More Thoughts on Noir

Recently I have been re-reading my SF/Noir novel Vulcan’s Forge  in anticipation of editor’s notes as we proceed towards our early 2020 publication date and, along with watching classic noirson streaming while reading some of the classic works in their original forms, I have been thinking about the nature of the genre and what really makes up this beloved form.

In previous posts I have discussed how one of the principal driving factor of noiris to me is how characters are consumed by their appetites and I still hold that this is an essential elements in noir  fiction, be it film or literature, but I am now thinking there is an additional element, beyond the stylized ones, that feels central to the genre and that is the conflict between the character and their culture.

In noir  fiction characters are often immoral and that immorality is judged against the larger culture that character comes from.  Murder, theft, and unsanctioned sexual activity are the hallmarks of noir  movies and from the classic period running through the 1940s and 1950s acting on these desires places a person firmly beyond the boundaries of ‘polite society.’ Even when the heroes of noir fiction aren’t murderous insurance salesmen but rather the hard-bitten border-line alcoholic private detective they still transgress far beyond anything accept my society at large. Sam Spade before being entangled in a hunt for the ‘black bird’ and temptation of great wealth it represents is betraying both his partner and societies morals by his affair with Archer’s wife. Time and time again the main characters in noir  reject society’s conformity, sometimes they do so with an internal code such as Spade or Jeff Bailey in Out of the Past  or in other instances they simply violate society’s rules out of greed and lust such as Walter Neff in Double Indemnity.

All of this prompts the idea, that I am sure is far from original with myself, that a close reading of noir, either in a film or prose piece, can also been seen as a commentary on the society surrounding those characters. This is doubly so when the noiris combine with another genre such as fantasy or science fiction where the society is likely to be as fictional as the protagonists leveling an additional responsibility on the creator to be detailed and thoughtful about their narrative and what it says about human nature both at the individual and societal levels.

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Political Accessories

When you get dressed for a night out or for many people just getting dressed at all, there is the core outfit you assembled, colors and shapes that reflect the mood, your tastes, and the style you best thinks fits for the events to come, and then in addition there are accessories, rings or pendants, watches, and little elements of flash that accentuate the overall ensemble but are not essential to its completion. Politics, what we believe and what we support, either with our votes or with our time, toil, and treasure, is much the same.

We have the core elements of political philosophy, those things that are at the very center of what we believe, that reflect our understanding of the world and in a very real sense our understanding of what it means to be human. (This is why all narrative art is at some level also political art because it reflects an understanding of people and that requires a judgment as to what people actually are and that is always a political judgment.) Ideally, at least in my opinion, that core political fashion should come from careful consideration and deliberative thought about what is and isn’t permissible though I suspect for many it is born from desire, from what is wanted personally rather than any carefully constructed framework. No matter the origins, the core political fashion is the driver and essential nature of a person’s political actions, how they vote, how they expend time, toil, and treasure is the only true indicator of what they believe and hold valuable, everything else is an accessory and ultimately discardable.

But what about those accessories that you own but never wear? Watches, bracelets, and accentuations that you tell people you like, that are valuable to you and yet when it comes time to choose an outfit you never select one for which those are complementary, what about those items? Your actions and your choices make it clear that those items, no matter the protestations that they have emotional value, are valueless and the same goes for political accessories.

Everyone has a grab bag of political positions, very, very few people forge a political identity solely from cool, reasoned, principles. Because so many people have this odd-ball collection of positions, some become the ignored watches and bracelets of their political philosophy, items of claimed value that never influence their time, toil, and treasure. This is a natural byproduct of the compromise that lies at the heart of political action. Politics is the realm of the possible not a lofty idealized system divorced from the realities of human frailty, limited resources, and enemy action. However if there positions that you never vote for, if your own desires and need always outweigh those of your fellow citizens as their rights as assaulted, as the freedom is abridged, then perhaps it is time to admit that those concerns really are of no importance to you, that what really matters is getting your and too bad for others who lose in the process.

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The Obligatory Daenerys Targaryen Post

Naturally no one who cares about spoilers and who has not seen Season 8 Episode 5 should read this post.

 

I am of two minds about the events of The Bells  where Daenerys gives her rage and anger full reign destroying most of King’s Landing with dragon fire. (Along with the occasional sympatric explosion her father’s still existent stores of Wildfire cached around the city.) Quite a few fans are upset about this ‘turn’ where a character that

Photo Credit: HBO

they had looked upon as a hero, as a symbol of someone over coming tremendous adversity to achieve greatness suddenly is seen as monstrous, petty, and cruel. However to me this has been a moment of revelation where freed from the constraints of others Daenerys exhibits her true character, a character that is monstrous, petty, and cruel, a character that has been evident from the beginning of the series if you cared to pay attention.

