Week
9 ~ Feminist Crime Stories
Reading for week 9: Gillian Slovo’s
Death by Analysis, plus discussion of Bound, which
will be shown at the end of the week 8 seminar slot.
SHOWING OF TWELVE MONKEYS at 4 pm (to be discussed week 10)
For a few notes and critical extracts, see: Feminist
Crime Stories (a brief introduction to Death by Analysis
and Bound)
Links and topics for seminar preparation:
Seminar Questions for English 359 ~ Feminist Crime Stories:
1. ‘For a moment I was pulled back into the room, dissecting
my own thoughts, my own life, my own inner fears…Paul Holland’s
death was fading into one of those incidents of the outer reality which
could be forgotten in a search for the inner.’ (Death by Analysis
p.83) How useful is the psychoanalysis/therapy theme in this novel?
How might the detective and the therapist be linked in terms of what
they achieve in the novel?
2. ‘It didn’t take long to bring him out. When he came,
he was being dragged, his hands bound behind him: one rasta surrounded
by six burly policeman. As they pushed him into the van the woman from
number 45 shouted again. “Serve you right, squatter, she said.”
’(Death By Analysis p.17) How important is the socio-political
background of 1980s London to the novel? Could this novel be set in
present day? Would it have the same impact? How does the social context
of the novel contribute to the plot?
3. ‘Structurally the novel contains classic crime elements; its
radical character comes more from the thematic content: the attempt
to foreground psychoanalytic practice as a feminist site of interrogation.’
(Sally Munt, Murder by the Book?*) What examples
of classic crime elements can you find in Death By Analysis?
What similarities and differences are there between this novel and earlier
texts by female authors? (Think of Agatha Christie, Ruth Rendell and
P D James). A good starting point is the change from male to female
detective.
4. ‘Detective fiction is endowed with a flight path that carries
its stalwart forward, allowing new and awkward revelations to be tucked
into its form and into the detective herself, allowing for an uncompromised
model of female agency and the disregard of traditional lines of female
behaviour.’(Carolyn Heilbrun ‘The Phenomenon of the Woman
Detective in Fiction’*) How does the genre, and
this novel, represent women’s independence? Why might it be such
an appealing genre for feminist writers?
* All references can be located by following the
links on the Crimeculture Website www.crimeculture.com
Some further notes for week 9 ~ Gillian Slovo, Death by
Analysis
A useful starting point would obviously be to think about Death
by Analysis in comparison to some of the earlier texts we’ve
read, both female- and male-authored. Similarities? Differences? To
what extent does Slovo seem to you to be a writer with a clear agenda?
How is she using the socio-political background of 80s London? And why
the strong 60s/80s contrast? What’s the relevance of psychoanalysis
to this socio-political context? How important are the contrasts between
the different kinds of psychoanalysis/therapy?
Online, there’s a short but useful
article at: http://www.fathom.com/feature/35015
- Carolyn Heilbrun (who writes crime fiction as Amanda
Cross), ‘The Phenomenon of the Woman Detective in Fiction’,
analyses the relationship between feminism and the emergence
of the woman detective. Some of the things she says are very
directly related to such questions as how the genre represents women’s
independence and why it is an appealing genre for feminist writers.
For example,
‘Detective fiction is endowed with a flight path that carries
its stalwart forward, allowing new and awkward revelations to be tucked
into its form and into the detective herself, allowing for an uncompromised
model of female agency and the disregard of traditional lines of female
behavior. Notice must be taken, I believe, of this popular literary
form, because it will predispose later writers to experiment still further
in other less formulated novels. Notice must be taken also because popular
feminist detective fiction will entice more women who might otherwise
not be so tempted to read of new revolutionary women.’
