I reinjured my back dealing with an overspill of rat-chewed garbage in our driveway, a sentence no part of which I had any interest in ever typing
UGH NO.
Noir films, however, frequently undermine this misogynistic scapegoating by making it clear that the men who are led astray by temptresses were just waiting for a chance to go astray anyway; the women awaken a suppressed tendency toward antisocial rebellion and crime, the desire to "get away with something
....man, I remember watching Double Indemnity as a kid and thinking something like this? The noir antihero is hardly a trembling innocent corrupted against his will!
I LOVE Megan Abbott. Unfortunately her recent books have varied wildly in quality. I'd highly recommend her first four novels -- Die a Little (2005), The Song Is You (2007), Queenpin (2007) and Bury Me Deep (2009) and then, in a wild change of pace, she wrote Dare Me (2012), a noir novel about suburban modern-day cheerleaders, which I know sounds really off-putting, but it's beautifully written and completely noir. It was made into a show (soon cancelled) and it makes me a bit sad everyone is enthusing over the Yellowjackets show now which is a giant hit, because Dare Me just kind of disappeared. Anyway. I don't know if I'd recommend any of her books after that -- she kept on writing from the POV of teenagers, which didn't really work for me without the noir cheerleading, and then wrote a book sort of about PMDD and noir women and murder, Give Me Your Hand (2018) which was at least pretty readable, but genuinely off-putting. Unfortunately her very latest, The Turnout (2021), which is sort of about ballet and house renovation and dark secrets and so on, went back to unpalatable for me, but I know other people who liked it better. But Dare Me is incendiary.
no subject
UGH NO.
Noir films, however, frequently undermine this misogynistic scapegoating by making it clear that the men who are led astray by temptresses were just waiting for a chance to go astray anyway; the women awaken a suppressed tendency toward antisocial rebellion and crime, the desire to "get away with something
....man, I remember watching Double Indemnity as a kid and thinking something like this? The noir antihero is hardly a trembling innocent corrupted against his will!
I LOVE Megan Abbott. Unfortunately her recent books have varied wildly in quality. I'd highly recommend her first four novels -- Die a Little (2005), The Song Is You (2007), Queenpin (2007) and Bury Me Deep (2009) and then, in a wild change of pace, she wrote Dare Me (2012), a noir novel about suburban modern-day cheerleaders, which I know sounds really off-putting, but it's beautifully written and completely noir. It was made into a show (soon cancelled) and it makes me a bit sad everyone is enthusing over the Yellowjackets show now which is a giant hit, because Dare Me just kind of disappeared. Anyway. I don't know if I'd recommend any of her books after that -- she kept on writing from the POV of teenagers, which didn't really work for me without the noir cheerleading, and then wrote a book sort of about PMDD and noir women and murder, Give Me Your Hand (2018) which was at least pretty readable, but genuinely off-putting. Unfortunately her very latest, The Turnout (2021), which is sort of about ballet and house renovation and dark secrets and so on, went back to unpalatable for me, but I know other people who liked it better. But Dare Me is incendiary.