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Saturday, March 26, 2011

Blog Entry #10 - "The Gold Coast Section"

The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones would have to be the best example of Noir for me, out of all the 4 reading selections in "The Gold Coast Section."  The qualities of traditional noir that I found are similar with this story are;
  • A femme fatale who will do anything to get a guy to help her carry out a murder.
  • A beautiful femme fatale, who seduces a guy in hopes of gaining his trust.
  • A femme fatale who turns on the guy that she got to help him with a murder.
  • A protagonist named Tate, who doesn't know whether or not he should help the femme fatale, or turn her in to authorities.
  • The protagonist is a "loser type" individual with no real aspirations.
  • The main setting of the story seems to be at night, because the windows of the house are described as dark, and the inside of the house is dark as well.
The story that I felt to be the most difficult to classify as noir would have to be What You See.  I was really frustrated with this story the whole way through.  The main character in the story, made me want to slap him in the face!  It's almost as if he was trying to play a cool guy, but he is actually a big loser nerd with mental issues.  I think the harder this character tried at anything, the more retarded he got.  I almost felt as if he was whining and rambling on throughout the story.  The whole thing just seemed really fake and ridiculous.  The plot was also too predictable.
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2 comments:

  1. noirdarknessMarch 27, 2011 at 4:23 PM

    I read 'Barnaby Jones' and I also thought it was a good example of noir. The classic male protagonist who will do ALMOST anything for the femme fatale when the femme fatale wants something from him. I didn't read the other story, I read 'The Kinship'. I liked that they were two different types of stories and they both are different in the noir feel.I appreciate the description of the other story you read. Makes me laugh.

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  2. RunnerMarch 28, 2011 at 9:42 PM

    I liked that you picked “The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones” as the best example of noir. I felt the same way. I liked how you made a bullet list to point out the characteristics of noir that it had. I like how you not only point out the obvious characteristics of noir but also found other less obvious characteristics of noir to. I agree with you also about “What You See”. It made me irritated to. I liked how you said, “The main character in the story, made me want to slap him in the face!” I agree with you about the plot as well. It was way to predictable. It was like you already knew what was going to happen before it even happened. You could almost predict what the next sentence was going to say. I really enjoyed reading your blog and look forward to reading more from you in the future.

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