The Noir Thriller ,Page-9
Players, Voyeurs and
Consumers
‘We
walk in,’ Robbie said, ‘I open up with the MAC and you open up with the Hitachi.’
‘The camera? You’re kidding me.’
‘I
told you that, didn’t I? I want to see it, I want to study
it . . .’
it . . .’
Elmore Leonard, Split Images (228)
When
it’s ‘showtime’, millionaire murderer Robbie Daniels lovingly
assembles some of his favourite consumer durables, a $4000 video
camera and a ‘compact little submachine gun’, a MAC-ten ‘painted with
free-form shapes in rose and dark blue on a light blue background’
(27-8); he gives careful thought to what he is going to wear (a dark cash-
mere and a light canvas shooting coat), gets into his silver Rolls Royce
and sets out to film the death of a rich acquaintance whose main offence
is that he ‘never remembers Robbie’s name’ (184). In its preoccupation
with consumerism and the creation of spectacle Elmore Leonard’s Split
Images (1981) is characteristic of many of the noir thrillers written
during the last three decades.
assembles some of his favourite consumer durables, a $4000 video
camera and a ‘compact little submachine gun’, a MAC-ten ‘painted with
free-form shapes in rose and dark blue on a light blue background’
(27-8); he gives careful thought to what he is going to wear (a dark cash-
mere and a light canvas shooting coat), gets into his silver Rolls Royce
and sets out to film the death of a rich acquaintance whose main offence
is that he ‘never remembers Robbie’s name’ (184). In its preoccupation
with consumerism and the creation of spectacle Elmore Leonard’s Split
Images (1981) is characteristic of many of the noir thrillers written
during the last three decades.
The motifs of players, voyeurs and consumers
are obviously present
as well in the thrillers of earlier periods. We have looked, for example,
at the themes of game-playing and showmanship in Paul Cain stories,
at the voyeurs of James M. Cain novels (who want to possess the women
on whom they have gazed), at the pleasure in consumption that moti-
vates Highsmith’s Ripley, at the display and performance required of the
successful gangster and at the pathos of the small-time crook’s failure
to attain even ordinary material well-being in a greedy society. In Ander-
son’s Thieves Like Us (1937) the protagonist, Bowie, having entered into
his way of life in a spirit of play, travelling with ‘some fellows on the
as well in the thrillers of earlier periods. We have looked, for example,
at the themes of game-playing and showmanship in Paul Cain stories,
at the voyeurs of James M. Cain novels (who want to possess the women
on whom they have gazed), at the pleasure in consumption that moti-
vates Highsmith’s Ripley, at the display and performance required of the
successful gangster and at the pathos of the small-time crook’s failure
to attain even ordinary material well-being in a greedy society. In Ander-
son’s Thieves Like Us (1937) the protagonist, Bowie, having entered into
his way of life in a spirit of play, travelling with ‘some fellows on the
197
carnival’
(242), feels absolutely bound by his gang’s code of loyalty. The
economic deprivation that has produced Anderson’s thieves is under-
scored by a touchingly peaceful interlude during which Bowie soaks in
the ‘richness’ of their temporary living room, its radio, its chairs with
brocaded coverings and lights shaped like candlesticks. As events close
in on them, Bowie and Keechie, longing only for economic sufficiency,
are turned into a spectacle. They are absurdly misrepresented by the
newspapermen who report the exploits of ‘the Southwest’s phantom
desperado’ and his gun-toting companion (376).
economic deprivation that has produced Anderson’s thieves is under-
scored by a touchingly peaceful interlude during which Bowie soaks in
the ‘richness’ of their temporary living room, its radio, its chairs with
brocaded coverings and lights shaped like candlesticks. As events close
in on them, Bowie and Keechie, longing only for economic sufficiency,
are turned into a spectacle. They are absurdly misrepresented by the
newspapermen who report the exploits of ‘the Southwest’s phantom
desperado’ and his gun-toting companion (376).
In comparison to contemporary noir, however,
the earlier uses of
these motifs are less central, in terms of both theme and structure. This
can be seen, for example, if one considers Anderson’s novel alongside
Tarantino’s Natural Born Killers (1995),1 a lovers-on-the-run fable of our
own time. The Tarantino story is contained almost completely within
the preparation of a documentary, part of a series that profiles serial
killers. His protagonists are very conscious of themselves as game-
players and performers, as a spectacle to be consumed by a huge tele-
vision audience. In Anderson’s story, the consumer durables are fleeting
reminders of a longed-for domestic life and the young outlaws would
scarcely recognise themselves in the lurid newspaper accounts of their
crimes. In Natural Born Killers, on the other hand, the entire narrative
is structured around the creation and consumption of the ‘saga’ of
Mickey and Mallory. ‘Movie Mickey’, in the inset ‘romantic’ movie Thrill
Killers, rants against the ‘minimum wage train’ and shouts of wanting
cash and fast cars: ‘And I want it now!’ (43). But the main theme of
Tarantino’s own film script is not the causal connection between eco-
nomic deprivation and violent crime but the possibility of a mutually
reinforcing relationship between violence and its mass-public represen-
tation - ‘stylized, serialized and specularized’.2 Mickey and Mallory are
a product to be marketed by the media, created in part by a journalist
who seizes upon the chance to interview Mickey as ‘one of those golden
moments that happens maybe only four times in a lucky journalist’s
career’ (25). They are also, however, self-created. As inventors of spec-
tacle, they are ultimately the protagonists of their own movie: ‘OK,
Wayne, your little movie just underwent a title change . . .’ (98).
these motifs are less central, in terms of both theme and structure. This
can be seen, for example, if one considers Anderson’s novel alongside
Tarantino’s Natural Born Killers (1995),1 a lovers-on-the-run fable of our
own time. The Tarantino story is contained almost completely within
the preparation of a documentary, part of a series that profiles serial
killers. His protagonists are very conscious of themselves as game-
players and performers, as a spectacle to be consumed by a huge tele-
vision audience. In Anderson’s story, the consumer durables are fleeting
reminders of a longed-for domestic life and the young outlaws would
scarcely recognise themselves in the lurid newspaper accounts of their
crimes. In Natural Born Killers, on the other hand, the entire narrative
is structured around the creation and consumption of the ‘saga’ of
Mickey and Mallory. ‘Movie Mickey’, in the inset ‘romantic’ movie Thrill
Killers, rants against the ‘minimum wage train’ and shouts of wanting
cash and fast cars: ‘And I want it now!’ (43). But the main theme of
Tarantino’s own film script is not the causal connection between eco-
nomic deprivation and violent crime but the possibility of a mutually
reinforcing relationship between violence and its mass-public represen-
tation - ‘stylized, serialized and specularized’.2 Mickey and Mallory are
a product to be marketed by the media, created in part by a journalist
who seizes upon the chance to interview Mickey as ‘one of those golden
moments that happens maybe only four times in a lucky journalist’s
career’ (25). They are also, however, self-created. As inventors of spec-
tacle, they are ultimately the protagonists of their own movie: ‘OK,
Wayne, your little movie just underwent a title change . . .’ (98).
Some of the noir crime novels discussed here,
in particular, the black
gangster novels of Goines, Headley and Smith, more closely resemble
novels of the thirties in their focus on economic causation. It is depri-
vation that necessitates ‘performances’ of quite a high order from those
trying to rise out of poverty. Frequently, however, performance is more
an end in itself, and the fates towards which characters move are not
gangster novels of Goines, Headley and Smith, more closely resemble
novels of the thirties in their focus on economic causation. It is depri-
vation that necessitates ‘performances’ of quite a high order from those
trying to rise out of poverty. Frequently, however, performance is more
an end in itself, and the fates towards which characters move are not
simply
the product of necessity but of sheer engagement with and
enjoyment of the activity, the creation and consumption of spectacles.
As in earlier noir, passivity is often represented as the attitude that is
most dangerous and culpable (not to enter the game, to be an object,
to be consumed), but at the same time the noir protagonist faces the
dilemma that the more active options (playing, performing, controlling
the gaze, consuming) are all forms of complicity with a corrupt society.
These are not, however, fixed oppositions, since a common character-
istic of these various roles is their invertibility: characters are represented
as simultaneously acting and acted upon; the consumer is consumed,
the player combating a rival is also the rival combated, the watcher is
watched, the performer has the status of both subject and object. The
instability of identity tends in earlier noir to be a matter of chronologi-
cal sequence, for example, in the sort of plot in which a victim becomes
the aggressor. More recently, on the other hand, divergent possibilities
tend to coexist and the both/and nature of this characterisation3 height-
ens the sense of complicity that is at the core of the contemporary noir
thriller. Whereas in earlier decades fate is linked to difference, depriva-
tion and exclusion from normative communities, late twentieth-
century noir is less likely to involve an alienated protagonist than
someone altogether too ‘like us’, their complicity evidenced by their
participation in the most commonplace activities of modern society -
performing, viewing, consuming.
enjoyment of the activity, the creation and consumption of spectacles.
As in earlier noir, passivity is often represented as the attitude that is
most dangerous and culpable (not to enter the game, to be an object,
to be consumed), but at the same time the noir protagonist faces the
dilemma that the more active options (playing, performing, controlling
the gaze, consuming) are all forms of complicity with a corrupt society.
These are not, however, fixed oppositions, since a common character-
istic of these various roles is their invertibility: characters are represented
as simultaneously acting and acted upon; the consumer is consumed,
the player combating a rival is also the rival combated, the watcher is
watched, the performer has the status of both subject and object. The
instability of identity tends in earlier noir to be a matter of chronologi-
cal sequence, for example, in the sort of plot in which a victim becomes
the aggressor. More recently, on the other hand, divergent possibilities
tend to coexist and the both/and nature of this characterisation3 height-
ens the sense of complicity that is at the core of the contemporary noir
thriller. Whereas in earlier decades fate is linked to difference, depriva-
tion and exclusion from normative communities, late twentieth-
century noir is less likely to involve an alienated protagonist than
someone altogether too ‘like us’, their complicity evidenced by their
participation in the most commonplace activities of modern society -
performing, viewing, consuming.
The figure of the player is closely analogous
to the gangster or small-
time crook as the embodiment of capitalistic self-interest and ambition,
but as a term it is value-neutral, suggesting an approach to life based on
rational self-interest, the calculation of advantage, the understanding of
one’s opponents. The ‘gangster-capitalist’ is invariably associated with
corruption; the player is simply a man or woman who follows the rules
appropriate to any given game rather than appealing to some ultimate
moral code. There has been increasing attention given since the 1970s
to exploring the common elements in ‘games’ as diverse political con-
tests, armed conflict, crime and punishment, sport, poker. Game theo-
rists analyse successful strategies where there are conflicting interests.
They look at the ways in which participants take account of the reac-
tions of rivals to any given strategy, and at the extent to which they
show themselves willing to co-operate, form coalitions, retaliate, make
threats, stubbornly resist, lie and cheat. The role of reputation is of
central importance in game theory, which provides a non-judgemental
way of looking at the necessity of carrying through whatever threats are
made. This wider interest in analysing and theorising games is reflected
time crook as the embodiment of capitalistic self-interest and ambition,
but as a term it is value-neutral, suggesting an approach to life based on
rational self-interest, the calculation of advantage, the understanding of
one’s opponents. The ‘gangster-capitalist’ is invariably associated with
corruption; the player is simply a man or woman who follows the rules
appropriate to any given game rather than appealing to some ultimate
moral code. There has been increasing attention given since the 1970s
to exploring the common elements in ‘games’ as diverse political con-
tests, armed conflict, crime and punishment, sport, poker. Game theo-
rists analyse successful strategies where there are conflicting interests.
They look at the ways in which participants take account of the reac-
tions of rivals to any given strategy, and at the extent to which they
show themselves willing to co-operate, form coalitions, retaliate, make
threats, stubbornly resist, lie and cheat. The role of reputation is of
central importance in game theory, which provides a non-judgemental
way of looking at the necessity of carrying through whatever threats are
made. This wider interest in analysing and theorising games is reflected
in
the metaphors, characterisation and structure of many thrillers of the
period. There is a general implication that it is the player’s choice of
game that determines the rules he follows, and also that this choice
separates him from the players in other games. A recurrent motif is
agency acquired at the expense of community. That is, the player’s
involvement in one kind of game separates him from others, such as
close friends and family. The game is a serious business, most often with
an economic motive behind the play, but this is combined with enjoy-
ment, which is to say that the game can become an end in itself. Role-
playing becomes a vital activity, generating a preoccupation with
performance and spectatorship.
period. There is a general implication that it is the player’s choice of
game that determines the rules he follows, and also that this choice
separates him from the players in other games. A recurrent motif is
agency acquired at the expense of community. That is, the player’s
involvement in one kind of game separates him from others, such as
close friends and family. The game is a serious business, most often with
an economic motive behind the play, but this is combined with enjoy-
ment, which is to say that the game can become an end in itself. Role-
playing becomes a vital activity, generating a preoccupation with
performance and spectatorship.
The voyeur has obvious affinities both with
the private eye and with
the man trapped by obsession, like the protagonists of Double Indemnity
or The Postman Always Rings Twice. In more recent novels, however, acts
of investigative and obsessed looking are often assimilated to the
modern technology of voyeurism - taping, photography, film - and are
much less closely associated with the specifically male gaze. The
increased fascination with acts of voyeurism is linked both to a post-
Watergate/Vietnam concern about surveillance and to a more general
sense that we live in a culture of spectacle and spectators. From the late
sixties on, discussions of media culture and the society of the spectacle
have proliferated. The often quoted opening sentences of Guy Debord’s
Society of the Spectacle (1967) sum up one influential line of argument:
‘In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of
life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything
that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.’4 It is
not necessary to accept the more extreme implications of this and
other postmodern ruminations on ‘sensory overload’ and ‘saturation’
to see that such analyses are symptomatic of a widespread concern
with the nature of spectatorship - with questions about the effects of a
constant flow of images and sounds and about the ways in which spec-
tators themselves influence and select the spectacles they watch (like
the crowd at a Roman circus, giving the thumbs up or thumbs down).
There are obvious implications for fiction that centres on violence,
which has increasingly represented the act of violence as the creation
of spectacle in a world in which everyone consumes and produces
images and spectacles.5 As a central element in the noir narrative
structure, the ‘consumer’ has always been there, but consumption in all
its forms is more prominent in the late twentieth-century thriller, often
accompanied by more explicit attention to the commodification of
people, the irony of the ‘consumer consumed’ and the postmodern city,
the man trapped by obsession, like the protagonists of Double Indemnity
or The Postman Always Rings Twice. In more recent novels, however, acts
of investigative and obsessed looking are often assimilated to the
modern technology of voyeurism - taping, photography, film - and are
much less closely associated with the specifically male gaze. The
increased fascination with acts of voyeurism is linked both to a post-
Watergate/Vietnam concern about surveillance and to a more general
sense that we live in a culture of spectacle and spectators. From the late
sixties on, discussions of media culture and the society of the spectacle
have proliferated. The often quoted opening sentences of Guy Debord’s
Society of the Spectacle (1967) sum up one influential line of argument:
‘In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of
life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything
that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.’4 It is
not necessary to accept the more extreme implications of this and
other postmodern ruminations on ‘sensory overload’ and ‘saturation’
to see that such analyses are symptomatic of a widespread concern
with the nature of spectatorship - with questions about the effects of a
constant flow of images and sounds and about the ways in which spec-
tators themselves influence and select the spectacles they watch (like
the crowd at a Roman circus, giving the thumbs up or thumbs down).
There are obvious implications for fiction that centres on violence,
which has increasingly represented the act of violence as the creation
of spectacle in a world in which everyone consumes and produces
images and spectacles.5 As a central element in the noir narrative
structure, the ‘consumer’ has always been there, but consumption in all
its forms is more prominent in the late twentieth-century thriller, often
accompanied by more explicit attention to the commodification of
people, the irony of the ‘consumer consumed’ and the postmodern city,
‘saturated
with signs and images’, as a centre of play, performance and consumption.6
Players and their games
In
noir narratives of the 1930s and 1940s, the figure of the game-player
or gambler is most often seen committing himself to a doomed enter-
prise. He is a man who has placed a losing bet against fate. The pro-
tagonist of You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up, for example, who
only wins when he is playing to lose, says despairingly, ‘I figured the
wheel was hoodooed and the black would come up forever’ (31). When
Harry Fabian, in Night and the City, gambles all on his big fight venture
we know he is inviting the fate that befalls him. The gambles them-
selves signify desperation. The game is played in the vain hope of break-
ing free from a grim cycle of defeat and degradation. In such texts, the
only character for whom gambling carries different connotations is the
boss, the head of the gambling and other rackets, like Crotti in Paul
Cain’s Fast One, who is himself presented as analogous to an inexorable
fate (‘When you buck Crotti you’re bucking a machine’ [119]). As Dana
Polan points out in his discussion of such figures as Corrigan in The
Lady Vanishes and the casino owner Armand in The Great Sinner (both
1949), these are men ‘outside of time . . . for whom life is a safe repeti-
tion’.7 They never actually gamble in the sense of taking risks, since it
is they who control the system and they can rely on the law of large
numbers to safeguard their success. They are the human gods presiding
over a game in which the ordinary player stands no chance of winning,
and can indeed often be assimilated to a more general sense of noir
fatality.
or gambler is most often seen committing himself to a doomed enter-
prise. He is a man who has placed a losing bet against fate. The pro-
tagonist of You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up, for example, who
only wins when he is playing to lose, says despairingly, ‘I figured the
wheel was hoodooed and the black would come up forever’ (31). When
Harry Fabian, in Night and the City, gambles all on his big fight venture
we know he is inviting the fate that befalls him. The gambles them-
selves signify desperation. The game is played in the vain hope of break-
ing free from a grim cycle of defeat and degradation. In such texts, the
only character for whom gambling carries different connotations is the
boss, the head of the gambling and other rackets, like Crotti in Paul
Cain’s Fast One, who is himself presented as analogous to an inexorable
fate (‘When you buck Crotti you’re bucking a machine’ [119]). As Dana
Polan points out in his discussion of such figures as Corrigan in The
Lady Vanishes and the casino owner Armand in The Great Sinner (both
1949), these are men ‘outside of time . . . for whom life is a safe repeti-
tion’.7 They never actually gamble in the sense of taking risks, since it
is they who control the system and they can rely on the law of large
numbers to safeguard their success. They are the human gods presiding
over a game in which the ordinary player stands no chance of winning,
and can indeed often be assimilated to a more general sense of noir
fatality.
