性、暴力與無政府是美國犯罪小說的三個主要構成元素。自從達許．漢密特於西元1929年出版了他的《紅色收穫》，美國冷硬派偵探犯罪小說就此成形。此本論文針對三位經典冷硬派犯罪小說作者的主要作品，討論黑色電影文學的性、暴力與無政府：在詹姆斯．凱因的《雙重保險》裡 ，我們說到美國犯罪小說中的性元素；在雷蒙．錢德勒的《湖中女子》裡，探討美國黑色文學中的暴力因子；而在達許.漢密特的《紅色收穫中》， 我們講到美國冷硬派偵探小說裡的無政府現象。本論文的主軸在於作者如何呈現小說的故事，以及讀者是如何被作者引導進入犯罪小說的世界裡， 藉由文本的閱讀，讀者投射了本身的慾望、恐懼與迷戀情節 (desires, phobias and obsessions) ，用幻想的方式，在腦海裡再生性與暴力的情節。法國哲學家尚路克．南希(Jean-Luc Nancy)提及影像的無扎根性(the groundlessness of images)，影像的過剩威力是一種自發的向度，不在場的人事物往往讓人感受到親臨現場的情緒張力：想像力生成的腦內影像，在缺置(absence)的狀態下，達到身置其中(presence)的氾濫情感。藉此，犯罪小說激起讀者的強烈情緒、豐富的想像力，最後想像力生成的影像超脫了文本的桎梏，讀者體會了踰矩的快感。
詹姆斯．凱因偏向從犯罪者的角度描寫故事，不同於其他的冷硬派作者 (他們都從私家偵探的角度看待犯罪)，而凱因的主角往往都是利慾薰心的一般人。在《雙重保險》中，蛇蠍美女(femme fatale)的身體是美麗且怪誕的，凱因所描繪的女體性慾是無法掌控與馴服的，是法國女哲學家克里斯蒂娃(Julia Kristeva)所描繪的「黑暗、可憎且墮落的威力」。凱因的女主角菲力絲(Phyllis) 是一位愛戀喪禮美感的奇女子，也是死神的肉身賦形。菲力絲是克里斯蒂娃所說的「謀殺性社交的嘉年華魁儡」，她的愛人無法抵擋她奇異的女性魅力，參與了她的陰謀而犯下了謀殺的惡行。男人瘋狂地迷戀那腐敗的壞女人，臣服了自己心理的病徵 (拉岡Lacan與紀傑克Zizek曾說：「女人是男人的病徵」)，成了女性犯罪的共謀者，一齊追求那遙不可及的執爽快感 (jouissance)，以愛之名犯下了不可饒恕的罪惡。
凱因的男主角往往是女性魅惑的犧牲者。有別於凱因，雷蒙．錢德勒小說中的男主角成功地抗拒了女性的嫵媚。然而，男主角卻執意身涉險難，以證明自己的男子氣概。在《湖中女子》中，菲力普．馬洛涉入了一個危險的謊言境界：他必須釐清誰是謀殺湖中女子的真正兇手，以及溺死的湖中女子到底身為何人。沉入湖底的屍骸是被兇手強力切割分解的，它是一具毀了容的屍體，一件被殘忍掠奪性命的物品。另一位涉案的女性也慘遭痛毆，現場血跡斑駁。兇手與受害人的身份經常互調，難以辨識，連最後尋獲的屍體也由於兇手的猛烈侵犯，呈現突兀變形的恐怖狀態。
大衛．沙勒文(David Savran)在《像個男子漢般地承受》一書講到強勢的男子漢總是把自己視為受害者，主動去承擔許肉體上的害難，以滿足男性建立自我價值的心理需求。男子漢堅持自我，冒險犯難且大難不死，為的是在事後享受到權威感與自我控制的滿足。心理學家芮克(Theodore Reik)曾解釋「反射型施虐受虐情節」(reflexive sadomasochism)的運作機制：男人為了創造出全能的自我優越幻象，常常做出傷害自己的事情；在受難的過程當中，男人同時是觀看者，也是被自己觀看的對象。
一方面說來，在男性相互角力的環境中，異性戀的性慾實現往往藉著肉體的剝削來達成：男人不是自虐地允許自己被女人傷害，就是自己成為施虐者，主動加害女性，來滿足一種扭曲的性快感。另一方面說來，在犯罪小說中，女體的再現是刻意被作者肢解的，用碎裂的方式呈現：私家偵探追蹤著女性受害者的屍塊，細部調查犯罪細節。讀者在追尋破碎女體的過程裡，也感到窺淫的樂趣，被作者帶入一個以分屍女肉組成的殘忍世界。當故事的主角試圖蒐集碎裂的女體屍塊，來破解案情，作者激起了讀者的想像力，用圖像的方式構思犯罪。卡雅．席佛曼(Kaja Silverman)提及傳統電影當中的「陽具經濟」(phallic economy)：男人是主體(Je)，女人是客體(moi)，男人必須在文化當中棄絕(repudiate)女性來鞏固自己在兩性中的主導地位。而犯罪小說的作者也用這種方式，把女性邊緣化，帶領讀者進入一個想像力氾濫的邪惡世界，於無邊際的潛意識裡狂奔。就此案例說來，生氣勃勃、風韻十足的性感女性被賦形成抽象的「事」(德文das Ding)，而被謀殺分屍的女受者人則是具形的「物」 (德文die Sache)，這也符合德國哲學家黑格爾所說「主人/奴隸」(主體/客體)的辦證邏輯。這也說明了，犯罪小說的蛇蠍美女不是被過度吹捧且奉若女神(deified)，就是被貶謫且戀物癖化(fetishized)。
