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This was written during the second semester of my sophomore year at Johns Hopkins University for Hard Boiled Fiction and Film Noir with Dr. John Irwin.

Carlos Macasaet
Dr. John Irwin
220.399
9 April 2003

The years 1967 – 1976 witnessed the rise of a neo-modernist movement in American film. The films depicted confused characters wandering aimlessly through situations beyond their comprehension and control. They were self-reflexive and analysed the relationship between representation and reality. This ‘Hollywood Renaissance’ in turn witnessed a resurrection of film noir. (Spicer 130-133) Following the creation of two other retellings of hard-boiled detective fiction, The Long Goodbye in 1973 and Chinatown in 1974, writer David Zelag Goodman and director Dick Richards collaborated in 1975 to tell the story of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely (1940). Although the film is set in the same 1940’s America as the novel, it differs from other film adaptations of hard-boiled detective fiction. The classic antecedent films noirs to Farewell, My Lovely such as The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep and Edward Dmytryk’s adaptation of the same novel, Murder, My Sweet, focus on the ethical paths the protagonists chose and the moral decisions they face while unravelling mysteries in a seedy and corrupt world. However, Farewell, My Lovely goes beyond testing Marlowe’s mettle in a morally ambiguous environment. It tells the story of a man searching for meaning in a dynamic world where the only constant is death.

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This essay was written during the second semester of my sophomore year at Johns Hopkins University for Hard Boiled Fiction and Film Noir with Dr. John Irwin.

Carlos Macasaet
Dr. John Irwin
220.399
5 March 2003

In The Big Sleep (1939), Raymond Chandler constantly compares the protagonist, Phillip Marlow, with a knight. We see this on the first page when Marlowe observes the stained glass window portraying a knight lackadaisically liberating a nude lady from the ropes that bind her. Marlowe comments that inevitably he will have to help the knight in the window to free the lady because the knight does not seem to be trying hard enough. However, Chandler makes it obvious that Marlowe is striving for an ideal that cannot exist in a modern world of corruption. How does Chandler define chivalry and the ideals of a romantic age in a modern-day Los Angeles that Phillip Marlowe fails to fit into?

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This essay was written on April 20, 2001 while I was in 12th grade at Winchester Thurston school for English Class with Chantel Acevedo.

Carlos Macasaet
April 20, 2001
English 12 — Brave New World Reflective Essay

The Internet is a revolutionary new medium that has provided people the world round a new medium of communication. In “cyberspace” as the Internet has been nicknamed, everyone can have a voice and it is relatively easy for one person to reach a very large audience. In addition to revolutionizing the way messages are broadcasted, cyberspace has also revolutionized peer-to-peer communication. E-mail and instant messaging have become a very convenient method of communication for many people, oftentimes replacing the use of telephones and conventional postal mail. However, the new methods of communication emerging on the Internet have also created a new communication medium for criminals. Many criminals have found e-mail to be a safer method of communication as opposed to the telephone as it is impervious to wiretaps. Instances of criminal use of cyberspace include espionage and drug trafficking. Cyberspace has also led to the rise of a new form of crime — cybercrime. Such crimes include child pornography and online stalking.

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