Los Angeles began as the Spanish settlement El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles. Upon American acquisition, Our Lady the Queen of the Angels was the target destination of a morally pure city for aryan Protestants. But as thousands of immigrants trekked west across the country, our city developed into the melting pot of America. Los Angeles was meant to be our city, open to the people seeking to achieve the American Dream.
For the next thirty years, that's exactly what LA was. This was no land of luck, this was the Land of Opportunity, where a mere thought can produce a harvest of oranges, and a simple appearance at the hottest bar would land you a golden star on your door.
The angelic portrayal of Los Angeles was not meant to be. The chaos that ensued the Great Depression left many at loss and many more pouring in from the Dust Bowl. There were new tensions, towards the Oakies, towards the government, and towards the city itself. The labyrinth layout of Los Angeles no longer signified LA's freedom, but rather its disorganization and lawlessness.
Buntin pronounces that "Los Angeles invariably proves to be a femme fatale," who loves you then leaves you with a bullet in your chest and a murder pinned to your back. In the way that Faye was the embodiment of Hollywood to West, Phyllis is the incarnation of the 1930's noir Los Angeles to Cain. Her seductive facade hiding her sociopathic detachment is the booster's temptations, luring people to the city, and the the corruption of the police, holding the front of protection while running the organized crime. Her native Californian blood runs deep within the society of the time, and her femme fatale character brings disaster to Huff and Angelenos alike.
People defined the representation of Los Angeles, and in turn, Los Angeles defined a representation of its people.
I think it is a very interesting point that Sophie has when she talks about Phyllis symbolizing Buntin's femme fatal LA. I had never really thought about Phyllis or any other character, for that matter, in the context of LA. I was of the opinion that this book could have been placed in any other city and still maintained its literary merit. For me, the aspects of LA that were in this book were of a solely descriptive nature. I had never really explored what Cain's argument towards the city of Los Angeles could be, but after reading Sophie's post I think I have an idea. Sticking to the idea of femme fatal Phyllis as a symbol of LA, I think that Cain's argument about LA is centered around the fact that the alluring and tempting beauty is all a facade. People like Huff are brought in by the beauty and perceived possibility, but when they actually get to this city, the veil is immediately dropped and they see a place fraught with crime, murder, and deceit. This idea presented by Cain really seems to contain many of the fundamental themes of Noir, which would make sense because Double Indemnity was one of the original Noir novels. The idea that one of the fundamental characters in Noir novels, femme fatals, is an embodiment of a real life femme fatal, Los Angeles, who dupes thousands of unsuspecting Westerners and brings their lives and sanity crashing to the floor is a very interesting idea that I think deserves exploration.
ReplyDeleteI engaged with your comparison of Faye and Phyllis to highly seductive, sexualized characters representative of Los Angeles as a whole. The midwesterners and any other immigrants to the city were not in love with the city, they moved on a whim of passion and desire. This eventually characterizes the city of Los Angeles as a whole in the 1930s: a place strife with chaos. Even those who enter as cool, calm, and calculating, will eventually only contribute further to the chaos that characterizes the city, as evidenced by Huff. This begs the question: Did Los Angeles, in its beginning, create rash citizens, or did irrational, passionate immigrants move to the city and create the culture of madness.
ReplyDeleteI want to touch more on the police and their role in LA during this time period. In both Double Indemnity (James Cain) and The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City (John Buntin), the role of the police tell readers a lot about the “noir age” and that time period surrounding it. In Double Indemnity, the police are mentioned once on page 64 as Norton is explaining to Keyes and Huff why they’re sunk and what the police had to say about it. “‘I’ve been talking to the police about this. I told them we suspect murder. They said they did too, at first, but they’ve given up that idea….No, they assure me it’s on the up-and-up.” Here, the police, having little to no stakes involved in the case, take one glance at the murder and go along with the idea that it’s a freak accident. They are not affected by the insurance company paying the high cost or not. Other than this cameo, the police are not mentioned and play no role in the story. This is paralleled in Buntin’s work as the corruption of the police are so clearly outlined with real facts and stories. They look the other way in order to gain higher positions or stay in power. This ironically immoral justice system brands the noir period—its stark black and white contrast blurs into more shades of gray.
ReplyDeleteI think as we have talked about in earlier discussions, the idea of Los Angeles as the “America” of America is a very valuable idea in talking about the motivations behind the population of Los Angeles in the 1930s and beyond. People came to LA because they were dissatisfied with the Midwest – they were the people who were and would always be looking for greener pastures, and, because of this, they created the culture-clash of “madness” that we see in the Noir era. Going off of what Griffin said earlier, I think that people who came to Los Angeles were frenzied in a way – Los Angeles didn’t “make” them crazy, but it drew the “crazy” to Los Angeles.
