Comments on: Female Noir: Rewriting a Genre

By: NickS

NickS — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:43:01 +0000

in female noir, [the femme fatale] is no more power or money hungry than the men she’s dealing with. The Noir world has very strict rules, as I’ve mentioned. If she does not want to be passive,

For what it’s worth this was very much my understanding of the Femme Fatale in The Maltese Falcon movie.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the final showdown with Spade, Gutman (with his thugs), and O’Shaughnessy and the realization that O’Shaughnessy is probably the most powerful and dangerous person in the room.

By: Morgan Page

Morgan Page — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:33:26 +0000

Christa Faust’s Money Shot is my favourite example of Noir, and especially female-written Noir. It’s bloody brilliant. Not only that, but the tough-as-nails sex worker main character, I feel, breaks through the stereotype of the sex-worker-as-victim so prevalent in Noir.

~Morgan

By: Sophia

Sophia — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:13:50 +0000

Running a s/hand bookshop, its always great when you can recommend authors that you like that are somewhat overlooked. Mary Wings only got limited print runs in europe, mainly ‘women’s press’. She writes classic noir, updated to the 80′s and 90′s, with a strong lesbian detective, mixing a surprising degree of eroticism with interesting subversions of the genre. An honourable mention to
Glen Cook’s ‘Garrett PI’ series. Of course if we can count cyber-punk…

By: Josh Jasper

Josh Jasper — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 14:26:38 +0000

I really have to quibble with the “money hungry” part of your characterization. The noir detective is always cynical, but money hungry? Nope. Down on his luck, and in *need* of money, for certain. But not greedy, just struggling to get by. He often never gets paid at all, or takes on cases for free.

The standard trope is that the detective is very shortly going to get kicked out of his office for not paying rent, and a beautiful woman who’s not who she seems comes by and offers him a job that’s not what it seems. That’s the classic noir story start.

By: Maria

Maria — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:50:13 +0000

I think this discusion is not complete without mentioning Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, as far from ingenue as from femme fatale: an old lady who tends to think logically and to think the worst of everyone. And who plays with stereotypes, posing as innofensive, frail, and a terrible gossip. She is part of the canon since 1930. And the author used to love her as much as she hated Poirot.

Although noir genre writers were mostly male, and in general wrote the stereotypical female characters, mistery novels are totally different; in my opinion because most of the good authors are women: think of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhoney, or Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta, as unstereotypycal as females as they are (sometimes) stereotypical as detectives.

Another female character that I love (Huge in all Europe right now), is Lisbeth Salander, by Stieg Larsson, a feminist man (judging him by his work) if there ever was one.

By: Rockit

Rockit — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:45:23 +0000

I’d like to put in a mention for one of my all-time favourites, Jim Thompson too. Sure, his stories tended to be from the opposite point of view – the amoral anti-hero who was smarter than the rest but who always seemed to get caught in the web he tangled – but the female characters never seemed to fall into the realm of stereotypes and they usually had, if not always rational, eminently understandable and human motivatons.

Plus in terms of economy, his best stuff’s up there with the cream of 20th century writing. The second chapter of The Grifters alone is six pages long, and it’s an absolute masterclass in short form characterisation.

By: Persia

Persia — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:57:03 +0000

The Thin Man isn’t noir, though. I think most ‘classic’ noir does fall into dames-and-tough guy patterns.

I just read The Black Dahlia, a neo-noir by James Ellroy, and one of the interesting things about my (later) edition was a concluding essay by the author, where he felt like he’d been too tough and not understanding enough of his female characters. It was really interesting and I’d encourage anyone who likes noir to check it out. (And to check Ellroy out, he’s wonderful.)

By: Steph

Steph — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:41:15 +0000

Ellid- Yes, I agree the whole article is oversimplified. I’m a little embarrassed about the intro looking back on it in the morning. I was trying to hurry through the background stuff so I could get to the meat of the situation.

And I was not fair to Harriet Vane in the process, who is one of my favorite characters. I was thinking more of how other, not-Peter characters treat her detecting. But I love Gaudy Night, so so much. I could babble about it, but my brain isn’t quite coherent yet.

By: Elizabeth Anne

Elizabeth Anne — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:35:18 +0000

Lindsay Davis. Her books are set in ancient Rome (under Vespasian) but distinctly noir. The main character’s wife is an woman born to the Senatorial class, so her ability to ferret things out is based not on her feminine wiles but her awareness of a) the clout her class gives her and b) the expectations her gender and class set up. (Senatorial women are supposed to be airheaded sots.) By managing to subvert and manipulate both, she really ends up playing with the genre a bit.

By: Nick Charles

Nick Charles — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:36:33 +0000

A contemporary novel (albeit set in 1950) that offers a great female perspective is Dope by Sara Gran. This book really tears into the ancient archetypes of good and evil–the question it seems to ask (subtly) is, how can anyone be good all the time in a horrible world where no one can be trusted? The protagonist, Josephine “Joe” Flannigan, is a petty thief and recovering heroine addict who gets hired to find a missing young woman, and the seedy New York underworld she journeys through is largely dominated by impoverished addicts and the desperate things they do to get the next fix. It has a few amteurish slips on the author’s part, and Joe is (intentionally, I think) a sloppy detective despite her unbending toughness and street smarts, but nothing about her weak points is gendered–yes, she has a soul and caring about other people trips her up, but Gran does a good job of making the reader connect empathically with Joe.