Example of Anti-Noir: Accepting Negative Feelings (vs. Cause 2)

In this post I'm going to connect Philip Marlowe to Mr. Rogers.  Bear with me.

It's that time of the course when we look for antidotes.  There's Noir Cause 2, "unprocessed romantic loss." What does that mean? The example I gave was the passage in The Long Goodbye where Marlowe thinks Eileen Wade is coming on to him, gets interested, changes his mind, flips out, runs away, and then drinks until he passes out.  It's one of those anomalies that needs explaining. A slide from October 15th:

My claim was that if Marlowe doesn't see himself as the dominant figure in the situation--the head guy in charge-- he flips instantly to feeling humiliation. That's what he'll feel if he loses control, or isn't the person in control.   He then experiences himself as the inferior person in the very unequal structure typical of being "in love."  He is terrified of the possibility of being rejected.

Of course this is a common condition: we're all susceptible to having our feelings massively hurt when somewhere we're attracted to isn't attracted to us.  It's not so bad, however, if we have attachments to other people to whom we don't feel inferior and who won't humiliate us.  In lecture, I argued that Marlowe doesn't have these attachments, and he tends to sabotage all prospects of them (with Terry Lennox or Linda Loring).

I inferred from his behavior that Marlowe is attached to some lost person.  In this sense, he is a classic melancholic, enduring that condition in which the lost object is brought into the self and preserved there. It becomes confused with the self, and it's hard for someone like Marlowe to find his identity as separate from that lost object and not missing it. (This struggle happens to many of us when we pine for someone for months or years, long after we are supposed to have "moved on with our lives"--moved on to an attachment to someone else.)

The key outcome is weakness of self-identity, or a sense of inferiority.  This increases the tendency to latch on to (apparently superior) people, in this case the "unclassifiable" blonde. This doesn't strengthen the self, but keeps it in the same state of dependency, inferiority, and resentment.  This in turn can lead to behaviors like Marlowe lunging at Eileen Wade and then running away.

It's possible to overcome this condition--it happens all the time. But it requires facing negative feelings, particularly the sense of inferiority.  This sense surfaces in that passage in The Long Goodbye. This won't change for Marlowe as long has he doesn't face his negative feelings (like fear of humiliation) but keeps them repressed.  Facing them would involve identifying the lost object(s) whose permanent, unacknowledged loss produces his sense of sadness or weakness, and gradually letting go of it (them). Instead, what Marlowe does is find temporary substitutes, and acts out being in charge and dominant.  This masks inferiority, temporarily.  Then the whole thing happens again.

You probably know that A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is in theatrical release, with Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers.  My favorite commentary so far is, It's a Terrible Day in the Neighborhood, and that's OK.  It's worth reading in full. Here's a good moment:

Despite his sweet pastor’s demeanor, Rogers was tuned into our souls’ darkest feelings. He had an uncommon appreciation for anger, fear, stress, sadness, disappointment and loneliness. He respected the range of emotions and encouraged children to accept all their feelings as natural. . . . Rogers believed that variations of the “sticks-and-stones” adages intended to get kids to “shake it off” are stifling; they abandon children to their pain instead of teaching them how to process it. In contrast, Rogers encouraged children to face their dark feelings.

After a couple of paragraphs on Aristotle (also interesting), the author, Mariana Alessandri, continues:

Aristotle would discourage us from shaming ourselves over feeling sad when we “should” feel happy. He rejected “shoulds” altogether when it came to feelings, since he believed them to be natural and, without accompanying wrong action, harmless. All feelings, for Aristotle, are potentially useful in that they provide an opportunity to practice behaving well. Feelings alone can’t jeopardize virtue, he believed, but actions can and often do. Mister Rogers agreed: “Everyone has lots of ways of feeling. And all of those feelings are fine. It’s what we do with our feelings that matter in this life.”

Rogers believed that all children (and adults) get sad, mad, lonely, anxious and frustrated — and he used television to model what to do with these difficult and often strong emotions. He wanted to counter the harmful message kids typically receive, some version of the ever-unhelpful you shouldn’t feel that way.

Mr. Rogers is talking about "processing" emotions, or what Freudians call "working through."  We don't have easy, direct access to these feelings or their causes--hence the value of other people, particularly professional therapists, who help.   But it's a start on what we're looking for-- a reversal of Noir Cause 2.