Christianson E. The Big Sleep: Strategic Ambiguity in Judges 4-5 and in Classic film noir

Biblical Interpretation 15 (2007) 519-548.Ambiguity is a driving force of the narrative world of film noir. It is expressed through unconventional characterization as well as innovative and excessive visual and narrative techniques. Just as viewers are engaged in an intellectually demanding process, the book of Judges makes similar demands of its readers and shares a number of the concerns found in film noir, such as anxiety over constructs of masculinity and normality, interest in ritualized violence, the fetishization of women, existential deliberation over character, resignation to the fate of the individual (and by extension the nation), withering acknowledgment of the façade of material progress — all expressed with indeterminate narrative modes that frustrate attempts at making meaning.