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2 Noir Part 1: Socialism in One Genre: Wildcat Strikers, Fugitive Outsiders, and a Savage Lament
- University Press of Florida
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chapter 2 Noir Part 1 Socialism in One Genre: Wildcat Strikers, Fugitive Outsiders, and a Savage Lament Mitchell: What’s happened? Has everybody suddenly gone crazy . . . Or is it just me? Keeley: No, it’s not just you. The snakes are loose. Crossfire As defined in this study, “film noir” denotes the moment in the history of the crime film where ideas of the left dominated and, for a brief moment, dictated the structure of the genre. This left hegemony, in one genre of the culture industry for one short period (1945–50), represented on the screen the coming together of a dominant bloc of working- and middle-class interests. It appeared at a moment when working-class consciousness was heightened by a series of strikes, both in the nation as a whole and in Hollywood in particular, and when middle-class anxiety over increasing corporatization was acute. The formation expressed itself on the screen as a multitude of subworking -class, working-class, and middle-class male and female fugi- Noir Part 1: Socialism in One Genre · · · 31 tives forced to flee the law, usually for a crime they felt at least in some way innocent of, ultimately exposing the real criminal as the upper- or business-class foe who torments them. In addition, there is a sub-period grouping within this five-year span both in labor as a whole and in Hollywood labor and in its expression on screen in the crime film. The period immediately after the war begins with the hope of change in society, expressed in labor through a series of strikes and in the crime film through a turn to a more direct dealing with social problems. Labor is then frontally assaulted through the Taft-Hartley Act and through HUAC, with the effect of this assault on the crime film being the retreat of the crime film directors into a more covert expression in the form of the generic dominant of the outside-the-law fugitive. Finally, by the end of the period , labor has ousted its militant members, the Hollywood blacklist is fully in effect, and the crime film directors respond with films that function as a lament for a lost opportunity for radical change. Postwar Labor: Revolt and Counter-revolt For labor, the three sub-periods were the postwar strikes, which ignited mass strikes as well (1945–47); the reaction against these strikes, initially on the legislative front in the Taft-Hartley Act (1947–48); and then, more broadly, the wide-scale attack on labor under the all-purpose label of “Communism,” which culminated in the CIO’s expulsion of eleven of its most radical unions (1949–50). Comingoutofthewar,laborwasextremelyorganizedandextremely disaffected. By the end of the war, 69 percent of workers in industrial production were unionized (Brecher 223) and many had gained experience in striking, with 1944 boasting the most strikes ever up to that point in U.S. history (225). During the war they watched business profits rise while wages remained stagnant, and after the war, expecting a pay increase, they saw instead, largely because of the cancellation of wartime overtime, their income decline from 15 percent (Lichtenstein 221) to 30 percent (Lipsitz, Rainbow 99). Worse yet, the end of the war occasioned the overnight cancellation of $24 billion in government contracts, leading to massive layoffs (2 million by 1 October 1945 and by winter one-quarter of the U.S. workforce [Lipsitz, Rainbow 99]) in [3.88.254.50] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:00 GMT) 32 · · · Chapter 2 a wartime economy that had seen full employment for the first time in U.S. history. Add to this workforce the 10 million returning servicemen and -women, and the specter of a new depression loomed large. The presence of a disaffected but organized workforce resulted in the twelve-month period after V-J Day being the greatest strike period in U.S. history (Lipsitz, Rainbow 99). During that year, 4.6 million workers participated in strikes (Richter xii), and the strikes kept building momentum; the number of workers on strike doubled from August to September 1945, doubled again in October, and then became in the first six months of 1946 “the most concentrated period of labor management strife in the country’s history” (Brecher 228). Most major sectors of U.S. industry went on strike, with a strike by railroad workers in May 1946 bringing trains to a halt and a strike by 750,000 steelworkers being the largest strike...