There’s also quite a good essay at: http://www.intellectbooks.com/europa/number5/slater.htm
on British feminist detective fiction, Morag Shiach’s
‘Domesticating the Detective’, taken from: Women
Voice Men,
edited by Maya Slater. Shiach’s aim is to ‘explore
some issues which arise from the narrative and symbolic importance of
the female detective's male sexual partner and their domestic arrangements
in novels by Val McDermid, Sarah Dunant, Michelle Spring and Gillian
Slovo.’ She starts with the problem of adequately expressing ‘feminist
subjectivity’, and her list of critical reservations about feminist
detective fiction might give you a useful way into thinking about your
own views of Slovo’s novel: do these objections seem to you to
apply to Death by Analysis? (consider how you would support
your case one way or the other).
Shiach writes: ‘I am aware that feminist detective fiction is
a difficult object for textual critics. Critical writing about feminist
detective fiction so often amounts to a catalogue of disappointments,
where the critic expresses frustration and anger at the failure of a
range of texts to express or develop a coherent and effective version
of feminist subjectivity. Feminist detective fiction seems to disappoint
its critics in a number of ways: by relying on liberal versions of individual
agency; by portraying female detectives as amateur, as taking on cases
only for family and friends rather than seeing themselves fully as players
in the public world of crime; by failing to sustain the (fantasy of)
autonomy for its female protagonists. Finally the genre seems to risk
disappointing because its need for formal resolution creates a reactionary
tendency to reinforce the status quo.’
A similar point is made in the extracts from Cora Kaplan
quoted at http://www.usq.edu.au/users/leec/3002L8.htm,
addressing the question of whether it is possible to write a
feminist detective novel. Kaplan, in "An Unsuitable Genre
for a Feminist?", argues that: ‘women crime writers have
been at worst explicitly anti-feminist, and at best highly ambivalent
about any disruption of traditional gender relations. Within a genre
which in general upholds conservative social values our queens of crime
have, with few exceptions, been good royalists, often defending a social
order in their fiction that is decidedly on the wane if it has not actually
disappeared from the real world some decades before.’ Again -
would you agree with or argue with this view?
Bound (Andy and Larry Wachowski, 1996)
If you look around in the obvious places (rottentomatoes.com,
imagesjournal.com),
you’ll find lots of reviews, fan sites (Bound has a definite
cult status), stills, etc. The single most useful site, though, is probably
http://obsessions.org.uk/bound/index.htm,
which has several sections - at least a couple of which are worth a
visit.
There is, e.g., the Guardian interview with the Wachowski
Brothers at: http://obsessions.org.uk/bound/interviews/wb/guardian.htm
- The things they say here about the ‘challenge’
of generic rules are worth thinking about (how do they bend
the rules and to what effect?): ‘The script was originally about
Violet. The idea was to offer up a character who you would look at and
make all kind of assumptions about, but be wrong," explains Larry.
"We like genre films because each one has its own cinematic language,
its own rules. It's like a challenge, to bend them, do something different,
yet still be understood.’
A more academic piece - quite an interesting one - is a student paper
from NYU at http://obsessions.org.uk/bound/paper/paper.htm:
‘Queer Theory and Even Queerer Criticism: Deciphering the Discourse
on Bound,’ by Maria San Filippo. This opens with some useful thoughts
on how the whole look of the film relates to canonical film
noir and neo-noir, and also on how this is connected to the
film’s over-the-top characterisations:
‘Much of the way in which Bound looks back to and comments
on classical noir is through tactics similar to, and on par with, those
of other self-conscious noir revisionists (John Dahl, Robert Altman,
the Coen Brothers). Bound’s skewed temporal and spatial structure
of flashbacks and zero-gravity camerawork boosts noir expressionism
to new extremes. The violence is brutally sadistic and dwelled on in
loving close-up, while a (historically queer) camp aesthetic infuses
the highly stylized noir atmosphere of Art Deco apartments and tough-guy
dialogue. Joe Pantoliano’s over-the-top portrayal of the high-intensity
Caesar and Jennifer Tilly’s heavy borrowing from her Oscar-nominated
gun-moll role in Bullets Over Broadway (Woody Allen, 1994), are deliberately
reflexive.’ nods to the tradition of gangster noir.’