In
more recent noir
the dominant game-playing
narrative that
emerges is one which associates the player with more potential control
and confident agency.8 Whereas the roll of the dice or the spin of the
roulette wheel are perhaps the most commonly recurring images of
gambling in the pre-World War Two thriller (signifying a gamble the
player cannot control), in later noir thrillers the plot more often turns
on games in which the outcome depends upon the tactics, the cunning
and duplicity, the bluffing and counter-bluffing of skilled players. The
‘gambling against inexorable fate’ narrative does not, of course, disap-
pear, and these contrasting types of narrative are in fact encapsulated
in two neo-noir films of the nineties, The Winner (Alex Cox, 1996) and
Rounders (John Dahl, 1998), the first involving dice and roulette wheels,
the second poker. In The Winner the god-like character of Kingman looks
emerges is one which associates the player with more potential control
and confident agency.8 Whereas the roll of the dice or the spin of the
roulette wheel are perhaps the most commonly recurring images of
gambling in the pre-World War Two thriller (signifying a gamble the
player cannot control), in later noir thrillers the plot more often turns
on games in which the outcome depends upon the tactics, the cunning
and duplicity, the bluffing and counter-bluffing of skilled players. The
‘gambling against inexorable fate’ narrative does not, of course, disap-
pear, and these contrasting types of narrative are in fact encapsulated
in two neo-noir films of the nineties, The Winner (Alex Cox, 1996) and
Rounders (John Dahl, 1998), the first involving dice and roulette wheels,
the second poker. In The Winner the god-like character of Kingman looks
down
on the casino and pulls the plug when the protagonist threatens
to defy probability: if anyone does ‘get lucky’, the gods will destroy him.
Rounders, on the other hand, locates fatality in the choice of which game
to play: one’s course in life is only apparently chosen but in reality deter-
mined by ‘destiny’. The game itself, however, is represented as some-
thing not to be won by luck but by skill in understanding the other
players, by application and tenacity. The latter approach is summed up
by Burke in Vachss’s Blue Belle (1988) when he forcefully advocates
approaching life as an active player, determinedly making choices rather
than believing that ‘your life is a damn dice game’ (217).
to defy probability: if anyone does ‘get lucky’, the gods will destroy him.
Rounders, on the other hand, locates fatality in the choice of which game
to play: one’s course in life is only apparently chosen but in reality deter-
mined by ‘destiny’. The game itself, however, is represented as some-
thing not to be won by luck but by skill in understanding the other
players, by application and tenacity. The latter approach is summed up
by Burke in Vachss’s Blue Belle (1988) when he forcefully advocates
approaching life as an active player, determinedly making choices rather
than believing that ‘your life is a damn dice game’ (217).
Game theorists take note of the fact that the
word ‘game’ might be
seen as having somewhat misleading connotations, that is, as implying
‘amusement, light-heartedness, and a recreational contest’,9 whereas in
truth the activities that can be modelled as games (economic and busi-
ness problems, the tactics of warfare or politics) involve serious and fun-
damental conflicts of interest. In the world of the thriller as well, the
trope of the game and the player is generally located in the wider
context of economic and political activities. At the same time, even in
the serious analyses of game theorists, the element of fun remains.10
This combination of entertainment and serious purpose very often
emerges in thriller narratives. Exploring the borderline between ‘serious’
necessity and playful indulgence or fantasy fulfilment is sometimes self-
reflexive: the thriller itself represents the difficulties of the real world
but at the same time absorbs readers into the world of play. But such
novels also bring to the fore, as one of the issues at stake in the moral
world of the thriller, the question of what prompts characters to cross
the line from necessity to indulgence in games for their own sake. This
sheer indulgence in game-playing and the diversity of intersecting
games are central elements, for example, in Robert B. Parker’s Chance
(1996), in which ‘the players in the Boston mob scene’ (230) carry on
with their ‘games’ in Las Vegas, or in George V. Higgins, Trust (1989), a
sly, allusive fable of crooked players set in 1968, in the run-up to Nixon’s
election as President. Higgins’ main character, Earl, the kind of anti-hero
the era deserves, is a sportsman who was in earlier years responsible for
fixing college basketball games - a crooked player for whom dishonest
used car-selling and blackmailing are just extensions of his earlier career.
Higgins gradually exposes a series of tangentially related forms of sport,
ranging from the low-level sleazy deals of Earl up to local political
manoeuvrings and, a little higher in the scale, to characters involved in
the Washington political scene, where Neil Cooke feels he’s ‘“a player
...You can say what you want about Richard M. Nixon... . But there’s
seen as having somewhat misleading connotations, that is, as implying
‘amusement, light-heartedness, and a recreational contest’,9 whereas in
truth the activities that can be modelled as games (economic and busi-
ness problems, the tactics of warfare or politics) involve serious and fun-
damental conflicts of interest. In the world of the thriller as well, the
trope of the game and the player is generally located in the wider
context of economic and political activities. At the same time, even in
the serious analyses of game theorists, the element of fun remains.10
This combination of entertainment and serious purpose very often
emerges in thriller narratives. Exploring the borderline between ‘serious’
necessity and playful indulgence or fantasy fulfilment is sometimes self-
reflexive: the thriller itself represents the difficulties of the real world
but at the same time absorbs readers into the world of play. But such
novels also bring to the fore, as one of the issues at stake in the moral
world of the thriller, the question of what prompts characters to cross
the line from necessity to indulgence in games for their own sake. This
sheer indulgence in game-playing and the diversity of intersecting
games are central elements, for example, in Robert B. Parker’s Chance
(1996), in which ‘the players in the Boston mob scene’ (230) carry on
with their ‘games’ in Las Vegas, or in George V. Higgins, Trust (1989), a
sly, allusive fable of crooked players set in 1968, in the run-up to Nixon’s
election as President. Higgins’ main character, Earl, the kind of anti-hero
the era deserves, is a sportsman who was in earlier years responsible for
fixing college basketball games - a crooked player for whom dishonest
used car-selling and blackmailing are just extensions of his earlier career.
Higgins gradually exposes a series of tangentially related forms of sport,
ranging from the low-level sleazy deals of Earl up to local political
manoeuvrings and, a little higher in the scale, to characters involved in
the Washington political scene, where Neil Cooke feels he’s ‘“a player
...You can say what you want about Richard M. Nixon... . But there’s
a
lot of us out there that know why Dick wants it, and by God, we’ll see that he gets it . . .”’
(231).
Part of the player’s skill, then, is
represented as his ability to choose
the right game and the right venue, and the narratives of such novels
often move forward by juxtaposing perspectives from within different
games. Higgins does this largely by the creation of revealing conversa-
tions amongst the various players. The more usual method is to use the
multiple viewpoints produced by shifting first- or close third-person
narration, as in a recent British thriller, Greg Williams’ Diamond Geezers
(1997), which is structured around four separate game plans, each
with its own rules and goals: Asian-rights activists trying to gain
political leverage; Ron, a small-time criminal, wanting to stay on top of
things; a protagonist who pretends to play on Ron’s team as a move
in his own game (running off with Ron’s wife); and Councillor Goodge,
manipulating the other players to enhance his public image. What
Ron and Goodge have in common is a recognition that ‘maintaining a
positive image in a competitive world is of the utmost importance’
(126). Although Goodge is, in the end, the main player who benefits
from the ‘show’ created, his triumph is accidental and he is in no sense
the god-like controller of the game. He is, however, a tenacious player,
and is ready at the end, as a prospective Member of Parliament, to
take another step in the hierarchy of the game - to ‘leap into another
league’ (41).
the right game and the right venue, and the narratives of such novels
often move forward by juxtaposing perspectives from within different
games. Higgins does this largely by the creation of revealing conversa-
tions amongst the various players. The more usual method is to use the
multiple viewpoints produced by shifting first- or close third-person
narration, as in a recent British thriller, Greg Williams’ Diamond Geezers
(1997), which is structured around four separate game plans, each
with its own rules and goals: Asian-rights activists trying to gain
political leverage; Ron, a small-time criminal, wanting to stay on top of
things; a protagonist who pretends to play on Ron’s team as a move
in his own game (running off with Ron’s wife); and Councillor Goodge,
manipulating the other players to enhance his public image. What
Ron and Goodge have in common is a recognition that ‘maintaining a
positive image in a competitive world is of the utmost importance’
(126). Although Goodge is, in the end, the main player who benefits
from the ‘show’ created, his triumph is accidental and he is in no sense
the god-like controller of the game. He is, however, a tenacious player,
and is ready at the end, as a prospective Member of Parliament, to
take another step in the hierarchy of the game - to ‘leap into another
league’ (41).
The implication in Diamond Geezers is that everyone who is a fully
functioning member of society is a player. In Williams’ novel, the action
is mainly male-dominated, but many writers of the eighties and nineties
include women amongst their key competitors. In Eugene Izzi’s Players,
an American thriller of the mid-1990s, it is only the simpleton, Mute,
who thinks in a fatalistic way that any success must bring punishment
(‘God must be planning something seriously bad for him tomorrow’
[350]). Throughout, Izzi juxtaposes the gambles everyone takes with the
different ways in which they all try to control their fates, expanding his
cast of players and allowing us to follow all of the intersecting paths of
many characters who would be marginalised in other types of thriller.
The emphasis is on choice and refusal to surrender passively to fate, and
Izzi pointedly gives women equal status as players, whether they are
unscrupulously sampling the exhilaration of coming out on top (‘This,
she knew, was something she could get used to’ [133-5]) or justifiably
rejecting a passive domestic role to pursue success in a game of their
own choosing. In Charles Willeford’s Kiss Your Ass Good-bye (1987) the
protagonist prides himself on his skill in the battle of the sexes, always
functioning member of society is a player. In Williams’ novel, the action
is mainly male-dominated, but many writers of the eighties and nineties
include women amongst their key competitors. In Eugene Izzi’s Players,
an American thriller of the mid-1990s, it is only the simpleton, Mute,
who thinks in a fatalistic way that any success must bring punishment
(‘God must be planning something seriously bad for him tomorrow’
[350]). Throughout, Izzi juxtaposes the gambles everyone takes with the
different ways in which they all try to control their fates, expanding his
cast of players and allowing us to follow all of the intersecting paths of
many characters who would be marginalised in other types of thriller.
The emphasis is on choice and refusal to surrender passively to fate, and
Izzi pointedly gives women equal status as players, whether they are
unscrupulously sampling the exhilaration of coming out on top (‘This,
she knew, was something she could get used to’ [133-5]) or justifiably
rejecting a passive domestic role to pursue success in a game of their
own choosing. In Charles Willeford’s Kiss Your Ass Good-bye (1987) the
protagonist prides himself on his skill in the battle of the sexes, always
winning
until he meets ‘Jannaire’, who completely misleads him about
the nature of the game being played. Similarly, in Andrew Coburn’s
Goldilocks (1989), role reversals make women much more active com-
petitors, breaking free from domesticity. One of the few Coburn char-
acters to emerge at the end in a stronger position is an ageing widow
who, after a lifetime of repression, discovers that she, too, can take part
in the game, ultimately bidding farewell to the last man, ‘Goldilocks’,
who is ever likely to try taking over her house with ‘“When you get to
hell . . . tell Harold [her dead husband] everything”’ (242-3). Yet
the nature of the game being played. Similarly, in Andrew Coburn’s
Goldilocks (1989), role reversals make women much more active com-
petitors, breaking free from domesticity. One of the few Coburn char-
acters to emerge at the end in a stronger position is an ageing widow
who, after a lifetime of repression, discovers that she, too, can take part
in the game, ultimately bidding farewell to the last man, ‘Goldilocks’,
who is ever likely to try taking over her house with ‘“When you get to
hell . . . tell Harold [her dead husband] everything”’ (242-3). Yet
another
kind of empowered woman is at the centre of Nicholas Blincoe’s Acid Casuals (1995), in which the reversal of expectations
involves casting
Estela, who used to be Paul, as a transsexual hit woman, a ‘modern woman’ (22) who has
taken control of her life by changing her gender - ‘reborn as a killer tart’ (209).
Many of the players so far considered are
represented as motivated by
economic need, but the satisfactions of selecting a game, learning the
winning moves and shaping the story of one’s own victory (‘“tell Harold
everything”’) often assume much greater importance. The degree of
choice and narrative control associated with being a successful player
by and large runs counter to any strain of economic determinism. Even
where a novel begins from an ascent out of economic deprivation, play
is both a response to financial need and an activity that is an end in
itself. In No Beast so Fierce (1973), Edward Bunker, who has converted
his own experience of crime and imprisonment into compellingly direct
thrillers (and who also became a familiar face when he played Taran-
tino’s Mr Blue in Reservoir Dogs), represents his narrator as determined
to challenge his fate by defining his own rules of the game: ‘I declared
myself free from all rules except those I wanted to accept - and I’d
change those as I felt the whim.’ Crime is where he belongs, his ‘free
choice’ and also ‘destiny’: ‘Fuck society! Fuck their game!’ (107-8). His
grim resolution originates in deprivation and a deep-seated sense of
grievance, but soon develops into something more than the urge ‘to
strike back’ (143-4). By the end of the novel, we see clearly how much
it is the activity itself rather than need that drives him. He has a craving
to gamble and, having escaped to an idyllic ‘faraway place in the sun’,
he grows ‘tired of peace’. It is much more than dwindling resources that
lures him back to his old life: ‘My stomach is nervous with anticipation
of playing the game again’ (300-1).
economic need, but the satisfactions of selecting a game, learning the
winning moves and shaping the story of one’s own victory (‘“tell Harold
everything”’) often assume much greater importance. The degree of
choice and narrative control associated with being a successful player
by and large runs counter to any strain of economic determinism. Even
where a novel begins from an ascent out of economic deprivation, play
is both a response to financial need and an activity that is an end in
itself. In No Beast so Fierce (1973), Edward Bunker, who has converted
his own experience of crime and imprisonment into compellingly direct
thrillers (and who also became a familiar face when he played Taran-
tino’s Mr Blue in Reservoir Dogs), represents his narrator as determined
to challenge his fate by defining his own rules of the game: ‘I declared
myself free from all rules except those I wanted to accept - and I’d
change those as I felt the whim.’ Crime is where he belongs, his ‘free
choice’ and also ‘destiny’: ‘Fuck society! Fuck their game!’ (107-8). His
grim resolution originates in deprivation and a deep-seated sense of
grievance, but soon develops into something more than the urge ‘to
strike back’ (143-4). By the end of the novel, we see clearly how much
it is the activity itself rather than need that drives him. He has a craving
to gamble and, having escaped to an idyllic ‘faraway place in the sun’,
he grows ‘tired of peace’. It is much more than dwindling resources that
lures him back to his old life: ‘My stomach is nervous with anticipation
of playing the game again’ (300-1).
In many black crime novels of the period,
there is a similar combi-
nation of harsh necessity and pleasure in being a successful player, with
playing the game signifying an assertion of the ability to choose and a
nation of harsh necessity and pleasure in being a successful player, with
playing the game signifying an assertion of the ability to choose and a
rejection
of blind chance. The early seventies novels of Robert Dean
Pharr, representing characters who ‘just happen to be in the numbers
racket’,11 suggest a world governed by fate. In The Book of Numbers (1970)
and S.R.O. (1971), the numbers racket, like dice and the roulette wheel,
is the kind of gamble that images a doomed appeal to fortune in the
face of hopeless odds. On the other hand, however, Pharr creates rep-
resentations of the kind of gamble that depends not on luck but on skill,
resolution and, a key aptitude for the games-player, the ability to bluff.
These are talents also much in evidence, for example, in such conman
novels as Trick Baby (1967) and The Long White Con (1977), by Iceberg
Slim (Robert Beck), himself an experienced player who spent his
younger days as a pimp and hustler. In the darkly comic fantasy of
Pharr’s Giveadamn Brown (1978), an unpromising, ‘unhandsome’ young
southern boy proves himself a worthy heir to a drug empire by hitting
on a bluff, a kind of philosopher’s stone of heroin production, the ‘one
ingredient’ needed to produce ‘the finest synthetic dynamite in the
world . . .’ (133). Though Giveadamn is an innocent who works by untu-
tored intuition alone, his grasp of the power of the dream enables him
to come up with a piece of inspired trickery and so to take control of
his destiny.
