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“She is my warrior woman. Always, and never.” The battle of the sexes has typically feature heavily in film noir, with patriacrhy ultimately achieveing the upper hand. With reference to Sin City, has the genre changed as a result of feminism?
To effecently analyse the overall consenus of the gender conflict in film noir, it is intially best to aquisite an explanation and background of what the genre is. Film noir emerged from a period of political instability: 1941-58, the time of the Second World War and the Cold War. In the United States this was a time of repressed insecurity and paranoia; emotions inspiring mental instability, as is similarly seen in Sin City protagonists. The American dream seemed in tatters, and American national identity was under severe strain. The audience wanted something to reflect their cynical mood, having just endured another world war. Hollywood wanted B-movies to supply them, while still staying on the budget they lacked. Film noir was the neutral territory for the active institution and audience. By the audience and critics, film noir is believed to be, “A movie characterized by low-key lighting, a bleak urban setting, and corrupt, cynical characters.” ( http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=film%20noir ) It is a usually used term “to describe a dark, suspenseful thriller.” (Watson, James and Hill, Anne (2000) “Dictionary of Media & Communications Studies”, page 114) Also alternatively, it’s insisted that “film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style, point-of-view, or tone of a film.” (http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html)
These explanations are all essential, for through their different definitions developes the argument as to what is the ambiguous and alleged genre film noir, and the question of can it be cemented and simplified into a single accepted identify? Furthermore, the debate spirals downwards evermore still, right to the term genre. Its definition of “meaning type of classification” (Watson, James and Hill, Anne (2000) “Dictionary of Media & Communications Studies”, page 126) isn’t questioned. But this word, too, suffers from feelings of fraudulent identity, and excessive nitpicking. This stems particularly from the Roland Barthes believe that “all texts refer finally to each other”, (Fiske, John (1987 ) “Television Culture”, page 115 ) hence only ‘hybrid’ or ‘sub’ is perhaps grammatically and truly acceptable astride the word genre, for there are no pure-breed, single genre movies still being made.
To ignore this is to disregard the mass twentieth Century audience, all of who expect no less than a conglomerate of movie types together in one text. And in our laissez-faire economic view, media industries would never reject revenue from the pluralistic, active audience. However, without introducing a moving image text, discussing this debate is a fruitless endeavour. Thus, this question of if “film noir is a genre or a visual style” (Lacey, Nick (2000) “Narrative and Genre Key Concepts in Media Studies”, page 145) will again be addressed at a later analyse when applicable. For now, what can be agreed on is that, given these definitions and demarcations, the customarily male detective dominance of film noir is not by right or means some deliberate complexity, or even a necessity. Mostly, it is the director’s decision, the audience’s expectation, and the hegemonic stronghold Hollywood has on noir, that these black films prefer protagonists of the stereotypically more formidable sex for so many reoccurring years. Basing main perusal on the movie Sin City (2005, directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez), it will be observed as to whether this patriarchy is reinforced with conventions of the old, or broken with the noir of the new.
The text’s visual style is as much unique homage to earlier film noir, as it is an improvement on the past that might have felt an inconvenience to the earlier audiences. Whereas in older silver screen, film noir such as The Big Sleep (1946, directed by Howard Hawks) and Notorious (1946, directed by Alfred Hitchcock), the audience would have to be told the colour of anything moderately important, now by the editing, important items are already coloured for the sake of the viewer, although this suggest that film noir is more of a visual style, but not that Sin City relies on it.
Sin City starts with with the camera fading to a CGI-created nighttime, rooftop scene while a diegetic cop siren sounds, the pitch being the first implicit audience note that crime is perhaps a presence in this norally noir, urban environement. The music then goes into a non-diegetic jazz sound, typically romantic in its gesture. We see a lone person. A lithesome lady wrapped in a red dress. This is a mise-en-abime for herself. Even if only in a passive-syringe, unconscious manner, the audience identifies her as the typical noir femme fatale. Matriarchal power is before us.
Dangerous and seductive, she stands taut towards the railing. “Although the femme fatale remains a male fantasy at least she has the compensation of seducting, rather than being seduced by, the male protagonist and often leads him to a bad end.” (Lacey, Nick (2000) “Narrative and Genre Key Concepts in Media Studies”, page 149) With this in mind, she is someone every Fruedian follower willingly wants to dominated by. A woman that every feminist will cheer for. And the one the audience wholly expects the man to fall victim to. From a medium-long shot in the foreground, we see her askance features, and in the background, from the shadows, a stranger approaches.
