Naked is the Night

Hola Everybody,
Some of the worst, most atrocious examples of writing can be found in the social sciences. I think a large part of the reason is that social scientists try too hard to make their writing sound “scientific.”

Every once in a while, however, you run into some great writers who also happen to be great social scientists. Case in point, Luc Sante’s Low Life, the story of New York's Lower East Side, circa 1840-1920. Sante may not be a social scientist in the strict sense of the word, but damn! his insights and how he brings to life the culture of the streets that continues to influence our contemporary popular culture, is a rare and wonderful fusion of art and science. Check this little gem of a paragraph…

The Naked Night

The night is the corridor of history, not the history of famous people, or great events, but that of the marginal, the ignored, the suppressed, the unacknowledged; the history of vice, error, of confusion, of fear, of want; the history of intoxication, of vainglory, of delusion, of dissipation, of delirium. It strips off the city’s veneer of progress and modernity and civilization and reveals the wilderness. In New York City it is an accultured wilderness that contains all the accumulated crime of past nights… and it is not an illusion. It is the daytime that is the chimera, that pretends New York is anyplace, maybe with bigger buildings, but just as workaday, with a population that goes about its business and then goes to sleep, a great machine humming away for the benefit of the world. Night reveals this to be a pantomime. In the streets at night, everything kept hidden comes forth, everyone is subject to the rules of chance, everyone is potentially both murderer and victim, everyone is afraid, just as anyone who sets his or her mind to it can inspire fear in others. At night, everyone is naked.

* * *

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

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Naked is the Night

Hola mi gente,
I have so many topics I’m juggling that can’t decide on what to write about! LOL However, my current situation doesn’t lend itself to good writing.

Speaking of which, some of the worst, most atrocious examples of writing can be found in the social sciences. I think this is in large part due to social scientists trying too hard to make their writing sound “scientific.”

Every once in a while, however, you run into some great writers who also happen to be great social scientists. Case in point: Luc Sante’s Low Life, the story of New York's Lower East Side, circa 1840-1920. Sante may not have been a “social scientist” in the strict sense of the word, but damn (!) his insights and his ability to bring to life the culture of the streets that continues to influence our contemporary popular culture, is a rare and wonderful fusion of art and science. Check out this little gem of a paragraph… 

The Naked Night

The night is the corridor of history, not the history of famous people, or great events, but that of the marginal, the ignored, the suppressed, the unacknowledged; the history of vice, error, of confusion, of fear, of want; the history of intoxication, of vainglory, of delusion, of dissipation, of delirium. It strips off the city’s veneer of progress and modernity and civilization and reveals the wilderness. In New York City it is an accultured wilderness that contains all the accumulated crime of past nights… and it is not an illusion. It is the daytime that is the chimera, that pretends New York is anyplace, maybe with bigger buildings, but just as workaday, with a population that goes about its business and then goes to sleep, a great machine humming away for the benefit of the world. Night reveals this to be a pantomime. In the streets at night, everything kept hidden comes forth, everyone is subject to the rules of chance, everyone is potentially both murderer and victim, everyone is afraid, just as anyone who sets his or her mind to it can inspire fear in others. At night, everyone is naked.

* * *

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Film Noir

Hola mi Gente,

Yesterday, my good friend and film scholar treated me to the new Marvel film, Captain America: Civil War. I have to say it’s one of the best Marvel films I’ve ever seen. Kicks the Superman/ Batman fiasco in the ass.

The film sparked a discussion on one of my fave topics, moral reasoning, that I really enjoyed. 

* * *

Film Noir

What I like about you is you’re rock bottom. I wouldn’t expect you to understand this, but it’s a great comfort for a girl to know she could not possibly sink any lower.

Jane Greer to Robert Mitchum: The Big Steal

A guy down on his luck, hitting the bottle and hiding out from his landlord. A mysterious and beautiful woman appears at his door with a wad of cash for seemingly simple errand to run… 

The stereotypical beginning of a classic film noir.