Pharr, representing characters who ‘just happen to be in the numbers
racket’,11 suggest a world governed by fate. In The Book of Numbers (1970)
and S.R.O. (1971), the numbers racket, like dice and the roulette wheel,
is the kind of gamble that images a doomed appeal to fortune in the
face of hopeless odds. On the other hand, however, Pharr creates rep-
resentations of the kind of gamble that depends not on luck but on skill,
resolution and, a key aptitude for the games-player, the ability to bluff.
These are talents also much in evidence, for example, in such conman
novels as Trick Baby (1967) and The Long White Con (1977), by Iceberg
Slim (Robert Beck), himself an experienced player who spent his
younger days as a pimp and hustler. In the darkly comic fantasy of
Pharr’s Giveadamn Brown (1978), an unpromising, ‘unhandsome’ young
southern boy proves himself a worthy heir to a drug empire by hitting
on a bluff, a kind of philosopher’s stone of heroin production, the ‘one
ingredient’ needed to produce ‘the finest synthetic dynamite in the
world . . .’ (133). Though Giveadamn is an innocent who works by untu-
tored intuition alone, his grasp of the power of the dream enables him
to come up with a piece of inspired trickery and so to take control of
his destiny.
Most of the players in the black street novels
of this period are con-
siderably less innocent than Giveadamn. Like the gangster anti-heroes
of Burnett and Trail, they come from an impoverished ethnic minority
seeking upward mobility,12 men shaped by harsh circumstance, behav-
ing brutally, full of delusions of grandeur. Though sympathetically
created, their characters are explained not by the impaired masculinity
of many noir protagonists but by a kind of macho self-assertion which,
viewed from a female perspective, can be seen as disabling in terms of
community. For the players themselves, however, it is what empowers
them as agents, and is an essential element in the games in which they
are engaged, not least because their reputations on the street depend
upon toughness in enforcing agreements and policing the behaviour of
other players. Some of the most striking examples of this sort of narra-
tive are Donald Goines’ novels, such as Whoreson: the Story of a Ghetto
Pimp (1972) and Street Players (1973). For the pimp-protagonist of the
latter, all that counts is being known as ‘one of the big players’ rather
than as some ‘chili-bowl pimp’ (125): ‘“Whatever I did, Duke, you can
bet I did it like a player”’ (10). His arrogance and violence are fully
in view, but are seen as rational elements in the game he is playing,
establishing the credibility of his threats and the substance of his
reputation.13
siderably less innocent than Giveadamn. Like the gangster anti-heroes
of Burnett and Trail, they come from an impoverished ethnic minority
seeking upward mobility,12 men shaped by harsh circumstance, behav-
ing brutally, full of delusions of grandeur. Though sympathetically
created, their characters are explained not by the impaired masculinity
of many noir protagonists but by a kind of macho self-assertion which,
viewed from a female perspective, can be seen as disabling in terms of
community. For the players themselves, however, it is what empowers
them as agents, and is an essential element in the games in which they
are engaged, not least because their reputations on the street depend
upon toughness in enforcing agreements and policing the behaviour of
other players. Some of the most striking examples of this sort of narra-
tive are Donald Goines’ novels, such as Whoreson: the Story of a Ghetto
Pimp (1972) and Street Players (1973). For the pimp-protagonist of the
latter, all that counts is being known as ‘one of the big players’ rather
than as some ‘chili-bowl pimp’ (125): ‘“Whatever I did, Duke, you can
bet I did it like a player”’ (10). His arrogance and violence are fully
in view, but are seen as rational elements in the game he is playing,
establishing the credibility of his threats and the substance of his
reputation.13
Britain has also, in the 1990s, seen the
publication of several black
street novels, most notably the Yardie novels of Victor Headley.
Headley’s Yardie (1992), like Goines’ novels, centres on characters who
are players in the rough games of drug dealing and prostitution. The
protagonist, ‘D.’, ‘the Front Line’s newest Don’, like Whoreson or Earl,
learns his game at an early age. Headley puts more explicit emphasis on
adverse economic circumstances than does Goines, writing in his
Preface to Excess (1993) that ‘the worst in anyone’ is brought out by
‘deprivation, lack of opportunity and general sense of frustration’ (viii).
But if necessity is the original spur, male pride in being a player is also
a powerful inducement: D. ‘was the ruling king, and all the hustlers and
players were his subjects and acting as such’ (103). Inspiring both love
and fear, he gains the constant flattery of an ‘army of sycophants’,
adding to ‘the inflated view he had of himself’ (103). As in Goines’
novel, we are asked to side more with the male protagonist than with
the woman whose testimony gets him arrested for rape and murder. His
sympathetic role is confirmed by female devotion, the end of the novel
(like that of Players) being dominated by a loving woman’s shock at his
fate. The self-determining power of such characters is evident, and
remains even when a stronger female point of view is added to re-
inforce our sense of the cost of the game, of agency achieved at the
expense of community by a male player who is a ‘rogue’ rather than a
‘homebody’.14 Karline Smith’s Moss Side Massive (1994), for example,
tells a very similar kind of story, but one in which female perspectives
are more fully represented, and in which the mother is a powerful figure,
though not a sufficient force to stop mayhem amongst her sons, par-
ticularly given that she is denied the truth about the street life that sup-
ports them. Just as in, say, Trail’s Scarface, there is a split in the male self
between family identity and the role of the street player (the mother in
Moss Side Massive is ‘happy to see her son, Clifton’, but would not be
happy to see him if she knew he was also a ‘bad bwai called Storm’
[63-4]).
street novels, most notably the Yardie novels of Victor Headley.
Headley’s Yardie (1992), like Goines’ novels, centres on characters who
are players in the rough games of drug dealing and prostitution. The
protagonist, ‘D.’, ‘the Front Line’s newest Don’, like Whoreson or Earl,
learns his game at an early age. Headley puts more explicit emphasis on
adverse economic circumstances than does Goines, writing in his
Preface to Excess (1993) that ‘the worst in anyone’ is brought out by
‘deprivation, lack of opportunity and general sense of frustration’ (viii).
But if necessity is the original spur, male pride in being a player is also
a powerful inducement: D. ‘was the ruling king, and all the hustlers and
players were his subjects and acting as such’ (103). Inspiring both love
and fear, he gains the constant flattery of an ‘army of sycophants’,
adding to ‘the inflated view he had of himself’ (103). As in Goines’
novel, we are asked to side more with the male protagonist than with
the woman whose testimony gets him arrested for rape and murder. His
sympathetic role is confirmed by female devotion, the end of the novel
(like that of Players) being dominated by a loving woman’s shock at his
fate. The self-determining power of such characters is evident, and
remains even when a stronger female point of view is added to re-
inforce our sense of the cost of the game, of agency achieved at the
expense of community by a male player who is a ‘rogue’ rather than a
‘homebody’.14 Karline Smith’s Moss Side Massive (1994), for example,
tells a very similar kind of story, but one in which female perspectives
are more fully represented, and in which the mother is a powerful figure,
though not a sufficient force to stop mayhem amongst her sons, par-
ticularly given that she is denied the truth about the street life that sup-
ports them. Just as in, say, Trail’s Scarface, there is a split in the male self
between family identity and the role of the street player (the mother in
Moss Side Massive is ‘happy to see her son, Clifton’, but would not be
happy to see him if she knew he was also a ‘bad bwai called Storm’
[63-4]).
In other novels in which the pressure of
economic necessity is less to
the fore, the metaphor of the player implies devising and playing games
for their own sake, independent of any rational end, such as reputation
or financial gain. Instead, the game involves entry into a world of
fantasy, more individualistic, less co-operative. All such games to some
extent isolate the player, not only separating him from his own family
group but, at the extreme, dividing him from most of his fellow men.
Elmore Leonard, for example, constructs the plot of City Primeval (1980)
around the competing sets of rules dividing his diverse groups of
the fore, the metaphor of the player implies devising and playing games
for their own sake, independent of any rational end, such as reputation
or financial gain. Instead, the game involves entry into a world of
fantasy, more individualistic, less co-operative. All such games to some
extent isolate the player, not only separating him from his own family
group but, at the extreme, dividing him from most of his fellow men.
Elmore Leonard, for example, constructs the plot of City Primeval (1980)
around the competing sets of rules dividing his diverse groups of
players.
At critical junctures there is doubt about which code will
prevail: do the ‘rules, like a game’, prohibit, say, killing a man who is
unarmed or can one coolly and deliberately choose this way of execut-
ing someone? Is a ‘good’ player like Raymond Cruz actually playing the
same kind of game as the psychotic Clement? Raymond sets him up for
a final shooting match, and, in refusing to play, Clement insists on how
much he and Raymond are actually alike, even though ‘“We got our
own rules and words we use”’ (101). Leonard often explores the attrac-
tion and potency of the role of the cowboy for men engaged in any
form of armed combat, as well as the moral ambiguities that such an
image conceals. As also, for example, in Riding the Rap (1995), there is
a distinct Wild West element in Raymond Cruz’s vision of how he will
deal with Clement: ‘“Mano a mano. No - more like High Noon. Gun-
fight at the O.K. Corral . . .”’ (139).15 This is not, however, the world of
‘Hang ‘em High’ (Riding the Rap, 249) and Raymond’s victory is accom-
plished by playing a game which he would, at the outset, have rejected
for the barbarity of its rules of play.
prevail: do the ‘rules, like a game’, prohibit, say, killing a man who is
unarmed or can one coolly and deliberately choose this way of execut-
ing someone? Is a ‘good’ player like Raymond Cruz actually playing the
same kind of game as the psychotic Clement? Raymond sets him up for
a final shooting match, and, in refusing to play, Clement insists on how
much he and Raymond are actually alike, even though ‘“We got our
own rules and words we use”’ (101). Leonard often explores the attrac-
tion and potency of the role of the cowboy for men engaged in any
form of armed combat, as well as the moral ambiguities that such an
image conceals. As also, for example, in Riding the Rap (1995), there is
a distinct Wild West element in Raymond Cruz’s vision of how he will
deal with Clement: ‘“Mano a mano. No - more like High Noon. Gun-
fight at the O.K. Corral . . .”’ (139).15 This is not, however, the world of
‘Hang ‘em High’ (Riding the Rap, 249) and Raymond’s victory is accom-
plished by playing a game which he would, at the outset, have rejected
for the barbarity of its rules of play.
The end of City
Primeval remains
ambiguous (and noir) primarily
because Raymond cannot actually think of a reply to the baffled
Clement’s dying ‘What did you kill me for?’ (274). There is no answer
to the question of what motivated him to compel Clement to play his
game. If ‘civilised’ rules of engagement are abandoned, it is only a short
step to the psychotic whose games are entirely his own. Amongst these
wholly ‘non-co-operative game players’, there is, for example, the
unhinged Terry, a hard man preparing for the apocalypse, in Charles
Higson’s The Full Whack (1995). Terry announces (as he beats a man to
death), ‘“Let me tell you about the rules. Rule one, I am the ref. See?
...Rule number three, there are no rules, everything is allowed...
Good game. Good game”’ (161-2). Psychosis, in game-player narratives,
is imaged as the playing of a game so detached from usual norms
that there is no element of rationality or co-operative behaviour or
enlightened self-interest in the player’s conduct. In its extreme form,
such psychosis produces characters like the killer in Julian Symons’
The Players and the Game (1972), Mr Darling, a mild-mannered estate
agent who writes a journal in which he expounds his ‘Theory of
Behaviour as Games’ (10). Like Terry, he sets himself up as creator and
referee of his own rules of play and is determined to make others play
in his game: ‘“Consider this as a game, and yourself as one of the
players,”’ he says to a girl he is about to kill (142-3). In contrast to, say,
the psychopaths of Jim Thompson’s novels, Terry and Mr Darling are
not used to reflect on or to reflect the psychological malaise of the
because Raymond cannot actually think of a reply to the baffled
Clement’s dying ‘What did you kill me for?’ (274). There is no answer
to the question of what motivated him to compel Clement to play his
game. If ‘civilised’ rules of engagement are abandoned, it is only a short
step to the psychotic whose games are entirely his own. Amongst these
wholly ‘non-co-operative game players’, there is, for example, the
unhinged Terry, a hard man preparing for the apocalypse, in Charles
Higson’s The Full Whack (1995). Terry announces (as he beats a man to
death), ‘“Let me tell you about the rules. Rule one, I am the ref. See?
...Rule number three, there are no rules, everything is allowed...
Good game. Good game”’ (161-2). Psychosis, in game-player narratives,
is imaged as the playing of a game so detached from usual norms
that there is no element of rationality or co-operative behaviour or
enlightened self-interest in the player’s conduct. In its extreme form,
such psychosis produces characters like the killer in Julian Symons’
The Players and the Game (1972), Mr Darling, a mild-mannered estate
agent who writes a journal in which he expounds his ‘Theory of
Behaviour as Games’ (10). Like Terry, he sets himself up as creator and
referee of his own rules of play and is determined to make others play
in his game: ‘“Consider this as a game, and yourself as one of the
players,”’ he says to a girl he is about to kill (142-3). In contrast to, say,
the psychopaths of Jim Thompson’s novels, Terry and Mr Darling are
not used to reflect on or to reflect the psychological malaise of the
society
they live in, but to act as limit points of individualistic prefer-
ence. They are extreme examples, unjustified by economic necessity, of
‘making your own rules’ and saying to conventional society, in viola-
tion of all ‘stable social convention’, ‘“Fuck their game!”’ The rules they
play by are so far removed from ‘common knowledge of rationality and
the game’s structure’ that there can be no ‘reasonable conjecture’ about
their next moves.16
ence. They are extreme examples, unjustified by economic necessity, of
‘making your own rules’ and saying to conventional society, in viola-
tion of all ‘stable social convention’, ‘“Fuck their game!”’ The rules they
play by are so far removed from ‘common knowledge of rationality and
the game’s structure’ that there can be no ‘reasonable conjecture’ about
their next moves.16
The eyes of the beholders
‘It’s
not necessarily whether you win or lose, darling,’ she once
said. ‘It’s how you look while you’re playing the game.’17
said. ‘It’s how you look while you’re playing the game.’17
For
most of the players discussed above, performance is a central
element in the games they are playing. In the black gangster street
novels, for example, all of the players are, in one way or another, putting
themselves on show. Reminiscent of the thirties gangster, with his
extravagant style and ostentatious consumption, Earl has his jewellery
and perfect clothes, D. his green Mercedes and ‘soft-leather’ shoes’ (Moss
Side Massive, 44), Clifton his designer sunglasses, leather jacket and Tim-
berland boots. For them, as for earlier gangsters, the role assumed is
what ensures their upward mobility. This heightened awareness of
making an appearance, of the creation of an image and of observing
eyes, is even stronger in contemporary than in traditional noir, in
which, of course, tension was frequently created by the ways in which
men looked at women. What we see in more recent novels is a greater
mutuality, that is, of men and women looking at one another. So, for
example, in the straightforward and unsubtle games of Goines’ ‘street
players’, mutual appraisal is a constant element in the power struggles
taking place. Charles tries to take the play out of Earl’s hands with some
young girls he is staring at contemptuously, but is put down by the
boldest of them, who returns his attention by staring ‘straight into his
eyes’ (Street Players, 22-3). Earl, whose ‘looking’ is much more success-
ful (he studies, appraises and chooses his whores), very consciously
makes himself the object of feminine admiration, taking ‘just as much
trouble dressing as a woman would’ (45). Both watcher and watched
have power. Earl, in both capacities, has most power, but female char-
acters also deliberately exploit both roles and, although one could not
pretend that in Goines’ novel the power of the gaze is equal for men
and women, there is clearly a degree of reciprocity.
element in the games they are playing. In the black gangster street
novels, for example, all of the players are, in one way or another, putting
themselves on show. Reminiscent of the thirties gangster, with his
extravagant style and ostentatious consumption, Earl has his jewellery
and perfect clothes, D. his green Mercedes and ‘soft-leather’ shoes’ (Moss
Side Massive, 44), Clifton his designer sunglasses, leather jacket and Tim-
berland boots. For them, as for earlier gangsters, the role assumed is
what ensures their upward mobility. This heightened awareness of
making an appearance, of the creation of an image and of observing
eyes, is even stronger in contemporary than in traditional noir, in
which, of course, tension was frequently created by the ways in which
men looked at women. What we see in more recent novels is a greater
mutuality, that is, of men and women looking at one another. So, for
example, in the straightforward and unsubtle games of Goines’ ‘street
players’, mutual appraisal is a constant element in the power struggles
taking place. Charles tries to take the play out of Earl’s hands with some
young girls he is staring at contemptuously, but is put down by the
boldest of them, who returns his attention by staring ‘straight into his
eyes’ (Street Players, 22-3). Earl, whose ‘looking’ is much more success-
ful (he studies, appraises and chooses his whores), very consciously
makes himself the object of feminine admiration, taking ‘just as much
trouble dressing as a woman would’ (45). Both watcher and watched
have power. Earl, in both capacities, has most power, but female char-
acters also deliberately exploit both roles and, although one could not
pretend that in Goines’ novel the power of the gaze is equal for men
and women, there is clearly a degree of reciprocity.
Female-authored novels of the nineties, like
those of Duffy, Moore,
Zahavi and Hendricks, represent many women who ‘appropriate the
male gaze’, taking on an aggressive role in other ways as well. The
control or manipulation of the gaze, whether by using one’s role as
object (Duffy) or by being the one who gazes (Moore, Zahavi and Hen-
dricks), is seen as involving entry into a dangerous game. As with the
games considered above, and as with the voyeuristic activities repre-
sented in traditional film noir (for example, Double Indemnity), partici-
pation may be empowering but also carries the risk of a loss of control.
