Intertexts

1 8 0 I N T E R T E X T S about the instructor not becoming the text that students seek to decipher, for example. Conversely, several essays in Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English have impelled me to think about the interarticulations of homosexuality and heterosexuality and about the vi'ays Ihandle matters of sexuality and sexual orientation in all the courses Iteach. Smith’s essay points to new contextualizations that Imight deploy with The Children’s Hour, something that Iteach in Women Writers, an undergraduate course cross-listed with Women’s Studies, and Zami: ANew Spelling of My Name, a selection in the Lesbian Theory and Literature course. Such an assessment of teaching approaches is exactly what acollection of pedagogical essays hopes to engender, and that Spurlin’s edition is published by the National Council of Teachers of English points to the importance the profession gives to les¬ bian and gay studies at atime when prevailing politics of students seek to define academic freedom in conservative terms and when the dominant cul¬ tural emphasis on “family values” seeks to delimit notions of “family.” M a r j e a n D . P u r i n t o n Texas Tech University Conrad, Mark T., ed. The Philosophy of Film Noir. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2006. xv +246 pp. The thirteen essays collected herein represent an attempt to bring into focus, if not to offer convincing solutions to, the major critical and conceptual con¬ troversies surrounding film noir, while at the same time seeking to “deepen and enrich [the reader’s] respect for and understanding of’ the noir, as Con¬ rad says in the Introduction. The first of three parts of the book, titled “The Essence and Elements of Film Noir,” seeks to answer two questions: Is noir agenre of film? Is there aset of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions to afilm noir? Then three subsequent essays, “Film Noir and the Meaning of Life,” “The Horizon of Disenchantment: Film Noir, Camus, and the Vicissi¬ tudes of Descent,” and “Symbolism, Meaning, and Nihilism in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction,” explore the existentialist and nihilist aspects of noir. Finally, five essays covering awide range of philosophical issues are joined by their focus on one (or two in the case of “Knowledge, Morality, and Tragedy in The Killers and Out of the Past”) classic noir film. As awhole, the collection aims to achieve two goals: to introduce genuine philosophical problems and film noir characteristics, while providing sufficiently in-depth discussion that those familiar with either philosophical methods or film noir will not find the material too elementary. Although facing adifficult task, Conrad has put together acollection that succeeds in both respects. In Part I, consisting of the first four essays, the essence of film noir comes under scrutiny. The general emerging consensus holds either that noir is not agenre, or, if it is, then its essence is not specifiable as aset of nec- Review of Uje Philosophy of Film Noir 1 8 1 essary and sufficient conditions (i.e., what must he included if something is a noir and what, if present, makes something anoir). In discussing noir’s essence. Aeon J. Skoble’s “Moral Clarity and Practical Reason in Film Noir” (the essay perhaps most successful in Part Iat walking the line between introducing philosophical issues and providing plenty of food for scholarly debate), explores morality in noir characters both from aKantian point of view (wherein ethics is based on asense of moral duty and moral imperatives take the form of rules such as, “To lie is wrong.”) and from aPlatonic point of view (wherein sometimes moral rules of thumb must be violated so that true justice can be served or the truly good act be performed). After quickly, but thoroughly enough, laying the groundwork necessary to begin talking about ethics (discussing moral realism vs. relativism, duty-based ethics vs. virtue-based ethics), Skoble suggests that, despite appearances to the con¬ trary, some classic noir protagonists do not experience true moral conflicts. The difficulty surrounding some decisions Sam Spade must make, for instance...