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.