Going Through Fire and Water

Cleansing rituals are a feature of all cultures.   It may be water but in other cases smoke from a herb fuelled fire can perform the same function.
Peter Rozovsky has given some thought about the number of instances where a character is in a shower and a dramatic event... anything from an intruder arriving to just slipping on the soap...
moves the plot forward or is used to build tention, indicate relolution of a problem or for comic effect to release tension in the audience  or reader who many have been exposed to a series of demanding scenes of horror or unhappiness or perhaps for some, worst of all, a long medley of Broadway hits.

The question arose in the context of set pieces within the Noir genre, but since I think that
genre itself is a red herring and leads the literary analyst astray more often than it guides,
it is worth looking at why plumbing in general is so fundamental to an understanding of literature
through the ages.
Water is life, to quote the old adage and its elemental importance in all literature is linked to the other three essentials, fire, earth and air, as perceived by Europeans.   The  gloriously entertaining film "The Fifth Element" refers to, perhaps the quintessential nature of the Universe, as embodied in the main character who drives everybody, quite literally, up the walls but who needs to be nurtured by social harmony which is only
possible if the tangible four elements are kept in balance.   There is a lot of washing in the film, as anybody
can see.
I always had great sympathy for actresses who played light comedy in the 1950 onwards as they
were compelled to spend hours in bubble baths and since some props managers tend to skimp on toiletries,
they must have had to take great care in repairing skin damage.   I don't know how long the fashion for bubble baths
lasted, but it was a wow with the pre-baby-boomer generations.   French films make very inventive use of the bath,
a commodity that is less usual than the shower and a long treatise could be written on its place in the iconography
of a country that came through two world wars and had to rebuild each time.   Having the bath in the kitchen was
the first shock I had to endure when I first visited that country, as the sanitation laws I was used to would have
had much of Paris closed down as a health hazard.  
"The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Third Man" use the sewage systems of seemingly orderly
societies (what could be more orderly than a prison or a city under military rule?) to expose the underlying chaos,
the secret places of disorder and, ultimately, the route to excape that, as a guide to understanding the moral condition of the protagonist
either leads to freedom or entrapment.

The short story by James Joyce "Clay" is one of the most finely tuned work where the elements are both hindrance and help
to the central protagonist who, is both exploited and protected in a city where nothing is as it seems.   What is on the surface
as simple visit to a Hallow'een party becomes a melancholic exploration into the life of a lonely spinster who gets teased by the children.
They offer the old folk game of blindfolding each player in turn and have set on a table representations of the four elements and, once the containers have
been moved round, the player is asked to choose one by touch.   It would be a spoiler to explain here exactly what is going on, but I have been in houses
were this game was not allowed at Hallow'een it is too close to the bone, psychologically speaking.
My favourite use of the elements is the Chinese culture, which has five, the most unusual to a European being the clouds and the world above them.
That, however is for another day...