THE STRANGER IN THE DARK: THE ETHICS OF LEVINASIAN-DERRIDEAN HOSPITALITY IN NOIR

ii Don Callen, Advisor The meaning of what identifies film noir from other stories has plagued scholars of literature and film for decades. Some argue that film noir existed for a set period of time due to particular cultural, historical, and aesthetic reasons and that all similar narratives today represent just pale copies of copies, while others present noir as distinct stages. Few examine a range of these cultural texts to find the threads that bind them together and continue to make these dark tales of urban crime interesting to audiences over fifty years after they began. The tools and contexts alone do not rest at the heart of what defines noir. Noir, this genre-like cycle, is not the end in and of itself but rather the cultural and philosophical questions behind the grouping provides the real impetus to study. On one hand, James Naremore in his book More Than Night refers to the need to explore the ideological center of noir. On the other hand, Jacques Derrida requests in Of Hospitality further analysis of ethics based on narratives that problematize binaries such as citizen/foreigner