Black & white & noir : America's pulp modernism / Paula Rabinowitz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rabinowitz, Paula.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Film noir--United States--History and criticism.

Film noir.

United States.

Popular culture--United States--History--20th century.

Popular culture.

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 308 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Other Title:

Black and white and noir

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2002]

Summary:

"Noir," or pulp fiction, permeates daily life in newspapers, on Hollywood screens, in fashion, and in the cultural fascination with lurid crime trials involving white women and black men, such as the O.J. Simpson trial. Rabinowitz sees pulp fiction as a kind of political theory that has its origins in two submerged aspects of American modernity -the contradiction of slaveholding democracy, and the suppression of working-class and radical movements. Violence is at the core of both of these strands. "Noir," Rabinowitz argues, normalizes horror by deflecting it from the public arena to the private realm. "Black & White & Noir" is the first book to treat issues of race and ethnicity as related to "noir," offering a cultural history of twentieth-century America through episodic readings of films, photographs, and literature.

Contents:

Introduction: On Pulp Modernism 1

Part 1 Black: Rooms and Rage

1. Already Framed: Esther Bubley Invents Noir 25

2. Domestic Labor: Film Noir, Proletarian Literature, and Black Women's Fiction 60

3. Double Cross: Wri(gh)ting as The Outsider 82

Part 2 White: Work and Memory

4. Blanc Noir: Rural Pulp and Documentary Modernism 105

5. Melodrama/Male Drama: The Sentimental Contract of American Labor Films 121

6. Not "Just the Facts, Ma'am": Social Workers as Private Eyes 142

Part 3 Noir: Household Objects

7. Barbara Stanwyck's Anklet 171

8. Medium Uncool: Avant-Garde Film and Uncanny Feminism 193

9. Mapping Noir 225.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [245]-293) and index.

ISBN:

023111480X

0231114818

OCLC:

48942734