Noir developed as a stylistic way of dealing with the universal corruption WW II revealed. What kind of a life, let alone a good life, could you have in such a dark, deceptive, and duplicitous world? Betrayal, backstabbing, and bribery combined with bullying, mayhem, and outright murder to align society against individual.
Night fell, hard. Moral pollution kept it permanently dark.
Darkness was the concrete correlative showing how murky, foggy, and arbitrary the world had become without even a pretense of propriety offering hope’s faint glow. Noir condensed like bloody dew on the cold iron prison bars, pooled on the chipped, stained concrete, sloshed at the body-dump wharfs and docks.
That style, like all paint, gradually wore away. Now it’s just how it is. Lids were ripped off during WW II to reveal the universal corruption, but they pop off of their own accord now, so much has it worsened. We exist now, forget living, in bare metal desperation, scrambling to avoid the falling heels.
We see the ragged edge now, hardening as we approach. Over that edge gapes the pit of extinction, spread wider than a femme fatale. We don’t even know why we’re running in a lemming stampede, but we leap toward the edge, wild to fly over it.
Dark as it is around us now, it’s far darker down in the pit.
///
