UH West Oʻahu professor publishes book on film noir

Posted: May 24, 2010

UH West Oʻahu Professor Dr. Stanley Orr recently published a book on the way American crime fiction and film have changed throughout the twentieth century. In "Darkly Perfect World: Colonial Adventure, Postmodernism, and American Noir", Orr argues that films noirs and noir fictions dramatize Raymond Chandler’s pronouncement that, “Even in death, a man has a right to his own identity.” He illuminates a noir ethos committed to “authenticating alienation”: subjectivity managed through radical polarization of Self and Other. Distinguishing a heretofore unrecognized context for American noir, Orr demonstrates that Chandler and Dashiell Hammett arrive at this subject within and against the colonial adventure genre. "Darkly Perfect World" was published by Ohio State University Press.

 

Orr serves as professor of English and chair of the humanities division at the University of Hawai‘i - West O‘ahu. He teaches courses in literature, film studies and cultural studies. He is co-editor for a textbook entitled "The Pearson Custom Library: Introduction to Literature" (2006; revised edition 2008) and has published essays in "Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies", "Literature/Film Quarterly", "Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres", and "Post-Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities".