WARNING! WARNING! RANDOM PHILOSOPHICAL WANKERY IN 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....
Seperated At Birth?
While I was wandering around the bookstore today, trying to look like I was working when work was the furthest thing from my mind, a random thought sprung into my head. I was passing by our drama section when I peeped that we got a new copy of Homer's Odyssey in. It was a nice edition: big text, dark cover with no cheesy My-Big-Fat-Greek-Mythology cover art, and thick enough to bash a baby seal's head in with. Rescuing it from its prison (perched inbetween Chaucer's snoozefest Canterbury Tales and a cluster of ratty-as-fuck Shakespeare paperbacks), I flipped through it during my lunch break, and while I wasn't really reading it (I was doing something more akin to bibliomancy: flip to a random page, read a random paragraph, rinse repeat; kind of like a cut-up method for reading, Burroughs-style), I couldn't tear my attention away from it. Confession time: I'm a huge mythology freak. Always been mad for the stuff. I haven't actually sat down and read anything about myths in a while, so it was nice to kind of step back into that quicksand again. While I was flipping through Homer's text, one of my coworkers (a middle-aged chap named Chester, who bears an uncanny resemblance to The Princess Bride's Sicilian, and whom I will be certain to mention again in future posts, because he is quite the freaky dude) sat down next to me and busted out his copy of James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia. Seeing that book in his hands and then looking at the book in my hands made something come together in my head. It made me realize why I noir literature and films so much: because the shit is straight up mythological.
Now I don't mythological in the iconic sense. Not in the sense that some writers like Neil Gaiman and Tim Powers would use the word myth to refer to noir. In the iconic view, noir is mythological because all the cliches and symbols of noir have become grand archetypes and influenes on our culture. Humphrey Bogart is a totemic warrior god, and Death no longer comes in the form of a skull in a moth-eaten robe, but in the form of a sexy dame with bed-room eyes and a five-pack-a-day habit. Instead of Hades or the Elysian Fields, you've got Heaven and Las Vegas. I'm not talking about that noir turning into myth shit: I'm on a Joseph Campbell trip here. I'm talking about noir, the whole gumshoe/gangsters genre, crawling out of the primordial ooze of myth.
What I dig about writers like James Ellroy, Jim Thompson, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet, etc. is that they don't believe in giving their characters a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card. As much as I like The Lord Of The Rings, I can't stand how whenever a character is placed in a dire situation, nine times out of ten a deus ex machina (be it a flock of eagles, elves, Gandalf, etc) comes along and pulls the Fellowship's collective fat out of the frying pan. What's nice about noir is that there is no cavalry on the horizon, no Great Eagles ready to swoop down from the sky and bail your sorry ass out of the bad situation you're in. The characters are alone. Be they private eye or Asphalt Jungle-style robber, they are always alone. The few friends and loved ones they have are either unreliable or too much of a liability to keep around. The powers that be that could help them, the authorities and the underworld, are too busy enjoying the fruits of their corruption to waste time giving mere mortals a leg-up. Just like ancient mythology.
In ancient mythology (and for the sake of simplicity, I'll only refer to Nordic and Greek systems of myth for this ramble), the world was ruled over by gods with human needs, emotions, and attributes. They squabbled amongst each other and constantly meddled in mortal affairs. The mortals knew they existed, paid their respects, and usually got screwed over by the gods anyway. Greek myth is a classic example: there is probably no other career choice more hazardous to one's health than being a legendary Greek hero. With the exception of Odysseus, I can't think of a single legendary Greek character who isn't in the end fucked over by the gods in some fashion. Either their own weaknesses do them in, or the gods do it for them. Even though many Greek heroes are champions of the gods and appeal to them for help, most are snuffed out anyway. The Nordic heroes had it even worse: they KNEW they were fucked right from the get-go. The Greeks had at least the false hope of redemption, of getting out of the hero business in one piece, while the Nordic heroes pretty much had BORN TO LOSE tattooed on their foreheads. In spite of their eventual (and inevitable doom), the Nordics kept fighting on anyway.
