Weekly Summary

Hi, my name is Philip Dorch. I began working on all of this just this morning and admittedly could have used much more time to put this all together. Unfortunately I spent the majority of my week going to and from home and did not get a chance to sit down and look at all of this until this weekend. Regardless I think I got everything put together and completed the requirements for our class so far.

I have never had my own domain nor do I have much experience with blogging of any sort. The part that I had the most trouble with was simply understanding the fundamentals of getting wordpress to work correctly. Sadly I must admit that the what I struggle with most is the bouncing back and forth between web page and email constantly confirming this and that. However, once I got registered for my domain site and everything had been confirmed the rest was not too bad. I had, and am still having, a bit of trouble understanding all the formatting within wordpress but am slowly becoming adapted to its functions. The next task on the list of things to do was set up accounts for the listed websites. I use Soundcloud quite regularly and already had a youtube and Twitter account. The only site that I needed to register for and learn to use was Flickr. Setting up Flickr and uploading pictures was easy to do and did not take much time.

The last thing on the list now was to begin becoming familiar with noir. As I imagine most people did, I googled definitions of noir before I began looking into actual noir pieces. After reading descriptions and seeing a few representations of what noir was, I began categorizing films and some television shows that accurately represented noir to me. Something about this type of film seemed so nostalgic to me yet I could not quite put my finger on why. The first things that came to mind were some movies I had seen when I was younger, Bugsy Malone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Clue the movie and The Mask all popped into my head. I think a lot of what made these movies stand out to me was the wardrobe and general atmosphere of the films. After further thought and examination I concluded that only Who Framed Roger Rabbit could really fit into the noir category. I also thought of the television shows Twin Peaks and True Detective. Twin Peaks is a show from the early 90’s while True Detective is more recent. Both shows are very dark and mysterious, the characters all seem to be motivated by off screen actions. The protagonists float through morally ambiguous situations that focus around the mystery at hand. I then proceeded to investigate the list of noir pieces listed on the noir website. I was already quite familiar with The Dark Knight, Sin City and Watchmen, so I decided to watch the pretty little liars episode along with the three cartoons that were listed. The pretty little liars episode struck me as what noir is “expected” to be. Almost like a tourist attraction trying to give the entire ‘noir’ experience in a short concentrated dose. Nonetheless, the episode seemed like a decent homage to film noir and stayed true to many of its elements. The cartoons were a little more subtle in their noir-esque qualities but could certainly be considered noir as well. I was happy to see Watchmen and Sin City listed as noir as they are two of my favorite movies. I also really enjoy The Dark Knight but I must admit that I do not understand how it could so easily be considered noir. At least to me it seemed more of a stretch then the other two. Watchmen especially stands out to me as a recent example of film noir. The characters are all morally questionable and have entire backgrounds that influence their decisions. The entire movie is told on a dark and rather depressing note and even ends with a partially happy partially sad ending. As a whole I have enjoyed learning what I have learned so far about film noir and hope to learn much more throughout the semester

Here is a link to my introduction page