The NYU ‘Queer Theory’ paper also suggests ways of thinking
about the film’s representation of women in comparison
to traditional film noir (e.g., Double Indemnity):
‘Mistaken identity has long been a trope of film noir, which abounds
with morally ambiguous, fundamentally unknowable characters. In its
discourse on lesbian invisibility, Bound makes this central ambiguity
one of sexual identity, as Chris Straayer points out: The crucial question
is whether Violet is a femme fatale or a lesbian femme...Corky faces
the enigma not by scrutinizing Violet’s criminality but rather
by doubting her lesbian status (Straayer, 158). Bound is peppered throughout
with the flirtatious bantering and heavy innuendo associated with classical
noir, another self-referential device although here it refers unabashedly
to lesbian sexuality. Their seductive tête-à-tête,
in which Violet (Jennifer Tilly) admires Corky’s (Gina Gershon)
fix-it abilities and her magic hands, recalls the similarly verbal foreplay
bandied by classical (heterosexual) noir couples.’
How did you view this aspect of the film? To what extent does the presence
of strong female characters change the nature of the crime film? with
feminist revisions of male-centered noir plots? If you have seen any
other of the ‘strong woman’ crime films of the 80s and 90s
(Body Heat, Last Seduction, Blue Steel, etc.),
you might want to think about lines of comparison.
On related topics, you might find it of interest to read the following
essays written by MA students:
The
Noir Thriller: Male Identity and the Threat of the Feminine by
NAOMI
KING
Noir
Transformations: Gender, Place and Identity in The Talented
Mr Ripley and
Dirty Weekend
by ANDREW JEFFCOAT
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Week
10 ~ Future Noir
Reading for week 10:
William Gibson, Virtual Light, plus discussion of Twelve
Monkeys, which will be shown at the end of the week 9 seminar
slot.
Links:
Pasts
and Futures (chapter from Horsley, The Noir Thriller,
on cyberpunk and future noir)
Some online Gilliam links:
http://www.eofftv.com/j/jetee_main.htm
~ site containing information on Chris Marker's 1962 film,
La Jetée, half-an-hour of black and white still photographs.
Twelve Monkeys can to some extent be considered as a remake
of La Jetée.
http://www.smart.co.uk/dreams/monkvive.htm
~ J. D. Lafrance, 'Twelve Monkeys: Dangerous Visions'
http://members.aol.com/morgands1/closeup/indices/gillindx.htm
~ articles, interviews and 'behind-the-scenes' info on
Gilliam's films
Paul Ferguson, a student on last term's
MA module, 'The Noir Thriller', suggested the following ideas to think
about with respect to Gibson and Gilliam. You can also read
his essay on the site: 'After
the Past: Noir Legacies in an [Un]certain Future: William Gibson’s
Virtual Light and Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys'
Twelve Monkeys:
The Grail.
Gilliam’s interest (obsession?) with the Holy
Grail: The Fisher King, Monty Python and the
Holy Grail.
Cole as Grail seeker: Philadelphia Crusader –
“You’re one of us”. Searching for humanity’s
saviour, a cure (also links to Shapely the AIDS Saint in Virtual
Light).
The Grail grants humans the gift of eternal life and,
thanks to the paradoxes of time travel, in witnessing his own death
Cole becomes immortal destined to re-live his entire life again and
again. The swirl, the vortex, of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys symbol
seen at the beginning of the film adds to the impression of time as
a cycle.
Syndromes.
Obviously this film is massively preoccupied with the
distinctions between madness and sanity and the relative values upon
which definitions are predicated - “Yesterday this day’s
madness did prevail” – in particular the historicity of
any particular madness. The best-known Theorist to deal with this
topic is Michel Foucault in Madness and Civilization (New
York: Vintage Books, 1965).
Kathryn appears, to a police officer, to suffer from
a very contemporary syndrome known as Stockholm syndrome. This is
of course only one man’s opinion. See http://www.sniggle.net/stock.php
for further vaguely amusing info.
