Noir Fiction and Film

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Clark Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Film Noir ◽  
Noir Fiction ◽  
Detective Films ◽  
Withholding Information ◽  
Do So

The argument of Noir Fiction and Film is curiously counterintuitive: that in a century of hard-boiled fiction and detective films, characteristics that at first seemed trivial swelled in importance, flourishing into crucial aspects of the genre. Among these are aimless descriptions of people and places irrelevant to plot, along with detectives consisting of little more than sparkling dialogue and flippant attitudes. What weaves together such features, however, seems to be a paradox: that a genre rooted in solving a mystery, structured around the gathering of clues, must do so by misdirecting our attention, even withholding information we think we need to generate the suspense we also desire. Yet successful noir stories and films enhance that suspense through passing diversions (descriptive details and eccentric perspectives) rather than depending on the centerpieces of plot alone (suspected motives or incriminating traces). As the most accomplished practitioners have realized, the “how” of detective fiction (its stylistic detours) draws us in more insistently than the “what” or the “who” (its linear advance). The achievement of recent film noir is to make that “how” become the tantalizing object of our entire attention, shorn of any pretense of reading for the plot, immersing us in the diversionary delight that has animated the genre from the beginning.

scholarly journals Vagueness and Withholding Information in Christie’s (1926) Detective Fiction The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: A Pragma-Stylistic Study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Safaa K. Merzah ◽  
Nawal Fadhil Abbas
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Stylistic Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Withholding Information ◽  
Do So

This study is intended to examine the deceptive strategies utilized in the well-renown Agatha Christie’s (1926/2002) detective fiction The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to fill a gap in the literature by conducting a pragma-stylistic analysis of the novel. To do so, the researchers have set two objectives which are phrased as follows: firstly, examining the pragma-stylistic choices that are used to surface the deceptive strategies on the character-character level in the pre-dénouement stage and secondly, investigating the pragma-stylistic choices that are used to surface the deceptive strategies on the narrator-reader level in the pre-dénouement stage. The stylistic idiosyncrasies of Christie’s Dr. Sheppard are carried out through an eclectic pragma-stylistic approach to expose his deceptive strategies for the fulfillment of his selfish ends. Therefore, the study at issue follows an eclectic conceptual framework which comprises Merzah and Abbas’s deceptive principle (2020) and Chen’s (2001) self-politeness, along with the stylistic effects achieved via the manipulation of such linguistic tools, to explore the two levels of discourse, namely, character-character level and narrator-reader level proposed by Black (2006). The qualitative analysis of the novel has exhibited that Dr. Sheppard is an expert deceiver who principally relies on indirect strategies, as he is cognizant of the power of what is insinuated but left unsaid.

Welty’s Moonlighting Detective

2019 ◽  
pp. 189-213
Author(s):  
Jacob Agner
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Chester Himes ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Dashiell Hammett ◽  
Noir Fiction

This essay argues that Eudora Welty’s 1966 civil rights story, “The Demonstrators,” casts a spotlight on the “crime” of systemic racism in the U.S. South through the popular crime genre of American noir fiction and film. Although a mid-twentieth-century category mainly recognized for its depictions of dark cities and shadowy “mean streets,” noir’s stylized world collides with the Closed Society in Welty’s late story and throws into stark relief the subtler effects of white supremacy. Turning noir’s key traits on their head (e.g., black-and-white chiaroscuro lighting, the femme fatale, and the tropes of hard-boiled detective fiction), Welty throughout “The Demonstrators” brilliantly illuminates the subtle tactics of, and clues left behind by, criminalized acts of whiteness. In so doing, Welty’s masterful crime story pays homage to classic noir artists such as Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, and Alfred Hitchcock.

scholarly journals Trump and the Resurgence of American Noir

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 90-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Newhall Rademacher
Keyword(s):  
Detective Fiction ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Film Noir ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Political ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Political Expediency ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Media

This essay examines the political persona of Donald Trump as mediated by the imagery of hardboiled detective fiction and film noir. By evoking and distorting noir’s challenge to the status quo, its suspicion of systems of power and questioning of dominant norms, Trump has fashioned his political persona in ways that deliberately revise the popular conception of the hardboiled hero as brash-talking rebel at the margins of a corrupt system. Reading Trump’s persona through the mediating function of noir exposes how Trump’s rhetoric plays on, and benefits from, a theme of citizen estrangement while simultaneously reinforcing political expediency and self-interested power. Moreover, it is not only Trump who uses noir imagery provocatively to shape his political image. The media have also participated in crafting images of Trump as either entertaining disruptor or more darkly destabilising. As responses to crises of capitalism, corruption, and social fracture, noir narratives provide critical ways of investigating periods of disequilibrium and their resurfacing in the present. Analysing the production, expression, and reception of Trump’s political persona through the historical and discursive structures of noir underscores the salience of the study of persona to reveal underlying fissures in current American politics and society.

Holding replication studies to mainstream standards of evidence

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duane T. Wegener ◽  
Leandre R. Fabrigar
Keyword(s):  
Replication Studies ◽  
Replication Research ◽  
Standards Of Evidence ◽  
Do So

AbstractReplications can make theoretical contributions, but are unlikely to do so if their findings are open to multiple interpretations (especially violations of psychometric invariance). Thus, just as studies demonstrating novel effects are often expected to empirically evaluate competing explanations, replications should be held to similar standards. Unfortunately, this is rarely done, thereby undermining the value of replication research.

Electron Microscopy of a Herpesvirus Isolated from Marek's Disease in Duck and Chicken Embryo Fibroblast Cultures

1968 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 222-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyvan Nazerian
Keyword(s):  
Inclusion Bodies ◽  
Chicken Embryo Fibroblast ◽  
Marek's Disease ◽  
Marek’S Disease ◽  
Duck Embryo Fibroblast ◽  
Multinucleated Cells ◽  
Viral Particles ◽  
Infected Cells ◽  
And Control ◽  
Do So

A herpes-like virus has been isolated from duck embryo fibroblast (DEF) cultures inoculated with blood from Marek's disease (MD) infected birds. Cultures which contained this virus produced MD in susceptible chickens while virus negative cultures and control cultures failed to do so. This and other circumstantial evidence including similarities in properties of the virus and the MD agent implicate this virus in the etiology of MD.Histochemical studies demonstrated the presence of DNA-staining intranuclear inclusion bodies in polykarocytes in infected cultures. Distinct nucleo-plasmic aggregates were also seen in sections of similar multinucleated cells examined with the electron microscope. These aggregates are probably the same as the inclusion bodies seen with the light microscope. Naked viral particles were observed in the nucleus of infected cells within or on the edges of the nucleoplasmic aggregates. These particles measured 95-100mμ, in diameter and rarely escaped into the cytoplasm or nuclear vesicles by budding through the nuclear membrane (Fig. 1). The enveloped particles (Fig. 2) formed in this manner measured 150-170mμ in diameter and always had a densely stained nucleoid. The virus in supernatant fluids consisted of naked capsids with 162 hollow, cylindrical capsomeres (Fig. 3). Enveloped particles were not seen in such preparations.

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