Noir Thriller-M Term 2002

'If Hammett's work "brings alive conflicting versions of individualism that society emphasizes" then we had better take a closer look at what those conflicting versions of individualism were before we re-evaluate Hammett's own critique of individualism. What will arise from this discussion is the concept of a "new individualism" that called for a complex submission and/or allegiance of the individual's desires to those of a larger, less traditionally individualistic collective body. Like contemporaries, Hammett struggled to reconceive the nature of American individualism...' (Metress, 'Dashiell Hammett and the Challenge of the New Individualism,' in Metress (ed), The Critical Response to Dashiell Hammett, p. 91)

'"One wonders what impression people will get of contemporary life if The Postman Always Rings Twice is run in a projection room twenty years hence. They will deduce, I believe, that the United States of America in the year following the end of the Second World War was a land of enervated, frightened people with spasms of high vitality but a low moral sense - a hung-over people with confused objectives groping their way through a twilight of insecutiry and corruption." [Houseman, Vogue, 15 Jan. 1947] And that, indeed, is very much what critics have done with the movies. From Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton to Foster Hirsch, they have identified a noir sensibility, traced it across a body of films, and then sought to attach it to a general American cultural condition of "postwar malaise". "The unstable universe depicted in so many noir films is a continual reflection of the tremendous cultural apprehension focused on both the 'Red Menace' and the chances of nuclear devastation."' (Maltby, 'The Politics of the Maladjusted Text,' Cameron (ed), The Movie Book of Film Noir, p. 41)

'It would be misleading...to read Hammett's fiction as a pale reflection of high modernism. Hammett's modernism, and the modernism of the hard-boiled school, is based not on a repudiation of mass culture, but instead on an embracing of its possibilities. The distinctiveness of Hammett's fiction consists of its recuperation of modernist themes and techniques in a predominantly realist form that Hammett made contemporary through his command of American English. In the process Hammett virtually produced the distinctively American hard-boiled detective genre.' (Thompson, 'Dashiell Hammett's Hard-Boiled Modernism,' in Metress (ed), The Critical Response to Dashiell Hammett, p. 118)

'The influx of foreign directors and other craftsmen before and during World War II - most notably the German "refugees": Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, Max Ophuls, William Dieterls, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger - had previously helped to refine film noir's distinctive visual style. That was not merely low-key photography, but the full heritage of German Expressionism: moving camera; oddly angled shots; a chiaroscuro frame inscribed with wedges of light or shadowy mazes, truncated by foreground objects, or punctuated with glinting headlights bounced off mirrors, wet surfaces, or the polished steel of a gun barrel.' (Silver and Ward, 'Introduction,' Film Noir, p. 3)

'Expressionism serves as a convenient shorthand for the notion of the outer world expressing the inner world of the characters, and it occurs across the arts. It is a "heightened" form, bringing into play exaggeration, distortion, the grotesque and the nightmarish, and it may be found in a literary form in some of the noir writers, no less than in visual form in the films themselves...' (Walker, 'Film Noir: Introduction,' in Cameron (ed), Movie Book of Film Noir, p. 26)

For further material please see the LUVLE site.

Some useful sources:

French criticism and influences:

'The "Collection Minuit" faced resolutely across the Atlantic and, with "midnight" in its title, became the immediate predecessor of the most famous collection of all in the field, the "Serie Noire" created by Marcel Duhamel in 1945. The roman noir existed, film noir was soon to follow. The film noir, when the term entered the language a couple of years later, was thus the cinematic equivalent of the roman (de la Serie) Noir(e): not a detective puzzle, but crime fiction, with an urban setting and cynical outlook on life, specifically American in ethos (even though two authors of romans noirs much admired and translated in France, James Hadley Chase and Peter Cheyney, were English).' (Buss, 'In Black and White,' in French Film Noir, pp. 12-13)

'During the months following the end of World War II, Hollywood reestablished its European markets and released a huge backlog of films to continental theaters...In France, particularly in Paris, these long-withheld films were received with a great deal of enthusiasm...In the postliberation period, a time of optimism yet political uncertainty, French film culture was especially enlivened by debates about the social role of the cinema. Many advocated committed filmmaking, a cinema engage on the model of Italian neorealism...Whether humanists or existentialists...French critics almost universally celebrated film as an art that addressed, if often indirectly, the pressing issues of the day. Thus, the just-released films from America were scanned closely for what they had to say about developments in the political and cultural life of an esteemed ally (whose economic imperialism, particularly in the realm of popular culture, was not always welcomed).' (Palmer, "Introduction,' in Palmer (ed), Perspectives on Film Noir, pp. 3-4)

Some useful sources:

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Narrative structure and the nature of narration:

