When teaching my introductory lecture on the history and aesthetics of film noir, I end with a close reading of a music video. I find this to be a helpful pedagogical medium for distilling noir’s more recognizable formal elements such as high contrast lighting; in addition, both modes of filmmaking are concerned more with mood and affect than clear storytelling.[1] Some music videos are more overt with their noir references, such as Mitski’s “Washing Machine Heart.” From her 2018 album Be the Cowboy, “Washing Machine Heart” is a short (just over two minutes) indie pop song that is loaded with Chandler-esque metaphors about emotional baggage in a failed relationship. The opening verse of the song creates this hard-boiled sensibility, “Toss your dirty shoes in my washing machine heart/Baby, bang it up inside”

Through a noir lens, some of my students have observed that Mitski is not a femme fatale but longs to be one. Using medium shots of Mitski in a black cocktail dress and close-ups of her hands and profile, the video exists in a noir space of black and white shadows cast by venetian blinds and a skyscraper lit up at night. What is most striking is how Mitski performs with various props. At the beginning of the video, she stands to the side of a stuffed bird, her hand hovers over it but never touches it. We get a close-up of her hand lighting a match and a few shots later a close-up of the stuffed bird appearing to look back at Mitski, an inanimate Kuleshov effect. After a shot of Mitski in profile blowing out the match, she attempts to seduce a man in shadow. There are close-ups of props that simulate an intimate encounter that turns volatile. The video rapidly cuts between Mitski about to kiss her love interest. A close-up of her fingers caressing an oyster shell then another close-up of her hand holding a pile of pins and needles. Here the noir use of metaphor becomes embodied in props. Not only is the emotionally fraught relationship told using the lyrics about dirty laundry, it is also evoked through the tactile caressing of objects.

What I am struck by is the presence of the bird, an overt reference to noir’s most famous prop, the Maltese Facon. Although the falcon appears to be stuffed instead of a statue, its presence seems to be the only other living thing in the video. The human male figure is slightly out of sight, mostly hidden in shadow. He remains as still as a prop. In her wide-ranging article on the prop and its many counterfeits, film theorist Vivian Sobchack observes that the Maltese Falcon, “is the arrested experience of unfulfilled desire—the desire to desire itself—that, by possessing the Falcon, allows them to again relive its loss in the very moment of its possession.”[2] For Mitski’s failed femme fatale, her desire is always displaced onto props but never fulfilled. It seems the closest connection she can make within this lonely noir landscape is through the prop of the falcon. Although, she can never quite bring herself to touch it. Instead, they share an ambiguous look at each other, her longing turned into a mere visual reference that reflects her desire.[3]