ABSTRACT
In a critical scene in the Wachowski brothers’ film Bound (1996) the mafia money launderer, Caesar (Joe Pantoliano), is shown in an act that merges the metaphoric and the literal. After washing blood off money recovered from a murdered business associate, Caesar dons a print apron and irons and hangs the money up to dry. In so doing he assumes the traditional feminine role of doing the laundry. Violet, who also works in the apartment, providing sexual services to Caesar and some of his associates, is passively watching the laundering. As it turns out, both the household’s money and libidinal economies serve to deform the dominant images of domesticity with which the mise en scenes in the classic film noir genre are composed. Pursuing the details of this deformation provides an occasion to reflect on a brief historical trajectory of the micropolitics of the urban household.
