Sin City, Style, and the Status of Noir (original) (raw)

2015, Critical Approaches to the Films of Robert Rodriguez

Robert Rodriguez claims that his Sin City “translates” Frank Miller’s graphic narratives, its source texts, “directly to the screen.” Surprisingly, however, Ro- driguez’s film includes almost constant references to film noir, to film production, and to cinematic conventions – conventions Rodriguez either adheres to or throws into relief. But this overt remediation of Miller’s narrative actually mirrors Miller’s own remediation of early noir fiction. Noir, in Rodriguez’s hands, becomes more than a style or a story that might appear in various forms. It is a discourse that consists of a particular relationship between a text’s style and its structure. This discourse thus depends upon style, but “style” understood to be the particular way in which the signs will obtain in the context of a medium and its conventions. And if we can define style in this way, we can better understand the relationship between discourse and the material medium in which it presents. This article demonstrates the importance, when considering style and discourse, of investigating medium-specific methods of signification, as what a sign “means” depends on what the medium is capable of. Particularly at this moment, as investigations of narrative tend toward the cognitive processes and contextual elements involved in its reception, we would do well to bear in mind the relationships – among medium, style, and whatever histories and conventions come with them – that make up discourse, as these relationships constitute the real process of signification.