'Todorov demonstrates how the classic detective story gave birth to the so-called suspence novel, in which an exclusive concern for the past (i.e., the writing of an enigma that occurs before the onset of the story) made room for prospection as well. In the hard-boiled variety of the suspense novel the detective becomes vulnerable, and in the thriller a miswritten victim must become a detective to save himself and solve the crime. In time, a third genre emerged, what Todorov calls the serie noire. Here all concern with retrospection disappears; no first story exists to be written within the second. Instead, this form depends on a reversal of the detective story's syntax. For the detective, discovering an effect, must locate its cause. In the serie noire, on the contrary, the discourse introduces a cause (a crime, sexual attraction, etc.) and then constructs suspense concerning its effect.' (Palmer, 'Film Noir and the Genre Continuum,' in Palmer (ed), Perspectives on Film Noir, pp. 146-7)

'A survey of a large body of films usually classed as noir suggests that one of its most distinctive yet often overlooked features is its singular concern with or awareness of the nature of narration...My survey...isolates four dominant strategies or discursive formations: (1) the classical, third-person narrative, (2) the voice over/flashback style, (3) the subjective camera technique, and (4) the documentary mode.' (Telotte, 'Noir Narration,' in Voices in the Dark, p. 12)

Some useful sources:

*Damico, J., 'Film Noir: A Modest Proposal,' Palmer (ed), Perspectives on Film Noir

*Palmer, R. B., 'Film Noir and the Genre Continuum,' in Palmer (ed), Perspectives on Film Noir

*Telotte, J. P., 'Noir Narration,' in Voices in the Dark

Week 2 - Fatal Women

Links to relevant sections of crimeculture.com:

The Fatal Woman in the Hard-Boiled Fifties

The Noir Thriller: Male Identity and the Threat of the Feminine Naomi King , University of Lancaster

The representation of women:

'Woman [in film noir] as elsewhere is defined by her sexuality: the dark lady has access to it and the virgin does not. That men are not so deterministically delineated in their cultural and artistic portrayal is indicative of a phallocentric cultural viewpoint: women are defined in relation to men, and the centrality of sexuality in this definition is a key to understanding the position of women in our culture...Film noir is hardly "progressive" in these terms...But it does give us one of the few periods of film in which women are active, not static symbols, are intelligent and powerful, if destructively so, and derive power, not weakness, from their sexuality.' (Place, 'Women in Film Noir,' in Kaplan (ed) Women in Film Noir, p. 35)

''The scenario of the duplicitous woman as femme fatale affords as well as the pleasures of passivity which arise from being in thrall to her promise of love, pleasures which are no doubt also masochistic. The violent retribution so often enacted upon the femme fatale by the plot and/or the male hero bears witness not so much to patriarchal ideology as to the man's inverse desire to control and punish the object of desire who has unmanned him by arousing passive desire...The male hero often knowingly submits himself to the "spider-woman" - as Neff does in Double Indemnity - for it is precisely her dangerous sexuality that he desires, so that it is ultimately his own perverse desire that is his downfall.' (Cowie, in Copjec, Shades of Noir, p. 125)

'What is really menacing about the femme fatale is not that she is fatal for men but that she presents a case of a "pure", nonpathological subject fully assuming her own fate. When the woman reaches this point, there are only two attitudes left to the man: either he "cedes his desire," rejects her and regains his imaginary, narcissistic identity (Sam Spade at the end of The Maltese Falcon), or he identifies with the woman as symptom and meets his fate as a suicidal gesture (the act of Robert Mitchum in what is perhaps the crucial film noir, Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past).' (Zizek, 'Two Ways to Avoid the Real of Desire,' in Looking Awry, p. 66)

Some things to think about for the week 2 seminar: Think about the above quotes, and if you have time look at one or two of the articles they're taken from (the Place article is particularly useful, as indeed is the whole of the Kaplan book). Make some notes on the iconography of the femme fatale - the 'phallic woman' - in Double Indemnity and Farewell, My Lovely (similarities? differences? comparisons to be made with The Maltese Falcon?). One of the things we'll be discussing in week 2 is the style of the hard-boiled crime story, which can perhaps be categorised as 'masculine': does the femme fatale have her own characteristic style? How would you compare the femme fatale figures to the other women in the narratives (Phyllis's stepdaughter? Anne Riordan in the Chandler novel?). Think through the ways in which the male protagonists relate to the different types of women represented: what do these relationships tell us about his male autonomy and masculine identity? and what are the differences, in this respect, between the investigative protagonist and the transgressor protagonist? In James M. Cain's original novel, Phyllis was actually revealed to be a serial killer who, committing suicide at the end, says she is going 'to meet my bridegroom' [death]: why do you think the film changed this? How would this alter our response to her? The above quotes suggest that the role of the femme fatale can be seen as embodying the suppression of the independent woman (she must be punished in the end), or, on the other hand, can be seen as a one of the cinema's most memorable and 'active' expressions of female power and self-assertion (adventurous, sexy, exciting, strong): how would you argue the case?

Some useful sources:

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Week 3 - British Noir

Links to relevant sections of crimeculture.com:

Week 3 seminar – some additional reading and topics for discussion

The scene of the crime
‘The viewer [of The Third Man] is introduced to the actual and the fictional situation in Vienna by a sequence of shots in the style of the newsreel, informing cinemagoers in a form they were used to believing...
‘This sequence implies omniscience of the daylight world and the underworld of Vienna, passing it on to the whole film narration and letting the fictional events appear as part of reality. Authenticity in a film can mean sense of place. In The Third Man the city is made an entity of its own, a presence to be felt continually, beside the characters. By having an active role, the city convincingly sets the conditions for its inhabitants to live in and may turn into a desert, a trap, a labyrinth or even a hell for them.’ (Ulrike Schwab, ‘Authenticity and Ethics in the Film The Third Man’, in Literature/Film Quarterly 28 (2000), No 1)

Think about the way this works in The Third Man: how is the city shot? what images stay most clearly in your mind? how do the images of the city relate to the rest of the film? Los Angeles is made ‘an entity of its own’ in Double Indemnity and Farewell, My Lovely, as is Brighton in Greene’s novel: think comparatively about the creation and function of scene in these texts/films.

Destabilising meanings
‘There is something disingenuous about Greene’s claim in Ways of Escape that the detective story in Brighton Rock is confined to the first fifty pages. Even if he had had the strength of mind to do so, Greene could not have taken the detective story out of Brighton Rock, for its structure is woven into the fabric of the novel and cannot be excised with the surgical removal of a fixed number of pages. Whatever Greene may say, Brighton Rock, though it is many other things, is also a detective story. As a story of reading and interpretation, the novel thematizes reading...Within the narrative, scenes of reading abound while the residual structure of the detective story contains these within a larger interpretive frame that is the detective’s investigation of a criminal’s fiction...
‘The power Pinkie and Ida think they have, because it is based on its own fiction of unequivocal reading, is illusory; despite her claims and his intentions, their sense of reading is shown to be limited and incomplete...
‘In linking power to its construction of readerly texts and authoritative readings and then exposing the impossibility of this construction, Brighton Rock expresses a radical scepticism about any person or institution that claims for itself the ability to discern and present a single meaning or truth.’ (from Brian Diemert, Graham Greene’s Thrillers of the 1930s)

Explore this kind of destabilisation of meaning in Brighton Rock, and think about the relationship between Greene's narrative and the other investigative narratives we've looked at. What other elements in Greene’s thriller might lead you to class it as ‘noir’?

Political and religious themes in Brighton Rock
I’ve added to the site A Brief Note on the Politics of the ‘Serious Thriller’ in 30s Britain. You might have a quick look at this and then think about the question of how Greene brings together his Catholic and his political themes in Brighton Rock.

Questions of closure
The ending of The Third Man has been much debated. There’s quite a lively and combative online article (Richard Raskin, ‘Closure in The Third Man: on the dynamics of an unhappy ending’) that will introduce you to the main lines of argument (supported by analysis of several stills from the end of the film). Please follow the link to: http://imv.au.dk/publikationer/pov/Issue_02/section_3/artc3C.html - read the article and think through your own views on the matter.

Extend your analysis by thinking about closure in The Third Man in comparison to the end of Double Indemnity (if anyone wants to analyse the actual end sequences of either film more closely, you’re very welcome to borrow them). You might also want to think carefully, in comparison, about Greene’s final pages in Brighton Rock.

Notes for further reading: The most useful thing on Greene's political thrillers is probably Brian Diemert, Graham Greene's Thrillers and the 1930s (McGill-Queen's U Press, 1996); there's also a chapter (Ch 3) on the Britain's 'serious thrillers' of the 30s in my Fictions of Power in English Literature, 1900-1950 (Longman, 1995); and a good general discussion of the historical context (though not of Brighton Rock) in Michael Denning, Cover Stories: Narrative and Ideology in the British Spy Thriller (Routledge, 1987); there are a few books just on Greene and cinema - e.g., Quentin Falk's Travels in Greeneland (Quartet Books, 1984) - and articles on The Third Man might be of some use (e.g., Ulrike Schwab's 'Authenticity and Ethics in the Film The Third Man,' in Literature/Film Quarterly, 28:1, 2000, 2-6 - which I can lend you if it's not in the Library); there's also a bit in James Naremore, More than Night (U of California Press, 1998), Ch 2, on both Brighton Rock and The Third Man.

Week 4 - Masculinity in Crisis

Links to relevant sections of crimeculture.com:

The most cited (and best) study of 'masculinity in crisis' is Frank Krutnik, In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre and Masculinity (Routledge, 1991), which includes (Ch 7) a detailed discussion of Out of the Past. There's also a chapter on Out of the Past in Ian Cameron (ed), The Movie Book of Film Noir (Studio Vista, 1992), 203-212; Bruce Crowther, Film Noir: Reflections in a Dark Mirror (Virgin, 1990), Ch 5 ('Noir Performers: Male Icons') provides interesting film noir context; there's much less available on Goodis, though there's a bit in my Noir Thriller (Palgrave, 2001 - see Strangers and Outcasts) and a chapter in James Sallis, Difficult Lives (Gryphon Books, 1993), which I can lend you; plus, e.g., some online discussions of the film of Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut, Tirez sur le Pianiste, 1962) - see, e.g., reviews collected at http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/ShootthePianoPlayer-1018878/preview.php. Aside from a slightly dodgy structuralist analysis of Out of the Past (http://www.filmmonthly.com/Noir/Articles/OutOfThePast/OutOfThePast.html) most online discussions of the film offer little more than plot summary (some of these quite full and competent – e.g., http://www.filmsite.org/outo.html).

Problematising Male Identity in Out of the Past
Since not everyone will be able to have a look at Krutnik’s In a Lonely Street and the essay on Out of the Past in Cameron, it might be helpful for me to sketch in a couple of their main arguments. The focus in these studies is very much on the diminution of the male protagonist, and the breakdown of a secure, unified male identity. Krutnik (112) writes about the ‘disturbance of the process of masculine consolidation’, and the essay in the Cameron book considers the transformation of the seeker hero (analogous to the investigative protagonist we have looked at in, for example, Hammett and Chandler) into the victim hero.

Out of the Past, in Krutnik’s view, is one of the most ‘traumatised’ of the tough thrillers, and thus a film that links private eye noirs to what he labels ‘criminal adventure noirs’ (Double Identity would be a prime example of this category). Bailey, he suggests, is a private detective hero whose sense of control is fragmented in the process of his escape from the ‘professionalized masculinity’ of his job. The fantasy of omnipotent, self-contained masculinity that we tend to associate with the investigative thriller is problematized when Bailey transgresses against Whit, the father figure embodying the regime of masculine authority – an Oedipal revolt in which Bailey not only takes Whit’s mistress but makes himself subservient to her. Bailey’s leading trait is seen in this analysis as his almost hopeless lack of will, his fatalistic passivity, allowing him to accept Kathie’s dominance as if faced with forces beyond his control. Iconographically, he is a noir protagonist whose fatalism tinged with witty cynicism suggests, Krutnik says, a ‘bruised romantic idealism’. His loss of identity and his masochistic position in relation to Kathie emphasise his ceding of motive power (‘Baby, I don’t care’), and Mitchum’s voice over reinforces this sense of all-enveloping hopelessness.

Extracts from Krutnik, Cameron and Palmer:

'[The] displacement of the narratively organised process of masculine consolidation, and the prevalence of traumatised or castrated males, can be taken as signs of a disjunction between, on the one hand, the contemporary representational possibilities of the masculine self-image and, on the other, the traditional cultural codifications of masculine identity. The appeal of these films may very well have rested in the ways in which, within the context of a fictional mode which had the glorification of masculine achievement as its apparent aim, they were able to open up potentialities which are conventionally repressed within the culturally delimited regime of masculine desire and identity.' (Krutnik, In a Lonely Street, p. 91)

'The protagonist of film noir, like the dreamer, is an ambiguous figure (unlike the traditional problem-solving detective, on the one hand, or the gangster, on the other). He is caught between his conscience (which can be seen as an internalised version of American society's expectations of its men) and those desires which violate such norms and find expression, to a greater or lesser extent, in the films.' (Thomas, in Cameron (ed), Movie Book of Film Noir, p. 59)

'Clearly not all crime fiction defines gender in the same way; but in general it proposes that stereotypically masculine qualities are superior to feminine ones, and it offers a particular definition of what masculinity is (at the same time offering a definition of what the individual is, and tending to conflate the two); in doing this it necessarily favours a space in the social structure defined in these terms.' (Palmer, 'Crime Fiction: Film Noir and Gender,' in Potboilers, p.152)

Some questions for seminar discussion of Out of the Past and Shoot the Piano Player:

How do both film and novel develop a sense of impaired or damaged masculinity? What are the implications for narrative structure? The problematising of male identity is one of the most obvious elements in these 'traumatised' thrillers - think about their representations of masculinity in comparison to, e.g., Hammett and Chandler.

Psychoanalytic dimension? Less explicit, perhaps, than in some of the other texts/films we'll be looking at (e.g., Thompson and Siodmak), but repression, Oedipal conflict, etc. are still of relevance. Krutnik, e.g., discusses Bailey's Oedipal revolt. Think about the 'pop-Freudian' elements in both Out of the Past and Shoot the Piano Player.

Changes in the roles of women? Women in relation to male anxiety? Out of the Past, in particular, is notable for its femmes fatales; consider the role of Kathie in particular (her phallic appropriation of the gun; the ways in which she serves, in Krutnik's phrase, as an articulation of 'ambivalent tendencies within masculine identity and desire'); and consider Kathie in relation to the film's other women. How would you compare roles of women in film and novel?

