A Look at Lott - Jacob Dreyer
In Lott's article "The Whiteness of Film Noir" the play of light and shadow in film noir and how this shades the white man's soul with racial undertones is examined. Lott argues that the "blackening" that takes place of the white protagonists within film noir has a racial undertone to it. Previously, this decent to "darkness" was seen as a metaphor for the decay of society and the moral degeneracy of the character. Often the character is forced to choose between good/light, and evil/dark. This darkness is frequently personified as a woman, as seen in Double Indemnity, which the man must reject. What Lott puts forth is that this moral blackness also has a literal component. The darkness which the character embraces is a direct allusion to non-Caucasians. By becoming "black" the character is not just losing its moral decency, but adopting those indecent and criminal components that characterize the African American in American conciousness of the time.