When Daenerys was a pawn in her older brother’s schemes to regain the Iron Throne of Westeros, she showed no ambition for herself, accept that Viserys as the older and male heir had the legitimate claim to be the sovereign. However immediately upon Viserys’ brutal murder at her husband’s hands, a death she shed no tears at her lack of sorrow accepted because of Viserys’ own cruelty and stupidity, she begins asserting her claim as Queen of Westeros and attempts, repeatedly, to get his Dothraki husband Drogo to invade and conquer the seven kingdoms so she can take what is hers. At no point is she tempted to remain the Khalessi to a powerful Khal, to live within this new community with the love she has discovered, all that is to be tossed aside and used to achieve her desire of power and title based solely upon her name. Long before she claimed ‘Breaker of Chains’ she sought to establish herself as an absolute monarch. Daenerys’ lust for power has always been present.

For years Daenerys fought to claim her throne, suffering bitter losses including her husband Drogo, and repeated betrayals by those she trusted. It is important to note that at nearly every turn when faced with an enemy, traitor, or someone unwilling to accept her unquestionable authority, and with the power to inflict punishment upon them, Daenerys has chosen the cruelest methods available as punishment, and that method was often fire. Now my point here is not that Daenerys should have ‘turned the other cheek’ or otherwise forgiven those that robbed her of children, subjected her husband to a living death, stolen her dragons, sought to enslave her, or refused to bend the knee. Westeros is a brutal land and death to your enemies is a norm, it is the manner of those deaths that is the heart of her character. Burned alive upon funereal pyres or from the mouths of dragon are for the vast majority of people the most horrific death imaginable. Also note how throughout the series fire is a motif that is repeated and the use of fire by characters such as Daenerys father the ‘mad King’ burning suspected enemies alive in the throne room or seeking to burn all of King’s Landing, Gregor Clegane, burning and scaring his little brother Sandor for playing with his toys, or Melisandre, the Red Priestess, who burns children alive as sacrifices to her god. All character we are expected to consider as evil and yet when it come to Daenerys this propensity for execution by flame is excused.

It is a tribute to the writing and to Emile Clarke performance that we empathize with Daenerys so completely through the years that her repeated acts of cruelty as dismissed with the simple thought ‘They Deserved It.’ Of course that is the crux of the matter, with all these other character, their use of fire and flame is seen as horrific acts, at best misguided as they obsessively chased goals that they have deemed sufficient to justify these barbarous actions, but with Daenerys we are in her point of view, not watching horrified from some other character. It is no surprise at all that Daenerys, stripped of her trusted advisors, thwarted in her life’s consuming goal, and crushed by the twin revelation that the man she loves can’t love her in return and like Viserys has the more legitimate claim on her treasured prized, lashes out, giving in to her well shown nature of punishing with fire and blood. Her slaughter of innocents at King’s Landing is no ‘turn’ it is the culmination of years of character and if you loved Daenerys as she crucified hundred perhaps it would be best to look and understand how easily we are lead astray from what we consider good and just. The same is true for Daenerys lust for power. Never has she offered compromise, she had been pleaded and wheedled into it from time to time but she offers nothing to others except her terms. The North cannot be allowed to be free, even if such freedom would acquire her allied against her war with the Lannisters. Daenerys gives up nothing and makes enemies where should win friends because it is her destiny by birthright alone to the absolute monarch of all seven kingdoms. Despite he constant tirades against tyranny she is blind to the fact that she herself is a tyrant. The Bellsis the logical culmination of Daenerys’ choices and personality.

I said I was of two minds about this episode and here’s my other mind.

While the conclusion of her arc is on point the execution is flawed. Bereft of GRRM’s books as guidance the shows writers have fallen back in tricks, tropes, plot driven coincidences, and hand waving more typical of television scripts. Vital information is withheld to create ‘surprises’ that are in actuality lies to the audience, time is compressed in the sake of speed versus more credible world building, and characters have lost all subtlety and this episode parades these flaws, undermining the powerful commentary of the slippery nature of righteousness into evil that Daenerys’ arc has provided.

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Two Statistics

With the surge in draconian abortion laws sweeping the nation as conservative forces see glimmers of victory with the current make-up of the Supreme Court I think it is instructive to look at two disparate statistics.

Mind you, this is not an exhaustive argument, the reason why I consider myself to pro-choice are legion and at the heart of that reasoning is the simple fact that people should be allowed to live as they wish, including getting elective medical procedures that they want.

Maternal Mortality:

NPR and Pro-Publica published a finding on maternal mortality in the United States. The shocking and horrifying figure is 26.4 deaths per 100,000. Out of every 100,000 pregnant women 26.4 die from complications due to that pregnancy. (Other industrialized nations have far lower rates ranging from 3.8 to 9.2 per 100,000.) To carry a pregnancy to term is a decision that risks your very life and certainly the instances where the state can compel you to risk your life should be held to be most stringent of standards and not merely to suit the whim of moralistic politicians.

