By Samer Dabit
Initially perceptible as a pair of texts lacking correlation and connection, Carl Franklin’s 1995 film adaptation of Walter Mosley’s 1990 novel Devil in a Blue Dress and Gilroy’s 2014 film Nightcrawler, can be read upon closer inspection as deeply engaged in a singular conversation. Although varying considerably in tone, this interconnected dialogue is united through subject matter; the role of race and class in Los Angeles, and the lengths to which marginalized individuals will go to ensure their survival in inhumane economic, social and political systems. Taxonomically categorized as neo-noir films, these texts utilize classic noir themes of the blurring of lines of morality, alienation within the cityscape, and dissatisfaction with the existing social order. They additionally incorporate contemporary issues such as racial profiling, digital journalism, and mainstream political discussion topics regarding capitalist economic policy in order to reflect a more modern context. Though tonally and temporally disparate, Carl Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress and Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler share central themes of intersection between racialization and socioeconomic status in Los Angeles, the marginalization of minority communities, the inherent corruption and ineptitude of law enforcement, and restriction in mobility within the cityscape.
Though both Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress and Gilroy’s Nightcrawler utilize and contextualize race in Los Angeles in order to complicate the functional ramifications of late stage capitalism, they are differentiated through their employment (or lack thereof) of cultural touchstones. Franklin’s film is distinguished by its usage of African-American music, art, history and vernacular, opening up on a shot of Harlem Renaissance artist Archibald Motley Jr.’s Bronzeville at Night. Depicting the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, which operated as a safe haven for African-Americans seeking to migrate from the South, the utilization of this particular painting emphasizes the importance of an explicitly Black community in fostering support and connection in Easy Rawlins’ narrative. The portrayal of the Los Angeles cityscape in this film is one shaped by the spaces, boundaries, and racial ties shared between the minority characters, as well as the over policing, brutality, and socioeconomic hardships that impact the material conditions of their communities. Shefrin argues that “the South Central neighborhood references the incongruities between the city’s purported image of colorblind attitude and its real history of spatial injustices.” Naturally, the structure of Rawlins’ journey is informed by discriminatory color lines, and limitations of mobility.
In this sense, Franklin’s iteration of twentieth century Los Angeles is both racial and racialized. Gilroy’s film, on the other hand, though intensely racialized, does not share the usage of the racial, with no explicit reference made to Rick or Detective Frotieri’s racial identities. The hustling bustling community of Easy Rawlins is translated into a sterilized metropolis devoid of humanistic modes, instead defined through strict terms of profit and a culture of carnage, one in which violence is racialized and commodified through digital media. In explaining to aspiring journalist Louis Bloom the type of footage KWLA prioritizes, News Director Nina Romina states that the viewership is most “interested in urban crime creeping into the suburbs…a victim, or victims, preferably well-off and white, injured at the hands of the poor or a minority.” (Nightcrawler 20:24-20:37) Although KWLA peddles and disseminates images and recordings of the grotesque and obscene, including traffic collisions, murders, and robberies, it does so not primarily for shock value, but to boost its own ratings and satisfy the appetites of its audience. It is this exploitation and scapegoating of the socioeconomically disadvantaged and racially marginalized that defines Bloom’s endeavors in journalism, working to push falsified narratives in order to fear monger, enflame race relations, and create capital through ratings and advertising revenue. He fully embraces the quantified value system assigned to human life, bargaining prices for his footage based on the citizenship status, race, and wealth of the individuals or victims suffering. Much like Mr. Albright, he manipulates a young man of color struggling to maintain a stable form of housing in order to aid him in doing his dirty work. As previously noted, however, Rick is differentiated from Easy Rawlins by his complete lack of community, and seemingly weak ties to his Pakistani heritage. Little is actually revealed about Rick, aside from his homelessness, as he, like most of the other characters, is primarily defined through economic struggle, never shown outside of his work with Bloom, and reduced to his low status in the capitalist hierarchy.
