Neoliberalism, Film Noir Influences and Cultural Silence in Alan McMonagle’s Laura Cassidy’s Walk of Fame

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research has shown that neoliberalism alters the balance of power in favour of market forces and produces mental distress in young people. Given that media narratives and narrative texts reflect public discourse and mutually constitute one another, this analysis focuses on Alan McMonagle’s second novel, Laura Cassidy’s Walk of Fame, which stands for an indictment of neoliberal failure where social exclusion is prominent. McMonagle is part of a creative explosion of Irish writers who have experimented with fiction in the last decade to write about capitalism’s dark side and the empty dread of consumer culture. The author uses film noir as a framework for the story of his eponymous character, a young woman with mental health problems whose dream is to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. This essay examines the significance of McMonagle’s use of film noir influences and its clichés, Laura’s silence and the surrounding cultural silence as a power relation in Michel Foucault’s sense, and their consequences for the narrative in sociological and aesthetic terms.