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Contents

Prcf~lce

\hout this Book

\\ho '\eeds Genres?2 Before Genre: \lelodrama

Part 1: Classical Paradigms3 The Western: Genre and Histon-+ The \ I llsical: Genre and Form), The \\ar/Combat Film: Genre and '\ationfl, The G,l11~ster Film: Genre and Societ~

Part 2: Transitional Fantasies7 The Horror FilmN, The Science Fiction Film

Part 3: Post-Classical Genrest), Fillll .\011'

10, The .\ction BlockbusterII, Genre: Breakin~ the Frame

( !) Docllmen tary(ll) Holocaust Film(III) Porno~raphy

12, (~onclllsion: Transg:enre?

Bihliog;raphyIndex

YII

IX

2<)

2IO

2332.17257262

267273

2792<n

II

Preface

The concept of gCllrc - a French word meaning 'type' or 'kind' - is used

throughout film culture: in film production, in the popular consumption andreception of films ,1I1d in academic film studies. Yet the \\ays in which genreis understood arc anything but consistent across those different constitu­encies. :\t a more fundamentalleH~1too, genre remains a perplexingly c\'asi\c.tnd. philosophically speaking, idealistic entity. On the one hand, no individualgenn.' film can ncr embody the full rang;e of attributes said to typify itsgenre; hy the same token - as \olumes of frustrated critical cff(lrt attest - nodefinition of a genre, hO\\e\cr t1exible, can account equally well ftH' e\crygenn.' film. For newcomers to the field, it must often seem that, as with(intrude Stein's Oakland, 'when you get there, there's no "t here" there.'

This book proposes that, such problems notwithstanding, genre remainsan essential critical tool ftlr understanding the ways that films are produced

and consumed, as well as their broader rclations to culture and society. How­e\ cr, the shifting \alences, relations and definitions of the concept of genrepose ob\ious problems ftlr students, who must additionally halance abstract,lnd/or g;encralised categ'ories- in 'defining' indi\idual g-cnres and in under­

SLlllding the underlying principles of g;cncric classification as such - on theone hand against their realisation (or repudiation) in any given film on theother. Rather like the barned private eye Harry \loseby in the 're\isionist'

genre film Sip)iI\!o;:'cs (l(n~), anyone studying g;enre is prone to encoun­

tering; an unexpected complexity in apparently common-sense categoriesII hel-C even new turn threatens further consternation. Harr\ eVloseby ends. . .lip lJuite literally going around in circles. Students risk a similar btl'.

The aim of this book is to make that dismal outcome less likely. FocusingnLlinly on the best-known and longest-liyed Holly\\ood genres - those withrOots in the classical studio era, eyen if like the action film they haye taken on

a different generic char,leter and a hugely expanded industrial importance in

VIII FILM GENRE

the post-classical period I hale tried to shOll the \\ays in \\hich film genretheory has informed the most influential accoul1Cs of major genres and lice\ersa. In some GISeS, students may find that their prior assumptions aboutwhat makes films generic, or hO\y indi\idual genres \\ork, are challenged ..-\sdisorientin[?: as this mig'ht sometimes he, it seems nonetheless ,111 appropriatedimension of learning to understand \yhat arc after all complC\ entities \\ithwidely ramified connections to film, social - and critical history. Suchramilications defeat Harry i\loseby, \\ho at the end of the film \\e lea\e adriftin a hoat named Po III I or 11'(,11'. Ylp,ll/ .\10('('.1' lel\TS it deliberately ambi[?:uous