Stella Duffy’s Calendar Girl (1994), one of Duffy’s series of dyke detec-
tive novels featuring Saz Martin, creates a ‘woman-as-enigma’ who
remains inscrutable in spite of the desire of other characters to know
and possess her. The novel’s title summons up one of the most clichéd
images of woman-as-sex-object, though in the end we feel sure that she
has not been a passive object. She instead seems to have been someone
who has used her creation of roles as a choice that allows her to func-
tion in a society in which ‘face value’ is all, as an assertion of indepen-
dence and even, paradoxically, of integrity. In a New York club,
‘Calendar Girls’ (65-8), which resembles the classic film noir site of
female display, the casino that looks like a brothel, she is one of the
identically ‘designed’ girls (given the same hair and eye colour) who
tempt men to part with their money. The idea of a constructed iden-
tity, created for display and consumption, runs all through the novel,
with the ‘calendar girl’ as someone in search of excitement, playing
other roles in which she tempts both men and women into risk and
danger. A duplicitous yet also an intensely sympathetic figure whose
death is mourned as the novel closes, she has affinities with Karen
DiCilia in Elmore Leonard’s Split Images (1981), who plays a role that
makes her ‘like a movie star’ (81) and is willingly trapped by her enjoy-
ment of a world in which her flamboyance attracts looks.
Zahavi and Hendricks, represent many women who ‘appropriate the
male gaze’, taking on an aggressive role in other ways as well. The
control or manipulation of the gaze, whether by using one’s role as
object (Duffy) or by being the one who gazes (Moore, Zahavi and Hen-
dricks), is seen as involving entry into a dangerous game. As with the
games considered above, and as with the voyeuristic activities repre-
sented in traditional film noir (for example, Double Indemnity), partici-
pation may be empowering but also carries the risk of a loss of control.
Stella Duffy’s Calendar Girl (1994), one of Duffy’s series of dyke detec-
tive novels featuring Saz Martin, creates a ‘woman-as-enigma’ who
remains inscrutable in spite of the desire of other characters to know
and possess her. The novel’s title summons up one of the most clichéd
images of woman-as-sex-object, though in the end we feel sure that she
has not been a passive object. She instead seems to have been someone
who has used her creation of roles as a choice that allows her to func-
tion in a society in which ‘face value’ is all, as an assertion of indepen-
dence and even, paradoxically, of integrity. In a New York club,
‘Calendar Girls’ (65-8), which resembles the classic film noir site of
female display, the casino that looks like a brothel, she is one of the
identically ‘designed’ girls (given the same hair and eye colour) who
tempt men to part with their money. The idea of a constructed iden-
tity, created for display and consumption, runs all through the novel,
with the ‘calendar girl’ as someone in search of excitement, playing
other roles in which she tempts both men and women into risk and
danger. A duplicitous yet also an intensely sympathetic figure whose
death is mourned as the novel closes, she has affinities with Karen
DiCilia in Elmore Leonard’s Split Images (1981), who plays a role that
makes her ‘like a movie star’ (81) and is willingly trapped by her enjoy-
ment of a world in which her flamboyance attracts looks.
In feminist crime fiction we often see the
formation of identity
through the solution to a crime.18 Duffy’s novel, which is to some extent
a piece of conventional detective fiction, with alternate chapters pro-
viding an investigative narrative, is brought closer to noir by the loss of
community and the sense of unknowability (that is, we cannot finally
know whether the woman at the centre has a core of integrity or has
simply been ‘fragmented’). A more unequivocally noir vision informs
Moore’s In the Cut (1995), in which the dangers of both gazing at others
and displaying oneself are made more insistently evident. As in much
traditional noir, the narrator’s insecure identity finds self-preservation
through the solution to a crime.18 Duffy’s novel, which is to some extent
a piece of conventional detective fiction, with alternate chapters pro-
viding an investigative narrative, is brought closer to noir by the loss of
community and the sense of unknowability (that is, we cannot finally
know whether the woman at the centre has a core of integrity or has
simply been ‘fragmented’). A more unequivocally noir vision informs
Moore’s In the Cut (1995), in which the dangers of both gazing at others
and displaying oneself are made more insistently evident. As in much
traditional noir, the narrator’s insecure identity finds self-preservation
impossible.
Moore’s protagonist, Frannie, in many respects occupies
the role of the femme fatale, independent, sexually defined, courting
danger, anything but domestic. The male protagonist of earlier noir
often misjudges the motives and character of the woman at whom he
gazes and is entangled by desire, as Jeff Bailey is in Out of the Past, from
the moment he sees Kathie Moffett coming into the bar out of the sun-
light. Frannie meets her end as a result of sundry such misjudgements.
In the Cut begins with an act of voyeurism. Frannie happens on a man
who is being given a blow job by a red-headed woman who is later
found murdered and ‘disarticulated’. Frannie’s voyeurism is a complex
act of looking in which she reflects on her own difference from the girl
(‘oh, I don’t do it that way, with a hitch of the chin like a dog nuzzling
his master’s hand’ [9]) but also wants to come closer to the girl’s own
perspective. In the course of a narrative during which she takes much
pleasure in looking - ‘curious to see if the performance of his dressing
would make me want him again . . .’ (88) - she traverses the distance
between herself and the girl. In the end, in spite of her boldness and
resource, she is as helpless as the redhead.19 Like the male noir protag-
onist, she commits errors of perception, ‘looking’ without really seeing
until it is too late, and finds herself unable to remain a detached, safe
observer. She cannot remain ‘in the cut’ - ‘A word used by gamblers for
when you be peepin’. . . . From vagina. A place to hide’ (178-9).
the role of the femme fatale, independent, sexually defined, courting
danger, anything but domestic. The male protagonist of earlier noir
often misjudges the motives and character of the woman at whom he
gazes and is entangled by desire, as Jeff Bailey is in Out of the Past, from
the moment he sees Kathie Moffett coming into the bar out of the sun-
light. Frannie meets her end as a result of sundry such misjudgements.
In the Cut begins with an act of voyeurism. Frannie happens on a man
who is being given a blow job by a red-headed woman who is later
found murdered and ‘disarticulated’. Frannie’s voyeurism is a complex
act of looking in which she reflects on her own difference from the girl
(‘oh, I don’t do it that way, with a hitch of the chin like a dog nuzzling
his master’s hand’ [9]) but also wants to come closer to the girl’s own
perspective. In the course of a narrative during which she takes much
pleasure in looking - ‘curious to see if the performance of his dressing
would make me want him again . . .’ (88) - she traverses the distance
between herself and the girl. In the end, in spite of her boldness and
resource, she is as helpless as the redhead.19 Like the male noir protag-
onist, she commits errors of perception, ‘looking’ without really seeing
until it is too late, and finds herself unable to remain a detached, safe
observer. She cannot remain ‘in the cut’ - ‘A word used by gamblers for
when you be peepin’. . . . From vagina. A place to hide’ (178-9).
Whereas Frannie’s obsessive looking forces her
out of her secure
female place into victimisation, other female voyeurs are led to abandon
their female locations and roles in more radical ways. In assuming
control of the gaze they also move towards male violence, creating
revenge fantasies that much more directly constitute an assault on male-
centred narratives. Both Zahavi’s Dirty Weekend and Hendrick’s Miami
Purity have the kind of extremity associated with satiric inversion.
Zahavi’s novel begins with Bella ‘in the cut’, peeping out from her safe
basement, only to realise that she herself is being observed by ‘A man
in black. Looking out of his window and down into hers’ (16). Once
she decides that she has ‘had enough’ of being in this sort of position,
her story ‘really starts’ (21-2). She takes control of the whole dynamic
of seeing and being seen, presenting herself as a sexual object, re-
inventing herself until she becomes their most ‘fertile fantasy’, looking
back at and evaluating the male gaze: ‘She turned to look at him. . .
His piggy eyes were watching her’ (94-5). In returning the gaze, she
judges the men she encounters as grotesquely unappetising physical
objects. Having also appropriated male violence, Bella survives in the
end as a mythic figure. The victim has emerged as a triumphant aggres-
female place into victimisation, other female voyeurs are led to abandon
their female locations and roles in more radical ways. In assuming
control of the gaze they also move towards male violence, creating
revenge fantasies that much more directly constitute an assault on male-
centred narratives. Both Zahavi’s Dirty Weekend and Hendrick’s Miami
Purity have the kind of extremity associated with satiric inversion.
Zahavi’s novel begins with Bella ‘in the cut’, peeping out from her safe
basement, only to realise that she herself is being observed by ‘A man
in black. Looking out of his window and down into hers’ (16). Once
she decides that she has ‘had enough’ of being in this sort of position,
her story ‘really starts’ (21-2). She takes control of the whole dynamic
of seeing and being seen, presenting herself as a sexual object, re-
inventing herself until she becomes their most ‘fertile fantasy’, looking
back at and evaluating the male gaze: ‘She turned to look at him. . .
His piggy eyes were watching her’ (94-5). In returning the gaze, she
judges the men she encounters as grotesquely unappetising physical
objects. Having also appropriated male violence, Bella survives in the
end as a mythic figure. The victim has emerged as a triumphant aggres-
sor,
both a caricature (the exaggerated embodiment of sexual violence) and a warning to the male
aggressor and the male voyeur: ‘If you see a woman walking . . . Just let her pass you by’
(185).
Vicki Hendricks’ Miami Purity, another female rewriting of male
thriller conventions, gives a much more positive role to the female gaze.
Hendricks creates more interesting ambiguities, in that her novel does
not depend so much for its effect simply on a heightening of either the
victim or the aggressor roles. Her protagonist is neither satirically
reduced to simple-mindedness (like Bella) nor knowingly introspective
(like Frannie) but intermittently perceptive, often wayward and mis-
taken, admirable mainly for her temporary determination to lift herself
out of a life which has no real narrative (since she can remember
nothing of it). ‘Sherri’ is both victim and aggressor, wholeheartedly
sexual, capable of redefining herself, as suggested by her changes of
name. She is inclined to succumb to ‘fate’ but also willing to work very
hard at controlling her destiny. We are ultimately left unsure about the
way in which to apportion blame, since her sexuality, like that of the
male noir protagonist, has a strong element of fatality about it (‘Sexual
heat was always permanent in me, no escaping it’ [29]) and her erotic
choice is the all too aptly named Payne. Hendricks’ recent Iguana Love
(1999), set in a world of scuba diving, body building and numerous
naked bodies, is even more centred on ultimately empty and self-
destructive acts of voyeurism. “I have to look,”’ the narrator, Ramona,
tells one Greek sculpture in tights, ‘“You’ve created yourself for look-
ing”’ (134). In the same scene, Ramona begins her own development
towards a very male kind of muscular perfection, becoming like the men
who are the objects of her voyeuristic fascination, ‘a solid construction’
(185) that is both a remarkable spectacle and a killing machine: ‘My
arms were steel, my tits were rock . . . I was the stronger brute’ (179). In
her struggle to achieve the reversal, however, Ramona has become not
only a cold aggressor but her own victim, her ‘solid construction’
metaphorically linked to a cage, ‘the way I built myself’ (185).
thriller conventions, gives a much more positive role to the female gaze.
Hendricks creates more interesting ambiguities, in that her novel does
not depend so much for its effect simply on a heightening of either the
victim or the aggressor roles. Her protagonist is neither satirically
reduced to simple-mindedness (like Bella) nor knowingly introspective
(like Frannie) but intermittently perceptive, often wayward and mis-
taken, admirable mainly for her temporary determination to lift herself
out of a life which has no real narrative (since she can remember
nothing of it). ‘Sherri’ is both victim and aggressor, wholeheartedly
sexual, capable of redefining herself, as suggested by her changes of
name. She is inclined to succumb to ‘fate’ but also willing to work very
hard at controlling her destiny. We are ultimately left unsure about the
way in which to apportion blame, since her sexuality, like that of the
male noir protagonist, has a strong element of fatality about it (‘Sexual
heat was always permanent in me, no escaping it’ [29]) and her erotic
choice is the all too aptly named Payne. Hendricks’ recent Iguana Love
(1999), set in a world of scuba diving, body building and numerous
naked bodies, is even more centred on ultimately empty and self-
destructive acts of voyeurism. “I have to look,”’ the narrator, Ramona,
tells one Greek sculpture in tights, ‘“You’ve created yourself for look-
ing”’ (134). In the same scene, Ramona begins her own development
towards a very male kind of muscular perfection, becoming like the men
who are the objects of her voyeuristic fascination, ‘a solid construction’
(185) that is both a remarkable spectacle and a killing machine: ‘My
arms were steel, my tits were rock . . . I was the stronger brute’ (179). In
her struggle to achieve the reversal, however, Ramona has become not
only a cold aggressor but her own victim, her ‘solid construction’
metaphorically linked to a cage, ‘the way I built myself’ (185).
Several male writers of the eighties and
nineties, for example Jim
Nisbet, Marc Behm and Paul Theroux, have also developed markedly
voyeuristic themes. In their work, however, the focus is more likely to
remain on the mind of the male voyeur and his complicity in a wider
system that trades in voyeuristic experiences - the market place, regimes
of representation, the network for the production and distribution of
pornography, the use of such images in both blackmail and surveillance.
One of the most sympathetic representations of male voyeurism is Marc
Behm’s Eye of the Beholder (1980), in which we are led from the start to
Nisbet, Marc Behm and Paul Theroux, have also developed markedly
voyeuristic themes. In their work, however, the focus is more likely to
remain on the mind of the male voyeur and his complicity in a wider
system that trades in voyeuristic experiences - the market place, regimes
of representation, the network for the production and distribution of
pornography, the use of such images in both blackmail and surveillance.
One of the most sympathetic representations of male voyeurism is Marc
Behm’s Eye of the Beholder (1980), in which we are led from the start to
identify
with ‘the Eye’, entering his perceptual space, and
feeling
uneasily complicit
in his compulsive ‘Peeping-Tom-ism’, but
also
coming
to understand his lack of control. His voyeuristic position does
not give him ‘masculine dominance’. Although the woman on whom
he spies is not co-operating deliberately with him, there is no sense of
her victimisation.20 Behm resembles writers like Goodis, Willeford and
Thompson in the way that he takes genre conventions and makes of
them something quite original. Eye of the Beholder is an intense and com-
pelling reworking of the private eye as voyeur. The ‘Eye’, like earlier noir
investigators, is distinguished from the classical detective by his own
involvement in the crimes he records, prowling outside windows, com-
pulsively following Joanna Eris, witnessing many of her murders and
even tidying up after her, dabbing blood from a wall or burying a body
more deeply. In our judgements of Joanna herself, though her murders
are legion, we are influenced by the bizarre and touching voyeurism of
the ‘loving eye’ that records them. Each has experienced loss and vic-
timisation, and as he tracks her through more rapid changes of identity
than even he can keep track of, he records flirtations and brief liaisons
that parody the mercenary couplings of the world that has victimised
them. The Eye not only gazes himself but observes the gaze of other
men, occasionally men who seem capable of offering Joanna love and
security, but more often sexual predators, at best shallow and crass, at
worst brutal.
not give him ‘masculine dominance’. Although the woman on whom
he spies is not co-operating deliberately with him, there is no sense of
her victimisation.20 Behm resembles writers like Goodis, Willeford and
Thompson in the way that he takes genre conventions and makes of
them something quite original. Eye of the Beholder is an intense and com-
pelling reworking of the private eye as voyeur. The ‘Eye’, like earlier noir
investigators, is distinguished from the classical detective by his own
involvement in the crimes he records, prowling outside windows, com-
pulsively following Joanna Eris, witnessing many of her murders and
even tidying up after her, dabbing blood from a wall or burying a body
more deeply. In our judgements of Joanna herself, though her murders
are legion, we are influenced by the bizarre and touching voyeurism of
the ‘loving eye’ that records them. Each has experienced loss and vic-
timisation, and as he tracks her through more rapid changes of identity
than even he can keep track of, he records flirtations and brief liaisons
that parody the mercenary couplings of the world that has victimised
them. The Eye not only gazes himself but observes the gaze of other
men, occasionally men who seem capable of offering Joanna love and
security, but more often sexual predators, at best shallow and crass, at
worst brutal.
Despite the scale of the bloodshed, Eye of the Beholder is characterised
by a mood of gentle sadness, especially with the inexorable approach
of the death of its ageing protagonists. This elegiac quality, reminiscent
in a way of Burnett’s later novels, makes it unusual, however, amongst
voyeuristic crime novels, which more commonly move towards resolu-
tions in which a violent end is precipitated by a loss of the control
sought (whether by the watcher or the one watched). So, for example,
Nisbet’s 1981 novel, The Damned Don’t Die, represents the violent break-
down of the sense of immunity felt by the voyeuristic audience. Origi-
nally published as The Gourmet, this is a narrative in which there are
layers of voyeurism, of watching and listening and of the fetishistic con-
sumption of others that was suggested by the original title. The novel
begins with a character listening to a murder, an act that gives us a
queasy insight into the voyeuristic relationship of the audience to the
perpetrator of psychotic violence. The protagonist is ex-cop, now private
eye Martin Windrow, whose name seems a reminder of the false secu-
rity felt during acts of voyeurism, of a protective window separating
audience from act. Windrow’s search comes to centre on a photograph
by a mood of gentle sadness, especially with the inexorable approach
of the death of its ageing protagonists. This elegiac quality, reminiscent
in a way of Burnett’s later novels, makes it unusual, however, amongst
voyeuristic crime novels, which more commonly move towards resolu-
tions in which a violent end is precipitated by a loss of the control
sought (whether by the watcher or the one watched). So, for example,
Nisbet’s 1981 novel, The Damned Don’t Die, represents the violent break-
down of the sense of immunity felt by the voyeuristic audience. Origi-
nally published as The Gourmet, this is a narrative in which there are
layers of voyeurism, of watching and listening and of the fetishistic con-
sumption of others that was suggested by the original title. The novel
begins with a character listening to a murder, an act that gives us a
queasy insight into the voyeuristic relationship of the audience to the
perpetrator of psychotic violence. The protagonist is ex-cop, now private
eye Martin Windrow, whose name seems a reminder of the false secu-
rity felt during acts of voyeurism, of a protective window separating
audience from act. Windrow’s search comes to centre on a photograph
album
(itself is a fetishistic object, kept by the murderer), documenting the lives he is
investigating from early conventional married days to sado-masochistic excess and
death, recorded by photographers who become more professional as the voyeuristic
activities become a more public display. Much is revealed by looking at the
victims as they look back
from the photos, and the key lies in the interpretation of response: are the
victims abject? masochistic? willing?