To what extent do Out of the Past and Shoot the Piano Player function as critiques of patriarchal power? What are the ways in which Whit signifies the regime of masculine authority? Kinds of domination and submission central to the Goodis novel?

Settings? (e.g., use of contrasting settings in Out of the Past - in relation to themes of film?)

Inadequacy of narrative closure? Narrative confusion? (e.g., on first watching Out of the Past many people find its disjunctions confusing: do the elliptical plot and the lack of clarity contribute to our sense of anxiety and nightmare?)

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Week 5: Psychoanalysis and Noir

Links to relevant sections of crimeculture.com:

Seminar preparation:

Extracts on psychoanalysis and popular psychology in the noir thriller:

'In the 1940s noir thrillers, criminal impulses are generally motivated in terms of individual malaise or psychic dysfunction. Any social critique is ostensibly deflected. Yet at the same time, this very stress upon psychic disorder - and the alienation from social living - often suggest a breakdown of confidence in the defining and sustaining cultural regimentation of identity and authority.' (Krutnik, In a Lonely Street, pp. 54-5)

'Crime writers do in fact use psychology as motivation but also as a warehouse of archetypes, a Bullfinch's Mythology or Ovid's Metamorphoses, "the kind of mythology that might emerge if Oedipus, endowed with Freudian knowledge about himself, still saw fit to enact his myth." Freudian and other psychiatric concepts work less to explain motives than to provide conventions and effects. Their use enables the crime writer to engage us in the nervous center of the genre where an uncomfortable identification merges into recognition of an appalling otherness, an otherness that is a dangerous potential for the self, its carnival mirror image.' (Hilfer, 'Deviant Impulses: Incest and Doubling,' in The Crime Novel, p. 14)

Questions that you might think about in preparing for seminar discussion of The Killer Inside Me and The Grifters:

Think about TheKiller Inside Me in comparison to the other texts we've looked at so far. Thompson's use of irony? Presence of different kinds of irony? The relationship between the narrator and the reader?

Consider the use of psychoanalysis as the 'scientific' discourse of patriarchal authority (compare to the use of psychoanalytic discourse in The Grifters); think about the significance of the way Lou is situated with respect to family and 'the law of the father'.

'Fate' and the inescapability of the past are recurrent noir themes: how does this relate to the use of psychoanalysis? Think about the question of how far we trust Lou's self-diagnosis. Characters in The Grifters also indulge in psychoanalysis of one another: how is this integrated with the other themes of the film? How are the psychoanalytic stereotypes deployed reflected in the way the film is shot and acted?

What things strike you about Thompson's representation of the local power structure? Of the American small town? Importance of satiric elements in the novel? Does The Grifters also contain satiric elements, or elements of socio-political critique?

Consider the use of doubles and Lou's self-estrangement in The Killer Inside Me. Also consider the doubling of the femmes fatales in The Grifters: how is this used to structure the narrative? to define the protagonist? (and is Roy in fact the protagonist, or might one argue, as Frears himself has suggested in interview, that it’s actually Lily who is the protagonist?)

More generally, how would you characterise Thompson's representation of women? In The Killer Inside Me? In The Grifters?

Some useful sources and links:

*Krutnik, F., 'Film Noir and the Popularisation of Psychoanalysis,' in In a Lonely Street
*Thomas, D., 'Psychoanalysis and Film Noir,' in Cameron (ed), Movie Book of Film Noir
Hilfer, T., 'Deviant Impulses: Incest and Doubling,' in The Crime Novel
http://www.crimetime.co.uk/features/jimthompson.html (a site with lots of background on Jim Thompson)
Lifetime Editions of Kraepelin in English: http://www.thoemmes.com/psych/kraepelin.htm
No Place for a Woman: The Family in Film Noir and Other Essays: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/noir/
Tim Applegate on The Grifters: http://www.kamera.co.uk/features/the_grifters.php

Week 6 - Friendly Psychopaths

Links to relevant sections of crimeculture.com:

Some useful sources: The most critically sophisticated source is probably Mark Seltzer, Serial Killers: Death and Life in America's Wound Culture (Routledge, 1998) ~ NB Ch 6 on pulp fiction (& Jim Thompson); also Tony Hilfer, The Crime Novel: A Deviant Genre (U Texas Press, 1990) ~ NB Ch 6, which includes discussion of Highsmith and Thompson; re Strangers on a Train, see Jonathan Freedman & Richard Millington (eds), Hitchcock's America (OUP, 1999), Ch 5 (& also, of course, other Hitchcock studies - e.g., Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films Revisited)

Some questions for seminar discussion of The Talented Mr Ripley and Strangers on a Train:

Crime fiction is a means of exploring the nature of guilt and morality: Highsmith said that the nature of guilt was central to her Ripley novels - think about her exploration of, e.g., the indeterminacy of guilt.