\\hether I-Iarry himself lacks a point of \ie\\ or is baffled by too many con­tlictin[?: ones. The reader of this hook \\ill I hope be able to understand thereasons for the contrO\Trsies and conflicting' \'icy\s of film [?:enre and genre

lilms, and throug'h such understandin[?: de\elop a critical perspecti\ e of their

own.Books, like films, are collaborati\T productions. Thanks are owed to many

colleag;ues and under[?:raduate and post[?:raduate students, and to Ro\alHolloway, Cni\Trsity of] ,ondon, \\'ho ha\T in a \ariety of formal and inf()rmal

contnts helped formulate and refine the ideas about lilm genre explored inthis book. J haye also had the benefit of airing some of these ideas, notably onWesterns ,Illd on Holocaust film, in papers deli\Tred at conferences in theUk and the United States: I am grateful to the conference organisers I(JI'those opportunities and, once again, to numerous colleagues for the responsesand insig'hts they ha\'e \,(llunteered. Some material is based on essays pre­\iously published in 1"11111 [;) IIlslor]' and the ]ol/rnill or 1I01IICIIl/SI 1;'d/lCIIllolI.My editor at Edinburgh Uni\Trsity Press, Sarah Ed\\ards, expertly co,I:\l'l1the book thnlu[?:h the initial proposal and then waited (and waited!) p,ltientl~

for the cyentual arriyal of the manuscript. \ly L.Imily had to li\e \\ith anincreasingly reclusi\T and grouchy author as his deadline first approached,then passed, They did so \\ith a good deal more [?:race than he did. In

particular, without the support, tolerance and keen editorial eye of m~ \1 ifeCarole Tonkinson this book \\ould not hale been possible, and it is dedicated

with I<l\T to her.

About this book

The o\erall approach of FIIIII (;Cl/re: HoIIJ'II'IIIIIIII/ld fJeJ'ol/l1 situates [?:enres intheir historical - primarily, cultural and (film) industrial conte:\ts; theO\erarching context of the book is the transition from the 'classical' Holly­wood system to a 'post-classical' mode that extends to the present day. [nmaking this separation, I neither explicitly challen[?:e nor endorse argumentsJbout thc extent to \\ hich 'post-classical' Holly\YooJ represents a qualita­ti\eh different set of yisual stylistics in Holly\Yood film, or is essentiallycontinuous in formal terms with the 'classical' Hollywood cinema (see

Bord\\ell, Staiger and Thompson, r9k); Bordwell, 2002). It is clear enoug'h,as numerous studies ha\T no\y established, that the relati\'ely standardisedmass-production of lilm entertainment that typilied the studio era until shortly,ll'tcr the war has been repLlCed by a Ell' more dispersed and heterogeneousIllechanism (this does not mean of course that the outcomes are equally hetero­geneous), and thus the structure of contract artists stars, \\Titers, directors,set and costume designers, composers, etc. ,studio b,lcklots and standing sets,

,1I1nual release 'slates' and \ertically integTated corporate org'anisations thatcollecti\ eh comprised \\hat .-\ndre Bazin GIlled 'the genius of the system' and

1\ hich supported and encouraged genre production, has gone. Some g'enres,like the musical and the "'estern, seem I(JI' a \ariety of reasons to hale beenso much a part of that system that they could not easily sUl'\iYe its passing',

\\ hile others, like .film 1I0ir and the action blockbuster, arc in different waysclclrly outcomes of a different order of production th,\I1 the Holly\Yood studio

S\steIll and may usefully be considered in the context of a post-classicalcinema. In any eYent, [ haye arrang;ed the genres discussed in the book into

three categories - classical, transitional and post-classical. Like other bound­

aries discllssed in this book, these too are porous and certainly open tochallenge: they are intended as heuristic tools rather than Jefiniti\e statements,

LICh chapter addresses both genre histol'\ and some of the principal

X FILM GENRE

critical approaches each genre has invited. Histon' and criticism are at e\-crystage interlinked: it is easy enough in genre study' to lose the wood for thetrees, and so I have not attempted either to cover e;ery major crirical approachto every genre (a task in any case undertaken mag'isteriallv bv Steve '\Jeale,2000), nor h,l\'e I aimed to prO\ide in each case a comprehen-siv~ genre history,as this can easily end up simply offering; lists of insufficiently differentiatedfilm titles. Each chapter docs, I hope, give a reasonably clear picture of a genre'shistorical de\'e1opment while also engaging with those critical perspectivesthat seem to have the most direct bearing either on the current state of crirical

