The story, The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones, from the Gold Coast section in the book Los Angeles Noir is, in my opinion, most like noir. The story that is least like noir is Kinship. I think that the story, The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones, by Scott Phillips is the most like noir, because it has a femme fatal and a protagonist. The femme fatal in this story is Cherie. She is describe as “Tall and leggy with hair dyed blond, hanging straight with an inward flip just below her jaw line, and looking at her face and body you wouldn’t take her for more then forty”(288). She calls Tate, the protagonist in the story, to come to a house she is house sitting to help her. Once he is inside, she starts rubbing up against him and giving him lots of lets have sex signals. They make it into the bedroom where they have very brief sex, and afterwards she turns on the light. Tate discovers the owner of the house on the floor bleeding to death. Cherie wants Tate to help dispose of the body. This is classic noir with a femme fatale, Cherie, who is trying to convince the protagonist to do something bad and using her body to do it.
The story Kinship, in the Gold Coast section of the book Los Angeles Noir by Brian Ascalon Roley is the least like noir. It doesn’t have a murder or a femme fatale in it. This story also doesn’t have a detective. It doesn’t have any of the things that make this a true noir story. All good noir has at least one of these elements in it. When it doesn’t, the story just lacks flavor and appeal. It’s basically a story of revenge for a wrong done to a family member. It’s about a guy who goes after the father of the child who is bulling his nephew. In the story it says, “They didn’t believe us. Said we were making false accusations against their son. Then Manny went over to confront the guy after he noticed Emerson’s slit braces. The fathers a soccer-dad from hell” (301).The story is mainly about a uncle who used to be a gang banger but is now a youth pastor and a pillar of the community. When he finds out his brother-in-law was beat up by the father from hell, he gets an ice pick and his brother-in-law and they go down to this guy’s house and kidnap him. Then they beat him up and drive an ice pick through his knee. This story is just lacking on all levels of what makes a story noir. I don’t have any idea what the editors of the book were thinking when they put this story in their collection. The only thing in this story that slightly resembles noir is the dark overtones. There is no murder, no protagonist, and no femme fatale. This story is just a waste of the reader’s time and effort.
I chose the same two stories as you did the girl who kissed Barnaby Jones even though I thought it sucked, it was definitely the one that had more Noir elements, the femme fatale was very clear, the protagonist as usual was a sucker for the femme fatale, she did use her body as a tool to get the protagonist to do what she wanted to but apparently this guy wasn’t a total sucker he knew where to stop and run. And about the kinship I do believe it was the one that had no Noir sense in it I personally believed it had no darkness, it was just not enough all he wanted was revenge but still not dark enough for Noir.
ReplyDeleteSo far all the blogs I have read, have chosen The Girl who Kissed Barnaby Jones as being more like noir....then again I've only read two. Anyways great job at describing and explaining the reasons why it was more noir elements. Its making me want to read all four stories just to evaluate the difference between all of them. Good job.
ReplyDeleteKinship was my second choice as being the least noir-esque. Ultimately, I chose What You See in its place. I gave Kinship the edge because of the division of its protagonist, representing a shading of neo-noir. However, reading the explanations in your blog has made want to examine it again.
ReplyDeleteI laughed when you called out the editors on their choice to include the story in their anthology. Nicely done. But you’re right, it does have a dark sensibilities. I agree whole heartily. Also, you brought up the use of revenge in the story. I don’t know if revenge was prevalent as a plot device in classic noir, so that was a good insight.