ReplyDeleteIn this way, I wonder if, beyond Faye and Phyllis, we can begin to look into the character of Walter Huff. In some ways, we talked about him being desensitized by the insurance business – his “crazy” actions were inspired by the unfeeling business that he was in. While I think about the people of Los Angeles as being crazy from the beginning, I wonder if a similar concept to that of Walter occurred in Los Angeles during the “noir” era. In a time of murder and intrigue, it didn’t seem as odd for people to commit wild murders and crazy crimes – if nothing was being done about it, then maybe the “craziness” of Los Angeles in the era did force people into their actions. Perhaps they were already of a more “unhinged” mindset, but the tumult of Los Angeles in the noir era brought out more.
As Cain portrays her, Phyllis Nirlinger is a cold-blooded killer hidden behind a seductive façade. She kills simply for the thrill of it, and lures people in along the way. I do see Phyllis as a personification of Los Angeles in the way other people act around her. Huff, representing a common Angelino, falls in love with her because of how she looks, and what he thinks he sees in her. But as he soon finds out, she is a woman filled with empty promises. This is a direct parallel to the ideas Midwesterners had about Los Angeles. They saw the city and wanted it so badly they would do anything for it: we saw this with West’s interpretation of Faye. Phyllis embodies the trap that most people faced when moving to LA. They fell in love with idea of it, but it ultimately destroyed them.
ReplyDeleteI think we should be careful before we generalize too much about Phyllis and how she symbolizes LA. While I think there is certainly something to that link, shouldn't we consider whether we're in another "everyone is there for the fame" situation? It might be a bit lazy for us to say "LA is a seductress, she ruins everyone, story's over." Maybe I'm missing some of the nuance of what has already been posted but I think LA in Double Indemnity could be more than a femme fatale–especially one as dark as Phyllis. I'd like to see our conversation tomorrow focus more on booster LA versus noir LA instead of a Phyllis vs. Faye comparison. Let's dig deeper!
ReplyDeleteIn a Double Indemnity context, the city seems more to me like the insurance business itself: Los Angeles is the Wild West with a fresh coat of paint in just the same way Cain says insurance is like civilized roulette. With so much opportunity here, couldn't it follow that the dark side of human nature might be the one capitalizing? That's one of the struggles noir tries to tease out: inside our pristine mission-style homes rich with "heritage" we're murdering each other! Maybe Phyllis's role says more about the darkness within us than the city we live in. Maybe that makes Keyes our better (if flawed) side, and Huff a reluctant corruptible conscience stuck between the two?
I'd agree with Alex here. Before we dive too far into the idea that L.A. is a femme fatale, we should evaluate whether that statement is helping be specific or whether it's a way to evaluate the text in more general terms.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to talk tomorrow about some of the changes Raymond Chandler made to the screenplay version of Double Indemnity and those changes' implications to our own reading of the text. Phyllis strikes me as a far more genuine character in the film than she does in the text: her reactions to Neff's suggestions about murdering her husband appear immediately sincere in the film, whereas the book suggests Phyllis's ability to hide her true intentions is less developed. Neff/Huff, on the other hand, seems far less genuine to me in the film than he does in the book. Certain choices about his dialogue and treatment of Phyllis, specifically the screenwriter's emphasis romantic elements of their relationship ("I'm crazy aboutcha, baby,") come off as forced and uncomfortable. Such choices, whether deliberate or the result of a certain style of acting, illuminate some of the subconscious feelings we have about characters in advance of seeing them come to life on the silver screen.
I have trouble characterizing Phyllis as simply some sort of sociopathic killer, an embodiment of LA that breaks your heart and dashes your dreams. Noir sees the world as nuanced--no one is simply good or bad. By labeling Phyllis as a heartless femme fatale, I don't think we are doing her justice. Perhaps Phyllis is more an embodiment of the id. Phyllis has a habit of seeing what she wants and following her instincts to pursue it. She has no qualms with cheating on her husband with both Huff and Sachetti; she simply follows her sexual urges. She had no problems killing children, the first Mrs. Nirdlinger, and Mr. Nirdlinger--she even had plans to kill Lola. While she was most certainly not morally justified her actions, she was simply following her instinct, getting what she wanted. Phyllis, to me, is not dependent on location. Phyllis, the id, is in each of us; the location of Los Angeles was simply a convenient location in which the id could thrive.
ReplyDeleteI was engaged when you compared the layout of LA to its lawlessness because we tend to think of the sprawling figure of LA as liberating. Any one can build wherever they like because we can just keep expanding outwards, but as each individual follows their own architectural dreams, organization is thrown out the window. It seems like you could almost continue this comparison and maybe talk about how in LA so many people are trying desperately to follow their own dreams that they begin to run over each other and become disorganized and “lawless”.
ReplyDeleteI also thought that your comparison of Phyllis to the people who make up LA was very interesting. While this comparison may be a bit of a generalization, it made me think about how the noir era came about. What was happening in LA that made authors like Cain decide to create characters like Phyllis? I also thought of Huff and how he, like the people of LA seeing LA as something other than “angelic”, slowly began to see Phyllis as her true self.
