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.This dual mechanism of condensationand displacement is the main object of our study.More speciWcally, wedescribe the logic of identity as the condensation of race and sex tomanage the precarious process of subject formation, and we highlightthe displacement of the mother as a crucial element of this logic.163 164 FRANKLIN S NEW NOIRSome criticism about noir, however, and in particular racially in-Xected criticism, sees noir differently.For these critics, noir is a mirrorof social changes in the United States.2 Similarly, Wlm critics of blackneo-noirs such as Manthia Diawara turn the genre into a reXection ofa unique African American experience, which in turn gives shape to asingular (if sometimes contradictory) response to the racism implied innoir.3 These critics speak of noir and neo-noir as if they were mirrorsthat reXect an identity that is threatened in the case of noir and Wght-ing for survival in the case of neo-noir.The uniqueness of the blackexperience and racial identity is what is at stake for these critics.Inso-far as this is true, the monsters that undo the logic of identity in noiralso haunt these critics.It is not surprising, for example, that Diawarawould see a formalist approach to Wlm noir (an approach that focuses onWgures like the femme fatale) as a threat to the stability of the identitymirrored in black neo-noir.4 Diawara suggests that focusing on Wgureslike the femme fatale draws back from the more relevant and supposedlyencompassing experience of black rage.But Diawara also acknowledgesthat black rage is aimed at women and effectively silences them by kill-ing them.Thus Diawara is faced with the impossible task of choos-ing between a competing sexual or racial identity for a subject that isboth, and of choosing between competing methodologies to study anaesthetic event that cannot be split neatly into form and content.Mark Berrettini s essay Private Knowledge, Public Space isanother example of an identity-based model of Wlm criticism that isriddled with similar problems.Citing Ruby Rich, Berrettini describesblack noir as noir with a difference. Drawing from Stephen Soitos sstudy of African American detective Wction, Berrettini also emphasizesthe central importance of a black experience to understand changes tothe genres of noir and detective Wction.Berrettini discusses Wgures suchas the femme fatale, but always as a function of racialized challengesto the convention.He argues that both in Walter Mosley s novel Devilin a Blue Dress and in Carl Franklin s Wlm of the same title, the femmefatale becomes a tragic mulatta.But underlying this difference is thecommon tragic fate of both the femme fatale and the mulatta in both FRANKLIN S NEW NOIR 165noir and in neo-noir, as well as in both detective and black detectiveWction.It is this common tragic fate that Berrettini s account fails toexplain.While the problem of racial identity accounts for the changefrom femme fatale to tragic mulatta, the identity model cannot explainwhy the new Wgure must also die.In fact, the death of the tragicmulatta, a Wgure of ambiguous racial identity, seems necessary given thenature of Berrettini s analytical model.In both Diawara s and Berrettini s account of neo-noir in general,and of Carl Franklin s Devil in a Blue Dress in particular, race and sexcompete for the attention of their identity-driven models.There is,however, another way of approaching this Wlm and the novel that pre-cedes it.This approach does not set race and sex against each otherbut rather highlights the exclusionary condensation of race and sex, aswell as the displacement of the maternal Wgure in the novel and in theWlm.These mechanisms are then diagnosed as the symptoms of theidentity logic that drives the constellation of noir novels, Wlms, and crit-icism.The making of Easy Rawlins, a new noir detective and a newidentity for noir, is a process that stabilizes and naturalizes a black sub-ject by easing some of the tensions that have characterized noir.Theslips in this process of identity building, however, reveal its operationand its artiWciality.These slips are made manifest in the impertinentreturn of the characters of Mouse and Daphne, both of whom condenseand displace the maternal threat that lies at the center of the identitylogic that drives the Wlm.Building Blocks of a New Stable AuthorityFatalism is not a part of Devil in a Blue Dress in two signiWcant ways.For Franklin, the answer to the question Why me? is because of thecolor line. Devil in a Blue Dress transforms the fatalism of the 1940sinto racism.In other words, if there is any fear and anxiety in his Wlm,it is not due to a dangerously senseless, violent world over which thecharacters have no control.The source of the nervousness of the Wlm sprotagonist is as plain to the viewer as it is to Easy Rawlins (DenzelWashington). Nervous? Here I was in the middle of the night in a 166 FRANKLIN S NEW NOIRwhite neighborhood with a white woman in my car.Naw, I wasn t ner-vous.I was stupid. Easy s dark skin threatens to determine his fate ata time when the color line in America worked both ways and even arich white man like Todd Carter [Terry Kinney] was afraid to crossit. By making racism the agent of Easy s misfortunes, Franklin demys-tiWes North American Wlmmaking during the forties.In other words, hebrings out the noir in Wlm noir; he raises to the surface the racial aspectof noir; he makes explicit the threat to authority represented by theracially othered and contained by widespread racism.5But fatalism is not a part of Devil in a Blue Dress in yet anotherway.Although fear may be what drives Easy, Franklin also makes it clearthat his Wlm is about a journey to self-determination.In a master semi-nar held in the American Film Institute, Franklin describes Devil in aBlue Dress as kind of about a guy who makes a pact with a Faustian kindof character and then gets exposed to the real American dream behindthe facade where the cogs and pulleys exist and where the back roomdeals are made and somehow is able to navigate through those sub-terranean waters and comes out the other end with his principles fairlywell intact and still alive (Franklin 1998).In the seminar, Franklin saysthat if you re somehow in control of your own self-determination, yourown business, if you somehow have a self-determination of some kind,then you can work as much as you want, as little as you want or what-ever.That s the real American dream.That s what I was trying to getacross (Franklin 1998).Self-determination, owning a business, beingyour own boss, the real American Dream (going from employee to self-employment) is what Devil in a Blue Dress is all about, according toFranklin.And indeed, Devil in a Blue Dress shows us the making of a self-determined individual.Easy becomes a private detective with a doubledifference.Unlike many detectives of Wlm noir, Easy sees behind thefacade and can navigate the subterranean waters of the corrupt systemin order to survive.Also unlike the detectives of Wlm noir, Easy is black.6However, the process of making this new noir is not without itsproblems.In its struggle to subvert noir conventions and to bolster andnaturalize its black subject, Franklin s Devil in a Blue Dress also bolsters FRANKLIN S NEW NOIR 167the genre by erasing, covering over, and easing the contradictions andtensions that feminist critics of noir have effectively made visible asstrategic points of intervention.7 In other words, there is a markedlynostalgic air to Franklin s self-determined black detective
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