漢密特的《紅色收穫》在西元1929年版，這本小說奠定了美國無政府社會正義英雄的典範。在惡名昭彰的中部小鎮「人民谷」(綽號「人毒谷」)中 ，私家偵探歐普陷入了官商勾結、黑道鬥爭的血戰，連自己的女朋友戴娜都被殺手用冰鑽刺死，而冰鑽的指紋卻指向他。逼不得已，被陷害的歐普必須以不報警的方式，靠一己之力來執行正義，飽受黑道追殺，歐普鋌而走險，在夾縫中生存，最後憤而一舉把壞人殲滅。歐普是犯罪小說裡的無政府英雄，這種形象常常出現在眾多主流的好萊塢犯罪電影與超級英雄漫畫當中，體現出一種美國特有的無政府英雄崇拜。
英國歷史學家艾瑞克．霍布斯邦(Eric Hobsbawn)說道，美國私家偵探的無政府英雄形象有著普世的魅力，也象徵著美國資本主義社會中根深蒂固的無政府主義。美國文化中的超個人主義(ultra-individualism)投射出一個理想的美式烏托邦： 無政府的正義英雄是不受限於體制的，他也是個反射型的受虐施虐者，享受著痛楚的快感。法國哲學家德勒茲(Deleuze)提出「沒有器官的身體」這個概念來解釋資本主義的有機體，體制在慾望的流動中去邊界化(deterritorialization)，且再次邊界化(reterritorialization)。 犯罪是人類慾望的反面再現，漢密特小說中的殺手是被解體的，受害者的屍塊也跟著被分解。正義英雄、加害者與受害者的肉身在這個黑暗的犯罪世界中消融，成了美國經濟大蕭條時代裡慾望的半形肉身(quasi-bodies)。接下來美國進入了第二次世界大戰，也為血肉模糊的紅色收穫，鋪下了無政府的大道。

Sex, violence and anarchy have been the three dominant elements of American crime fiction, ever since the release of Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest in 1929. This dissertation will investigate these three elements as they are represented in the works of three classic “hard-boiled” crime writers: sex in James M. Cain's Double Indemnity (1943), violence in Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake (1943) as violence, and anarchy in Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929). The focus will be on how these themes are presented by the authors, and thus on the process by which readers are led—given their own desires, phobias and obsessions—to imagine and recreate the scenes of sex and violence. Jean-Luc Nancy mentions the groundlessness of image’s excessive power, its "self-presenting" force that "draws the form of the present out of absence" so that the reader is, in a sense, "absent" from the scene of the crime. The intense emotions that literary texts arouse in readers go far beyond the reach of the images that are implanted within his or her mind.
