Some ideas for a research paper:

Below are some ideas that might get you started thinking about research projects. All of them are suggestions only – they should be taken with a grain of salt, and you should write a paper based on one of them only if it really fires you up. In my experience, there is nothing worse than trying to write a research paper that answers somebody else’s question: it’s possible, of course, but it doesn’t really fulfill the primary function of research, which is to teach you something that you really want to know. So if any of these helps your own ideas to coalesce into a set of directed questions, great; if not, treat these only as examples of how a research problem can be formulated, given what we have to work with so far.

· One idea fairly leaps to mind, mainly because I’ve been thinking about it a lot for the last couple of days. Start with a simple question: what is the role of violence in the noir genre, and how does that role change from the classic period to the contemporary period? I’ve already gone into this a little bit on the Prospectus page, but the central questions here are (a) why do the films become more violent over time and (b) how does the violence of late noir make you rethink what’s going on in early noir? There’s a lot to be thought about there. If this one interests you, tell me as soon as possible – I have a lot of books you can look at.

· You might write a more searching paper about the relationship between the Hays Code and noir, or the relationship between the Hays Code and film more generally in the 194Os. You could approach this in one of two ways: the first would be to start with the Hays Code, with its history, and to try to speak generally about the Hays Office’s influence on films in a discrete period. Or, you could choose a film -- Double Indemnity, Postman – that had a particular problem with the Hays Office, and use that particular debate as a lens through which to view Hollywood’s self-censorship more generally. (And remember – nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Might noir be as much a creation of the Hays Code as an enemy to it?) Again, the key is to ask the questions in such a way that they become focused rather than diffuse.

· We haven’t really touched on this, but a good paper could be written on noir as a reaction to diffuse cultural fears of nuclear war in the post-war world. Noir – because its basic response to the world is paranoid anyway – is the perfect vehicle for expressing paranoia, and many noirs addressed nuclear or communist threats pretty directly. See Richard Widmark in Pickup on South Street, for instance, or the horrendously bad and yet still quite interesting Kiss Me Deadly, the first of the Mike Hammer films, the last of the noir detective films and in many ways the darkest in worldview of the noirs. Several readings in the packet (and all the ones about Kiss Me Deadly) address nuclear fear as a noir theme, either directly or indirectly. All of them would make good starting points for a research project.

· Most of you have already written about the femme fatale in one way or another, but its treatment of women remains the lasting legacy of noir, and has been at least partially responsible for some of our most enduring stereotypes of women: the virginal ingénue, the bitch, the castrating mother. That’s a rich vein and a deep one, and it’s worth some exploration: many of the basic models for female characters developed in the noir period recur alarmingly often today, even in non-noir films.

· You might also revisit the connection between noir and alternative sexualities and gender identification. Noir – since it was, for the most part, a “B-picture” phenomenon, slipped almost seamlessly into the dominant and sex-obsessed B-picture mode of the the late 50’s and 60’s: usually referred to as the “exploitation film,” and usually directed by people like Roger Corman. The director who most clearly bridges the gap between noir and exploitation is Samuel Fuller, whose noirs like Shock Corridor and, especially, The Naked Kiss revolve around themes of prostitution, homosexuality, pedophilia and various forms of illicit lust a go-go. None of this is shown, of course (it’s still the Hays Code era, after all), but Fuller knows how to use noir techniques to suggest much of what isn’t depicted: these remain some of the best-looking and most honestly bad films you can see. If you’re interested in noir’s twisted relationship with sexuality – which is, really, at bottom, simply America’s twisted relationship with sexuality – see these films and read the criticism that surrounds them. And, of course, think about Miller’s Crossing and the home fatale.

· The books on which many of these films are based – the works of James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane – are available in the area, if not at Marlboro. Several of the articles in the packet (“Cain, Naturalism and Noir,” for instance) deal with the connection between the novel and the film. In many cases, the novels were much darker and much more unforgiving than the films – Cain’s version of Postman, for instance, included a scene in which Frank and Cora had sex quite literally over Nick’s dead body, and Cain’s story is both more misogynistic and, in some ways, more racist than the film’s. So you might choose a film – use the reading in the packet to help you choose one that’s worth it – and read the book on which it’s based. Then write a paper about how a noir film did and did not connect to its original “hard-boiled” model.

· You might also consider a paper that compares remakes – say, the 1962 and 1991 versions of Cape Fear, the 1946 and the 1981 versions of The Postman Always Rings Twice, the 1946 and the 1978 versions of The Big Sleep – to see how different directors, in different eras, interpret the same basic story. If you can do the comparison with enough depth, it will lead you to consider the differences between eras more broadly, and it will probably lead you to think about what noir really is. One reading in the packet compares noir to language: its imagery and themes supply the basic grammar, but within that grammar the director can say an infinite number of sentences. So such a paper would almost certainly lead to a discussion of how directors work within genres, and how artistic expression is possible within the confines of a single story and a single genre.

· OK – you might also simply write a longer paper about either a single film or a single director you find interesting. Don’t discount that. Students approaching their first long paper usually are worried about filling the space, so they’re always looking for what seems like the biggest topic they can find. But big isn’t always best: often the best papers are deep and narrow rather than broad and shallow. So if one film, or one director, really sparks your interest, start simply by reading around on InfoTrac and in the library to see if anything’s been written about it, and then use that reading to help you decide how you want to frame your own analysis. I hope it goes without saying that the film and the director do not have to have anything to do with noir; you’ll have more material at your fingertips if you stick with noir, but the most important thing at this point is to identify, and then pursue doggedly, the thing you’re really interested in. You’d be amazed how much you can write about one thing if you simply allow yourself to.

That’s enough for now. Again, only ideas. Don’t be limited by them – but think about the paper now, and do a bit of reading if you’re not sure where to go. The more you read now, the happier you’ll be later.