The Big Sleep

Photography is a suspect cultural artifact in the novel, a motif that is closely associated with purported deviant sexual behavior and social breakdown. The novel takes place in the shadow of Hollywood, which in the early 1930s was yet to be policed by the Hays Code that limited what could be shown on screen. Geiger’s store rents pornographic books that rely on photographic images—his business connects photography with the illicit. Most importantly, the plot of the novel kicks off because Geiger decides to take his blackmailing hustle up a notch by luring an intoxicated Carmen Sternwood into a nude photo session, creating a scandalous artifact with which he intends to blackmail Carmen’s wealthy father. As Carmen’s photo circulates through the novel’s criminal underworld, it accumulates an impressive body count: Geiger, Owen Taylor, and Joe Brody are killed over the negative and its prints. Because photography is a medium that ostensibly captures reality, the grimy sleaze of photos in the book reflects Marlowe’s jaded outlook on the city he investigates.

The LA Police Department in the 1930s should be the wall between law-abiding citizens and criminals, but its dealings are compromised by a corrupt willingness to protect the rich and connected. Marlowe uses their need to cover up certain misdeeds to help keep the Sternwood name out of the papers, but he also refuses to bow to them. That Marlowe often is in trouble with both the police and underworld figures testifies to his independence and also points at the dark underbelly of urban law enforcement: the dubious moral positions of officials exemplify the novel’s only vague distinctions between The Good, the Bad, and the Ambiguous.

Nestled in the hills above Hollywood, and powered by vast wealth collected from nearby oil rigs, the Sternwood estate embodies the dark underbelly of glamour. It consists of several acres, a large, regal mansion, a big garage for several fancy automobiles, and a greenhouse where General Sternwood spends his days. Sternwood’s daughters, Vivian and Carmen, live there and venture out to gamble, engage in affairs, and generally get into trouble.

The Sternwood property presents itself as an intimidating, if respectable, residence; particularly notable are the hastily commissioned portraits of ancestors, which aim to confirm dignity on this new money family, and Vivian’s pure white dress and decor, which is meant to convey her icy purity. But beneath this facade, the house is a lair for unusually avaricious people, whose greed and ambition is only heightened by the vast wealth they already possess.