In Nisbet, both men and women allow themselves
to move into the
role of the passive, victimised female. Paul Theroux’s Chicago Loop
(1990) is a mainstream novel that uses the movement across gender
lines to explore the nature of guilt, aggression and violence. One of the
central questions in the analysis of voyeurism, as of sadism, is to do
with the complicity of the victim - the acquiescence of the passive
person. Choice is something that Theroux’s psychopathic protagonist,
Parker Jagoda, feels he gives to his victim, Sharon. He has only unlocked
a door and told her it is unlocked (‘He had not forced her. . . . And
role of the passive, victimised female. Paul Theroux’s Chicago Loop
(1990) is a mainstream novel that uses the movement across gender
lines to explore the nature of guilt, aggression and violence. One of the
central questions in the analysis of voyeurism, as of sadism, is to do
with the complicity of the victim - the acquiescence of the passive
person. Choice is something that Theroux’s psychopathic protagonist,
Parker Jagoda, feels he gives to his victim, Sharon. He has only unlocked
a door and told her it is unlocked (‘He had not forced her. . . . And
so
she would have to take the consequences . . .’ [15-17]). Her compli-
ance traps both of them in a sado-masochistic game that ends in death:
as at a Mapplethorpe exhibition he attends, the issue for Parker
is whether ‘he’s using them and they don’t know it’ or whether ‘they
want to be used’ (45-6). The narrative charts Parker’s transition from
aggressor to victim, a search for atonement that leads him to become
Sharon. In transforming himself into a woman he ceases to be, like the
other men, a spectator. Taking on Sharon’s identity cannot ultimately
rid him of remorse but makes him better understand Sharon, enabling
him to experience her invisibility and also to understand her com-
plicity, ‘her share of the violence’ in her offer of herself as ‘a submis-
sive lover’ (176).
ance traps both of them in a sado-masochistic game that ends in death:
as at a Mapplethorpe exhibition he attends, the issue for Parker
is whether ‘he’s using them and they don’t know it’ or whether ‘they
want to be used’ (45-6). The narrative charts Parker’s transition from
aggressor to victim, a search for atonement that leads him to become
Sharon. In transforming himself into a woman he ceases to be, like the
other men, a spectator. Taking on Sharon’s identity cannot ultimately
rid him of remorse but makes him better understand Sharon, enabling
him to experience her invisibility and also to understand her com-
plicity, ‘her share of the violence’ in her offer of herself as ‘a submis-
sive lover’ (176).
The photographs taken by Behm’s Eye, the photo
album in the Nisbet
novel and the Mapplethorpe exhibition in Theroux all involve the
transformation of the voyeuristic object into a picture, but none of these
novels is primarily concerned with regimes of representation. In many
noir thrillers, however, attention is much more directed to voyeuristic
desire not just as an aspect of individual power relations but, trans-
formed into pictures (particularly moving pictures), as part of the whole
structure of commercial activity in a society that is increasingly domi-
nated by photoelectronic images.21 The issue in such novels is not just
whose gaze it is but who creates and uses and profits from the repre-
sentations, and what function they have within the socio-political
order. The exploration of filmed performance and voyeuristic partici-
pation has been a natural preoccupation of film-makers. The cinema,
novel and the Mapplethorpe exhibition in Theroux all involve the
transformation of the voyeuristic object into a picture, but none of these
novels is primarily concerned with regimes of representation. In many
noir thrillers, however, attention is much more directed to voyeuristic
desire not just as an aspect of individual power relations but, trans-
formed into pictures (particularly moving pictures), as part of the whole
structure of commercial activity in a society that is increasingly domi-
nated by photoelectronic images.21 The issue in such novels is not just
whose gaze it is but who creates and uses and profits from the repre-
sentations, and what function they have within the socio-political
order. The exploration of filmed performance and voyeuristic partici-
pation has been a natural preoccupation of film-makers. The cinema,
with
its ‘scopic regime’ is, of course, particularly well suited to the explo-
ration of the voyeuristic satisfactions of both film-makers and audi-
ences,22 forcing us to see ourselves in the role of voyeur and to think
through the distinctions between observer and observed, inside and
outside. A self-reflexive cinematic treatment of voyeurism has not
always been easy for audiences to accept. This was very evident in the
response to the 1960 Powell and Pressburger film, Peeping Tom, which
so outraged critics that the reaction virtually ended Powell’s career. The
film, following a serial killer/film-maker who records the deaths of his
victims, forces the audience to share the murderer’s morbid urge to gaze
and attacks the hypocrisy of a society that feeds off faces and bodies. In
more recent decades, voyeurism in relation to the technologies of re-
production has been much more widely treated. Both films and fiction
have explored the binding of identities to ‘machines of perception
and representation’ - ‘to the public reproduction, and reproducibility,
of private, torn, and opened persons’.23 Our mass-media witnessing of
scenes of public violence and our identification with others ‘by way of
the witnessing of public violence and its simulations’24 is at issue in such
films as Blow Out (Brian DePalma, 1981), Videodrome (David Cronenberg,
1983), Mute Witness (Anthony Waller, 1995) and 8mm (Joel Schu-
macher, 1999), and also in the noir fiction of writers like Andrew Vachss,
Robert Ferrigno, James Ellroy, Anthony Frewin and Ted Lewis.
ration of the voyeuristic satisfactions of both film-makers and audi-
ences,22 forcing us to see ourselves in the role of voyeur and to think
through the distinctions between observer and observed, inside and
outside. A self-reflexive cinematic treatment of voyeurism has not
always been easy for audiences to accept. This was very evident in the
response to the 1960 Powell and Pressburger film, Peeping Tom, which
so outraged critics that the reaction virtually ended Powell’s career. The
film, following a serial killer/film-maker who records the deaths of his
victims, forces the audience to share the murderer’s morbid urge to gaze
and attacks the hypocrisy of a society that feeds off faces and bodies. In
more recent decades, voyeurism in relation to the technologies of re-
production has been much more widely treated. Both films and fiction
have explored the binding of identities to ‘machines of perception
and representation’ - ‘to the public reproduction, and reproducibility,
of private, torn, and opened persons’.23 Our mass-media witnessing of
scenes of public violence and our identification with others ‘by way of
the witnessing of public violence and its simulations’24 is at issue in such
films as Blow Out (Brian DePalma, 1981), Videodrome (David Cronenberg,
1983), Mute Witness (Anthony Waller, 1995) and 8mm (Joel Schu-
macher, 1999), and also in the noir fiction of writers like Andrew Vachss,
Robert Ferrigno, James Ellroy, Anthony Frewin and Ted Lewis.
One of the most extended explorations of
Hollywood image-making
in relation to the commercial development of American society is in the
novels of James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet, which repeatedly return to the
theme of the bond between the money-makers and the myth-makers.
In L.A. Confidential (1990), for example, Raymond Dieterling is one of
those who bears greatest responsibility for the brutal events of the novel.
Father of modern animation and founder of a very thinly disguised Dis-
neyland empire, he is portrayed as someone who, under the sway of an
ambitious moneylender, produces pornographic cartoons, ‘erotic, hor-
rific’ films (466) intended to finance other business schemes. Such films
having shaped the obsessions of his deeply disturbed son, Dieterling
feels responsible for the macabre murders the son commits. The stylised
and explicit psychopathic murders of L.A. Confidential acquire the status
of perverted artistry created to express the psychological damage sus-
tained by the murderer. A gruesome counterpart to the animated films
of Raymond Dieterling, the murders are transmuted into pornographic
art work, ‘artful desecrations’ with ‘embossed red streaming from dis-
embodied limbs’ (440, 344). Ellroy recurrently writes about lives that
have been warped by voyeuristic participation in films produced by
in relation to the commercial development of American society is in the
novels of James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet, which repeatedly return to the
theme of the bond between the money-makers and the myth-makers.
In L.A. Confidential (1990), for example, Raymond Dieterling is one of
those who bears greatest responsibility for the brutal events of the novel.
Father of modern animation and founder of a very thinly disguised Dis-
neyland empire, he is portrayed as someone who, under the sway of an
ambitious moneylender, produces pornographic cartoons, ‘erotic, hor-
rific’ films (466) intended to finance other business schemes. Such films
having shaped the obsessions of his deeply disturbed son, Dieterling
feels responsible for the macabre murders the son commits. The stylised
and explicit psychopathic murders of L.A. Confidential acquire the status
of perverted artistry created to express the psychological damage sus-
tained by the murderer. A gruesome counterpart to the animated films
of Raymond Dieterling, the murders are transmuted into pornographic
art work, ‘artful desecrations’ with ‘embossed red streaming from dis-
embodied limbs’ (440, 344). Ellroy recurrently writes about lives that
have been warped by voyeuristic participation in films produced by
those
in pursuit of wealth and power. The dominance of Hollywood
storytelling combined with the addiction to spectacle spurs the disaf-
fected to narrative acts of their own, although it often also means that
characters can only conceive of themselves in terms of the conventional
roles of the cinema. In The Black Dahlia (1987), for example, the title
character has sought to create herself in a Hollywood image. The endless
lies she tells are all assimilations of her own life to Hollywood stories,
but stardom ironically only comes to her after she has been murdered,
when every turn of the plot brings ‘another instalment of the Black
Dahlia Show’. Identity is bound to public reproduction, and the stan-
dardised looks and stories of American cinema are shadowed by the dark
mockery of death and perversion.
storytelling combined with the addiction to spectacle spurs the disaf-
fected to narrative acts of their own, although it often also means that
characters can only conceive of themselves in terms of the conventional
roles of the cinema. In The Black Dahlia (1987), for example, the title
character has sought to create herself in a Hollywood image. The endless
lies she tells are all assimilations of her own life to Hollywood stories,
but stardom ironically only comes to her after she has been murdered,
when every turn of the plot brings ‘another instalment of the Black
Dahlia Show’. Identity is bound to public reproduction, and the stan-
dardised looks and stories of American cinema are shadowed by the dark
mockery of death and perversion.
The combination of commerce and voyeurism is
not, of course, con-
fined to Hollywood. Several other noir thrillers, for example by Vachss
and Ferrigno, have traversed the seedy, marginalised world of pornog-
raphy. Vachss’ Blue Belle deals with sexual violence as spectacle, one of
the addictive products sold in a market place in which everything has
a commercial value, including flesh. The owner of Sin City, the depraved
Sally Lou, has made his living out of the worst kind of porno videos
and is the centre of a coalition of ‘sex-death freaks’, whose ‘killer shark’
ghost van, one of his ‘money machines’ (278-80), is a purveyor of
killing spectacles. In Ferrigno’s Dead Silent (1996), set in southern
fined to Hollywood. Several other noir thrillers, for example by Vachss
and Ferrigno, have traversed the seedy, marginalised world of pornog-
raphy. Vachss’ Blue Belle deals with sexual violence as spectacle, one of
the addictive products sold in a market place in which everything has
a commercial value, including flesh. The owner of Sin City, the depraved
Sally Lou, has made his living out of the worst kind of porno videos
and is the centre of a coalition of ‘sex-death freaks’, whose ‘killer shark’
ghost van, one of his ‘money machines’ (278-80), is a purveyor of
killing spectacles. In Ferrigno’s Dead Silent (1996), set in southern
California,
both visual and auditory drives are being catered for by
sundry sleazy and clandestine recording activities, with secret watching
and listening. The novel opens with a doubly voyeuristic scene, the
overhearing through bedroom walls of telephone sex which is itself
being recorded for voyeuristic consumption; it moves swiftly to a double
murder recorded on a video camera. The entry into strangers’ lives,
‘that whole forbidden-zone thing’ (76), is inextricably bound up with
commercial deals, not just in the selling of the tapes but in performance
on them as a career route. The whole of society seems dominated by
voyeurism and prone to confusion about the relationship between
image and reality. Elliot, who lives in a house protected by a vast camera
and speaker system, is an archetypal voyeur who speaks for a post-
modern take on fiction and reality, pronouncing, for example, on the
quaint and irrelevant question of whether the murder heard on the
tape is ‘real’. The macabre fate he meets is that of the voyeur whose
spectatorship draws him into the danger of a real world from which he
has physically and intellectually tried as far as possible to distance
himself.
sundry sleazy and clandestine recording activities, with secret watching
and listening. The novel opens with a doubly voyeuristic scene, the
overhearing through bedroom walls of telephone sex which is itself
being recorded for voyeuristic consumption; it moves swiftly to a double
murder recorded on a video camera. The entry into strangers’ lives,
‘that whole forbidden-zone thing’ (76), is inextricably bound up with
commercial deals, not just in the selling of the tapes but in performance
on them as a career route. The whole of society seems dominated by
voyeurism and prone to confusion about the relationship between
image and reality. Elliot, who lives in a house protected by a vast camera
and speaker system, is an archetypal voyeur who speaks for a post-
modern take on fiction and reality, pronouncing, for example, on the
quaint and irrelevant question of whether the murder heard on the
tape is ‘real’. The macabre fate he meets is that of the voyeur whose
spectatorship draws him into the danger of a real world from which he
has physically and intellectually tried as far as possible to distance
himself.
In British thrillers, it is
the blue film market of the late 1950s and the
1960s
that has been the historical context for two of the best treatments
of the business of voyeurism: Ted Lewis’ Jack’s Return Home (1970) and
Anthony Frewin’s London Blues (1997). Lewis was one of the key figures
in the 1970s revival of British noir. Between 1970 and 1980 he pub-
lished seven novels, including two other novels, Plender and GBH, in
which pornography is an important element.25 Jack’s Return Home is a
harder, meaner version of the ‘can’t return home’ plot recurrently found
in post-World War Two American thrillers. What gives Lewis’ novel its
power is its terse, unflinching style (unlike many earlier British thrillers,
it is hard-boiled as well as noir), its tight plot and its gritty northern set-
tings, effectively translated to the screen in the 1971 Mike Hodges film,
Get Carter! When Jack returns home and sees his brother Frank in his
coffin, the past presents itself as flashbacks and ‘bits of a film’, and it is
in the context of this sort of image that we see his eventual discovery
of an actual film. The town itself, as the rich get richer, is designed to
be looked at, with affluent life styles displaying themselves for envious
inspection (80). But behind the display of wealth there are less accept-
able kinds of display, centrally a blue film in which Carter is shaken to
recognise his niece (or daughter - he cannot be sure) and which irre-
trievably alters Jack’s own ‘film’ of a past that he looks back on, as both
voyeur and participant.
of the business of voyeurism: Ted Lewis’ Jack’s Return Home (1970) and
Anthony Frewin’s London Blues (1997). Lewis was one of the key figures
in the 1970s revival of British noir. Between 1970 and 1980 he pub-
lished seven novels, including two other novels, Plender and GBH, in
which pornography is an important element.25 Jack’s Return Home is a
harder, meaner version of the ‘can’t return home’ plot recurrently found
in post-World War Two American thrillers. What gives Lewis’ novel its
power is its terse, unflinching style (unlike many earlier British thrillers,
it is hard-boiled as well as noir), its tight plot and its gritty northern set-
tings, effectively translated to the screen in the 1971 Mike Hodges film,
Get Carter! When Jack returns home and sees his brother Frank in his
coffin, the past presents itself as flashbacks and ‘bits of a film’, and it is
in the context of this sort of image that we see his eventual discovery
of an actual film. The town itself, as the rich get richer, is designed to
be looked at, with affluent life styles displaying themselves for envious
inspection (80). But behind the display of wealth there are less accept-
able kinds of display, centrally a blue film in which Carter is shaken to
recognise his niece (or daughter - he cannot be sure) and which irre-
trievably alters Jack’s own ‘film’ of a past that he looks back on, as both
voyeur and participant.