Turret’s syndrome is also apparent in Jeffrey:
physical and verbal tics, twitches, jerks etc. Jeffrey’s problems
obviously relate to his father and I’m sure we’ll all
be able to speculate endlessly as to the reasons why.
There’s also the issue of “Divergent Reality”
which I am pretty sure is also known as Munchaussen’s syndrome
(Barron Munchaussen being another of Gilliam’s films).
Various people seem to suffer at various points from this problem.
The Cassandra Complex.
Psychiatry.
Psychiatry certainly comes in for a lot of implicit
criticism. Kathryn’s superior exhibits traits not a million
miles away from a Turret’s sufferer and later proclaims that
Psychiatrists can make a clear distinction between reality and illusion,
madness and sanity. Kathryn says she might be losing her faith. Very
similar to D M Thomas’s The White Hotel (London: Gollancz,
1981) in which a fictional Freud is defeated by a case of “hysteria”
which he takes to be the result of a repressed trauma from the patient’s
past but is later revealed to be a repression of a trauma from the
future. This is a challenge to the linearity of historical narrative
and as such all very post-modern. Although we might take these challenges
as being slightly tongue-in-cheek the fact that Kathryn continually
feels she knows Cole, and finally recognises him when in disguise
suggests the actual reality of “premonition” – a
recurrent theme in Noir, hunches, feelings, the little man in the
gut in Double Indemnity etc.
Surveillance.
Mr Foucault knocks at the door once more when we realise
that the institution in which Cole finds himself is the very model
of a Benthamite Panopticon, an all-pervasive surveillance institution.
See http://cartome.org/reverse-panopticon.htm
about 3/4 of the way down for a bit of a rudimentary, but useful,
summary.
Everyone is under surveillance in this film. There are
so many instances I can’t list them all. Most interestingly
it appears that the people from the future are also under surveillance
– history in this film is itself under control. This ties in
with many SF preoccupations regarding the paradoxes of time-travel,
most of which I am sure are well known to everyone, i.e. if the past
is altered in any way the future will cease to exist, how can you
meet yourself etc.
The Death Star in Virtual Light.
Cultural Criticism.
SF often works as a satirical or an ironic view of contemporary
society. Both film and novel are operating on these levels. Gilliam
challenges science, at the very least the morality of modern science
– vivisection etc – e.g. the old bloke’s amusing
comment that “science ain’t an exact science for these
jokers”.
Criticism of consumer culture and the apocalyptic fears
brought to the fore by excessive consumption – ruined planet,
decay, desolation. The advance of Capitalism. Two imagined futures
– Gilliam’s apocalyptic, centralised and totalitarian,
Gibson’s devolved, comodified and incomprehensible to those
in it. The Bridge functions as a Carnivalesque break from the oppression
of this society, evolving in a literal no-man’s-land –
an organic (therefore “real”???) anarchy as opposed to
the “virtual” anarchy of a capitalist system reaching
towards its inevitable conclusion. It has been said that nothing so
much resembles real anarchy as the upper reaches of the global capitalist
economy – I think it was Immanuel Wallerstein but haven’t
time to check.
Noir features.
Gilliam is a self-proclaimed "German-Expressionistic-Destructivist-Russian-Constructivist"
(see http://members.aol.com/morgands1/closeup/text/sandsart.htm)
– the key word here most likely being “Expressionistic”.
Camera angles, subjective views, distortion reflecting inner states.
Architecture and cityscapes as Ruskinesque texts to be read as a diagnosis
of the society which has produced or destroyed them.
Russian Hard-Boiled cops, Rydell as an unwitting protagonist
much as Cole believes at one point he might have, unwittingly, caused
the release of the virus.
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SOME
SUGGESTED ESSAY TOPICS:
The
following page provides some useful background material and weekly suggestions
for seminar discussions, group work and additional reading. There
are links to a few chapters and articles that you might find helpful.
Crimeculture.com includes several useful bibliographies grouped in the Reading
Lists section. 
Week 2 ~ The Queens of Crime