An argument I have heard is that the state can compel women to not have abortions to ‘save a life.’ First off that presumes an embryo or fetus is the same as a person and that’s something I reject but even accepting that standard yields strange and vast powers for the state. For example could the state compel someone to donate a kidney to ‘save a life?’ However let’s put aside the idea of the state grabbing people and dragging them of to suffer unwanted medical procedures to save a stranger and look at another statistic.

In 2017 the FBI reported the national murder rate to be 5.3 murders 100,000 people. An argument I have often heard against nearly all forms of firearm regulation is that people have a right to self-defense and such regulations put people in danger from denying them the tools they may need to exercise that right of self-defense. Of course we are currently experiencing an epidemic of mass shootings as unbalanced people, nearly always men and far more often then not white men, cowardly murder unarmed people in schools, public places, and houses of worship, sure to ‘save a life’ these rights could be as trampled as cavalierly as a woman’s right to determine her own destiny. After all a pregnant woman faces a death that is five times as likely as random person is to be murdered.

Naturally these statistics are unlikely to cause anyone to change their minds on either abortion or firearm regulation, both issues transcend any sort of reasoned position and are more strongly held as a marker for group and individual identity. The core driving factors are for the most part quite simple, anything that ‘tramples’ a right ‘I’ want to exercise is tyranny and those that ‘trample’ the rights of others or right I do not wish or cannot exercise aren’t being trampled at all but the product of ‘rational’ restrictions. It is much more difficult to recognize the rights of other than it is to vigorously fight for your own.

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And Now My Birthday Has Ended

Yesterday was the anniversary of my birth. I started the day by driving to court and reporting for jury duty. I have often been summoned to jury duty but I have never served. As a writer I think it would be good and as a citizen I think it is my duty to do such service but alas it seems for the most part lawyers do not like the look of me. Yesterday it was not the lawyers but rather the lack of courtrooms. There was but one available for trail and so after they called a single jury pool away the rest of us were dismissed. Because so much of the day remained the rule for my day-job compelled me to report to work. So my birthday was split between a jury lounge and my cubical, surprisingly this was not the dullest birthday I have experienced.

In 1981 I was enlisted in the United States Navy and served my one and only Western Pacific Deployment, or WestPac. On my birthday we were no floating about the middle of the ocean, no for that special day we had found a spot even more boring than endless sea, Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia is a tiny atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Its strategic location makes it perfect as a base for long rang aircraft and there is a tiny tiny US Naval station there. Personnel who volunteer for duty at Diego Garcia, at least when I was in the service, have that duty count as sea duty, and one year is credited as two. You see, unlike other Naval Stations around the world, there is nothing at Diego Garcia. No native population, no city or town, just the military men and women on a sliver of land with a lagoon that often hosts sharks. Going ashore there, and even with nothing you still go ashore when you can, I watched a shark come out of the water to get a flying fish. The big entertainment on my birthday there was sitting on a beach watching my friend Dean Amick, and it was his birthday as well, struggle trying to work out how to split a coconut open. Ahh, good times.

So you see yesterday, in comparison, wasn’t bad at all. Not to mention I now have a nifty blu-ray stuffed with bonus material for the British horror film, Night of the Demon, one of the many films referenced in the opening song to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

 

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A Really Good Book: Delta V by Daniel Suarez

As I have stated before this blog is not a book review site. When I read a novel that doesn’t work for me, is flawed, or just fails to achieve takeoff speed I am not going to mention it here. However if I get my hands on a book that really works, which really sings you’ll hear about it and Delta-V by Daniel Suarez is just such a novel.

Set in the very close year of 2033 Delta-Vis the story of humanity’s first attempt to mine precious resources from a near Earth asteroid. Most people think of asteroid mining as something that would take place between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter where the main asteroid belt resides but a number asteroids also orbit much closer, even occasionally cross the Earth’s orbit with potentially catastrophic consequences. The protagonist of the story is James Tighe, a cave diving adventurer who, after surviving a terrifying disaster while on a deep under ground cave dive, is recruited by mysterious billionaire Nathan Joyce as a potential member of the first asteroid mining crew. Joyce, an entirely fictional character, is part of the New Space contingent of billionaire including ones who made fortunes in robotics/Artificial Intelligences, reusable rockets, and Internet based commerce. (You can decide for yourself who these characters are possibly analogs of in our real world.) As the training and mission unfold it becomes clear that Joyce hasn’t told anyone the full scope and audacity of his plan and his lies, short cuts, and mania turn out to endanger the lives of everyone involved.