In London
Blues,
which takes the film Get Carter! as its starting point,
Frewin creates one of the most subtle contemporary representations of
the economic and political interests of which pornography is a part -
though it is only one (and far from the most damaging) of the forms
of watching that goes on. As Ellroy does in L.A. Quartet and American
Tabloid (1995), Frewin mixes historical with fictional events and char-
acters, though in contrast to Ellroy his intent is not to shock by the
extremity of his fictions but, by weaving his story around a trade
branded as ‘shocking’ (59-60) in sixties tabloid exposés, to tease out the
real corruptions under the surface of a hypocritical society. The novel
starts with a complicated voyeuristic act, its present-day framing narra-
tive opening with the sudden appearance of one of Tim Purdom’s black-
and-white sixties porno films, interrupting a bootleg video tape of Get
Carter! The narrator discovers it ‘as I’m watching Michael Caine watch-
ing the film . . .’ (11). The character of Carter himself is seen by Frewin’s
narrator to possess a kind of self-respect and integrity that make him a
player to be reckoned with, a ‘tough guy’ worthy of comparison with
the American hard-boiled investigators of earlier generations. One of
the questions we are left to ponder at the end is whether the main pro-
tagonist possesses any of the qualities that the framing narrative at-
Frewin creates one of the most subtle contemporary representations of
the economic and political interests of which pornography is a part -
though it is only one (and far from the most damaging) of the forms
of watching that goes on. As Ellroy does in L.A. Quartet and American
Tabloid (1995), Frewin mixes historical with fictional events and char-
acters, though in contrast to Ellroy his intent is not to shock by the
extremity of his fictions but, by weaving his story around a trade
branded as ‘shocking’ (59-60) in sixties tabloid exposés, to tease out the
real corruptions under the surface of a hypocritical society. The novel
starts with a complicated voyeuristic act, its present-day framing narra-
tive opening with the sudden appearance of one of Tim Purdom’s black-
and-white sixties porno films, interrupting a bootleg video tape of Get
Carter! The narrator discovers it ‘as I’m watching Michael Caine watch-
ing the film . . .’ (11). The character of Carter himself is seen by Frewin’s
narrator to possess a kind of self-respect and integrity that make him a
player to be reckoned with, a ‘tough guy’ worthy of comparison with
the American hard-boiled investigators of earlier generations. One of
the questions we are left to ponder at the end is whether the main pro-
tagonist possesses any of the qualities that the framing narrative at-
tributes
to Carter. Young and ‘Peter Pan-ish’ (50), he drifts into the late
fifties pornography business, supplying blue movies and finding himself
on the periphery of the Profumo Affair without really having any clear
knowledge of what is going on. Purdom is in some measure fascinated
by the sleazy world into which he is drawn (‘It brings out the voyeur
in me’ [68]), but he is essentially detached, not even involved as a
voyeur in comparison to Stephen Ward. ‘Just another guy on the make,
that’s all’ (123). As ‘a living, breathing part of the decline of the British
Empire’ (135) he is a joke, though nonetheless inescapably part of the
‘eerie’ atmosphere of the demi-monde in sixties Britain - ‘a spectator. A
passive member of the audience wondering what is going to happen
next’ (284). The central irony is that the real question is: ‘who are we
not supposed to be looking at?’ (264). By the end, if Tim has indeed sur-
vived, then he has gone into hiding and has himself become a ‘lacuna’,
one of the secrets we are not supposed to be looking at. The curtain
‘seems to come down’ on him, and he becomes the unseen, part of a
suppressed history that emerges only piecemeal (289).
fifties pornography business, supplying blue movies and finding himself
on the periphery of the Profumo Affair without really having any clear
knowledge of what is going on. Purdom is in some measure fascinated
by the sleazy world into which he is drawn (‘It brings out the voyeur
in me’ [68]), but he is essentially detached, not even involved as a
voyeur in comparison to Stephen Ward. ‘Just another guy on the make,
that’s all’ (123). As ‘a living, breathing part of the decline of the British
Empire’ (135) he is a joke, though nonetheless inescapably part of the
‘eerie’ atmosphere of the demi-monde in sixties Britain - ‘a spectator. A
passive member of the audience wondering what is going to happen
next’ (284). The central irony is that the real question is: ‘who are we
not supposed to be looking at?’ (264). By the end, if Tim has indeed sur-
vived, then he has gone into hiding and has himself become a ‘lacuna’,
one of the secrets we are not supposed to be looking at. The curtain
‘seems to come down’ on him, and he becomes the unseen, part of a
suppressed history that emerges only piecemeal (289).
All-consuming quests
Voyeuristic
activities are themselves amongst the most obvious forms
of consumption in late twentieth-century society, but ‘consumer
of consumption in late twentieth-century society, but ‘consumer
lust’
in a broader sense (the power of consumerist society to direct lust
to commodities and the commodification of people) has become
an increasingly central theme in literary noir. By and large, instead
of the fabulous objects (the Maltese falcon or the ‘green ice’) of earlier
noir quest narratives, it is ordinary consumer goods that assume sym-
bolic status. Their function can, of course, be very traditional: like the
falcon and the emeralds they can be emblems of the falsity or empti-
ness or treacherousness of the commodities that are prized and pursued.
In George Pelecanos’ A Firing Offense (1992), addiction is presented
as the driving force behind the whole of the commercial enterprise, a
theme developed through the image of state-of-the-art hi-fis emptied
of their capacity to feed one addiction (to spectacle) but instead filled
with substances (drugs) designed to feed another. In Ed Gorman’s
Night Kills (1990), portraying a society in which the presidents of adver-
tising agencies would ‘hand over’ young women (namely their own
daughters) to win lucrative accounts (12), the plot turns on the sale of
advertising space which is in reality the sale of an undertaking not to
advertise the indiscretions of men who have opened themselves to
blackmail by buying the services of young women. In the Pelecanos
to commodities and the commodification of people) has become
an increasingly central theme in literary noir. By and large, instead
of the fabulous objects (the Maltese falcon or the ‘green ice’) of earlier
noir quest narratives, it is ordinary consumer goods that assume sym-
bolic status. Their function can, of course, be very traditional: like the
falcon and the emeralds they can be emblems of the falsity or empti-
ness or treacherousness of the commodities that are prized and pursued.
In George Pelecanos’ A Firing Offense (1992), addiction is presented
as the driving force behind the whole of the commercial enterprise, a
theme developed through the image of state-of-the-art hi-fis emptied
of their capacity to feed one addiction (to spectacle) but instead filled
with substances (drugs) designed to feed another. In Ed Gorman’s
Night Kills (1990), portraying a society in which the presidents of adver-
tising agencies would ‘hand over’ young women (namely their own
daughters) to win lucrative accounts (12), the plot turns on the sale of
advertising space which is in reality the sale of an undertaking not to
advertise the indiscretions of men who have opened themselves to
blackmail by buying the services of young women. In the Pelecanos
and
also the Gorman novel, the selling of these ‘false commodities’ is
part of a very fully established socio-economic context within which
advertising, selling and buying are the principal activities. Their entre-
preneurs are represented as being involved in creating space within
legitimate businesses to operate scams that use the skills of the com-
mercial mind.
part of a very fully established socio-economic context within which
advertising, selling and buying are the principal activities. Their entre-
preneurs are represented as being involved in creating space within
legitimate businesses to operate scams that use the skills of the com-
mercial mind.
Elaborations of the relationship between
crime, commercialism and
consumption can focus on characters’ resistance to the power of the
consumer society to ‘consume’ people or on characters whose psycho-
pathic and satirically presented excesses embody the all-devouring
nature of consumerism. Both Charles Willeford and Elmore Leonard, for
example, use consumerism as part of the background to their fictions,
functioning to establish the moral perspective within which we judge
their assorted criminals. Leonard’s novels often follow the old-fashioned
private eye precedent in using indifference to material goods as an index
of human worth: uncontrolled consumer urges can signify psycho-
pathic imbalance; indifference to consumption is an indicator of warm,
amiable humanity. Swag (1976), for instance, introduces Stick, a petty
crook who is inclined to bemused scepticism about the pleasures of con-
sumerism. In Stick (1983), he acts as a foil to Chucky and Barry. The
former is entirely willing, as ‘part of doing business’, to ‘give the Cuban
somebody to kill . . .’ (249), a caricature of acquisitive energy, wheeling
and dealing in a crude imitation of Barry, who is himself a crude imi-
tation. Both live in a ‘spoiled for choice’ way, Barry with his choice of
colour-co-ordinated cars and chauffeur’s uniforms, Chucky with his pro-
liferating hats and phones: ‘“Anyway, what’s my goal, the American
dream,” Chucky said. “What else? . . .”’ (249). Ordell, in Rum Punch,
‘working his ass off being cool’, gives equal attention to his ‘four-
hundred-dollar oxblood-colored alligator loafers with tassles’ and to the
attractive range of slickly advertised Berettas, MAC-10s, Uzis and Styer
AUGs he is trying to sell (143, 149). Leonard’s Split Images (1981) again
identifies the psychopath with the pointless consumer choice of his gun
collection, establishing the nexus of violence and sophisticated con-
sumerism by detailing Robbie’s showcase display of handguns.
consumption can focus on characters’ resistance to the power of the
consumer society to ‘consume’ people or on characters whose psycho-
pathic and satirically presented excesses embody the all-devouring
nature of consumerism. Both Charles Willeford and Elmore Leonard, for
example, use consumerism as part of the background to their fictions,
functioning to establish the moral perspective within which we judge
their assorted criminals. Leonard’s novels often follow the old-fashioned
private eye precedent in using indifference to material goods as an index
of human worth: uncontrolled consumer urges can signify psycho-
pathic imbalance; indifference to consumption is an indicator of warm,
amiable humanity. Swag (1976), for instance, introduces Stick, a petty
crook who is inclined to bemused scepticism about the pleasures of con-
sumerism. In Stick (1983), he acts as a foil to Chucky and Barry. The
former is entirely willing, as ‘part of doing business’, to ‘give the Cuban
somebody to kill . . .’ (249), a caricature of acquisitive energy, wheeling
and dealing in a crude imitation of Barry, who is himself a crude imi-
tation. Both live in a ‘spoiled for choice’ way, Barry with his choice of
colour-co-ordinated cars and chauffeur’s uniforms, Chucky with his pro-
liferating hats and phones: ‘“Anyway, what’s my goal, the American
dream,” Chucky said. “What else? . . .”’ (249). Ordell, in Rum Punch,
‘working his ass off being cool’, gives equal attention to his ‘four-
hundred-dollar oxblood-colored alligator loafers with tassles’ and to the
attractive range of slickly advertised Berettas, MAC-10s, Uzis and Styer
AUGs he is trying to sell (143, 149). Leonard’s Split Images (1981) again
identifies the psychopath with the pointless consumer choice of his gun
collection, establishing the nexus of violence and sophisticated con-
sumerism by detailing Robbie’s showcase display of handguns.
In Charles Willeford’s Hoke Mosley novels, on
the other hand, both
his series detective and his psychopaths tend to function as innocents
outside the customary round of American acquisitiveness. In The Way
We Die Now (1988), for example, the guilt revealed is that of a com-
mercial society. The novel is introduced with a quote from Burroughs -
‘No one owns life. But anyone with a frying pan owns death’ - and
weaves together various subplots involving the ‘owning’, controlling
his series detective and his psychopaths tend to function as innocents
outside the customary round of American acquisitiveness. In The Way
We Die Now (1988), for example, the guilt revealed is that of a com-
mercial society. The novel is introduced with a quote from Burroughs -
‘No one owns life. But anyone with a frying pan owns death’ - and
weaves together various subplots involving the ‘owning’, controlling
and
destruction of human life. Hoke, going under cover, descends to
the level of a tramp and, having joined the marginal people that
America tries to conceal, recognises that anyone sufficiently less suc-
cessful to have become invisible can (like the missing Haitian workers)
be dumped with impunity. In other novels in the series, Willeford’s psy-
chopathic characters are used to provide an outsider’s perspective on
the consumer society. ‘Junior’ Frenger, in Miami Blues (1984), is released
from prison only to find that there nothing ‘outside’ that he really
wants. Neither milk shakes nor powder-blue Caddy convertibles turn
out, after all, to be desirable (104). In Sideswipe (1987), the caricatured
embodiments of the American dream of contented consumerism are
Stanley and Maya, and their ‘ideal family’ is thrown into relief by the
psychopathic Troy, who presents himself in terms of a different kind of
American dream, a dying breed of tough outsiders: there are not many
like him left, ‘“And it’s a good thing for the world that there isn’t”’
(115). Troy allies himself with ‘a few men of style, my style’, as opposed
to men living in cities who are like rocks in a leather bag - like Stanley,
‘round and smooth as marbles . . . the perfect specimen of American
male’, in ‘glorious retirement in sunny Florida’, polishing his new Escort
every Sunday (116). Willeford is not romanticising Troy, any more than
Thompson romanticises his psychopathic malcontents, but he does use
the perspective of alienated male violence to bring out the limitations
of bland consumerism.
the level of a tramp and, having joined the marginal people that
America tries to conceal, recognises that anyone sufficiently less suc-
cessful to have become invisible can (like the missing Haitian workers)
be dumped with impunity. In other novels in the series, Willeford’s psy-
chopathic characters are used to provide an outsider’s perspective on
the consumer society. ‘Junior’ Frenger, in Miami Blues (1984), is released
from prison only to find that there nothing ‘outside’ that he really
wants. Neither milk shakes nor powder-blue Caddy convertibles turn
out, after all, to be desirable (104). In Sideswipe (1987), the caricatured
embodiments of the American dream of contented consumerism are
Stanley and Maya, and their ‘ideal family’ is thrown into relief by the
psychopathic Troy, who presents himself in terms of a different kind of
American dream, a dying breed of tough outsiders: there are not many
like him left, ‘“And it’s a good thing for the world that there isn’t”’
(115). Troy allies himself with ‘a few men of style, my style’, as opposed
to men living in cities who are like rocks in a leather bag - like Stanley,
‘round and smooth as marbles . . . the perfect specimen of American
male’, in ‘glorious retirement in sunny Florida’, polishing his new Escort
every Sunday (116). Willeford is not romanticising Troy, any more than
Thompson romanticises his psychopathic malcontents, but he does use
the perspective of alienated male violence to bring out the limitations
of bland consumerism.
The crises of identity faced by late
twentieth-century noir protagonists
are very often to do with the guilt and anxiety of the insider rather than
with the alienation of the outsider. All firm sense of identity is eroded
by complicity, by a willingness to pursue standardised goals or even to
make a commodity of oneself in order to secure a place in consumer
society. If you compare Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins to the traditional
private eye, for example, you see that one important strand Mosley has
added to the tradition is related to Easy’s ownership of property. His
‘secret life’ is his business success, his complicity with the American
success ethic: ‘All of what I had and all I had done was had and done
in secret. Nobody knew the real me. Maybe Mouse and Mofass knew
something but they weren’t friends that you could kick back and jaw
with’ (White Butterfly [1992], 169). Most centrally in Red Death (1991),
Mosley explores Easy’s sense of being trapped by this fact into a com-
promised position that involves in effect selling himself to the most
dubious of political masters. Like Himes, Mosley uses the role of his
black protagonist to focus attention on the marginalisation of his
novel’s black characters and to bring the novel into areas of Los Angeles
are very often to do with the guilt and anxiety of the insider rather than
with the alienation of the outsider. All firm sense of identity is eroded
by complicity, by a willingness to pursue standardised goals or even to
make a commodity of oneself in order to secure a place in consumer
society. If you compare Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins to the traditional
private eye, for example, you see that one important strand Mosley has
added to the tradition is related to Easy’s ownership of property. His
‘secret life’ is his business success, his complicity with the American
success ethic: ‘All of what I had and all I had done was had and done
in secret. Nobody knew the real me. Maybe Mouse and Mofass knew
something but they weren’t friends that you could kick back and jaw
with’ (White Butterfly [1992], 169). Most centrally in Red Death (1991),
Mosley explores Easy’s sense of being trapped by this fact into a com-
promised position that involves in effect selling himself to the most
dubious of political masters. Like Himes, Mosley uses the role of his
black protagonist to focus attention on the marginalisation of his
novel’s black characters and to bring the novel into areas of Los Angeles
which
in Chandler, say, were treated as alien. The main theme, however,
is less to do with Easy’s otherness than with his fears about being as-
similated on immoral terms. What bothers him is his complicity in the
society within which he seeks to secure a prosperous life for himself.
The presence of McCarthyism in the novel is used primarily for explor-
ing the nature of this complicity, with personal relationships under-
mined less by political suspicions than by the urge to survive and
prosper in an ‘American’ way. His shady property ownership has put
him in a position that is vulnerable to corrupt pressure from a man who
appears to be an upright official but is in fact far worse than any of the
supposed enemies of the state. Easy becomes ‘a flunky for the FBI’ rather
than risk losing his property and his freedom, and in consequence is
tormented by the knowledge that he ‘wasn’t, and hadn’t been, my own
man’ (235-6). Mofass, whose betrayal of Easy is at the root of his trou-
bles, forces Easy to concede that his own betrayal of friendships and
collaboration with the FBI is no better than the behaviour of Mofass:
‘“What was you gonna do fo’ that FBI, man? . . . He said he’d save yo’
money if you do somebody else dirt, ain’t that right? How come you
any different than me?”’ (266).
is less to do with Easy’s otherness than with his fears about being as-
similated on immoral terms. What bothers him is his complicity in the
society within which he seeks to secure a prosperous life for himself.
The presence of McCarthyism in the novel is used primarily for explor-
ing the nature of this complicity, with personal relationships under-
mined less by political suspicions than by the urge to survive and
prosper in an ‘American’ way. His shady property ownership has put
him in a position that is vulnerable to corrupt pressure from a man who
appears to be an upright official but is in fact far worse than any of the
supposed enemies of the state. Easy becomes ‘a flunky for the FBI’ rather
than risk losing his property and his freedom, and in consequence is
tormented by the knowledge that he ‘wasn’t, and hadn’t been, my own
man’ (235-6). Mofass, whose betrayal of Easy is at the root of his trou-
bles, forces Easy to concede that his own betrayal of friendships and
collaboration with the FBI is no better than the behaviour of Mofass:
‘“What was you gonna do fo’ that FBI, man? . . . He said he’d save yo’
money if you do somebody else dirt, ain’t that right? How come you
any different than me?”’ (266).
