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Popular Culture Review
after the ideological crash of the 1960’s. Its background of shock and horror may
be due to an overwhelming sense of a recent loss of unrealized enthusiasm. In the
subsequent atmosphere of social and personal disillusion amidst the escalation of
the Vietnam War, there was a lightning-quick spread of noir into reality and hyper
reality. The same lightning-quick spread of noir that followed the stock market
crash at the end of the 1920’s led to the beginning of the Hard Boiled Detective
genre. Quickly deteriorating social conditions make for the darkest, most socially
provocative noir, where the violence and horror is based on the dashed American
dream. While neo-noir explicitly portrays violence, in the best noir films and fiction,
violence is considerably more implicit than explicit. The most shocking, affecting
violence is a look of defeat, abandonment, or emotional loss in a character whose
psyche is shattered or whose dreams ultimately destroy him. This deep emotional
or psychic wounding is more realistic and moving than the obligatory shooting
scenes in neo-noir. Earlier noir heroes portrayed by Humphrey Bogart and James
Cagney had that paradoxically hard, but vulnerable look of the psychological
damaged hero who is actually dangling by a thin thread in a morally ambiguous
society that is threateningly dissolute.
In 1990’s America, there is no longer the sense of potential social
disillusion that there was in the 1930’s and early 1970’s. The contemporary noir or
neo-noir work has lost its sense of social immediacy and has become primarily a
form of entertainment or spectacle. Neo-noir has the pomp but little of the social
pertinence of earlier noir, as it tends to focus on quick memorable one-liners,^
special effects, and dominating mood music which overshadows the explicit
violence"*. In the end, one learns little about contemporary society or psychology
in these movies. The cultural detective/outlaw has become more of a hackneyed,
insubstantial detective/outlaw, whose “heroism” is “proven” by his unctuous wit
and his violent massacre of a overly exaggerated criminal menace. Furthennore,
the neo-noir hero is ultimately too tough to be believed, as his psychological
character is rarely or only briefly exposed. Ultimately, what makes the traditional
noir protagonist heroic is a realistic combination of weakness and ambiguity in his
attempt to overcome or deal with his limitations and the limitations of his society
by living by his own personal code. The neo-noir world is hyper-attractive and its
heroes tend to be either hyper-heroic or flat, two-dimensional characters who do
not have the psychological depth to fathom the noir revelation of horror underlying
American society and its inhabitants.
The best noir films and fiction allow the viewer to experience the insecurity,
alienation, and disorientation of their protagonist(s). Neo-noir is more of an
adrenalizing roller-coaster ride of shocking violence and special effects. Ultimately,
neo-noir’s recent popular resurgence may have destroyed its essential worth. Having
been picked up by major movie corporations and purposely tailored as money