Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Dames and Driving
• Section One: Contents and Contexts
  • Chapter One. Manning the Posts: Classic Noir, Postclassic Noir, and Postmodernism
  • Chapter Two. Sexing the Paradigm: Women and Men in Noir
  • Chapter Three. Racing the Paradigm: The Whiteness of Film Noir
• Section Two: Prototypes in Classic Noir
  • Chapter Four. The Killers (1946): Quintessential Noir?
  • Chapter Five. Out of the Past (1947): Passive Masculinity and Active Femininities
  • Chapter Six. Kiss Me Deadly (1955): Apocalyptic Femmes
• Section Three: Return of the Repressed in Retro-Noir
  • Chapter Seven. L.A. Confidential (1997) and Casablanca (1942): Does Anything Change as Time Goes By?
  • Chapter Eight. Mulholland Falls (1996): Nuclear Noir as Numbskull Noir
  • Chapter Nine. Fight Club (1999): Retro-Noir Masquerades as Neo-Noir
• Section Four: Revision of the Repressed in Neo-Noir
  • Chapter Ten. Twilight (1998): Age, Beauty, and Star Power-Survival of the Fittest
  • Chapter Eleven. Fargo (1996): A Woman Who Is Not Herself Mean-Snow-swept Highways and Margie
  • Chapter Twelve. Jackie Brown (1997): Gender, Race, Class, and Genre
• Conclusion. Doing It for bell: Cultural Criticism and Social Change
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index

About the Author

Jans B. Wager is Associate Professor of English and Literature at Utah Valley State College in Orem, Utah. This book continues the investigation of film noir she began in Dangerous Dames: Women and Representation in the Weimar Street Film and Film Noir.