While other authors of crime fictions focus on tough-guy detectives, James M. Cain wrote about ordinary people who commit horrible crimes out of greed. In Double Indemnity, the femme fatale’s body is beautiful and grotesque, for uncontrolled female sexuality may become, in Julia Kristeva’s words, “a dark, abominable and degraded power.” Cain’s Phyllis Nirdlinger, enamor of the beauty of funerals, embodies Death incarnate. She is what Kristeva would call a “carnival puppet of murderous sociality,” for her lover cannot resist and thus also participates in her lust for murder; he succumbs to his symptom (Zizek), becoming her fellow-murderer in a reckless pursuit of pleasure /jouissance under the name of romance (without love).
Unlike Cain’s ordinary man who falls prey to a woman’s allure, the male characters in Raymond Chandler’s novels expose themselves to dangerous, life-threatening situations. In The Lady in the Lake, Philip Marlowe gets caught up in a complex and puzzling case that features the confusion of the killers’ and the victims’ identities. The body of the woman found at the bottom of the lake had been mutilated by her male murderer; it is just a deformed corpse, a thing. The body of the other woman was beaten and bloodied by her female killer. Thus in both cases the identity- body as well as victim-murder connection is emphasized, and the female victims’ identities, like their bodies when they are found, have been transgressed and transformed.
David Savran in Taking it Like a Man claims that tough guys tend to view themselves as victims who need to recreate their self-value through voluntary corporeal suffering. After surviving each dangerous situation, the tough guy feels a new and unique sense of power and self-control. Theodore Reik speaks of the mechanism of “reflexive sadomasochism”: a man creates an illusion of omnipotence through his self-destructive actions, for he is now both the spectator (voyeur) and the spectacle of the crime scene.
On the one hand, within a world of male-male violence, heterosexual sex often becomes another means of physical (bodily) exploitation: the man either allows himself to be harmed by the woman or harms her, either way satisfying a twisted form of sexual desire. On the other hand, the representation of female bodies in this genre is purposely fragmented as the detective traces the remains of the dead women, and so the reader as voyeur is introduced into a diabolic world of dismantled female flesh. As the protagonist maneuvers to reassemble the bits and pieces of the dead women and solve the crime, the author leads the reader to visualize the actual crime in his or her imagination. Kaja Silverman mentions the “phallic economy” of traditional cinema: man is the subject “Je” (I) and woman is the object “moi” (me), and man needs to “repudiate” (the) woman in order to have a completely “gendered” self. What I try to show here is that the novelist’s technique can bring forth an even more potent visceral response from the reader, whose imagination of evil can guide him or her further and deeper into the domain of human darkness. In this case, the fully alive and sexually powerful woman becomes the embodiment of das Ding while the crudely “disposed of” dead woman is die Sache, as in the Hegelian master-slave dialectic. That is, the woman as femme fatale is either deified or fetishized.
Red Harvest became Dashiell Hammett’s first best-seller in 1929, and it introduces the archetype of the vigilante in an anarchic society. Continental Op gets himself mixed up in a web of city government, labor union and police corruption in the town of Personville, which Op calls Poisonville. Involved in an ongoing gang war, Op finds that his girlfriend Dinah Brand has been killed with an icepick that has his fingerprints on it. He is often held captive by criminals but finally breaks free and kills them all. In the end, Op decides that he must enforce the law himself, without official sanction, since none of the gang leaders will do it, and thus he becomes a sort of vigilante-anarchist of the sort we often find in Hollywood crime films, including those featuring comic book superheroes.
British historian Eric Hobsbawn claims that the universal appeal of the American vigilante-detective is closely tied to the “in-built anarchism of American capitalism.” For here we have a utopic idealization of “ultra-individualism”: the body of the vigilante- anarchist is beyond the control of the system, even as he becomes a reflexive sadomasochist inflicting pain on himself. As Deleuze notes, the organism collapses into a Body without Organs after being decoded and deterritorialized by the flows of desire. Crime is a negative representation of desire, and the bodies of the killers in Hammett’s novel are themselves in some way disintegrated, just as is the flesh of their victims. Thus one might say that the victims, their victimizers, and the vigilante-detectives who try to bring the victimizers to justice all get dissolved into quasi-bodies by the desiring machine of America’s Great Depression and the build-up to the Second World War—a blood-soaked state of anarchy in Red Harvest.