Confident in stride, tuxedo wearing to connote, “masculine independence and agression” (Kaplan, E. Ann (1980) “Women in Film Noir”, page 19) ; he’s the Bond representative of patriarchy. Binary opposition of Claude Levi-Strauss emerges. A voiceover takes over. His voice. The masculist ideology is reinforced. The audience begins to doubt the woman’s position of power. His voice in our heads, we hear him speak. His monologue is a smooth, sotto voce of poetic enuciation. He challenges male stereotypical stupidity. He is our hero.
They begin to talk. Verbally and implicitly, a battle has begun for gender supremacy. The camera angles switch betwixt both of them, over their shoulders in a viewpoint shot. The audience is impacted fully by their words. We warm to them, particularly the man. He is driving conversation and narrative forward. He is also a gentleman – he just offered her a cigarette. He is practically handing over his phallic power. Or a piece of it. The audience is affable towards him. She accepts, power then swinging to matriarchy.
Rain falls, synchronous sound coming soon after. The audience sees the storm surge.
Rightfully, the woman then takes the dialogue reigns. She reveals she is readying to face an adversary. The man says she wants to be rescued. The hero says he will help her. Passively, stereotypically, she accepts this. This stereotype attacks another; the one that says aggression is shown synoptically in red. The underestimating audience will be conflicted, thinking her now only a Proppian princess. Fans of film noir will figure this a femme fatale trap, typically to trick men. Parallel asynchronous romantic music begins. The two kiss and embrace, each other ensnared, her svelte form melting in his strong frame. The audience are offered a postmodernist, breif intertuxal comic-book shot of the kissing couple. This is as much for Frank Miller’s fans as it is showing an immortal love, captured in a single second. A peaceful picture of a thousand words.
Light flashes with a swift sound.
The man’s voiceover starts again. He anchors what happened, the explanation demanded from a tense audience. “The silencer makes a whisper of the gunshot. I’ll never know what she was running from. I’ll cash the cheque in the morning.” (Sin City)
The audience is disgusted at that man, as through the voiceover they now feel mislead by the money-lusting, misogynist. He silently holds her, almost remorseful, slowly lowering her to their knees as the rain patters downwards. He waits until the last of her life slips away, and she goes stiff. Repulsed with us, the camera pulls and winds away from the event. We get our last look at that anti-hero. This extreme high-angle, archetypal noir shot of the scene is a generic one, shown for “an oppressive and fatalistic angle that looks down on its helpless victim to make it look like a rat in a maze.” (Silver, Alain and Ursini, James (1998) “Film Noir Reader”, page 68) The audience can only unsettlingly assume that the resulting crimson that flows into the words Sin City is a metonymy of the dead woman’s own blood.
This dawning disequillibirum, stun tactic that the directors Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez chose to execute was done for multiple purposes. The first was to instill the feeling of meloncholy and moral corruption that churns so lividly in film noir, and to inject these emotions into the passive audience. Correlatively, this emblematic shot was done to “sum up the diegesis of the film.” (Hayward, Susan (2001) “Cinema Studies. The Key Concepts[ Second Edition.”, page 98) Also, as this was the first and same scene that Frank Miller was introduced to the idea of the movie by Robert Rodriguez, the audience are given a similar, privelieged prolouge. Also, this proof of concept helps to reintegrate the casual moviegoer into a genre that hasn’t stalked the movie screen since it’s recent reinvigoration, with films such as L.A.Confidential (1997, directed by Curtis Hanson).
L.A.Confidential starts with the unconventional film noir disquillibrium, as well as an almost immediate male voiceover. This is pluralisticly executed, with the person purposely, and with a deliberate irony, defacing the institute that made the film, Hollywood. (INSERT MARXIST THEORY HERE) The anti-hero here is the lone-wolf detective type that also stars in The Maltese Falcon (1941), yet is a type oddly absent from Sin City. Instead for Sin City we have the hulking psychotic hero, Marve and the less romantic one, Hartigan. Dwight’s character type can only be called the genuine hero of the film, but his morals become blurred in that fiendishly noir fashion, much like the protagonist of the “quintessential film noir” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2005/10/27/double_indemnity_2005_review.shtml) Double Indemnity (1944, directed by Billy Wilder).
In these four movies, there is typically a pro-patriarchal subjective camera, and a dominant heterosexual relationship. The (anti)heroes’ narratives often motivated by the oedipal trajectory of going through difficulty to settle down afterwards with a woman. However, a showing that film noir has evolved is the inclusion in the two latest texts, if only briefly, of lesbianism in lipstick lesbian couples. Therefore, this is some prove of ideological propulsion of the Frank Nino-dubbed black film, and a small showing that society is more tolerant to deviant sexualities. However, this doesn’t support much for matriarchy’s rule, except perhaps an extreme feminist theory. Especially as in all of four films, each of them has a leading male protagonist portraying patriarchy in the fore of the film, and in their voiceovers.
