Film Noir

Next Reading Group Discussion: July 21 8:30

Thanks for a great session today and for putting my with my idiosyncratic reading of LOTR. The great reveal was that I decided, because I was in the midst of theory wars in my workplace at the University of Minnesota that the LOTR. world was academia, the different kinds worlds represented different schools of post-Marxist theory and that the Ring of Power represented psychoanalysis which no academic could wield without abusing and that was why it had to be destroyed in Mt. Doom, because none of us could wield it without succumbing to the narcissism of our profession.

The Elves were Deconstructionists and Deleuzians, the Dwarves, the cultural studies types, the humans Post-colonialists and the Hobbits were banal historicists. But I kept trying to figure who was ‘good’ and who was ‘bad.’ But nobody deserved to use the Ring of Power.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, due to popular demand, we will have the next three meetings on the topic of Film Noir. Here are the films and the recommended reading for discussion. The study of genre films is critical to any understanding of the culture industry. We also discussed the need to mourn the failures of the Left and I will be writing about Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia in this context.

For the purposes of ideology critique, film noir analysis is a great way to understand the genre most suited to describing the tragic immolation of the individual subject in late capitalism.

These discussion sessions are for paid subscribers only. They are not recorded for the sake of privacy. For a small sum, you can join a pretty committed community of people who are interested in what a commitment to ideological critique of the culture industry and its modes of production can do to help us escape the snakepit of political paralysis of our times. No prior knowledge or even experience with any of these topics is required, but we did build on our readings of Freud, Adorno and Horkheimer and Marx and we are putting into practice the tools they have given us.

Session 1: Class Society, Noir and Neonoir: Below the paywall. I provide links to the films and the readings. For July’s meeting, we will be discussing the classic noir, Double Indemnity and its virtual remake for the Reagan era, Body Heat, along with Paul Schrader’s “Notes on Film Noir” and Janey Place’s essay on women in noir. Kathleen Turner makes her debut in Kasdan’s film, reprising Barbara Stanwyck’s femme fatale.

Session 2: Global Noir: Paris, Los Angeles, Harbin (date to be announced)

Le Samourai (Jean Pierre Melville, 1967)

Devil in a Blue Dress, (Carl Franklin, 1995)

Black Coal, Thin Ice, (Diao Yinan, 2014)

Session 3: Asian Extreme Cinema and Classic Noir: Incest (date to be announced)

Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)

Oldboy (Park Chan Wook, 2003)