Stories continued, varied and repeated as long as there was an audience. .

             Genre is essentially a narrative framework and can be analyzed by breaking down this construct in terms of its fundamental structural components of: plot, character, setting, thematics and style. Each genre film has a buy-in with the audience, as the film must play by the rules of what the participants expect. Borde and Chaumeton explain, "categories are formed discursively, through a process of metaphoric association that creates networks of relationships" (xiv). It is because genre uses iconography or the "process of narrative and visual coding that results from the repetition of a popular film story" (Schatz 22) that genre becomes common within the human experience. In this way subconsciously the audience picks up on cues to communicate which genre such as Western, Slapstick or Gangster is being presented.

             In other words, film noir is not really a genre but fits into the classification of being part of this way of storytelling. Film noir is more about style and the feeling of a film done in this technique. It is specific. Its rules are very strict as to what makes a film noir or "black". The term genre is very broad and can encompass many different themes of storytelling or in turn, creates sub-genres. These ideas can lead to mass confusion as many refer to film noir as a genre when really it is just a social way of describing films or a way of portraying content. This social description is incorrect. How an audience member may diffuse this can vary. For example, many classify George Lucas's Star Wars as a Science Fiction movie when others may see it as a Western.

             Film Noir.

             The late Gerald Mast describes, "the noir world was a dark place, psychologically and morally as well as cinematographically" (297). The word 'noir' is the French word for black and French film critics started the term film noir "who noticed the trend of how dark and black the looks and themes of many American crime and detective films were after the war" (Dirks 1).