The point I'm getting at (in a long-winded fashion) is that that atmosphere of cruel, lazy powers-that-be and the inevitability of fate (usually a doomed one) is all over the place in noir. Take the word "gods" and replace them with "police/mob/the rich/the government" and you have the same kind of situations presented in classic noir. In Philip Marlowe's world, gods were all over Los Angeles, abandoning Mount Olympus for Rodeo Drive mansions and drunken yacht parties. Much of Chandler novels invoke that mythic feeling, that feeling of being a small figure trying to keep from being stepped on by large, indifferent giants. And like classic mythology, the character, while often times larger than life and doing something that is supposed to be good, often leaves no impact on their world. Sigmund and Achilles could win as many battles as they wanted and killed as many monsters as they could, but it didn't mean shit in the end: the gods are still goosing each other in Olympus and the Nordic gods are still going to get massacred in the end. The status quo never changes (much like in noir: a minor case might be solved, a villian vanquished, but the cops are still corrupt, and that millionaire with the pervy habits is still going to sail through life with no friction). The same thing applies in classic gangster films, be it American classics like The Killing and Asphalt Jungle, or European ones like Le Cercle Rouge and Bob Le Flambeaur: the characters chase after glory (like all mythical heroes) and briefly attain it (in almost every heist movie I've ever seen, they ALWAYS get the loot; the trouble starts after the job...), but fate still catches them in the end. Be it a corrupt cop or a loose-lipped mistress or an uppity Chihuaha knocking over your suitcase full of cash, fate gets you in the end. The giants always grind their heels into the ants eventually.
I guess part of the reason my brain started up on this tangent is that I've been thinking a lot about crime films lately (particularly heist ones), and I was pondering a recent argument I had with a friend over Ocean's 11. I liked the film, it had its moments, but I felt it was missing something. Some spark that older heists have in spades was lacking in the new Oceans 11 (and 12, and if 13 comes out, it'll probably miss that spark too). And that mythical feel I was talking about is exactly what films like Oceans 11 and the Italian Job lack: the sense of fate/doom/powerlessness hanging over the characters. There was never any doubt in my mind that George Clooney's gang would get away with it, and frankly, nothing kills a good heist movie stone dead like the knowledge that they're going to get away scot-free. Throw a bump in the road after the job, for Christ's sake, make the characters sweat a little. Its the same reason why I think modern gangsta rappers like 50 Cent pale in comparison to older vets like the Notorious B.I.G.: the sense of tragedy, of inevitable doom creeping on the singer's footsteps is lacking in hollow shit like "Just A Lil'Bit" and "Candyshop". Heroes are only compelling, only truly great, when they are at their most broken, most paranoid, and most vulnerable (and these are all traits that noir protagonists have in abundance). Not to mention nihilism: like the Nordics, gumshoes and gangsters know they're fucked in the end, but live their lives anyway.
And speaking of living lives anyway, I'm all typed out. This brainfart has lost all its wind, so I'm going to go kick back and veg for awhile. Night all.
Seperated At Birth?
While I was wandering around the bookstore today, trying to look like I was working when work was the furthest thing from my mind, a random thought sprung into my head. I was passing by our drama section when I peeped that we got a new copy of Homer's Odyssey in. It was a nice edition: big text, dark cover with no cheesy My-Big-Fat-Greek-Mythology cover art, and thick enough to bash a baby seal's head in with. Rescuing it from its prison (perched inbetween Chaucer's snoozefest Canterbury Tales and a cluster of ratty-as-fuck Shakespeare paperbacks), I flipped through it during my lunch break, and while I wasn't really reading it (I was doing something more akin to bibliomancy: flip to a random page, read a random paragraph, rinse repeat; kind of like a cut-up method for reading, Burroughs-style), I couldn't tear my attention away from it. Confession time: I'm a huge mythology freak. Always been mad for the stuff. I haven't actually sat down and read anything about myths in a while, so it was nice to kind of step back into that quicksand again. While I was flipping through Homer's text, one of my coworkers (a middle-aged chap named Chester, who bears an uncanny resemblance to The Princess Bride's Sicilian, and whom I will be certain to mention again in future posts, because he is quite the freaky dude) sat down next to me and busted out his copy of James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia. Seeing that book in his hands and then looking at the book in my hands made something come together in my head. It made me realize why I noir literature and films so much: because the shit is straight up mythological.
Now I don't mythological in the iconic sense. Not in the sense that some writers like Neil Gaiman and Tim Powers would use the word myth to refer to noir. In the iconic view, noir is mythological because all the cliches and symbols of noir have become grand archetypes and influenes on our culture. Humphrey Bogart is a totemic warrior god, and Death no longer comes in the form of a skull in a moth-eaten robe, but in the form of a sexy dame with bed-room eyes and a five-pack-a-day habit. Instead of Hades or the Elysian Fields, you've got Heaven and Las Vegas. I'm not talking about that noir turning into myth shit: I'm on a Joseph Campbell trip here. I'm talking about noir, the whole gumshoe/gangsters genre, crawling out of the primordial ooze of myth.