Rather than Rick, it is Bloom who most mirrors the narrative trajectory of Easy Rawlins, as both protagonists are introduced as economically suffering individuals who ultimately are able to establish self-employment in fields that are exhibited to maintain the racial and socioeconomic status quo. Whereas Rawlins’ decision to pursue a career as a detective is fueled by his aggressive and dehumanizing experiences with the police, and is framed as the infiltration of a system used to brutalize African-Americans in order to reform it from the inside, Bloom’s founding of Video Production News is built on a basis of enforcing racial prejudice and reaffirming the callous capitalist structure that he is initially excluded from. Bloom is shown to be driven by a devotion to succeed under neoliberalism by any means necessary, adopting the jargon of the corporate world and incorporating it into his everyday life. Described by Tim Robey as “the worst possible byproduct of the American dream, raised on a vocabulary of pure business-speak, and lacking in a single human quality except cunning, drive, and oneupmanship,” Bloom is introduced in the very act of pawning stolen construction materials, exhibiting an unwillingness or even cognitive inability to recognize the consequences of his actions outside of the monetary yield. Orlando argues that “Lou [Bloom’s] immersion into the American gig economy reveals the networks of falsehood upon which this system hinges, and simultaneously lays bare the viewer’s voyeuristic desires to know the world from a distance.” (30) This argument is supported by the film’s portrayals of coexisting affluence and material scarcity in Los Angeles, creating a jarring dissonance between Bloom’s belief in enterprise and the lived experiences of those around him. These falsehoods permeate almost every piece of footage Bloom sells to KWLA, as he moves bodies, breaks laws, and even goes so far as to instigate crimes in order to maximize his value to the company, to the benefit of their ratings and himself.
Bloom’s unfeeling nature and antisocial behavior situate him as the ideal candidate for the occupation of nightcrawler or stringer, but fundamentally prevent him from forming genuine personal bonds with those around him. Trading human attachment for economic transactions, he instead leverages power and capital in his interactions with others. His working relationship with Rick is framed entirely around his attempts to indoctrinate him into the same calculating ideology he lives by, paying him less than minimum wage, and perpetually postponing his employee review. Though Rick is shown to be complicit in Bloom’s crimes against humanity, he maintains a moral compass that creates aggravation and friction between the two, signalling his own commitment to treating others with dignity and desperation for employment. Bloom is also shown to leverage his newfound role as an asset to KWLA by blackmailing Nina into reluctantly entering a sexual relationship with him, threatening to cut off his stream of footage right when she is up for contract renewal. In doing this, Bloom exhibits an ingrained belief that those around him can be commodified for his own gratification, as the moral quandaries posed by his actions do not require consideration unless they hinder his ability to climb the ladder of success. Brayton argues that Bloom’s unspecified mental illness acts as a prerequisite, rather than a hindrance, for his success in late stage capitalism, stating that his “lack of empathy, remorse, and guilt, his manipulative and superficial charm is rewarded by the film’s ending; in a dysfunctional capitalistic society such attributes become positive rather than negative.” When considering the temporal context, Bloom’s sociopathy can be read as a direct result of the Great Recession, as he can be seen adopting the predatory corporatist behaviors of Wall Street in his business practices. By consistently placing Rick in increasingly dangerous situations, while he is filming from a safe and advantageous distance, he directly mirrors the same patterns of predatory lending, commodification of crisis, and deregulation of safety standards. Similarly to those who perpetrate white collar crimes, Bloom is never properly held accountable for his actions, while the downtrodden Rick ultimately takes the fall, and Nina is forced into reducing her own body into capital in order to maintain her career and livelihood.