understanding; of a genre or its location within genre studies as a w'hole. Inciting genre critics and theorists I have maintained a slig'ht bias towardsrecent research to reflect the current state of play and new critical directions.Each chapter concludes with a brief 'case study' of a genre film or pair offilms. These films ha\-c not been selected fflr either their 'classic' or their repre­

sentative status, but simply as films that can be and have been firmly locatedwithin the genre in question, whose more detailed consideration seems to mein useful ways to complement or amplify the issues raised in the main sectionof the chapter. The account given of the film(s) is not intended to be com­prehensive, nor could it be in the space a\ailable: the clements highlightedarc those that bear most directly on genre history or genre theory.

Genre studies has historically been dominated by analysis of the majorHollywood genres, and this book is principally about Hollywood. H()\\C\cr,the subtitle JJII//J ' /I'III)(/ allr! RC)'III/{/ reflects firstly my own concern toindicate that Hollywood genres not on Iy colonise the rest of the world, butarc and ha\c been open to it; secondly, the stream that in recent years has

hecome a flood of critical studies of the popular cinemas of other nations andtheir genres; and third, that e\cn .\merican g-Cl1lCS arc not and ha\-c not been

exclusi\-cly produced by I Iol1~ WoOl\. The first concern means that, where relevant(ff)r example, the horror film and ji/II/ IIl1lr) influences on Hol1y\\ood fromother national cinemas and cultures arc considered in their proper place inthe main hod~ of each chapter. The second is inadequately - ffn- reasons of hothspace and in many cascs the limits ofm~ o\\n expertise - cO\ered in a conclud­

ing section to each chapter (har Chaptcr .=; on thc war/ comhat film, which, tohighlight the interaction of genre and nationhood, proceeds on a comparati\c

international basis throughout) which briefly indicltes some of the wa~ s rhatmajor J Iol1ywood gelllTs ha\-c also figured importantly (sometimes under

IIol1ywood's influence and sometimes \\holl~ separately) in other nationalcinemas. l'\on-Hol1yw ood ,\merican genres like documentary and pornogTaphy

arc discussed at somew'hat gre,llcr length in the final chapter.

\01(: Films arc listed \\ ith their \ car of release on their tirst citation in al1\ indi\ idu,d eh'lpter:

the eountn of ori~in is assumed to be the L'S unless other\\ ise indiL',nnL

~

'I,JII

C1L\PTER I

Who Needs Genres?

T hinking' about why we might 'need' genres means thinking' about theuses to which w-c commonly put genre concepts and the value we derive

from doing so, Thus wc can focus on genre's role as an active pror!uccr ofcuI rural meanings and film-making' practices alike. The provisional answ-cr to

the question 'who needs genres?' is 'E\cryone but in different wa) s, andnot to the same degree'. For film-makers, organising prod uction aroundgenres and c~ cles holds out the promise of attracting and retaining audiencesin a reliable way, so reducing commercial risk. For audiences, genre cate­gories provide basic product differentiation while the generic 'contract' ofLI1l1iliarity lea\cned by novelty seems to offer some guarantee that the priceof admission wil1 purchase another shot of an experience already enjoyed(oncc or many times) hefore. For scholars, genre provides a historicall~

grounded method of establishing 'Lunily resemhlances' betwcen films pro­

duced and released under widely differing circumstances, and of mediatingthe relationship hetwcen the mythologies of popular culture and social,political and economic contexts.

L nlike many topics within academic film studies, the basic concept ofgenre is readily grasped and widely used in the larger contemporar~ filmCulture, as a visit to any video rental store readily illustrates. In my own localoutlet in South \Yest I ~ondon, ff)!- nample, videos and ))Y))s arc arranged

into the fol1<l\\ing categories: latest releases, action, thril1ers, drama, science

fiction, horror, comedy, Llmily, classics, cult and world cinema. Such alisting il1ustrates hoth the practical utility of genre and some of the problems

that genre theory and criticism have ahvays f:lCed. Certainly perhaps

unsurprising;ly for film consumers in this high-street context at least it isg'cnre, rather than other means of gTouping; films adopted by film scholars,

