"Tatort: Murder Scene, Montage and Melancholy in the Neo-Noir Imagination (or: Das Leiden unter der Tat und die Sehnsucht nach dem Wissen)"

Gilloch, Graeme (2024) "Tatort: Murder Scene, Montage and Melancholy in the Neo-Noir Imagination (or: Das Leiden unter der Tat und die Sehnsucht nach dem Wissen)". Irish Journal of Sociology. ISSN 0791-6035

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Abstract

Drawing principally on the writings of the Critical Theorists Walter Benjmain and Siegfried Kracauer, this paper considers the contemporary neo-noir detective story in relation to three interwoven themes / motifs: spatiality (scenes, sites and settings); temporality (time and narrational arc); and, characterization (the detective as a figure of repetition and melancholy). Combining the traits and practices of flaneur, ragpicker and collector, the detective wearily undertakes the investigation through an archaeological / genealogical discovery of the antecedents of the crime so as to reconstruct thereby a ‘bio-topography’ of the unfortunate victim(s). The facts (Tatsachen) of the case are to be gleaned somehow from, among other things, the deed itself (Tat) and from, among other loci, the actual crime scene (Tatort). I suggest how, as the evidence – traces, testimonies, forensics – proliferates and accumulates, the crime investigation board on which these fragments are pinned and presented becomes the object of the detective’s ceaseless and sorrowful scrutiny, transforming her/him thereby into one of Benjamin’s most famous allegorical figures of historical witness. Key words Noir, Neo-noir, Scandi-noir, detective fiction, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer