The Half-Baked Cultural Detective
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making entertainment, noir has been commodified and is no longer radical or
counter-cultural. The space for genuine postmodern noir fiction and film is in cyber
punk fiction and surreal experimental independent films. In the provocative movies
and novels of Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, David Cronenberg, David Lynch and
Gregg Araki, William Gibson, and Neal Stephenson, we see authors and directors
unafraid to confront the insidious spread of postmodern noir in American culture,
through the use of an appropriately surreal or cybernetic landscape. Just as Hunter
Thompson, almost thirty years ago, deeply explored the social and psychological
conditions of his time, so do these artists. Their intention is not to be commercially
successful. It is to shock viewers into awareness of amorphous, latent postmodern
noir that seems to be always lurking in some shape, underneath the facade of
American culture and ideology.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Daniel Grassian
Notes
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4.
In The Armies o f the Night (1968), Mailer inflates his personality in the face o f
encroaching political chaos, or noir. While Thompson’s exaggeration o f the self is
comically self-deprecating. Mailer’s is comically pretentious. The atmosphere o f noir
in Annies o f the Night is minimal compared to Fear o f Loathing in Las Vegas — noir
has significantly spread in those three cmcial years in American history.
Seminal cyber-punk fiction writer William Gibson has created intriguing protagonists
in Neiironiancer (1984) and his subsequent novels that are actually updated versions
o f the noir hero battling the technological or computerized spread o f noir in postmodern
society. Cyber-punk writers Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson also continue in
Gibson’s tradition o f appropriating the noir hero into a technologically advanced and/
or computerized landscape.
For instance, Samuel L. Jackson's, “That’s one tasty burger” in Pulp Fiction, Detective
Exley’s prophetic “Rollo Tomasi” in L.A. Confidential, or the hackneyed cliche o f
Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, ‘i ’ll be back!”
Quentin Tarantino’s inclusion o f the song “Stuck in the Middle with You” in Reservoir
Dogs when one character cuts the ear off o f another character, underscores the violence
o f the scene. This is more chillingly and effectively done by David Lynch in Blue
Velvet where Dennis Hopper’s character sings Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams,” before he
goes on a psychotic binge.
Works Cited
Chandler, Raymond. “The Simple Art o f Murder,” in Later Novels and Other Writings.
New York: The Libraiy o f America, 1995.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. New York: Penguin Books, 1