In novels in which the act of consumption is
much more integral to
the structure, commodity fetishism and unrestrained consumerism are
sometimes figured as the vices of serial killers. As Seltzer argues, ‘the
general forms of seriality, collection, and counting conspicuous in con-
sumer society . . . and the forms of fetishism’ can all be seen in con-
nection to serial killing.26 In James Hall’s Buzz Cut (1996), for example,
a narrative focusing on the activities of a psychopathic killer is given
point by extended metaphoric play with the idea of consumption. We
witness the perpetual feast of a cruise ship and ultimately see as well
the willingness of its owner, in order to keep the ship’s feast going, to
sacrifice passengers to feed a psychopath’s metaphoric hunger. The ship
and its ‘anniversary cruise’ are a floating embodiment of American con-
sumerist display: ‘An endless stream of food and liquor rolling up the
gangway . . .’ (108-9). The ‘glittery facades’ and ‘false allure’ of the
Eclipse are no defence against Butler Jack, a psychopath whose own
mother has made a commodity of herself in her marriage to Morton
Sampson, president of the Fiesta Cruise Lines. Jack takes the whole ship
hostage while its privileged guests ‘celebrate Morton Sampson’s unceas-
ing success’ (‘you name it, if they had ten million in the bank, they
were invited to the party’ [109]). His endeavour is a parallel to the fanati-
cism and the ‘unfathomable hunger’ of the men who built skyscrapers,
except that his hunger drives him to wield power over the extravagant,
the structure, commodity fetishism and unrestrained consumerism are
sometimes figured as the vices of serial killers. As Seltzer argues, ‘the
general forms of seriality, collection, and counting conspicuous in con-
sumer society . . . and the forms of fetishism’ can all be seen in con-
nection to serial killing.26 In James Hall’s Buzz Cut (1996), for example,
a narrative focusing on the activities of a psychopathic killer is given
point by extended metaphoric play with the idea of consumption. We
witness the perpetual feast of a cruise ship and ultimately see as well
the willingness of its owner, in order to keep the ship’s feast going, to
sacrifice passengers to feed a psychopath’s metaphoric hunger. The ship
and its ‘anniversary cruise’ are a floating embodiment of American con-
sumerist display: ‘An endless stream of food and liquor rolling up the
gangway . . .’ (108-9). The ‘glittery facades’ and ‘false allure’ of the
Eclipse are no defence against Butler Jack, a psychopath whose own
mother has made a commodity of herself in her marriage to Morton
Sampson, president of the Fiesta Cruise Lines. Jack takes the whole ship
hostage while its privileged guests ‘celebrate Morton Sampson’s unceas-
ing success’ (‘you name it, if they had ten million in the bank, they
were invited to the party’ [109]). His endeavour is a parallel to the fanati-
cism and the ‘unfathomable hunger’ of the men who built skyscrapers,
except that his hunger drives him to wield power over the extravagant,
gluttonous
people whose indulgence on the cruise ship is perceived by
him in fevered, hyperbolic terms. As in earlier killer protagonist novels,
the psychopath is both a reflection of his society and a savage satirist.
Hall gives Butler Jack his own sections of the narrative to express his
revulsion at the society he seeks to revenge himself on, committing
revolutionary violence on the rich world’s ‘safe and happy arrange-
ments’ (224-5).
him in fevered, hyperbolic terms. As in earlier killer protagonist novels,
the psychopath is both a reflection of his society and a savage satirist.
Hall gives Butler Jack his own sections of the narrative to express his
revulsion at the society he seeks to revenge himself on, committing
revolutionary violence on the rich world’s ‘safe and happy arrange-
ments’ (224-5).
Going beyond genre fiction but nevertheless
closely linked to the
techniques, materials and metaphors of the consumer society thriller,
Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991) is the ultimate consumption
novel, carrying to Swiftian satiric extremity the imagery of devouring,
commodification and objectification - the equation of uncontrolled
consumer urges with the psychopathic imbalance of a modern canni-
bal. The huge furore over American Psycho has been plausibly attributed
to its mainstream status, its publication not as a piece of genre fiction
but by Alfred A. Knopf as one of its Vintage Contemporary paperbacks.27
The eighties had seen the publication of many novels notable for their
depiction of gruesome killings, both noir thrillers (Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet
novels, for example, are never short on bloody details of grotesquely
brutal serial killings) and horror novels (like the best-selling ‘splatter-
punk’ novels of Clive Barker). As Robert Skal writes, both Ellis and
Stephen King depict, from radically different perspectives, ‘the mon-
strous spectacle of the consumer consumed. Ellis’ world of blood-soaked
designer labels recognisably upgrades the voracious mall zombies in
Dawn of the Dead: they shop till they drop, eat your brains, then shop
some more.’28 Skal’s explanation of the outrage over Ellis’ novel is that
this sort of excess can perhaps be tolerated in popular film and fiction
but that if the ‘hideous progeny’ of the genre writers is allowed to ‘start
tracking blood up the staircase of the Manhattan castle’ it is quite
another matter. Although the critical response to American Psycho may
seem the reverse of Orwell’s patronising argument that modernist moral
confusions were unsuitable for the literature of the ‘common people’,
there is a fundamental similarity: one literary preserve should not be
contaminated by another; every genre should know its place.
techniques, materials and metaphors of the consumer society thriller,
Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991) is the ultimate consumption
novel, carrying to Swiftian satiric extremity the imagery of devouring,
commodification and objectification - the equation of uncontrolled
consumer urges with the psychopathic imbalance of a modern canni-
bal. The huge furore over American Psycho has been plausibly attributed
to its mainstream status, its publication not as a piece of genre fiction
but by Alfred A. Knopf as one of its Vintage Contemporary paperbacks.27
The eighties had seen the publication of many novels notable for their
depiction of gruesome killings, both noir thrillers (Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet
novels, for example, are never short on bloody details of grotesquely
brutal serial killings) and horror novels (like the best-selling ‘splatter-
punk’ novels of Clive Barker). As Robert Skal writes, both Ellis and
Stephen King depict, from radically different perspectives, ‘the mon-
strous spectacle of the consumer consumed. Ellis’ world of blood-soaked
designer labels recognisably upgrades the voracious mall zombies in
Dawn of the Dead: they shop till they drop, eat your brains, then shop
some more.’28 Skal’s explanation of the outrage over Ellis’ novel is that
this sort of excess can perhaps be tolerated in popular film and fiction
but that if the ‘hideous progeny’ of the genre writers is allowed to ‘start
tracking blood up the staircase of the Manhattan castle’ it is quite
another matter. Although the critical response to American Psycho may
seem the reverse of Orwell’s patronising argument that modernist moral
confusions were unsuitable for the literature of the ‘common people’,
there is a fundamental similarity: one literary preserve should not be
contaminated by another; every genre should know its place.
Amongst contemporary cross-generic novels, American Psycho is one
of the most disturbing and unforgettable, though it might be argued
that to call this novel ‘unforgettable’ is not necessarily a recommenda-
tion. Its appalling images are not easily dismissed from the mind. Since
part of Ellis’ point is excess, Patrick Bateman’s monstrous acts are
described in so excessive a way that as we read on we ultimately feel
numbed by them - which is also, of course, part of Ellis’ point. The
of the most disturbing and unforgettable, though it might be argued
that to call this novel ‘unforgettable’ is not necessarily a recommenda-
tion. Its appalling images are not easily dismissed from the mind. Since
part of Ellis’ point is excess, Patrick Bateman’s monstrous acts are
described in so excessive a way that as we read on we ultimately feel
numbed by them - which is also, of course, part of Ellis’ point. The
novel’s
opening details establish a world of commercial oversaturation
in which the most common reaction is one of ‘total and sheer accep-
tance’ (5-6). The omnipresent bums and beggars, viewed with brutally
comic callousness by Price, Bateman and their like, define the lowest
social boundaries of the society, and are used by Ellis as a heavily
stressed reminder throughout the novel of those who are in effect non-
existent, the nobodies in a world where ‘Everybody’s rich. . . . Everybody’s
in which the most common reaction is one of ‘total and sheer accep-
tance’ (5-6). The omnipresent bums and beggars, viewed with brutally
comic callousness by Price, Bateman and their like, define the lowest
social boundaries of the society, and are used by Ellis as a heavily
stressed reminder throughout the novel of those who are in effect non-
existent, the nobodies in a world where ‘Everybody’s rich. . . . Everybody’s
good-looking’
(23). The failure to see anything other than pleasing,
saleable surfaces is abundantly (perhaps over-abundantly) established
by the dense texture of product description and methods of beautifica-
tion, with whole passages of meticulously detailed, heavily ironised con-
sumerism creating an elaborate context within which the later lists can
operate effectively - lists into which increasingly shocking items are
inserted, with the same banal tone recording corpse-disposals and can-
nibalism, Ralph Lauren dress shirts, Toshiba portable compact disc
players and Mitsubishi rechargeable electric shavers.
saleable surfaces is abundantly (perhaps over-abundantly) established
by the dense texture of product description and methods of beautifica-
tion, with whole passages of meticulously detailed, heavily ironised con-
sumerism creating an elaborate context within which the later lists can
operate effectively - lists into which increasingly shocking items are
inserted, with the same banal tone recording corpse-disposals and can-
nibalism, Ralph Lauren dress shirts, Toshiba portable compact disc
players and Mitsubishi rechargeable electric shavers.
Patrick Bateman is the psycho as normal
all-American boy, the
embodiment of insipid niceness, ‘the boy next door’ (11). He has affini-
ties with Thompson’s folksy psychopaths in The Killer Inside Me and Pop.
1280, but his metaphoric function as the ultimate consumer creates ten-
sions that are far more extreme. As the facade progressively disintegrates
(‘I’m having a difficult time containing my disordered self’ [301]), there
are ever more damning failures, on the part of the rest of society, to see
the beast under the blandness: ‘“You’re not really comprehending any
of this. . . .Ichopped Owen’s fucking head off. Itortured dozens of girls.
...” “Excuse me,” he says, trying to ignore my outburst. “I really must
be going”’ (388). The killing can be seen as an expression of Bateman’s
inability to cope, but more fundamentally it is an expression of the
nature of the society to which he wants to belong (and into which his
sickness and inhumanity do actually ‘fit’) - of a depersonalisation ‘so
intense’ that ‘There wasn’t a clear, identifiable emotion within me,
except for greed and, possibly, total disgust’ (282). Bateman records his
growing sense of the meaninglessness of all higher ideals and emotions,
creating an inner ‘desert landscape . . . devoid of reason and light and
spirit. . . . Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning
in . . .’ (374-5). This is a society in which the ideas of both decency and
indecency are defined in terms of tastes. Stash cannot be ‘perfectly decent
and nice’ if he asks for ‘chocolate chip sorbet’; ‘evil’ is just a casually used
endearment; ‘insane’ is a description of someone wearing tasselled
loafers; you are ‘crazy’ if you fail to join a tanning salon (20, 24, 31,
48). Bateman’s glib contextualising of his atrocities is also a statement
embodiment of insipid niceness, ‘the boy next door’ (11). He has affini-
ties with Thompson’s folksy psychopaths in The Killer Inside Me and Pop.
1280, but his metaphoric function as the ultimate consumer creates ten-
sions that are far more extreme. As the facade progressively disintegrates
(‘I’m having a difficult time containing my disordered self’ [301]), there
are ever more damning failures, on the part of the rest of society, to see
the beast under the blandness: ‘“You’re not really comprehending any
of this. . . .Ichopped Owen’s fucking head off. Itortured dozens of girls.
...” “Excuse me,” he says, trying to ignore my outburst. “I really must
be going”’ (388). The killing can be seen as an expression of Bateman’s
inability to cope, but more fundamentally it is an expression of the
nature of the society to which he wants to belong (and into which his
sickness and inhumanity do actually ‘fit’) - of a depersonalisation ‘so
intense’ that ‘There wasn’t a clear, identifiable emotion within me,
except for greed and, possibly, total disgust’ (282). Bateman records his
growing sense of the meaninglessness of all higher ideals and emotions,
creating an inner ‘desert landscape . . . devoid of reason and light and
spirit. . . . Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning
in . . .’ (374-5). This is a society in which the ideas of both decency and
indecency are defined in terms of tastes. Stash cannot be ‘perfectly decent
and nice’ if he asks for ‘chocolate chip sorbet’; ‘evil’ is just a casually used
endearment; ‘insane’ is a description of someone wearing tasselled
loafers; you are ‘crazy’ if you fail to join a tanning salon (20, 24, 31,
48). Bateman’s glib contextualising of his atrocities is also a statement
of
Ellis’ wide-ranging condemnation of American society, as he curses
principles and moral distinctions, all of which seem to him to come
down to nothing more than ‘die or adapt. I imagine my own vacant
face, the disembodied voice coming from its mouth: These are terrible
times’ (345-6).
principles and moral distinctions, all of which seem to him to come
down to nothing more than ‘die or adapt. I imagine my own vacant
face, the disembodied voice coming from its mouth: These are terrible
times’ (345-6).
Although they were not aiming to convey the
terror of ‘terrible times’
in the way that Ellis does, several British thriller writers of the nineties
centred their plots on the atrocities of a society in which everything
is subordinated to consumption. By the mid-1990s, after 15 years of
Conservative hegemony, British thriller writers were increasingly
constructing narratives that aimed to expose what Will Hutton, in his
best-selling 1995 critique, called ‘the state we’re in’, the result of failed
Thatcherite efforts to bring Britain closer to the market-oriented finan-
cial system of the United States, with its economic deregulation and
promotion of consumption. This was, Hutton argues, an ‘abandonment
of society to the market’ that instead brought inequality, social distress,
delegitimation of the British political system and deterioration of the
underlying economy.29 The New Wave British crime novelists of
in the way that Ellis does, several British thriller writers of the nineties
centred their plots on the atrocities of a society in which everything
is subordinated to consumption. By the mid-1990s, after 15 years of
Conservative hegemony, British thriller writers were increasingly
constructing narratives that aimed to expose what Will Hutton, in his
best-selling 1995 critique, called ‘the state we’re in’, the result of failed
Thatcherite efforts to bring Britain closer to the market-oriented finan-
cial system of the United States, with its economic deregulation and
promotion of consumption. This was, Hutton argues, an ‘abandonment
of society to the market’ that instead brought inequality, social distress,
delegitimation of the British political system and deterioration of the
underlying economy.29 The New Wave British crime novelists of
the
nineties were strongly influenced by American writers (by Jim
Thompson, Chester Himes and Charles Willeford, but also by more
recent writers like Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen30), and they shared
many of the themes of their American counterparts of the eighties and
nineties.
Thompson, Chester Himes and Charles Willeford, but also by more
recent writers like Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen30), and they shared
many of the themes of their American counterparts of the eighties and
nineties.
These are novels, however, that are
distinctively British in tone, style
and setting. There are still British thrillers set in the United States (and
written in an appropriate style) but, in contrast to the gangster pulps of
the fifties, they are very far from being rapid mass-market imitations.
There is, for example, the powerful series of noir novels by Tim Willocks,
including Bad City Blues (1991), with its exploration of addiction, obses-
sion and revenge in an archetypal Southern town;31 and there is the
mainstream noir of Martin Amis’ Night Train (1997), a tale of suicidal
despair amidst the futuristic commercial glow of a cyberpunk American
cityscape. More commonly, however, contemporary British thrillers
have been set in Walthamstow (Jeremy Cameron), Manchester
and setting. There are still British thrillers set in the United States (and
written in an appropriate style) but, in contrast to the gangster pulps of
the fifties, they are very far from being rapid mass-market imitations.
There is, for example, the powerful series of noir novels by Tim Willocks,
including Bad City Blues (1991), with its exploration of addiction, obses-
sion and revenge in an archetypal Southern town;31 and there is the
mainstream noir of Martin Amis’ Night Train (1997), a tale of suicidal
despair amidst the futuristic commercial glow of a cyberpunk American
cityscape. More commonly, however, contemporary British thrillers
have been set in Walthamstow (Jeremy Cameron), Manchester
(Nicholas
Blincoe) or Meadow Road near the Oval Cricket Ground (Ken
Bruen) and written in styles recognisably regional: ‘“Vinnie my son,” I
goes, “you come off second best mate . . .”’ (Cameron, Vinnie Got Blown
Away, 1). They are generally, as Ken Bruen’s narrator says of one of his
favourite words, ‘Hip, Contemporary. Sassy’ (Her Last Call, 32). In con-
trast to the ‘Brit grit’ writing of earlier decades (Ted Lewis, Maurice
Procter, Gerald Kersh) they offer a much greater admixture of surreal
Bruen) and written in styles recognisably regional: ‘“Vinnie my son,” I
goes, “you come off second best mate . . .”’ (Cameron, Vinnie Got Blown
Away, 1). They are generally, as Ken Bruen’s narrator says of one of his
favourite words, ‘Hip, Contemporary. Sassy’ (Her Last Call, 32). In con-
trast to the ‘Brit grit’ writing of earlier decades (Ted Lewis, Maurice
Procter, Gerald Kersh) they offer a much greater admixture of surreal
and
comic elements, whether they are writing stories of ‘London’s new
outlaw underclass’32 or of company take-overs played out in London’s
yuppie flats and wine bars. But in spite of their lightness of tone, they
offer serious criticism of British society and politics. Even writers who
do not link their plotting to actual political goings-on provide some
sharply satiric pictures of a society in which material success, desirable
goods and attractive surfaces are all founded on crime of one sort or
another.
outlaw underclass’32 or of company take-overs played out in London’s
yuppie flats and wine bars. But in spite of their lightness of tone, they
offer serious criticism of British society and politics. Even writers who
do not link their plotting to actual political goings-on provide some
sharply satiric pictures of a society in which material success, desirable
goods and attractive surfaces are all founded on crime of one sort or
another.
