and go to private school while African American's live in the hood with drugs, violence and no education. This is an example of Stereotypes; generalizations that are thought to characterize groups as a whole (Healey, pg.21).
While watching movies, have you ever noticed that the villains in almost every single Hollywood film are of Middle Eastern or European descent? In a reoccurring theme of Hollywood, the villains in these films are almost always foreigners or people of color. This is a stereotype. On the other side of the spectrum, we often see that the heroes of these films are most often than not white males. This is another stereotype. Within the last few years, we’ve seen actors such as Will Smith, Morgan Freeman, and Zoe Saldana take the lead roles, so it can’t be said that there are no non-white heroes, but there certainly isn’t many. Hollywood action movies, moreover than other genres, are typically loaded with an abundance of stereotypes. The way these movies are composed and structured can tell us a great deal about the views held within the American psyche and who holds the social power. The harsh reality is that the media ultimately sets the tone for societal standards, moralities, and images of our culture. Many consumers of media have never encountered some of the minorities or people of color shown on screen, so they subsequently depend on the media and wholeheartedly believe that the degrading stereotypes represented on the big screen are based on fact and not fiction. Mary Beltran said it best when she stated in her “Fast and Bilingual: Fast & Furious and the Latinization of Racelessness” article, “ultimately, Fast & Furious mobilizes notions of race in contradictory ways. It reinforces Hollywood traditions of white centrism, reinforcing notions of white male master while also dramatizing the figurative borders crossed daily by culturally competent global youth – both Latino and non-Latino” (77). This paper will specifically look...