Equilibrium

SemiNoir is a continuing series of short academic essays dealing with film noirs watched and reviewed in the seminar 'Film Noir and American Culture' at the University of Tuebingen.

What I find most interesting about Raw Deal is its use of violence and its homosexual tendencies. Although I am still of the opinion that Out of the Past is the most violent film noir we have seen so far, there is no doubt that Raw Deal also features a lot of onscreen violence. Just think of the time period the two films were coming to the big screen. World War II was just over and brought a lot of violence not only to the U.S. but also the whole world. And what do the noirs do? Yes, they feature violence you probably never experiences like that before. On the other hand: is this not the most American paradox in movie history – which exists until today? The MPAA allows the directors to put almost as much violence into their movie as they want to be in there. On the contrary, as soon as they put a little bit of naked flesh into their production they will surely get an R-rating. However, there is also a tendency towards more family-firendly movies which therefore seek a PG(13)-rating. Anyway, one thing is for sure: filmmakers were always allowed to show more violence than sexuality – which is also contrary to Europe respectively Germany (where you can see a woman's breasts even in noon's program). Furthermore, the movie's violent content can already be seen in its posters (a man pointing a gun at someone/something) and its tagline which says: Bullets! Women! – Can't Hold a Man Like This! It almost seems like a wonder that this passed through the censor (however, it was banned in Finland in 1949, for example).

Speaking of these 'un-American' elements in the film noir, I want to bring up the homosexuality in Raw Deal. This is the second time we could observe these tendencies in a noir, which makes me wonder even more. Since I just spoke of the MPAA (respectively its predecessor) I find it very astonishing that the censors did not recognize the homosexual content of these movies. Even today homosexuality is considered as something unnatural and bad in America's culture. So how did they achieve to put it in a movie in the 1940's!? Maybe the society in the 40's did not recognize or figured out the 'signs' of homosexuality as easily as we do today. We have seen a lot of movies featuring homosexuality, there are gay and lesbian feasts and other popcultural things like that – in short: we know how they (mostly) behave and act, which makes it fairly easy to call the villian in Raw Deal a man with homosexual tendencies. But is this not also something interesting, the fact that we receive films different now than we would have in the 1940's? Nowadays people have seen so much, know so much, and probably recognize something more easily than at that time. The noirs now have a totally different, a broader audience than they had in the old days – while they were targeted at adults, nowadays even teens can see this movie (i.e. the distribution via VHS, DVD, mass media, …).

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