Complicity: both Hitchcock and Highsmith find ways of making the reader/film-goer feel complicit - identify scenes in which this seems a particularly important element.

Use of suspense story conventions and third-person narration: think about the differences between the 'mystery' and the 'suspense' structure; think about modes of narration in relation to the idea of the 'likeable killer' (why do we care about Ripley? How do Highsmith and Hitchcock use suspense to manipulate our responses to the killers they portray?)

Tom Ripley and the American identity: Tom as 'protean man', divested of past and parentage - a parody of the American success ethic? Think about the ways in which Highsmith's novel reworks such themes as American conformity and the frontier ethos.

Both Highsmith and Hitchcock produce work that transcends generic boundaries but that also plays (in both comic and serious ways) with characteristic noir elements: think, e.g., about their use of irony; about their handling of fate, destabilisation of identity, claustrophobia, paranoia, entrapment, role-playing, self-alienation, subversion of the distinction between deviance and the norm, lack of closure.

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Week 7 - Devouring Ambition

Links to relevant sections of crimeculture.com:

Reuben and Andrew suggest the following topics for seminar discussion of Complicity (Iain Banks) and American Psycho (d. Mary Harron):

Deviant American individualism
Political satire/allegory
The role of the unconscious/return of the repressed
Is it noir?

Is Patrick Bateman’s individualism really so deviant? He is the ultimate consumer and as such the ultimate American. Late eighties Reaganomics/Thatcherite excess. Illusion of perception – Reagan as harmless old buffer, and yet in control of ultimate superpower. Constructing himself as film star hero he used to be. Performativity. Bateman just another performer – performing being human. Bathroom scene – staring in the mirror. Obvious Lacanian links. Can see a reflection, but beneath the surface there is nothing there. Regression to Imaginary? Is said that to exist in the imaginary is to become psychotic. Works at same firm as father – threatening law of the father? His violence misplaced? What he wants to do to own father? Aware of his own façade of sanity – his “nightly bloodlust” threatens to overspill. Can feel no catharsis or guilt – confession means nothing. Society has let him off the hook (American self-interest/absorbtion). Society allows perpetuation of psychopath.

Expressing what happens in hegemony. There will be those who rail against. Bateman is railing against society – but only the individual embodiments he can’t stand. In Complicity two characters rail against society. Cameron and Andy. Title – who is to blame? Cam the committed left winger who despises the Tories. And yet, himself repelled by Andy’s reasoning. Andy, acting out the fantasies of the left. Simple acts of vengeance and retribution. But is it right for him to be the law? Sets himself rules – is he a psycho? Or just rebelling in only course open to him? Andy had been part of the society he started to destroy. Possible elements of Thanatos. Business getting ever more risky. Ultimate desire to cleanse himself – only ending in death. Yet we don’t see that – perpetual flight.

Repression. Society’s repression at large. Thatcher/Reagan glossing over the underclass/mass unemployment/still continuing Cold War. Return of the repressed. We see Clinton come to power in Complicity – but an awareness that’s not a solution. We know that Labour will be victorious – but again, really a victory? Personal repression – killing of child molester. Catalyst for Andy’s killing spree. That individualised sickness represents the contagion in society. Other events too – sister’s death/Falkland’s war. These things can’t stay hidden forever. Not sure Andy feels guilt for these things – places it onto other people. And yet, that word ‘complicity’ suggesting that no-one is blameless. Even working in the formal structure of the novel. “I” and “you”. Dualism? Split-consciousness? Arbitrary nature of right and wrong? Making reader complicit in the killings. How do we feel? We are allowed no space to view from.

How is noir working now? The seedy underbelly that is glossed over. Bateman’s actions the metaphorical actions of American capitalism. Devouring those weaker/on the margins, and getting away with it. See behind the gentrification of Edinburgh – hope to expose the links between business and politics and war and death. Similar to Ian Rankin – even the same image of the built over city streets as in Ressurrection Men. Another image of the return of the repressed.

Irony – bright sheen of pop music in AP. Perfect, not distorted – unlike world view of Bateman. Anger and rage of The Pixies – the inexpressible anger of Cam. Actually meted out by Andy.

Useful sources:

There's probably less criticism available for this, though it's perhaps worth looking online for things on both Ellis and Banks. It also might be useful to look at Philip L Simpson, Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer through Contemporary American Film and Fiction (So Illinois U Press, 2000), especially Ch 4 on 'Serial Killers and Deviant American Individualism', which includes discussion of Ellis; Complicity as political allegory is briefly discussed in Scott McCracken, Pulp: Reading Popular Fiction (Manchester U Press, 1998), Ch 5; and there's a section on 'Players, Voyeurs and Consumers' (which deals briefly with both Banks and Ellis) in my Noir Thriller (Palgrave, 2001). Also, in the Continuum Contemporaries Series: Murphet, Julian, Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Pub Group, January 2002) and Cairns, Craig, Iain Banks's "Complicity": A Reader's Guide (Continuum Publishing, July, 2002).