What I dig about writers like James Ellroy, Jim Thompson, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammet, etc. is that they don't believe in giving their characters a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card. As much as I like The Lord Of The Rings, I can't stand how whenever a character is placed in a dire situation, nine times out of ten a deus ex machina (be it a flock of eagles, elves, Gandalf, etc) comes along and pulls the Fellowship's collective fat out of the frying pan. What's nice about noir is that there is no cavalry on the horizon, no Great Eagles ready to swoop down from the sky and bail your sorry ass out of the bad situation you're in. The characters are alone. Be they private eye or Asphalt Jungle-style robber, they are always alone. The few friends and loved ones they have are either unreliable or too much of a liability to keep around. The powers that be that could help them, the authorities and the underworld, are too busy enjoying the fruits of their corruption to waste time giving mere mortals a leg-up. Just like ancient mythology.
In ancient mythology (and for the sake of simplicity, I'll only refer to Nordic and Greek systems of myth for this ramble), the world was ruled over by gods with human needs, emotions, and attributes. They squabbled amongst each other and constantly meddled in mortal affairs. The mortals knew they existed, paid their respects, and usually got screwed over by the gods anyway. Greek myth is a classic example: there is probably no other career choice more hazardous to one's health than being a legendary Greek hero. With the exception of Odysseus, I can't think of a single legendary Greek character who isn't in the end fucked over by the gods in some fashion. Either their own weaknesses do them in, or the gods do it for them. Even though many Greek heroes are champions of the gods and appeal to them for help, most are snuffed out anyway. The Nordic heroes had it even worse: they KNEW they were fucked right from the get-go. The Greeks had at least the false hope of redemption, of getting out of the hero business in one piece, while the Nordic heroes pretty much had BORN TO LOSE tattooed on their foreheads. In spite of their eventual (and inevitable doom), the Nordics kept fighting on anyway.
The point I'm getting at (in a long-winded fashion) is that that atmosphere of cruel, lazy powers-that-be and the inevitability of fate (usually a doomed one) is all over the place in noir. Take the word "gods" and replace them with "police/mob/the rich/the government" and you have the same kind of situations presented in classic noir. In Philip Marlowe's world, gods were all over Los Angeles, abandoning Mount Olympus for Rodeo Drive mansions and drunken yacht parties. Much of Chandler novels invoke that mythic feeling, that feeling of being a small figure trying to keep from being stepped on by large, indifferent giants. And like classic mythology, the character, while often times larger than life and doing something that is supposed to be good, often leaves no impact on their world. Sigmund and Achilles could win as many battles as they wanted and killed as many monsters as they could, but it didn't mean shit in the end: the gods are still goosing each other in Olympus and the Nordic gods are still going to get massacred in the end. The status quo never changes (much like in noir: a minor case might be solved, a villian vanquished, but the cops are still corrupt, and that millionaire with the pervy habits is still going to sail through life with no friction). The same thing applies in classic gangster films, be it American classics like The Killing and Asphalt Jungle, or European ones like Le Cercle Rouge and Bob Le Flambeaur: the characters chase after glory (like all mythical heroes) and briefly attain it (in almost every heist movie I've ever seen, they ALWAYS get the loot; the trouble starts after the job...), but fate still catches them in the end. Be it a corrupt cop or a loose-lipped mistress or an uppity Chihuaha knocking over your suitcase full of cash, fate gets you in the end. The giants always grind their heels into the ants eventually.
I guess part of the reason my brain started up on this tangent is that I've been thinking a lot about crime films lately (particularly heist ones), and I was pondering a recent argument I had with a friend over Ocean's 11. I liked the film, it had its moments, but I felt it was missing something. Some spark that older heists have in spades was lacking in the new Oceans 11 (and 12, and if 13 comes out, it'll probably miss that spark too). And that mythical feel I was talking about is exactly what films like Oceans 11 and the Italian Job lack: the sense of fate/doom/powerlessness hanging over the characters. There was never any doubt in my mind that George Clooney's gang would get away with it, and frankly, nothing kills a good heist movie stone dead like the knowledge that they're going to get away scot-free. Throw a bump in the road after the job, for Christ's sake, make the characters sweat a little. Its the same reason why I think modern gangsta rappers like 50 Cent pale in comparison to older vets like the Notorious B.I.G.: the sense of tragedy, of inevitable doom creeping on the singer's footsteps is lacking in hollow shit like "Just A Lil'Bit" and "Candyshop". Heroes are only compelling, only truly great, when they are at their most broken, most paranoid, and most vulnerable (and these are all traits that noir protagonists have in abundance). Not to mention nihilism: like the Nordics, gumshoes and gangsters know they're fucked in the end, but live their lives anyway.
And speaking of living lives anyway, I'm all typed out. This brainfart has lost all its wind, so I'm going to go kick back and veg for awhile. Night all.