Bad Blood: Epistemological Conflict, the Color Line, and One False Move

Bad Blood: Epistemological Conflict, the Color Line, and One False Move Mark L. Berrettini Carl Franklin's One False Move (1992) sets Los Angeles as the originary point for its narrative in order to call upon the locale's relationship to film noir, its history as a prominent site of racialized tensions in the United States, and its status as a "cutting-edge" space in which conceptions of social difference in the U.S. are contained and explored through the use of surveillance technology. In "Los Angeles as Scene of the Crime," Paul Arthur argues for the enduring importance of L.A. as a setting for films noirs, while Mike Davis's definitive study of L.A., City of Quartz, not only describes the city in relation film noir, but also articulates that surveillance is foundational to the city's urban planning scheme, its dominant architectural style, and, of course, its notorious city and county police forces, the L.A. Police Department and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department . And for James Ellroy, author of numerous novels set in L.A. (including the so-called L.A. cycle) and the non-fictional My Dark Places: An L.A. Crime Memoir (1997), the city is foremost in the U.S. in the way that it relentlessly, if not viciously, divides individuals and groups according to lived and perceived notions of identity and difference.1 Rather than elaborate upon such work, One False Move uses L.A. as point of departure for its multi-locale road narrative, yet it does not leave behind the influence of L.A. as it travels through its various settings. In a sense, the film brings aspects of L.A. to other parts of the country in order JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory 31.1 (Winter 2001): 106-128. Copyright © 2001 by JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory. Epistemological Conflict, the Color Line and One False Move 107 to highlight the fact that while L.A. has a storied history with regard to social difference, surveillance, and policing, it is not unique. Beginning with the film's literal escape from contemporary L.A., then, I want to trace how these aspects of L.A. inform (from a distance) the film's representation of film noir's obsession with race, gender, and sexuality and its critical representation of the "color line" that is thought to delineate racial identity. I suggest that film's presentation of surveillance intersects with tropes of film noir to criticize visually-supported notions of race. Initially, surveillance operates within the context of a criminal investigation, but this function gradually shifts to focus on an individual and results in the scrutiny of racialized identity. One False Move starts with a vision of L.A. 's nighttime cityscape that is aesthetically characterized by a dark and light dichotomy. The city's lights are occluded in the background by a car rising over a hill, and as it crests the hill, its headlights overcome the dark street to literally supplant the darkness with light. The late-fifties era car stops and the door opens to reveal a pair of woman's high-heeled shoes, two light brown legs, and a miniskirt. The camera tilts up to reveal the woman who wears these clothes, and in quick succession, viewers see the woman move through a dark exterior to enter the brightly-lit interior of a house. Once the lightskinned black woman, Fantasia (Cynda Williams), greets the four black occupants (who are having a birthday party), she moves back towards the exterior of the house, saying that she left her purse in the car. This is an excuse for a more sinister action since Fantasia does not leave the house, but instead lets her companions Ray (Billy Bob Thorton), and Pluto (Michael Beach) inside. These two characters are introduced with weapons in hand, as their violent actions signal to viewers that symbolically , the darkness of L.A.'s outside world has taken over the well-lit, light-hearted party inside the house. Within minutes of screen time, this take-over is complete because, with the help of Fantasia, Ray and Pluto have murdered six individuals and stolen a large...