t hat offers the readiest means of charting a path throug'h the \ariety of

a\ ailahle films to those they arc most likely to want to see. ,\lthough film

2 FILM tiENRE

history, for example, plays some role in these classifications, the oyerarchingprinciple is not a historical one. Nor does the notion of the 'auteur' playaterribly yisible role: although the identification of (usually) the film directoras principal creatiye agent has become an interpretatiye norm for broadsheetand specialist magazine film criticism, directors in general feature onlymarginally in the promotion or classification of yideos. This of coursc tells usnothing about the percentage of customers who enter the store to find aparticular film, or a film by a particular director, and are thus uninterested inor uninfluenced by the genre categories: indeed, as we shall see, genre theorygenerally has found it rather difficult to establish \\ith any certainty how Elrthe film industry's categories map onto, let alone determine, audiences'actual experience of mo\"ie-going.

Stars, another major focus of academic film studies, playa much moreyisible part in the promotion of indiyidual films - 'abO\e the line' talentusually features prominently on yideo or DV]) cO\crs and is clearly a majorbctor in attracting audiences. Yet stars as such do not comprise genericcategories. Film students, indeed, may bc surprised to see that star personae

a major force in film production and consumption since the I()I0S, \\henpublic demand forced reluctant producers to identi(y their hitherto anony­mous performers (and pay these nc\\ 'stars' accordingly inflated salaries) ­are also suppressed as a criterion for classification. Industrial changc hasclearly played a part here: no longer salaried contract players assigned toseyeral different film roles annually within the studio's O\crall release 'slate',today's film stars are frec ,lgents, leading industry players in their 0\\"11 right,and usually haye their own production companies to orig;inate film projectsand bring them to studios f(lr financing and distribution deals. A.ctors todayare accordingly much freer to diyersify and extend both their acting rangeand their star inuge; they need not be pigeonholed in just one style or genreof film.

In the classical period the interplay of star, studio and g-enre \\",IS complexand not necessarily unidirectional: Sklar ([()()2: 7+ 106) argoues that ratherthan hiring performers to meet pre-established generic needs (let alonecompelling actors against their \\ill into restrictiye genre roles), ha\"ingHumphrey Bogart and James Cagney, both actors \\ith 'tougoh' urban screenpersonae, as contract players encouraged vVarner Bros. to make a speciality ofthe crime thriller during the [(nOS and I9+os. Eyen the \Vestern TlteO!...!a!zol/la Kid (HU9) \\holly conforms to the template established in othercontemporary Cagney and Bogart gangster films like. ill/!,e!s Willt Dlrly FI/as(I93 g) and The ROllrillg T77'i'IIlies (1939). "-\s usual, Cagney (much the biggerstar at this point) plays the hero- here in the 'pro-social' gangbusting mouldinto which his early I930S gangster persona had subsequently been recast(see Chapter 6) - and Bogart the underworld boss 'heayy' in a narrati\c that

WHO NEEDS GENRES? 3

simply transposes the racketeering/syndicate g,lI1gland template of G-Mell(1935) to the 'wide-open town' Western. In general - and with differentapproaches from one studio to another - the bigg'er the star the greater his orher opportunity for diyersification: thus Cagney in the I930S played not onlygangoster parts but musicals (Foolhj!,/II PI/mde, 193+), ayiation films (Cei!ill/!,/ero, 19.'1) and eyen Shakespeare (-1 oHidsllllllller Nigltl'S Drel/III, 1935)·\)orem"er, star personae could transform oyer time, as with Bogart's owntransition from second-lead heayies in the I930S to the ideal romantic leadingm,ll1 for the \\Oar-torn I9+os. But the studio system generally made casting amuch more reliable guide to the nature of a film than today: whereas fans ofErrol Flynn in Tlte .-1(l<'i'IIllIres or Robill l100d (HjJg) could be reasonablyconfident that Tlte Sell HI/ JI'/'" (r 9+ I) would ofler similar pleasures - and thatthis \\ ould be true e\'en if the generic mode shifted from swashbucklingactioll-adyenture to \Vestern (Tile)' Died Hillt Tltor Bools 011, [()+I) or warfilm (Desperale ]OUrtlC)', 19+2) - admirers of Tom Cruise in Top GUll (19X6)or ° \l Issioll !I/lpossi/J/e (1996) may be surprised, disappointed or eyen outragedby his per!(lrmanCe in A1agllo!i11 (11)1)1)). The moyement of a contemporarystar like Julianne "'loore between large-budg-ct popcorn spectaculars like]lIrmsll Pild' 1/: Tlte Losl World (H)97) and stylised independent films likeFI/r Frol/l lfel/7'l'1I (2002) offers audiences little clear g-eneric purchase.