Particularly in all noir films are voiceovers. This is “a distinctive feature of the genre film noir”. (Hayward, Susan (2001) “Cinema Studies. The Key Concepts. Second Edition.”, page 98) The base utilization of these is to further identification between the invited audience and antagonistic hero, allowing them a particular perspective provided by the protagonists. In film noir, as women are always the muted group; never possessing of protagonist main leads or voiceovers to impress or express dominance, an implicit patriarchy stands. Because of this, and the fact that directors of film noir are dominantly men, the feminist hegemonic thought that men “abuse their power” (Bryson, Valerie (1999) “Feminist Debates”, Page 37) is strengthened. This ignoramus representation aside, the reason for voiceovers is not solely for character identification. The voiceovers also assist apprize that, “When one is concerned with activities that have significant moral implications, the problem is magnified.” (Marsh, Peter and Campbell, Anne (1982) “Aggression and Violence”, Page 103) This particularly is seen in Sin City when Dwight has the deceased cop beside him. The jostling of the car at a high speed making the bodies’ slumped head move, as though nodding, and he starts hallucinating that the body begins to speak to him. This is one reason why film noir usually uses them. The protagonists are always in stressful situations, and voiceovers help to suture the subconscious and conscious conflict that is the life-force to many noir narratives.
The three, interlinked narratives of Sin City are all adapted from Frank Miller’s gloriously graphic comics, with the male gender shown to shove their stories onwards throughout this portmanteau film. As aforementioned, this male-as-norm management of main protagonists is a paradigmatic film noir convention. Although why this is a convention can’t be bound to one box. It could simply be that men’s masculinity is currently in a state of “flux” ( Gaunlett, David (2002) “Media, Gender and Identity”, page --- ) that hasn’t yet been resolved, so men now need multiple representations of themselves in order to appease the multiple male audiences’ want of narcissistic identification. Also, it could simply be done to have the ladies have their pick of visual fanfare.
The fact that none of Frank Miller’s comic creations have a lady that is constantly pushing the narration registers as an androcentrism. This reinforcement of patriarchy is somewhat understandable, as when he was drawing these illustrations, societal views were not as liberal as they are in modern day. However, during his prime, his portrayal of women was radicalism reborn. This is most aptly expressed in the appearance of Gale.
Gale is the sole, respected leader of the Old Town, a rundown but sizable chunk of Sin City. With stirrups up to her heels and all the attitude to amble down the darkest Sin City alley in them, her representation as a dogmatic leader is contradictive. This is particularly because the audience sees the Whore before them, which emulates her as an extreme throwback to the women whose “lives were spent at the bidding of men.” ( Sardar, Ziauddin and Loon, Borin Van (2002) “The Changing roles of women”, Page 114) Such a representation would satisfy any male audience need to subject someone to the gaze Laura Mulvey has spoken of, and supports the idea that the female body is filmed to “provide erotic pleasure,” and to get “ultimately a sense of control over her.” (Sullivan, Tim O’, Dutton, Brian and Rayer, Philip (2003) “Studying the Media”, Page 85) This wouldn’t be comforting to the modern female audience who disdain of such stereotypes, but Gale’s dominant personality and position, however, should.
Her decisive decisions, masochism and impulsive aggression is at a photo-finish comparison to all the men in the movie. This idea of a lead lady possessing of that much power and poise has not yet been seen in black film, showing a new development, or at least the further-enhancement of one. Easily, she is the epitome of matriarchy for this film noir. However as this improvement has had to come from the adaptations of somewhat old work, it can be a corollary idea that film noir hasn’t had much development. Something that can be said is that Gale is a forward step for film noir femme fatales, for she is atypical of them. The differences would best be drawn between the original pioneer of film noir: Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity.
Phyllis is calm, calculating and calloused, whereas Gale obviously isn’t. The cause of this could be that women now allow themselves to be more violent overall. Between the two, Phyllis would overall be seen as the forerunner for matriarchal power. This is due to her guile in getting the protagonist to do as she pleases, and the conventionally noir cigar she lights and smokes of her own regard in her last few scenes of Double Indemnity. However, even though she is the high mark of matriarchy, patriarchy is reinforced as the stronger before the film’s conclusion. This is because her feelings passively and stereotypically betray her plot to kill the protagonist, and she unsurprisingly herself gets shot with her own weapon, thereby being punished by a male backlash.