Online sources: The script of American Psycho can be found at: http://www.hemsida.net/screensource/americanpsycho.html
There is also a reasonably good Cinefiles Film Analysis of American Psycho: http://www.cinephiles.net/American_Psycho/Cinephiles-Gate.html. This online review contains a fair amount of shot and POV analysis. The argument is summed up in the opening paragraphs: ‘The title American Psycho, which uses "American" as a descriptive label for its subject "Psycho", poses the following question: What constitutes the "Americanness" of its subject? The title of Mary Harron's film and Bret Easton Ellis' novel suggests a subtle --yet important-- duality that promises to explore either 1) the Americanness of the psycho or 2) the psychosis of an American. Although the first focus seems to correspond more naturally to the film's placement of its protagonist in 1980s New York, the second focus most accurately represents the film's portrayal of a protagonist that belongs to 1980s New York.
'In order to fully appreciate the difference between these two foci, it is necessary to understand how the filmic elements of American Psycho portray 1980s New York as the capital of excess and Patrick Bateman as its best adapted and most exploitative citizen. Furthermore, as American Psycho is narrated from the main character's point of view while satirizing the character's own sense of belonging to his environment, it is essential to understand how the film integrates its visual, aural and narrative elements in order to elevate the character's lack of identity to a level of psychosis, and to create a disturbing portrait of the modern-day monster.’

On Banks, you can find a bibliographic summery at http://www.sfsite.com/isfdb-bin/exact_author.cgi?Iain_M._Banks, & Banks ‘Index’ at http://www.geocities.com/~banksp/Rec/IainMBanks/Index.html

And there are several Ellis sites, of course – e.g., http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/8506/

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Week 8 - Black Noir

Links to relevant sections of crimeculture.com:

Black Protest in the Mid-Century American Crime Novel

The novel for this week is Chester Himes, Rage in Harlem, and the film is an adaptation of a Walter Mosley novel, Devil in a Blue Dress. For more information on Mosley, Himes and the Carl Franklin adaptation of Devil in a Blue Dress, you can look at:

Chester Himes sites at: http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/HIMES/CHESTER.html &
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/chimes.htm

Walter Mosley sites: http://www.twbookmark.com/features/waltermosley/; http://www.bookbrowse.com/index.cfm?page=author&authorID=636; and other links listed at http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/mosley/mosley_walter_links.html. Links to several reviews of Devil in a Blue Dress are collected together at the Rotten Tomaties site: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/DevilinaBlueDress-1066290/reviews.php?page=0&critic=approved&sortby=default

There has been a lot published on black crime fiction/film over the last couple of decades. Here is a brief bibliography of some of the more useful books and articles. Not all of these will be in the library, but you are welcome to borrow them from me if you’re planning to write on this sort of topic.
Bailey, Frankie Y., Out of the Woodpile: Black Characters in Crime and Detective Fiction (New York and Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991)
Diawara, Manthia, ‘Noir by Noirs’, in Copjec, Joan (ed), Shades of Noir (London and New York: Verso, 1993)
De Jongh, James, Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) York and Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991)
Kennedy, Liam, ‘Black Noir: Race and Urban Space in Walter Mosley’s Detective Fiction’, in Messent, Peter (ed), Criminal Proceedings: The Contemporary American Crime Novel (London: Pluto Press, 1997)
Milliken, Stephen E., Chester Himes: A Critical Appraisal (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1976)
Muller, Gilbert H., Chester Himes (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989)
Reilly, John M., 'Chester Himes' Harlem Tough Guys', Journal of Popular Culture, 9, No. 4 (1976), 935-47
Sallis, James, 'In America's Black Heartland: The Achievement of Chester Himes', Western Humanities Review, 37, No. 3 (1983), 191-206
Skinner, Robert E., Two Guns From Harlem: The Detective Fiction Of Chester Himes (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1989)
Soitos, Stephen F., The Blues Detective: A Study of Afro-American Detective Fiction (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996)
Woods, Paula L., Spooks, Spies and Private Eyes: An Anthology of Black Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction of the 20th Century (Edinburgh: Payback Press, 1996). The publishers of Woods’ anthology, Payback Press, also publishes a whole series of reissues of black crime writing (for example, Iceberg Slim, Gil Scott-Heron, Robert Deane Pharr, Herbert Simmons – plus the whole of Himes’ Harlem cycle).

Some of the main questions you might want to think about for week 8 are:

Rage in Harlem. Himes said that, given the characteristics of the tough thriller (its depiction of character as a product of social conditions and its use of the viewpoint of the outsider as a way of exposing the failures of the dominant society) it was surprising that there weren’t more black detective stories. How effective is genre fiction as a vehicle for social and racial protest? What elements in the noir thriller seem to make it so readily adaptable to these ends, and how does Himes manipulate the conventions of the thriller?