Attacks on rampant consumerism can be launched
from deprived
areas. So, for example, within the council-estate world of Cameron’s
Vinnie Got Blown Away (1995) and its sequel, It Was an Accident . . .
(1996), we meet the almost innocent figure of the narrator, Nicky
Burkett, a car thief with a happy-go-lucky commitment to the consumer
society and a prudent respect for the rules that (by implication) struc-
ture the whole of this society: ‘Lean on someone smaller, don’t get
involved with someone bigger and better . . .’ (Vinnie, 19). The most
obvious milieu within which to satirise consumerism, however, is one
in which consumption is notably conspicuous, amongst those most evi-
dently enjoying the consumer boom of the eighties - the ‘fun, greed
and money’, ‘the hot credit and the Good Things’.33 As David Huggins’
narrator says in The Big Kiss (1996), ‘It was the high-water mark of the
Thatcher revolution and, except for the Red Wedge, everyone was at it’
areas. So, for example, within the council-estate world of Cameron’s
Vinnie Got Blown Away (1995) and its sequel, It Was an Accident . . .
(1996), we meet the almost innocent figure of the narrator, Nicky
Burkett, a car thief with a happy-go-lucky commitment to the consumer
society and a prudent respect for the rules that (by implication) struc-
ture the whole of this society: ‘Lean on someone smaller, don’t get
involved with someone bigger and better . . .’ (Vinnie, 19). The most
obvious milieu within which to satirise consumerism, however, is one
in which consumption is notably conspicuous, amongst those most evi-
dently enjoying the consumer boom of the eighties - the ‘fun, greed
and money’, ‘the hot credit and the Good Things’.33 As David Huggins’
narrator says in The Big Kiss (1996), ‘It was the high-water mark of the
Thatcher revolution and, except for the Red Wedge, everyone was at it’
(28).
Some of the most entertaining of the New Wave crime writers, such
as Huggins, Ken Bruen, Christopher Brookmyre and Iain Banks, choose
their main cast of characters from social groups that were cashing in on
eighties consumerism. Huggins’ narrator, Steve Cork, who built up his
business in the mid-eighties, at the height of the Thatcher revolution,
has created the kind of life defined by a detached Tudor-style house in
Roehampton, a Fiat Punto for his wife and a Mitsubishi Shogun. His
nemesis is a man who represents such a lifestyle carried to extremes -
the unacceptable face of upward mobility, and significantly not a creator
(as Steve has been) but a taker-over. Like Elmore Leonard, Huggins links
over-the-top, uncreative greed with a latent psychotic and sadistic
streak. Mental imbalance ultimately explains the obsessive progress up
the business ladder of the rapacious entrepreneur, who conceals his psy-
chosis under a surface so conventionally smooth that there is ‘some-
thing of the replicant’ about him: looking as though he has been ‘cast
in plastic from a mould’, he uses an electric razor twice a day to patrol
‘the frontier between himself and the rest of the world’ (14).
as Huggins, Ken Bruen, Christopher Brookmyre and Iain Banks, choose
their main cast of characters from social groups that were cashing in on
eighties consumerism. Huggins’ narrator, Steve Cork, who built up his
business in the mid-eighties, at the height of the Thatcher revolution,
has created the kind of life defined by a detached Tudor-style house in
Roehampton, a Fiat Punto for his wife and a Mitsubishi Shogun. His
nemesis is a man who represents such a lifestyle carried to extremes -
the unacceptable face of upward mobility, and significantly not a creator
(as Steve has been) but a taker-over. Like Elmore Leonard, Huggins links
over-the-top, uncreative greed with a latent psychotic and sadistic
streak. Mental imbalance ultimately explains the obsessive progress up
the business ladder of the rapacious entrepreneur, who conceals his psy-
chosis under a surface so conventionally smooth that there is ‘some-
thing of the replicant’ about him: looking as though he has been ‘cast
in plastic from a mould’, he uses an electric razor twice a day to patrol
‘the frontier between himself and the rest of the world’ (14).
The criminally inclined yuppie gets more
sympathetic treatment in
Ken Bruen’s blackly comic Her Last Call to Louis MacNeice (1998), which,
Ken Bruen’s blackly comic Her Last Call to Louis MacNeice (1998), which,
rather
like American gangster sagas, uses the point of view of a protag-
onist, Cooper, for whom crime is a business. His enterprising criminal-
ity mirrors yuppie ambitions and his fate, neatly noir, is entirely
appropriate. Cooper narrates in a laconic, laid-back style that makes no
distinctions between hard-boiled violence and loving consumerism -
the turbocharged car (‘A Subaru Impreza, its cousin won the Monte
Carlo rally. Yeah, like that’ [9]), the ‘flash’ flat and the possessions by
means of which he identifies himself. The Louis MacNeice lines he is
told to memorise (‘an addict to oblivion’ and ‘no intention’) capture
something of his hollow, rootless life, which has no deeper thought or
intention than the maintenance of surfaces: ‘I did not look for the sneer
beneath the surface . . .’ (14). Cooper’s career as a robber and even the
repossession business he set up as a front have prospered as though it
is divinely ordained destiny: ‘fuck me, ain’t it rich, the business took
off’, since God Himself probably ‘enjoys a bit of villainy. . . . Else how
onist, Cooper, for whom crime is a business. His enterprising criminal-
ity mirrors yuppie ambitions and his fate, neatly noir, is entirely
appropriate. Cooper narrates in a laconic, laid-back style that makes no
distinctions between hard-boiled violence and loving consumerism -
the turbocharged car (‘A Subaru Impreza, its cousin won the Monte
Carlo rally. Yeah, like that’ [9]), the ‘flash’ flat and the possessions by
means of which he identifies himself. The Louis MacNeice lines he is
told to memorise (‘an addict to oblivion’ and ‘no intention’) capture
something of his hollow, rootless life, which has no deeper thought or
intention than the maintenance of surfaces: ‘I did not look for the sneer
beneath the surface . . .’ (14). Cooper’s career as a robber and even the
repossession business he set up as a front have prospered as though it
is divinely ordained destiny: ‘fuck me, ain’t it rich, the business took
off’, since God Himself probably ‘enjoys a bit of villainy. . . . Else how
to
account for the Tory party’ (29-30). It is a decade in which there seem
to be boundless opportunities for those with some skills in ‘the art of
deception’ (56), until they inevitably encounter someone ‘bigger and
better’ - as Cooper, of course, does, leaving him in a state of paranoid
apprehension and with ‘Zilch’ from his latest robbery: ‘What is it - the
bank robbers’ prayer: “Lemme get away CLEAN.” I was dirty to my soul
...’ (123).
to be boundless opportunities for those with some skills in ‘the art of
deception’ (56), until they inevitably encounter someone ‘bigger and
better’ - as Cooper, of course, does, leaving him in a state of paranoid
apprehension and with ‘Zilch’ from his latest robbery: ‘What is it - the
bank robbers’ prayer: “Lemme get away CLEAN.” I was dirty to my soul
...’ (123).
Both Brookmyre and Banks chronicle the
dirtiness of the British
eighties from north of the border, as does Irvine Welsh, who in 1998,
with Filth, combined the ‘bad day in Bedlam’ qualities of Trainspotting
(1993) with elements of the noir crime novel. Welsh’s novel opens with
a brutal murder and has a psychopathic, unreliable narrator, Bruce
Robertson, ‘a bad bastard who happens to be a cop’.34 Although
eighties from north of the border, as does Irvine Welsh, who in 1998,
with Filth, combined the ‘bad day in Bedlam’ qualities of Trainspotting
(1993) with elements of the noir crime novel. Welsh’s novel opens with
a brutal murder and has a psychopathic, unreliable narrator, Bruce
Robertson, ‘a bad bastard who happens to be a cop’.34 Although
Thatcherite
politics are only briefly mentioned in Filth, it is a much
more overtly political novel than Trainspotting. Welsh’s 1994 play Head-
state had aimed ‘to capture the essence of Britain after 15 years of Tory
rule’,35 and Filth, through the narrative of Robertson’s tapeworm, covers
much the same period of time (‘You idolise Thatcher over the Falklands
...’ [389]), creating a surreal satire in which a voracious consumer of
drugs, women and police canteen culture is in turn consumed by a tape-
worm that speaks for his nagging conscience - an infestation of which
he finally rids himself.
more overtly political novel than Trainspotting. Welsh’s 1994 play Head-
state had aimed ‘to capture the essence of Britain after 15 years of Tory
rule’,35 and Filth, through the narrative of Robertson’s tapeworm, covers
much the same period of time (‘You idolise Thatcher over the Falklands
...’ [389]), creating a surreal satire in which a voracious consumer of
drugs, women and police canteen culture is in turn consumed by a tape-
worm that speaks for his nagging conscience - an infestation of which
he finally rids himself.
Brookmyre, though he lives in Edinburgh, is in
origin, like Banks, a
Glasgow writer. Said to have his Glaswegian birthplace ‘inscribed
Glasgow writer. Said to have his Glaswegian birthplace ‘inscribed
all over
his face: tough
with attitude’,36 he
creates violent crime
narratives, of less bizarre
extremity than Filth but similarly conceived
as
‘post-Thatcherite nightmares’. His first two novels, Quite Ugly One
Morning (1996) and Country of the Blind (1997), are set in nineties Scot-
land, where the entrepreneurial activities and shoddy morality of the
eighties continue to flourish in the underhanded schemes, gruesome
murders and establishment cover-ups around which he develops his
plots. Jack Parblane, Brookmyre’s hard-boiled journalist, investigates
conspiracies and dirty deals that have their origins in the Thatcherite
eighties. Parblane’s proof of ‘whodunnit’ at the end of Country of the
Blind involves Swan, ‘that self-made Eighties-Thatcherite-Revolution
success story’, and Dalgleish, one-time junior minister at the DTI and
now High Tory Secretary of State for Scotland. Both have been finan-
cially ‘propped up’ by a thoroughly corrupt Tory tabloid owner in return
for such favours as ‘massaging reports’ about his business revenues,
helping to conceal his dealings in pornography and aiding him behind
the scenes in his ‘weaponry transactions’ (359-60). In Quite Ugly One
Morning the nauseating, xenophobic, frighteningly right-wing Stephen
Lime has hatched a scheme to kill off long-stay geriatric patients to
facilitate the closure of a hospital, thus making room for ‘“Hotel.
Conference facilities. That sort of thing. Multimillion-pound develop-
ment”’ (200). The parable of spectacularly greedy consumption sus-
tained by large-scale human sacrifice is supported by satiric vignettes of
the massive Lime in his luxurious bath (thinking of his ‘wider rings of
girth’ as ‘evidence of health, strength and vitality’) and of his ‘hideous’
house with its ‘green, savannah-like shag-pile carpet’ and its ‘monstrous
glass chandelier’. Fittingly, Lime’s undoing begins with an exception-
ally messy murder and the trashing of the victim’s flat by a grotesquely
caricatured hit man who imagined that he was acting in an entrepre-
neurial spirit: ‘. . . he had managed to kid himself for a while that Lime
might even be impressed. He had “thought on his feet to protect the
investment” . . . Lime liked words like that’ (40).
Morning (1996) and Country of the Blind (1997), are set in nineties Scot-
land, where the entrepreneurial activities and shoddy morality of the
eighties continue to flourish in the underhanded schemes, gruesome
murders and establishment cover-ups around which he develops his
plots. Jack Parblane, Brookmyre’s hard-boiled journalist, investigates
conspiracies and dirty deals that have their origins in the Thatcherite
eighties. Parblane’s proof of ‘whodunnit’ at the end of Country of the
Blind involves Swan, ‘that self-made Eighties-Thatcherite-Revolution
success story’, and Dalgleish, one-time junior minister at the DTI and
now High Tory Secretary of State for Scotland. Both have been finan-
cially ‘propped up’ by a thoroughly corrupt Tory tabloid owner in return
for such favours as ‘massaging reports’ about his business revenues,
helping to conceal his dealings in pornography and aiding him behind
the scenes in his ‘weaponry transactions’ (359-60). In Quite Ugly One
Morning the nauseating, xenophobic, frighteningly right-wing Stephen
Lime has hatched a scheme to kill off long-stay geriatric patients to
facilitate the closure of a hospital, thus making room for ‘“Hotel.
Conference facilities. That sort of thing. Multimillion-pound develop-
ment”’ (200). The parable of spectacularly greedy consumption sus-
tained by large-scale human sacrifice is supported by satiric vignettes of
the massive Lime in his luxurious bath (thinking of his ‘wider rings of
girth’ as ‘evidence of health, strength and vitality’) and of his ‘hideous’
house with its ‘green, savannah-like shag-pile carpet’ and its ‘monstrous
glass chandelier’. Fittingly, Lime’s undoing begins with an exception-
ally messy murder and the trashing of the victim’s flat by a grotesquely
caricatured hit man who imagined that he was acting in an entrepre-
neurial spirit: ‘. . . he had managed to kid himself for a while that Lime
might even be impressed. He had “thought on his feet to protect the
investment” . . . Lime liked words like that’ (40).
Iain Banks, whose Complicity (1993) is a more ‘mainstream’ post-
Thatcher-era thriller, has been described as ‘an old-fashioned socialist,
forced by distaste for the former Conservative administration into
nationalism’. ‘After Thatcher came to power,’ he says, ‘I felt alienated
and a lot more Scottish.’37 Set in the early nineties, Complicity is more
overtly moral and political than most genre fiction attempts to be, re-
inforcing its attacks on moral bankruptcy, commercial selfishness and
corruption in high places with passages of explicit discussion of the law,
democracy and political allegiances: “We have chosen to put profits
before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanati-
cism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeak-
Thatcher-era thriller, has been described as ‘an old-fashioned socialist,
forced by distaste for the former Conservative administration into
nationalism’. ‘After Thatcher came to power,’ he says, ‘I felt alienated
and a lot more Scottish.’37 Set in the early nineties, Complicity is more
overtly moral and political than most genre fiction attempts to be, re-
inforcing its attacks on moral bankruptcy, commercial selfishness and
corruption in high places with passages of explicit discussion of the law,
democracy and political allegiances: “We have chosen to put profits
before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanati-
cism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeak-
able
agonies of others . . .”’ (301). This is the murderer’s justification for
his acts. In the manner of much traditional noir, Banks is using the psy-
chopath both as a metaphor for and a critic of a sick society, quite
explicitly putting the argument that in a ‘climate of culpability’ with
such widespread ‘perversion of moral values’, nothing that the killer has
done has been out of place (301). He represents himself as a product of
the system, ‘a businessman’ (299-301), settling accounts for the
his acts. In the manner of much traditional noir, Banks is using the psy-
chopath both as a metaphor for and a critic of a sick society, quite
explicitly putting the argument that in a ‘climate of culpability’ with
such widespread ‘perversion of moral values’, nothing that the killer has
done has been out of place (301). He represents himself as a product of
the system, ‘a businessman’ (299-301), settling accounts for the
exploited,
tipping the balance against those who can afford to live in
houses with views over golf courses, can own Range Rovers and fox-
hounds, and enjoy richly carpeted floors, black leather furniture,
chrome-and-glass tables and all the hi-tech luxuries that money can buy
(34, 56-7, 85-6). The murders described during the course of the novel
(of the prominently corrupt, appropriately dispatched) have an element
of Ellroy’s theme of grievances ‘written on the body’. They constitute a
diatribe against those in power conducted by means of grotesque physi-
cal violations, each symbolising the exact nature of the corruption
attacked. The friendship between the main narrator, Cameron Colley,
and the murderer raises very directly the whole issue of how we judge
the murders committed. The making of such judgements is part of a
complex treatment of the question of complicity in an immoral society.
As the murderer says, ‘“Don’t you see? I’m agreeing with you; I listened
to all your arguments over the years, and you’re right: the twentieth
century is our greatest work of art and we are what we’ve done . . . and
look at it”’ (301).
houses with views over golf courses, can own Range Rovers and fox-
hounds, and enjoy richly carpeted floors, black leather furniture,
chrome-and-glass tables and all the hi-tech luxuries that money can buy
(34, 56-7, 85-6). The murders described during the course of the novel
(of the prominently corrupt, appropriately dispatched) have an element
of Ellroy’s theme of grievances ‘written on the body’. They constitute a
diatribe against those in power conducted by means of grotesque physi-
cal violations, each symbolising the exact nature of the corruption
attacked. The friendship between the main narrator, Cameron Colley,
and the murderer raises very directly the whole issue of how we judge
the murders committed. The making of such judgements is part of a
complex treatment of the question of complicity in an immoral society.
As the murderer says, ‘“Don’t you see? I’m agreeing with you; I listened
to all your arguments over the years, and you’re right: the twentieth
century is our greatest work of art and we are what we’ve done . . . and
look at it”’ (301).
Comments
Post a Comment