Whereas community is decentralized and absent from Gilroy’s film, it plays an intrinsic role in both Franklin’s adaptation and Mosley’s original novel, portraying a tight knit community of African-Americans working not necessarily to altruistically support one another, but to maintain social bonds amidst over policing and racialized violence. As opposed to the machiavellian nature of Bloom, Easy Rawlins operates as a bastian within his community, recognizable for his home ownership and pride, intermingling within a network of interconnected people. Acting as a representative of attitudes contemporaneous with the publication of Mosley’s novel, rather than the actual setting of 1948, Rawlins’ self-regard and insistence on being treated with respect sometimes aid but often hinder him in his interactions with white people, a deficit counterbalanced by the assistance of his Black allies. Rather than working alone, Rawlins’ journey to find Daphne Monet is mediated and buttressed by his relationships with Coretta, Odell, Mouse, amongst others. Though violent, Mouse is shown to be an unflappable companion, indicative of what Jezawi describes as “an underclass reacting in self-defense.” (42) Unlike Bloom, Easy is shown to grapple with the moral questions resulting from his actions, wondering if he should turn Mouse in, but ultimately coming to agree with Odell’s mantra; “All you got is your friends..” (Mosley 225) Though still divided by gender and socioeconomic status and quite capable of doing harm to one another, the African-American community of Mosley’s original novel is shown to prioritize collaboration and the sharing of resources and information, qualities Gilroy’s film portray not only as liabilities, but contradictory to the existing systems of America. Easy’s entrance into the profession of law enforcement indicates an optimistic hope that these systems can be changed for the better in order to become more inclusive and indicative of a wider range of lived experiences. His decision to become a self-employed representative of his community within the same structures that terrorize them daily results in several questions of whether these internal systemic reconfigurations are feasible, and whether the existing racial and class hierarchies can be gradually altered over time. Set almost seventy years later, Gilroy’s film answers these questions in bleak and certain terms.
Both texts are connected through their narrative decision to situate law enforcement as an impediment to the goals of the protagonist, with Devil in a Blue Dress emphasizing the existential threat of safety the police pose to Easy Rawlins, the lack of standard protocol followed, and the precautions he must take in order to avoid them while navigating Los Angeles. The profiling, bigotry, and threatening nature of this iteration of the police speaks directly to the Rodney King riots, which took place three years after the publication of Mosley’s original novel but two years before the release of Franklin’s film. Whereas Easy operates as a generally upstanding citizen, whose forays into violence are necessitated by his surroundings and the machinations of those who wield power over him, Bloom is shown to actively circumvent the law. In the opening scene of Nightcrawler, an interaction is shown between him and a security guard who catches him stealing fencing and other construction materials he plans to pawn, resulting in Bloom assaulting the authority figure and stealing his expensive watch. As a white man, he is not faced with the same context of barbarity Rawlins is, and continues throughout his exploits to literally push the boundaries of what law enforcement officials will tolerate, moving closer and closer to scenes of violent crimes in order to get the perfect shot. While filming these incidents is not technically illegal, Bloom does commit legal transgressions in order to maximize his profit, ranging from breaking into scenes of crimes to withholding information about suspects. Acting as a direct answer to Easy’s intent to reform the criminal justice and policing systems, Detective Frontieri, who displays herself to be most determined to put Bloom behind bars, is the only African-American character in Gilroy’s film. Unfortunately, despite her efforts to collect substantial evidence in her case against Bloom, and her ability to piece together the details surrounding Rick’s death and the ensuing civilian casualties, she fails to achieve her goal. Her accusations of murder are brushed off by Bloom as merely “unprofessional,” continuously using the cold calculating language of the job market to replace emotionally charged terms.
A rigid dichotomy can be read from the two iterations of police interrogation, one in which the innocent Rawlins is scapegoated, assaulted, and racialized, whereas the guilty Bloom is accused in a professional and organized manner, but does not face any consequences. Whereas Franklin’s film portrays the role of law enforcement as reinforcing the class, social, and racial hierarchies, driving home the constant patrols through Easy’s neighborhood, Gilroy’s film crushes the hopes of the individual minority members who seek to rehabilitate these systems from within. Despite Detective Frontieri’s vigilance, intellect, and upright standards of morality, she is unable to gain support within her precinct in pursuing Bloom, and watches as the same cycles of racialization and lack of accountability that likely drove her career choice continue. In this sense, law enforcement is yet another system Gilroy portrays as corrupt, not only because of its history of brutality, but because of its failure and ineptitude in processing the criminals who do most harm. Bloom’s disrespect and deception in his interactions with law enforcement highlight his racial privilege as another tool in his arsenal that he has no qualms about employing in order to protect his business interests and well-being. The lack of progress in systemic reform illustrated through the trajectory of Detective Frontieri illustrates an inherent dead end for the likes of Easy Rawlins, continuing to portray law enforcement as arbitrators of mobility rather than impartial enforcers of justice. These societal issues appear to be more relevant in our own modern context than ever, with recorded and widely disseminated footage of police brutality making continual headlines and impacting the public consciousness and psyche more than actual legislation. Though Franklin’s film seems optimistic about the social, economic, and racial future, it is Gilroy’s unflinchingly nihilistic film that appears more accurately to portray our current moment.