Something similar between Sin City and Double Indemnity, and contradicting ideas of film juvenilisation, is their being deemed “violent” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2005/05/19/sin_city_2005_review.shtml) and “brutal” (Wilder, Billy (2002) “Double Indemnity”, page 1) by reviewers and censorship at their time, which wholly is true and understandable for them both. In Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, L.A Confidential and Sin City, it is obvious that women are the muted group. So to gain notice or notoriety they, “have to express themselves in the dominant mode of expression.” (Watson, James and Hill, Anne (2000) “Dictionary of Media & Communications Studies”, page 200) For the first three, they take the expectedly passive route of speech. This – in the case of Sin City – is a violent backlash at those that want to oppress them, the Pimps. As they are merely ride shot-gunning at those that are trying to annex their Old Town territory during their time of social unrest, the audience sympathise and wholly acceptable the anti-hero means. Furthermore, it is also understandable on a psychoanalytical level, as not opposing situations such as this “would have inevitably meant a loss of fate”, (Marsh, Peter and Campbell, Anne (1982) “Aggression and Violence”, Page 141) which would only incur further trouble. This is supported in the Sin City when the Old Town ladies have ambushed and begun murdering their enemies in a strategic area. The audience hears Dwight explain during this slaughter that the women weren’t doing it for some psychotic euphoria – although their sadistically smiling faces say otherwise. Furthermore it is said neither to be for well deserved revenge, although the audience sees it as an added perk. He says it is because they wanted the mob bosses to see, when they examine their loses, that their causalities were horrific in comparison to what they might have gained. While it is Dwight’s voiceover, the audience sees him as merely a passive spectator, and that matriarchy seems to rule supreme in this ending scene.
Through the analysis of film noir, to declare who is the clearer victor of the war for gender superiority, it still seems likely that patriarchy is the dominant ideology. Obviously, this is harshly rebutted in terms of expressive female sexuality, and the heroine’s dynamic, destructive or deceitful tactics. However, with the narrative leading characters the audience subjectively route for all being male, and the distinctive film noir voiceovers thus being given to them, it is assumable that matriarchy is still in a makeshift second place.
Independent Study: Bibliography
“She is my warrior woman. Always, and never.” Matraichal and Pathriachal have always contested for supermacy in the various forms of film noir, with voice moreso given to men. Has the genre and its hybrids extended far from this pre-feminist, societal preference?
Books:
Title: (The name of the book, including its edition) Author: (The author’s name: first their forename and then their surname.) Year: (The year the book was published last) Publisher: (The name of publisher that printed it) Place: (Where the book was printed)
Title: Women in Film NoirAuthor: E. Ann KaplanYear: 1980 Publisher: British Film Institue Place: London
Title: Aggression and Violence Author: Peter Marsh and Anne CampbellYear: 1982 Publisher: Basil Blackwell Place: Great Britain
Title: Television CultureAuthor: John Fiske Year: 1987 Publisher: Routledge Place: Great Britain
Title: Film Noir ReaderAuthor: Alain Silver and James Ursini Year: 1998 Publisher: Limelight Editions New York Place: United States
Author: Valerie BrysonYear: 1999Title: Feminist DebatesPublisher: Macmillian Press Place: Great Britain
Title: Narrative and Genre Key Concepts in Media StudiesAuthor: Nick LaceyYear: 2000 Publisher: Palgrave Place: China
Title: Dictionary of Media & Communications Studies Fifth Edition Author: James Watson and Anne Hill Year: 2000 Publisher: Arnold Place: Great Britain
Title: Cinema Studies. The Key Concepts. Second Edition.Author: Susan Hayward. Year: 2001. Printed: Routledge Place: USA and Canada simultaneously. Title: The Changing Roles of Women Author: Ziauddin Sardar and Borin Van LoonYear: 2002Publisher: Heinemann Library Place: Great Britain
Title: Media, Gender and Identity Author: David GaunlettYear: 2002 Publisher: Routledge Place: Great Britain
Title: Studying the Media Author: Tim O’ Sullivan, Brian Dutton, and Philip RayerYear: 2003 Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place: Italy
Title: Double Indemnity Author: Billy WilderYear: 2000 Publisher: University of California Press Place: Great Britain
Websites:
http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=film%20noir
http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2005/10/27/double_indemnity_2005_review.shtml
Films:
Director: (The name of the director(s), first their forename and then their surname.)Year: (The year the movie was released) Title: (The name of the movie) Institution: (The name of the institution that produced it)
Director: Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez Year: 2005 Title: Sin CityInstitution: Hollywood
Director: Curtis Hanson Year: 1997 Title: L.A Confidential Institution: Hollywood
Director: Howard HawksYear: 1946Title: The Big Sleep Institution: Hollywood
Director: Alfred Hitchcock Year: 1946 Title: NotoriousInstitution: Hollywood Director: Billy Wilder Year: 1944 Title: Double Indeminity Institution: Hollywood
Director: John Huston Year: 1941 Title: The Maltese FalconInstitution: Hollywood
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