Delta-V  is a novel heavy on the technical aspects and for some that will prove to be too dry of a narrative to endure but for devotes of ‘hard sf’ this novel will be catnip. Suarez has worked out the launch windows, the delta-v for his transfers and journeys, and the climax of the novel is an amazing meld of engineering and trying emotional decisions for the characters. Though hardly a massive tome, the story if packed with a number of fascinating and believable characters and could easily be adapted into a limited run series if someone wanted to pony up the funds for a production that would be as challenging as this one promises.

Over all I really loved this book and I can’t recommend it enough.

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Avengers: Endgame – The Second Viewing

Because I had a routine eye exam slated for Tuesday it made sense to take a day off from the day-job and that allowed me to go se a later night showing of Avengers: Endgame.

The movie works just as well on a second viewing as it did on my first. Though I did have a free large soda and popcorn, due to this being my birthday month and that’s an additional perk from the AMC A-List subscription, I still did not leave the sheening for a restroom break.

The timing of the screenings Monday night meant I attended a 3-D showing of the movie. While the 3-d effect was for the most part well done it was not effective. The Russo brothers shot the film for 2D and nothing in the framing or shot set-ups made the 3D effect any more important to the narrative. As it was shot on 2D that also means that the 3D version is a retro scan created by digital means and while it did not suffer from the sort of glaring errors other movies had presented, yes I am looking at you Clash of the Titans where an actors hair was in a different focal plane than the actor, not all of the 3D shot in Endgamewere flawless. In a number of shots actors in deeper focal planes looked as though they had been composted into the scene. There is absolutely no need to see this film in 3D.

Overall though I had a great time, even if I did get back home around one a.m.

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Sunday Shudder: The Car

For my Sunday night movie I decided to take a chance on one of those bizarro horror movies from the 1970s, The Car.Now if you did not know the 1970s were a very odd time for Hollywood and the global film industry. Between the collapse of the classic studios system but before the rise of the mega-corporation analytic and franchise driven system of today there existed a brief window where personal auteur driven films were produced such classics as American Graffiti, The God Father,and Taxi Driver  all hail from this unique era of motion picture production. After the success of Rosemary’s Babyand The Exorcist  the public also seemed tohave developed a taste for demon and evil oriented horror. So in 1977, the same year as Star Warsand two years following Jaws, the film that created the summer blockbuster, Americans were treated to the unique cinematic experience that is The Car.

Set in a remote small town/county in Utah The Caris the story of Wade, a sheriff’s deputy, divorced dad, and general all around good guy dealing with the mysterious murderous motorcar rampaging along the deserted desert roadways. The car, a black two door without any branding, no doubt no automobile manufacturer wished to be associated with such implied carnage, spends the moving mowing down random cyclists, hitchhikers, and lawmen. The film has a number of subplots, Luke the deputy with a drinking problem, Amos the despised abusive husband and general contractor, the old flame relationship between the county sheriff and Amos’ suffering spouse, but none of these are brought to any sort of resolution and as ‘color’ they fail to bring the story any sense of verisimilitude. The car itself looks fantastic, its lack of trademarks or hood emblems, along with the missing door handled gives it a sinister outline that suggests something not crafted by nor intended for human hands. The sequences of roadway violence of tame, even by the standard of late 70s film production and so the film is almost entirely bloodless, perhaps a major detraction to todays audiences. The cast gamely tried to play the scenes and the outlandish plot straight but hampered by a script that is neither bad enough to be enjoyable as a guilty pleasure not skilled enough to generate characters of depth the movie languishes in the mediocre middle ground that will reduced in audience’s memories to a few scenes and set-piece gags.

Most horror films fall into one of two broad categories, an evil with agency and therefore motivation, goals that the evil needs to achieve and ones where the evil represents a random, chaotic, and ultimately nihilistic universe. The Car  could not settle on either and thematically ended up as a muddled mess. The demonic car possessed enough agency to hold grudges and make plans, and yet there was no goal, no explanation for why this evil emerged on this rural community.

Over all the film was perfectly fine for a late Sunday night movie but not worthy of repeat viewings.

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Three Weeks

For three weeks now I have been following the weight watchers diet. The change was prompted because I had reached a new record weight and that was not a good thing. With the years passing under me plus the pressure on my joints already suffering from arthritis returning to a more modest weight seemed imperative and yet previous diets had proved to be too difficult to maintain. A writer friend of mine after facing a life threatening health crisis had used Weight Watcher to great effect and it seemed reasonable to give it a go.

It is by far the easiest weight management diet I have attempted. All of my empty calorie junk food snacks have been replaced with fruit and my regular meals are for the most part untouched. (Can you tell my problem was really junk food?) I can still have a burrito once a week and a nice lunch out with my sweetie-wife on our Sundays out.

At the two-week mark I had lost, at least according to our home scale, 13 pounds and I am not suffering from hunger and dreadful late night temptations.

I am not selling this. You do what is right for you, for me but this looks like it may actually work.

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