Neo Noir writer, Jason Starr, says that noir is a guy is about to reach the finish line when someone sticks their leg out and trips him. LOL I love film noir. Its use of clipped language and some of the most ingenious use of lighting ever, along with a not so black and white perspective on morality, alone make it a uniquely American art form. I consider film

noir the single greatest American contribution to cinema. Many today would agree. However, it wasn’t always like that. Early on, what became known as film noir was mostly treated as a stepchild of cinema -- a motherless invention borne out of necessity. During its heyday, which lasted from 1941to 1958, noir films were derided by critics. In fact, the top movie studios usually relegated noir films to B-unit productions and released on the bottom half of double bills.

There were, of course, some exceptions, such as The Maltese Falcon, Laura, and Double Indemnity – all Academy Award nominees; but even these films weren’t spared scathing reviews from the critical community.

You may scoff at my harping on films shot mostly in black and white, but believe me, you have watched many modern-day films directly influenced by film noir. Film Noir has influenced two generations of film makers, including but not limited to Roman Polanski (Chinatown, 1971), Francis Ford Coppola (The Conversation, 1974), Francois Truffant, Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, 1976), Spike Lee, Lawrence Kasdan (Body Heat, 1981), Quentin Tarrantino (Pulp Fiction, 1992), Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, 1982), and Stephen Frears (The Grifters, 1990), to name a few. In fact, the noir film movement has carried on, now called “neo noir,” for thirty years. 

I killed him for money -- and for a woman. I didn't get the money. And I didn't get the woman."
 -- from Double Indemnity (1944)

So what is film noir? Some will say that film noir isn’t a genre like westerns and crime films. Film noir is more about setting and mood. Film noir (literally “dark film”) is a term French film critics originally applied to the dark doom-laden, black and white Hollywood crime dramas of the 1940s, which were only seen in French cinemas for the first time shortly after World War II. The French had been deprived of

American movies for almost five years; and when they began to watch them late in 1945, they noticed not just a darkening of mood but of subject matter. Long before the term was introduced into the English language, film noir became part of the lexicon of French film criticism, with the first full-length treatment of film noir published in French by Raymonde Borde and Etienne Chaumeton. They began to examine the works of noir directors such as Nicholas Ray, Robert Aldrich, Fritz Lang, and Anthony Mann.

Americans didn’t catch up with the French appreciation of film noir until a new generation of film enthusiasts entered film schools in the 1960s. This new vanguard rebelled against the established norms of film history and found inspiration in the works of neglected noir classics such as Double Indemnity, Out of the Past (1947), T-Men (1948), Detour (1945), Criss Cross (1949), Gun Crazy (1950), Touch of Evil (1958), In a Lonely Place (1950), The Reckless Moment (1949), and Kiss me Deadly (1955).

Film noir’s roots are deep and diverse. On the literary side, noir borrowed heavily from the works of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction written by the likes of Dashiell

Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Cornell Woolrich. Equally influential were the works of Emile Zola and Earnest Hemmingway’s clipped language and poetic prose style was particularly influential, serving as a role model for noir works. It is no coincidence that the works of these writers were the first to be adapted, beginning with Hammett’s MalteseFalcon in 1941, Woolrich’s Phantom Lady (1941), and Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely (1944), and The Big Sleep (1946).

On the philosophical level, both existentialism and Freudian psychology, already familiar with the American upper middle class, which included the film community, promoted a world view that emphasized the absurdity of existence along with the importance that an individual’s past

plays in determining his or her actions. This plays into the two most important themes of noir work: the “haunted past” and the “fatalistic nightmare.” 

Noir protagonists are not creatures of the light. More often they are attempting to escape some past burden, sometimes a traumatic incident from their past (as in Detour or Touch of Evil) or sometimes a crime committed out of passion (as in Out of thePast, Criss Cross, or Double Indemnity). Sometimes they are simply attempting to escape demons fashioned by vague events buried in their past. Whatever their problems, these characters seek concealment in the dark alleys and dimly lit rooms of the noir world.