Mobility in the Los Angeles cityscape within these texts is shown to be mediated and restricted by boundaries of race and morality, lines the protagonists cross to create ripple effects on the people around them. Rawlins’ form of navigation prioritizes his own safety as his neighborhood is shown to be overpoliced and underprotected, initially operating exclusively within the bounds of social spaces denoted for African-Americans. The breaching of these racialized boundaries is directly shown to put Rawlins in harm’s way, as he is harassed, disrespected, and threatened by what Szmańko coins as “oppressive faces of whiteness.” She argues that these “faces of whiteness” operate within the spheres of property and labour relations, as well as the established social and legal systems, and Rawlins must confront these forces in order to maximize his own mobility in Los Angeles. The incident he faces when speaking to a white woman at the docks makes a point of the lack of action he must engage in to elicit reactions of rage, what Szmańko describes as “oppressive white masculinity denigrating blackness.” His interactions with the white passing Daphne Monet and her own narrative arc contribute to this overall messaging on the limitations of race on freedom to travel freely across racialized barriers. While Daphne is able to leverage her beauty and sexual appeal to enter social space meant for African-Americans, Rawlins must sneak into the hotel she is staying at in order to see her, as she is ironically staying in a separated “whites only” section. The very linkage between the two is shown to pose a threat to Rawlins, due to the history of white women commanding their racial and gender identity in order to marginalize African-American men through the false allegations of sexual assault. Although Daphne never does this, Rawlins expresses his discomfort with being seen with her, stating “Here I was in the middle of the night in a white neighborhood with a white woman in my car. I wasn’t nervous. I was stupid.” (Devil in a Blue Dress 41:43-41:51) His vulnerable status creates a hyper awareness of how others perceive his race, a trait he shares with Daphne, which shapes the modes and methods through which he navigates the city, choosing to take the long ways around in order to minimize contact with law enforcement, and appear as innocent as possible in the eyes of white people. This positions Rawlins as a daywalker, one who purposefully embraces the most cautious modes of mobility and standards of living in order to act as an honorable representative of his historically maligned racial group.
Unlike Rawlins, Bloom’s mobility is shown to be shaped through the lines of decency and limitations presented by the law and its enforcers. Though he puts Rick in more harm than he does himself, Bloom is shown to risk safety in order to maximize the quality of footage he is able to record, crossing police barriers as well as breaking and entering in order to do so. Rather than safety, Bloom’s modes of navigation are shown, above all, to be based on efficiency, forcing Rick to learn every highway route and memorize reported traffic conditions so he can operate as the navigator. As Bloom’s business model relies on timely, clear, and graphic footage, the delay of his arrival hinders his profit model, particularly if the paramedics or police arrive before they can. When Rick makes navigational errors on his first official shift of work, Bloom quantifies his mistake through the money spent on gas used in taking a wrong turn, allowing for no sense of humanity to exist while footage and capital are on the line. Bloom internalizes KWLA’s implicit motto of “If it bleeds, it leads,” not only tolerating the gratuity and bloodiness, but receiving an intense sense of gratification in witnessing and recording it. Because the viewing audience is not titillated or terrified by violence in urban communities, they primarily experience and record crimes committed against affluent white suburbanites, the direct beneficiaries of the systems that left them for dead, creating a sense of voyeuristic vengeance that Rick is repelled by and Bloom is enamored with. Orlando defines this elation Bloom experiences as a “socio-sexual pleasure,” pointing out his monitoring of his own progress by watching the broadcasts of his footage every morning. Mobility itself is shown to be absorbed into terms of capital, with more blocked off high level crime scenes promising bigger paydays and front page headlines, resulting in risk, rather than safety, acting as a primary economic motivator.
