Neo-noir

Neo-noir is noir after the classic era: a film genre of the 1970s New Hollywood period, "primarily associated with the subversion and visual style of classic film noir tropes", adapting 1940s and 1950s noir themes for contemporary audiences. Classic noir "is usually dated from the early 1940s to the late 1950s"; the philosopher Mark Conard defines the successor as "any film coming after the classic noir period that contains noir themes and noir sensibility." What persists is the moral register: "blurring of the lines between good and bad and right and wrong", "revenge, paranoia, and alienation", "conflicted antiheroes, trapped in a difficult situation." Chinatown (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Blade Runner (1982) and Blue Velvet (1986) line the shelf.

The label is film criticism's, and the article's examples are films; in prose it names the same register continued, the one cyberpunk borrows from noir, where the hardboiled detective's moral line has blurred away.