As much as I like fatally flawed characters of film noir, I also love its artistic contributions. Noir directors were masters of lighting and angle shots. We wouldn’t have music videos if it weren’t for noir. At least not videos as we see them

now. They used chiaroscuro lighting, low key lighting in the style of Rembrandt or Caravaggio. Shade and light play with each other not only in exteriors but also in interiors, shielded from sunlight by drapes and Venetian blinds. There’s use of hard, unfiltered side-light and rim light working to reveal only part of a face for dramatic tension.

In addition, noir utilized the camera in innovative ways. For example, there were the odd angles never before used in cinema. Noir directors favored low angles for several reasons. First, this angle made characters rise from the ground in an expressionistic manner, giving them dramatic weight and height. In addition, low angles allowed the viewer to see the

ceilings, giving the effect of claustrophobia and paranoia. High angles also cause a sense of imbalance -- vertigo -- peering down a steep stairwell over a flimsy railing or out a skyscraper building at a city street far below. They were also the first to utilize the moving camera effectively. A camera sliding across the room past a cluttered foreground, or tracking a character through a crowded café created a relentless quality and reeked of fate. 

I could go on and on. I haven’t even touched on noir archetypes (such as the femme fatale, for example), or noir’s depiction of the urban landscape, or its influence on language.

While the thematic treatments, low lighting, off center camera angles, and shadowy, almost claustrophobic atmosphere are not everyone’s cup of tea, film noir is a great body of work that continues to influence film today. For me, there are few pleasures comparable to a rainy weekend holed up somewhere with a lover and a stack of classic film noir works. I encourage anyone to explore what I like to call the “ugly beauty” of film noir.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Resources

They Shot Dark Films, Didn’tThey?

50 Key Noir Filmmakers

Classic Noir Online comprehensive survey of over 700 noir titles, with links to actors and directors and some free films.

Naked is the Night

¡Hola! Everybody...
Some of the worst, most atrocious examples of writing can be found in the social sciences. I think a large part of the reason is that social scientists try too hard to make their writing sound “scientific.”

Every once in a while, however, you run into some great writers who also happen to be great social scientists. Case in point, Luc Sante’s Low Life, the story of New York's Lower East Side, circa 1840-1920. Sante may not be a “social scientist” in the strict sense of the word, but damn! his insights and how he brings to life the culture of the streets that continues to influence our contemporary popular culture, is a rare and wonderful fusion of art and science. Check this little gem of a paragraph…

* * *

-=[ The Naked Night ]=-

The night is the corridor of history, not the history of famous people, or great events, but that of the marginal, the ignored, the suppressed, the unacknowledged; the history of vice, error, of confusion, of fear, of want; the history of intoxication, of vainglory, of delusion, of dissipation, of delirium. It strips off the city’s veneer of progress and modernity and civilization and reveals the wilderness. In New York City it is an accultured wilderness that contains all the accumulated crime of past nights… and it is not an illusion. It is the daytime that is the chimera, that pretends New York is anyplace, maybe with bigger buildings, but just as workaday, with a population that goes about its business and then goes to sleep, a great machine humming away for the benefit of the world. Night reveals this to be a pantomime. In the streets at night, everything kept hidden comes forth, everyone is subject to the rules of chance, everyone is potentially both murderer and victim, everyone is afraid, just as anyone who sets his or her mind to it can inspire fear in others. At night, everyone is naked.

Migrant Mother

¡Hola! Everybody...

I’ll just come out say it in plain words. If you listen to hate speech and get your political information from the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or voted for Sarah Palin, AFAIC you’re dumb fuckin twat with your head stuck so far up your arse you can’t hear me.

Period.