I think Diana's last point is so interesting! And I think that's how Phyllis is the most symbolic of LA. She goes from committing lots of murders to killing herself, just as LA seduced so many people over until it collapsed and became rampant with crime. Beyond that, though, I agree with Ezra and Alex and am hesitant to draw any comparisons. I think that if Phyllis were a true representation of LA, there should have been someone telling Huff to go for her (representative of booster culture) and she would have been viewed as perfect until he was absolutely committed to her (representative of how LA was viewed as a utopia and then people moved here and had their dreams crushed). Instead, Huff goes for her without having to be sold, and we see her desire to kill her husband (what I would call a flaw) in the second interaction between her and Huff. I know that Cain made the book short, but I think that if he had wanted to paint her as a representation of LA, he would have been more clear about it. Day of the Locust was short too, and that was wicked obvious.
ReplyDeleteCan we also please talk about the changed names in the movie? It might just be a matter of using more recognizable names, because Nirdlinger is pretty weird, but maybe there's a reason behind it. And that reason could very easily be a legal copyright thing but who knows. If anyone can unpack it, it's us! Yay!
I find Phyllis to be a fascinating character. One of my favorite moments from her in the novel is the point where she characterizes herself as this angel of death, mercifully delivering those that she killed unto the void. Of course, the question is to what extent Phyllis truly believes this about herself. I was interested by the fact that this does not appear in the film so far, as it provides interesting insight into her character. It undermines the question of her sanity and reason, but certainly provides interesting motivation. There are differences between the book and the movie for all of the characters, and perhaps this omission had to do with how the filmmakers wanted to portray Phyllis. She seems much better at covering up the true nature of her character--or perhaps her sociopathic tendencies are being played down on purpose--as there are fairly prominent tells in the novel which hint at more being under the surface of Phyllis' desire to kill her husband. I can't quite see her as a personification of Los Angeles, as the city itself (even in all of its generalized descriptions) has none of the cold, sociopathic malice of Phyllis Nirdlinger.
ReplyDeleteFrom reading some of the comments above, it seems that the general consensus is that we have identified several characters (i.e. Faye, Phyllis) as being "femme fatal" symbolizing Los Angeles. We have also always come back to the idea that Los Angeles is "American's America" in almost every text that we have analyzed. From this, would it be safe to say that the American Dream is dead? By implying that Americans see Los Angeles as their land of opportunity, but also stating that this is all just a facade that will later backfire on your initial intentions, are we saying that Los Angeles has nothing to offer? If so, why was there still lingering interest to move west and settle here? I struggle with the thought that Los Angeles is past its prime, or if it even had a "prime" apparently. I don't believe that our city will only take you in, chew you up, and spit you back out, there has to be more to this. I agree with Alex when he said that we need to dive deeper into this because Los Angeles is much more complex than just the femme fatal ideology and I think we should discuss what more it can/did offer in our meeting tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteWhile some argue that Cain uses Phyllis as the femme fatale of Double Indemnity, I pin some of the blame on Walter for allowing his desire for Phyllis to overcome his rationality. For this reason, I am having trouble coming to terms that Los Angeles “loves you then leaves you with a bullet in your chest.” It is not Los Angeles’s fault that dreams were crushed. I see those who came to LA to become a star or to revel in sunshine and oranges as blind and impulsive. They let their desire for the dreams of magic LA trump their own rationality and drive to work hard instead of “making it” in Los Angeles, in a similar way that Walter allowed Phyllis’s sexuality to blind him.
ReplyDeleteThere appears to be a tension between considering Los Angeles a parallel to Phyllis as a femme fatale and maintaining each entity's integrity. Although I do agree with Alix that blindly drawing this parallel causes us to ignore many of the nuances associated with Phyllis's character, I believe that there is still merit to this comparison. The initial comparison defines Huff's role as the Midwesterner drawn to Los Angeles for her image of fulfilling a person's dream, with Phyllis being the attractive Los Angeles. One can find fault with this comparison as failing to see Phyllis for all her sides or for ignoring the actual image of Los Angeles at the time. However, if you consider the other types of inhabitants in Los Angeles, the Phyllis-Los Angeles comparison seems to hold its merit. For example, in Double Indemnity, not all the characters were entranced with Phyllis--Lola was against Phyllis and both she and Sachetti saw that there was something highly suspicious about her. In the same way, not everyone who came to Los Angeles during this period was drawn to the dream machine image, exemplified by the characters in Day of the Locust. However, regardless of the reason people were drawn to Los Angeles, they were all victim to the "chaos" of the city. Similarly, everyone who was associated with Phyllis was victim to her ways--Huff was played, Sachetti was used, and Lola lost her father. In this way, like Midwesterners in Los Angeles at the time, they were all subject to the harsh realities of being associated with this femme fatale.
ReplyDeleteI think Los Angeles is unique in that it is a city whose image is created by and sustained by people. More than any other city and largely because of Hollywood, Los Angeles is associated with specific inhabitants instead of a culture or community. It is easy to see how the idea of LA as a femme fatale could arise out of this time period. Associated with surface beauty and subsurface violence, LA fits the bill as a femme fatale. But it may be too easy to simple draw that arrow. I agree with Sofie that just as the inhabitants created this image, the city shaped the inhabitants
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