Think in particular about Himes’ handling of the themes of agency and community, his vision of Harlem, his representation of violence, the role of religion, his use of Jackson as protagonist, and the function of Grave Digger and Coffin Ed.

‘Fate’ assumes different forms in the noir thriller (it tends to be economically determined in the Depression years, the result of psychological trauma in pop Freudian texts/films, etc.): how does Himes present ‘fate’ (and ‘luck’) in the world of the Harlem cycle?

Himes (much admired by French existentialists) called one of his autobiographical volumes My Life Of Absurdity: does Rage in Harlem seem to embody an existentialist awareness of life’s absurdity?

Devil in a Blue Dress is a 90s novel that recasts themes of space, identity and black subjectivity; it explores the nexus of race and money. Franklin’s film adaptation (well discussed in the Copjec collection of essays – see brief bibliography above) centres very much on the construction of a black community in post-World War II Los Angeles. How would you compare the film’s representation of black alienation and entrapment with the treatment of this theme in Himes’ Harlem cycle? How does Franklin create a sense of black community? How is a wider sense of the black position in a white society (of invisible boundaries and prohibitions, and of post-war race relations) established?

The Kennedy article (see bibliography) says that in Mosley’s novels ‘the idea of “getting out of your place” takes on a double meaning, signifying both geographic location and social prohibition.’ Analyse one or two scenes in the film in which this seems a key element.

In the book, Albright , claiming to own Easy, says, ‘When you’re in debt [as Easy is to Albright] then you can’t be your own man. That’s capitalism.’ In what ways does Franklin’s film explore race in relation to economic/class structure? It could be argued that although Franklin’s film, like Himes’ novel, brings out a strong sense of racial otherness, it adds to this preoccupation an anxiety about complicity in capitalism, consumerism and American conformity: does this seem to you to be the case?

Devil in a Blue Dress can be seen as in some respects a revisioning of Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely: for example, the opening can be seen as a parodic reversal of the opening of the Chandler novel. Can you see ways of developing the comparison? (think, e.g., about the representation of (sub)urban space, about Easy in comparison to earlier private eyes, his movements up and down the social scale, the nature of his quest, the ‘secret of the plot’, the theme of upward mobility and the role of the ‘femme fatale’).

Try to think in some detail about whatever comparisons/contrasts you see between Rage in Harlem and Devil in a Blue Dress – in terms of the representation of black life and race relations, and in terms of the way this relates to such generic elements as plot, character, setting, mood, period detail and so on.

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Week 9 - Female Noir

There's now quite a large body of criticism dealing with female crime writers and detectives; amongst the most useful are Sally R. Munt, Murder by the Book? Feminism and the Crime Novel (Routledge, 1994), NB Ch 8 ('An Unsuitable Genre for a Woman?'); Kathleen Gregory Klein, The Woman Detective: Gender and Genre (U of Illinois Press, 1988) - probably in the Library, but I can lend it to you if not; Proscilla L. Walton & Manina Jones, Detective Agency: Women Rewriting the Hard-Boiled Tradition (U of California Press, 1999); and you might also look at Elizabeth Cowie's chapter ('Film Noir and Women') in Joan Copjec (ed), Shades of Noir (Verso, 1993).

The noir family:

'It is in the representation of the institution of the family, which in so many films serves as the mechanism whereby desire is fulfilled, or at least ideological equilibrium established, that in film noir serves as the vehicle for the expression of frustration. On the thematic level, one of the defining characteristics of film noir is to be found in its treatment of the family and family relations. However, there is another level of analysis beyond that of theme where things are not what they seem at the surface level of narrative and plot. One of the fundamental operations at this concealed level has to do with the non-fulfilment of desire. The way in which this underlying frustration or nonfulfilment is translated into, or expressed at, the thematic level in film noir is through the representation of romantic love relations, the family and family relations.' (Harvey, 'Woman's Place: the Absent Family of Film Noir,' in Kaplan (ed), Women in Film Noir, p. 25)

*Harvey, S., 'Woman's Place: the Absent Family of Film Noir,' in Kaplan (ed), Women in Film Noir

*Horsley, L., 'Founding Fathers: "Genealogies of Violence" in James Ellroy's L.A.Quartet,' Clues

Pfeil, F., 'Home Fires Burning: Family Noir in Blue Velvet and Terminator 2,' in Copjec, Shades of Noir

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Week 10 - Future Noir

Pasts and Futures (chapter from Horsley, The Noir Thriller, on cyberpunk and future noir)

Some 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 suggests the following ideas to think about for the week 10 seminar:

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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Week 1 - Origins: Introduction to Hard-boiled fiction and Canonical Film Noir

Week 4 - Masculinity in Crisis

Links to relevant sections of crimeculture.com:

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Week 10 - Future Noir