* * *

-=[ A Madonna for a Bitter Time ]=-

When suffering knocks at your door and you say there is no seat for him, he tells you not to worry because he has brought his own stool.

-- Chinua Achebe

The woman... her name is Florence Thompson; she is 32 years-old, married, with no permanent address and seven children to feed. Even in the best of times, keeping it together would’ve been herculean, but the Great Depression now threatens to bring the family to the brink of disaster. Florence Thompson is one of the many migrant workers who travelled the land seeking any work they could find. It turns out that in March 1936, the pea harvest is once again poor, and that means no work -- and no form of income -- for the pickers. Florence Thompson has managed to find temporary lodging at a camp for pea pickers in Nipomo, California. As the photographer, Dorothea Lange noted, “Of the 2,500 people in the camp, most of them were destitute.”

The portrait of the young Florence Thompson -- worn, tight-lipped, and gazing blankly into the distance -- is one of the most famous of photographic icons. Since its appearance in the Family of Man exhibit (1955) the photograph has become part of the American collective consciousness. Originally titled in 1955 as “U.S.A.: Dorothea Lange Farm Security Adm.,” the photograph is now known as Migrant Mother, correctly situating the work in its proper historical context. Many interpretations have been attempted: from comparisons to the Mother of God with the Christ Child, to the attribution of the success of the picture through its balanced composition. One critic referred to the “dignity and essential decency of the woman facing poverty.” Another pointed out its “simplicity of means, its restrained pathos, and its mute autonomy of language.”

Whatever the reasons for its success, it is certain that Dorothea Lange basically ignored all such theoretical perspectives when she took the photograph. She described her approach to her work in different language: “Whatever I photograph, I do not molest or tamper with or arrange... I try to [make a] picture as part of its surroundings, as having roots... Third -- a sense of time... I try to show [it] as having its position in the past or in the present... ”

What I find fascinating with photography is the relationship between the photographer and the subject. There are at least three (often subconscious) dynamics at work in a photograph. There is the subject, the artist, the relationship between the subject and the artist, and finally there is the observer (you). All this works to create the aural power of the work. It is known that Lange approached the family slowly, taking pictures all the while, giving the family members a chance to pose themselves (in contrast to her stated approach to photography). In the initial photographs, for example, the children are looking into the camera; only in the final photo of the sequence do they turn away, in the process emphasizing their position as social outsiders that Lange strived to capture.

To be sure, Lange was seeking to do more than provide evidence, her understanding of documentary work included using persuasion. She wanted to do more than simply register reality; she wanted to move the observer. In making human suffering an object of art, Lange discovered a way of eliciting sympathy, attention, and interest in a world already saturated with images. She took the concept of documentary photography beyond merely recording events.

When Lange took the picture in 1936, she was forty years old, and had been a committed photographer for some time. She had been married to her second husband, a sociologist, and was herself a mother of two. The market crash of 1929 eventually led to dissolution of her moderately successful portrait studio. The ensuing economic calamity, however, forced many agricultural workers into the street, and this was what Dorothea Lange had tried to capture with her camera. Her perspective of the down an out waiting in front of a soup kitchen set up by a wealthy woman became known as The Angel Bread Line , and it marks a turning point in her work. Increasingly, it was the social realities of a post-agricultural America that she wished to capture.

It was the end of long hard winter, and several weeks of working with the camera under harsh conditions. It was raining and she was on her way back home in her car. A sign announced the camp of the pea harvesters. She drove past, but could not put it out of her mind. Suddenly, following her instinct, she drove back to the rain-soaked camp, parked her car, and got out. She immediately saw the woman in the distance, a “hungry and desperate mother.” According to Lange she doesn’t remember how she convinced the woman, or explained her presence. She told her name and age and she said she was living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children had killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that makeshift tent with her children huddled around her, and she seemed to know that the pictures would help her... so she helped the photographer.

Love,

Eddie

Update: For more of Ms. Lange's work check out the slide show (Music by Bobby McFerrin)