o-\rt\\ork on film posters and ()VD jackets typically relies at least as muchon sending' out generic signals .- typically b~ means of ilollo/!,rl/p!lI( conyen­tions (see belo\\") - as on star personae, \\hich arc indeed often modified orgcncricdly 'placed' by such imagery ..\rnold Sch\\arzenegger grins goofily inlincn lederhosen on the front of TJ7'ills (I9gX); on Killdcrgllrli'll Cop (1990) hegurns in cxagger.lted alarm as he is assaultcd by a swarm of pre-schoolers.Both films arc comedies and both images kno\\ingly playoff the unsmiling,tooled-up .\rnie fenurcd on the publicity filr the techno-thrillers TlteTerJ/IIl1lllor ([()X+) or Eraser (1996).

Yet as centLJ! an ,1spect of film consumption and reception as genre maybc, another look at the yideo store's gcneric taxonomy quickly rcyeals whatfi'om the perspectiye of most acadcmic g'Cnre criticism and thcory look likec\ idcnt '1l1omalies. For example, \\hile some of these genres - action, thriller,horror, science fiction, comedy - match up f~lirly well with sLmdard g;enreheadings, the \"ideo store omits se\Tral categories \\iuely regarded as ofcentral importance in the history of genre production, such as vVesterns,gangster films and musicals (examples of all of these arc dispersed acrossdr,lnL1, action, thriller and 'classics') - let alone more controwrsial yet (in

academic discussion) ubiquitous classifications as .fi/III I/O/!' or melodrama.Other categories are uncanonical by any standard: 'btest releases' is self­c\idently ,1 time-dated C1'oss-g;eneric category; 'classics' is generically prob­

Icmatic in a different \ray, since it apparently combines both an e\aluati\e

4 FrLM GENRE

term ('all-time classic', 'landmark', etc.) with a temporal one (the small andseemingly random selection of pre-lIn5 films available for rental arc auto­matically classified as 'classics', regardless of critical standing). The 'Lmli1y'category combines G-rated films from a number of conyentionally separategenres (animated films, comedies, Disney Iiye-action adyenrures and other

children's films). 'World cinema' is used, not as it is in academic film studies

(somewhat reluctantly, given its implicit Euro- or .\nglo-centrism) to designatefilm-making outside of North America and Western Europe, but rather

includes any subtitled film, most independently produced CS films and

British films - for nample, the films of Ken Loach - that fall outside recog­

nised and bmiliar generic categories like the gangster film, romantic comedy,

etc. Nor arc these categories stable in themseln:s: all nell titles nentuall~

mutate from 'latest release' into one of the other backlist categories; those

(English-language) films that last the course may in due course be eleyated to

'classics'.Anomalies of course beset classificatory programmes of any kind, In a

celebrated example (much quoted by critical theorists, most Lrmously \lichel

Foucault, IlnO: XI), the .\rgentini,m Llbulist Jorge Luis Borges quotes a

'certain Chinese encyclopedia' in Ilhich animals arc diyided into '(a) belong­

ing to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling' pigs, (c) sirens, (I)Llbulous, (g) .stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification ... ' and so

