This article examines Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour (1945) as an example of film noir's exploration of the affective dimension of early oil-regime America. Drawing on the work of energy-humanities scholars, the article finds the film, and by extension the genre, providing a much-needed ground-level perspective on the efforts of industry and government to stimulate oil consumption by creating desires in a public struggling with the inherent paradoxes of new technologies, foremost among them the car. The automobile gave rise to “automobility,” seemingly an expansion of democratic freedoms, yet that new way of life also entrapped its participants within destructive habits of consumption involving an entire suite of beliefs, practices, habits, and other technologies. These features of the new life, in turn, were understood within a racialized narrative of whiteness to be productive rather than extractive habits. The shadowy and fated network to which film noir gestures, the article thus argues, is not some abstract metaphysical contemplation or generalized conclusion on a period of war, but a felt recognition of the ways the rapidly expanding network of extraction, distribution, and consumption was compelling Americans to remake their lives in dramatic ways that felt beyond their control.

中文翻译：

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“坏爱”中的教训：埃德加·G·乌尔默 (Edgar G. Ulmer) 绕道 (1945) 中的黑色电影和美国石油政权的崛起

本文考察了 Edgar G. Ulmer 的车辆改道(1945) 作为黑色电影探索美国早期石油政权情感维度的一个例子。借鉴能源人文学者的工作，文章发现这部电影，并通过扩展类型，提供了一个急需的基本视角，以了解工业和政府通过在公众中创造欲望来刺激石油消费的努力。新技术的固有悖论，其中最重要的是汽车。汽车催生了“汽车”，这似乎是对民主自由的一种扩展，但这种新的生活方式也使参与者陷入了破坏性的消费习惯，涉及一整套信仰、实践、习惯和其他技术。反过来，新生命的这些特征，在白人的种族化叙述中被理解为富有成效而不是榨取习惯。文章因此认为，黑色电影所指向的阴暗而命中注定的网络并不是对战争时期的某种抽象的形而上学的沉思或概括的结论，而是对快速扩张的提取、分配和消费网络的方式的一种感受。迫使美国人以他们无法控制的戏剧性方式重塑他们的生活。