The network of social relations, regulations and adaptive possibilities specific to a social group, which may be defined in terms of location (such as a town or village), profession (artists, academics, and so forth), or class (blue collar, white collar, etc.). Developed by French sociologist Bourdieu, Pierre, the field is an objectifiable structured space, which means its rules for inclusion and exclusion, as well as the nature of the strategies one may employ while operating within its boundaries, can be identified and articulated. As Bourdieu demonstrates in Homo Academicus (1984), translated as Homo Academicus (1988) and Les RĂšgles de lâart (1992), translated as The Rules of Art (1996), it is possible to identify the structure of both academia and the art world and indeed any other sphere of life. With respect to art, Bourdieu dismisses the idea of the creative genius labouring in isolation as an impossibility---the artist, he shows, must be aware of a field (not just the âart worldâ as it is sometimes said, but the very possibility of art itself looked at from a social perspective) in order to know what counts as art and to know where its ontological boundaries are so they can be pushed. It is in the encounter with this field that the artist is formed. Bourdieu developed this term in conjunction with habitus and practices. Further Reading: M. Grenfell Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts (2008). film noir A film movement---or, better yet, film style---that began in the US in the early 1940s and persisted until the late 1950s. The term was created by French film critics by analogy with roman noir, the French term for hard-boiled crime novels. Following the end of World War II large quantities of American films were imported into France, forcing French critics to take notice of Hollywood productions whereas previously they had written them off almost as a matter of course. John Hustonâs 1941 film of Dashiell Hammettâs Maltese Falcon (1930) is widely considered the first film noir, but Marcel CarnĂ©âs prior Le Jour se lĂšve (1939) also has a claim on this title. In both cases, there is also an obvious influence of 1920s German Expression, not the least because many of the most important film noir directors were in fact German Ă©migrĂ©s (e.g. Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Douglas Sirk, and Max Ophuls). Although it is predominantly associated with detective thrillers, there are also film noir westerns and melodramas, so it cannot be considered a genre in the true sense of the word. Stylistically, it is typified by three distinctive characteristics: first, and most prominently, its visual style is characterized by stark contrasts between light and dark used to symbolize âgoodâ and âevilâ; second, its narratives are morally ambiguous, frequently ending on a bathetic âwinner losesâ note; third, its characters are of a limited variety of stereotypes---the grotesque villain, the beautiful but flawed femme fatale, and the emotionally damaged hero who seeks for justice in an unjust world, even if he has to break the law to do it. The best-known example, in this regard, is undoubtedly Howard Hawksâs 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandlerâs The Big Sleep (1939), starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Film noir has been of particular interest to film critics interested in psychoanalysis because its stories seem to be more about the complexities of human sexuality than their ultimately mundane crime and punishment plots. Because of the way the femme fatale uses her sexuality and breaks with the Hollywood convention of depicting women as passive (mother, whore, wife, or mistress), she has been subject to considerable theoretical attention. Film noir has also drawn the attention of film critics interested in the relationship between film and architecture because of its intensely urban character and the way it represents buildings. Further Reading: J. Copjec (ed.) Shades of Film Noir (1993). J. Naremore More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts (1998). S. ĆœiĆŸek Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (2001).