As you can see, this chart--which uses about 40% of the current Noir-o-Meter database--gives us a very good sense of how the noirs range from "tough" (to the left and up) to "tender" (to the bottom and the right).
From here, there are dozens of ways to slice the Noir-o-Meter data to look for patterns and trends. Since the different types of elements can co-exist, it's likely that many of the "noirest" films based on their raw scores (the 200-point scale that's assigned via scoring each of the 27 noir elements) will be closer to the mid-point (and you can see on the above chart where that is, as we've drawn in the averages for these two measures--it's where the red and the green lines cross). That's something we'll examine in a subsequent post.
Right now, we're interested in seeing if we can find any of the noir elements that isolate or cluster films in either the "tough" or "tender" region of noir. The elements that are likeliest to help us do this are, in fact, the ones derived from melodrama. And among the likeliest in that category is the element entitled "Degree of character triangulation."
Why this one? Because romantic triangles involve feelings and emotions. They evoke vulnerability in characters. It stands to reason that films which have a marked emphasis on character triangles are going to skew toward the "tender" side of the graph.
So we separated a sizeable subset of the Noir-o-Meter database into two groups: those which have a score of 9 or 10 in "degree of character triangulation" (an element assigned a maximum of 10 points), and those which have a score of 5 or less. We are surmising that this should produce two graphs that will give us some significant spatial separation.
Let's begin with the "tough" side...which we should find with films whose "degree of triangulation" is below average (5 or less is definitely below the overall average of 6.7/10). Here's what that chart looks like:
(Note we didn't include the axis labels that you saw on the first graph--but they are the same as above. And as you can see, we added some shading effects in the graph...because we're suckers for greyscale.)
Looks like that gives us mostly films in the upper left quadrant, which is where the "tougher" noirs are located.
Now--will we get a similar clustering when we look at the films whose "degree of triangulation" element score is 9+? Let's take a look:
And the answer is a resounding "yes." Films with a high degree of triangulation between characters have a strong tendency toward high MELO RATEs and low hard-boiled-to-melodrama character element ratios, pushing a larger preponderance of them toward the bottom right-hand region on the graph.
Of course, this too is not monolithic in nature, just as was the case for the low triangulation subgroup. But as you can see, at this level of triangulation there really are only a few films that cross over into the "tough" side of noir.
We can probably expect a graph of those films whose "degree of triangulation" scores are in the mid-range (6-8) to fall roughly halfway between these two extremes.
Which means that it looks like the "triangulation" element is a kind of bellwether for separating film noir sub-types.
We'll want to look at the films in the lower left and upper right portions of the graph, as these groups tend to resist the separation effect. Their placement may tell us something that those films have in common--higher or lower raw scores, for example.
At any rate, these uses of the data in the Noir-o-Meter provide strong indications that the system is fundamentally sound in its assumption that noir's dualism is ultimately its most defining characteristic, the quality that gives it its essential tension and allows it to be a protean form that operates across a wide range of story types, even invading established genres. Stay tuned for more...
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