on, concluding in 'in) that hom a long Ilay off look like flies', The 'IYonder­

ment' of this taxonomy, ,IS Foucault puts it, consists less in its sheer

heterog"Cneity per se since it is precisely the function of cOl1\entional lists

to enumerate similarities and discriminate differences than in the epistemo­

logical and ontological incompatibility of the categorics: 'the common ground

on Ilhich such meetings arc possible has itself been destroyed' (Foucault,I(no: xYi), While film genre criticism 1\()lIld seem to ayoid such difficulties,

many studies of g"Cnre including the present one - combine II ithin their

pag'es genres II ith rather different standing's: those that haye ,I long and

yerifiable (for ex,lmple, through film-makers' correspondence or trade paper

reyiews) history of usage as product ion categories II ithin the film industr~

itself", such as \Vesterns, musicals or war films; those II here industry uS,lg'e

differs m,lrkedly from critical usage, notably melodrama (sec Chapter 2); and

those that ,liT largely a product of critical intel"\cntion, pre-eminentl~ .//111IIIl1ir. The histon of early cinema memlyhile rneals that film distributors in

, ,

moying pictures' first decade tended to classify films under such heterodox

(by tOlby's standards) heading's as length (in feet of film) and duration LIther

than the content-based generic categories that emergcd by 1 l) 1 O. E yen the

most uncontrmcrsial categories remain heterogeneous: Iyar films and \Vesterns

are identified by subject matter, the gangster film by its protagonist(s),

thrillers and horror films by their effects upon the yinYer,jillll IlOir by either

WHO NEEDS GENRES? 5

its 'look' or its 'dark' mood, Studio-era producers, in addition to the familiargenre categories (usually referred to in the industry as 'types'), used the;'(lIIlIIIIlIC category of the 'prestige picture' to denote their most expensiye,hig'h-profile and (hopefully) profitable pictures - Iyhich could of course alsobe'long to one or more of the staI1lbrd types, but Iyhose audience appeal

I\ould be expected to break out beyond that type's core market.Our sojourn in the yideo store illustrates aboye all that genre is a proccss

LIther than a LICt, and one in Iyhich different perspectiyes, needs and

interests can and do deli\er Iyidely yarying' outcomes. Genres arc not born,

they .IIT made. The store manager explained to me that the 'classic' category

combines iI1lliyidual preference Iyith institutional supen-ision: that is, while

store m,ll1,lgers h,1\c Iyide personal discretion in assigning 'classic' status to

imlilidu,tl films, corporate policy mandates that if one film in a series is

categorised as a 'classic', other series entries must automatically be filed

alongsidc. Thus since Die lfilnl (Il)HH) is (so I Iyas informed) '<m obvious

classic', Die Hard: Willt il 1('lIge(/II«' (rl)l)S) ,t1so has 'classic' status thrust

upon it. This bears out James '\;aremorc's (1995 <)6: q) obsenation that

'indil idual genre has less to do Iyith a group of arteLICts than with a discoursea loosc tyolying system of arguments and reading's, helping to shape the

coml11crci,tl strategies and aesthetic ideologies.' (One might note that the

k'CII,ly this system ,Iffords indiyidual managers brings into play the social

categories through which contemporary cultural studies eng-ag-es popular

media tC\.ts LICe, g'ender, ethnicity, sC\.uality, elcn age. The lideo-rental

busiJless is, ,IS Kelin Smith's microbudget indie film ClericS (199-1-), testifies,domin,IlL'l1 by young- Iyhite males: the 'classics' section abounds in stereo­

1.1 piulh 'male' genres like \Vesterns, action films and science fiction, Iyith astriking deficit of musicals or family melodramas.)

