Accessing Bordered Spaces in Politically Corrupt Urban Landscapes Anonymous College

The expansive genre of film noir works to construct and deconstruct borders. Film noir both establishes and complicatesborders of identity within race, class, ethnicity, and gender. Neo-noir emulates the visual style of film noir as well as examining earlier film noirs preoccupation with the policing and transgressing of spatialized borders in urban landscapes. Neo-noir is unique in assuming the responsibility of contemporary issues and balancing their realities with the stylized veneer and tropes of hard-boiled detective stories. Film noir asks difficult and nuanced questions about borders such as: who is allowed access to bordered spaces? Why do societies construct borders? What is the effect of racialized, spatialized, and gendered borders on human identity and perception of self? In exploring the motifs, themes, and characterizations in several film noirs, one can discover a myriad of connections and distinctions between two neo-noir films that clearly represent the delineation of crossing racialized and gendered borders. Both Roman Polanski’s, Chinatown (1974) and Carl Franklin’s, Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) place their private detectives in dangerous and morally compromising positions. The two characters, Jake (J.J.)...