In analyzing the conclusions of the two films, one can read a cross-temporal expression of optimistic hope being met with brutal and frank realism. Franklin’s film ends on an almost saccharine portrayal of Easy Rawlins’ budding African-American suburbia, framed entirely in daylight, and buoyed by iconography of little girls playing jump rope with another, families having their pictures taken, and a literal pony being led down the block. The messaging of this finale seems indicative of a yearning for a more diverse and inclusive form of capitalism, one in which African-Americans can own their own homes, support each other in a healthy community, and develop the same levels of intergenerational wealth as their white counterparts. This desire to reform, rather than upheave, the existing capitalist system is one which has formed the basis of several platforms of Presidential candidates, including Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker. The optimism portrayed by this ending rings hollow when considering the continuous patrolling of the same officers who harassed Rawlins, however, and Gilroy’s film operates as a harsh rebuke of these reformationist fantasies.
The closing scenes of Bloom expanding his enterprise, Video Production News, framed almost entirely in the dark, reiterate the cycle of carnage he works to exploit and eternalize, giving the same sales pitch to a new batch of interns. Orlando’s description of him as “a self-made psychopath tailored to the current economic climate” oddly mirrors the ways in which Rawlins is also a product of his era, working to overcome obstacles through dedication, hard work, and independence. Though Bloom shares these qualities, the denouement of Gilroy’s film explicitly argues that the systems of exploitation, brutalization, and racialization will not only survive but thrive as new members of the disenfranchised masses discover the monetary gains presented by the selling out of one’s allies and community. Ultimately, despite their tonal and messaging distinctions, both Gilroy’s Nightcrawler and Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress prioritize varying portrayals of the deceit and commodification necessary to survive under a late stage capitalist system, ranging from Daphne Monet’s desperation to hide her racial identity to Rick’s prolonged toleration of treacherous working conditions and subpar pay rates in order to guarantee inhumane housing standards. Though the conversation elicited by analyzing the films in tandem with one another is not a hopeful or auspicious one in regards to the future, it allows for us to more closely inspect the moral decay evident in our modern world, and the ways in which visual texts can portray patterns of societal attitudes across wide expanses of time. Through the examination of the intersections between portrayals of race, class, community, and capital as portrayed in popular media, a clearer and more all encompassing understanding can be reached of a world in crisis, the individuals who fight for one another, and the individuals who manufacture and commodify the catastrophes we find ourselves in the midst of.
Works Cited
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Franklin, Carl, director. Devil in a Blue Dress. TriStar Pictures, 1995.
Gilroy, Dan, director. Nightcrawler. Open Road Films, 2014.
Jezawi, Hanan. “The Black Persona in American Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction.” Jordan Journal of Modern Languages and Literature 4.1 (2012): 35-50. Web.
Mosley, Walter. Devil in a Blue Dress: an Easy Rawlins Novel. Washington Square Press, 1990.
Orlando, Nicholas. “Deconstructing an Evil Fakeness: Digital Media and Truth in Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler.” Excursions (Brighton) 9.1 (2020): 28-44. Web.
Robey, Tim. “Nightcrawler, Review: ‘Jet-Black Laughs’.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 30 Oct. 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/11077789/Nightcrawler-review-jet-black-laughs.html.
Shefrin, Elana. “”Le Noir Et Le Blanc”: Hybrid Myths in “Devil in a Blue Dress” and “L.A. Confidential”.” Literature Film Quarterly 33.3 (2005): 172-81. Web.
Szmańko, Klara. “Oppressive Faces of Whiteness in Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress.” Text Matters 8.8 (2018): 258-77. Web.
Interpretations: Journal of the Graduate Literature Association 