11011 mig:ht any of this be relnant to genre studies; In relation to the last

C\amplc, genre critics and theorists h,lle in recent ~ears laid increasing

importance on institutional discourses and pLlCtices, broadly conceiYed

II hat StCI e '\ealc (Il)()3, citing Greg-ory Lukow and Stel e Ricci, I<)H-I-)

desig:n,Iles the industr~ 's 'inter-textual rela~ " comprising- both trade journal­

ism (1 ariel)', FillII Dill/)' and so on) and nelyspapers as Ilcll as the Lmguag"C

of film promotion ,1I1d publicit~ as a means of locating- in a determinate if

,1l1Ia~s changing' historictl context the understanding's of g-eneric categ'ories

UpOJl II hich g-enre criticism in turn bases itself For such catef!;ories, hO\ye\er

'lpparenth dcceptilcly solid 'in theory', often prole surprisingly e1usiye in

hoth industrial, and hcnce critical, practice. These 'historicist' approaches to~L"nre studies h,lye in some clses - notably the \\'estern ,Iml melodrama ­

significl11th extendcd the historical horizons and cultural contexts for under­

standing' genres and productilcly prohlemOltised cOl1\cntional critical accounts.

Tqday's genre-constituting 'relay' includes such yenues of film consumption

6 FILM GENRE

as the corner yideo store, \yhich occupies an important place in the global andyertically integrated 'film industry' - not in fact the singular and unifiedentity that term suggests, but a complex network of cross-media enterprisesmostly clustered into a few \cry large transnational corporate enterprises, for

whom a film's performance in ancillary (but no longer secondary) markets

like home yideo prO\ides a gnl\\ing share of its profitable return on imest­

ment.As Christine Gledhill (2000: 225f.) points out, the empirical history of

industry relays neither defines nor exhausts the terms on which audiences

engage with genre texts . .\loreO\cr, film genre studies today itself constitutes

its own 'relay': the terms and categories that haye de\cloped through decades

of analysis and theory about inui\idLul genres and genre in g;eneral h,I\'e

established meaningful contexts in \\hich genres and genre films ,liT

understood today. This process of generic legitimation is the principal reason

this book generally cbl\cs to 'canonical' genre categories like the \"estern,

the combat film, etc. \Vh.1t on the other hand I ha\c tried to a\oid is any

sense that such categ'ories .Ire more th.m prO\'isional or that generic identities

can be fixed, IHl\\C\er critically comenient such fixity \\ould undoubtedly

be. If am thing, genres may intermittently stabilise in the sense of becoming

for strictly delimited periods carriers of particular mcmings or yehicles

through \\hich specific issues may be negotiated (for example, '\\hiteness' in

early \Vesterns (sec Abel, 1<)<)1\), or 'technoscience' in the contemporary

science fiction {ilm (see Wood, 2002)).

THE SYSTEM OF GEI\JRES

Cenre, as a police detectiye in a (British) crime film might say, has form.

Aristotle opens his PIICI/(S, the foundational \\ork of \\estern literary

criticism, by identifying it as a \\ ork of genre eriticism: 'Our suhject being

Poetry, I propose to spclk not only of the art in general but also of its species

and their respecti\(: capacities' ([()I[: 3). By [(JOI-2, \\hen Shakcspcare's

JIIIII/Iel was first performed, genrc cltegories - and thcir ahusc \\erc clearly

'hot' issues. In 1I1I1I/1cI, .\ct 11, Scene ii, the busybody court ier Poloni us

excitedly announces the arri\al of a troupe of tra\elling pbycrs. PLlising­

today we \\ould say hyping their abilities, he declares them 'the best actors

in the world, either f(lr tragedy, comedy, histon, pastoral, pastoral-comical,

his torica1-pastora I, tragica 1-historica I, tragica I-comica1-his \(lrica I-pas tora I,

scene indi\isible, or poem unlimited' (I. 392f1. ).

Shakespeare here is clearly making fun of Polonius' ludicrous attempt to

pigeonhole, ratif~ and standardise the aesthetic realm to \yithin an inch of its

life; howe\'er, he may also be targeting for satire the <lbuse of ,'Ii/lil categories

WHO NEEDS GENRES? 7

th<lt \\ill ultin1<ltely lead to the bre.lkuO\\I1 of the utility of categorisation

itself. Genre, in other \yords, is a tool that must be used wisely but not too

\\ell: defining the incliyidual artefact in generic terms can be helpful but

shouldn't be pursued at <Ill costs . ."."ot C\ery <lspect of the genre text is

necess,lrily or purely attributable to its generic identity, hence there is no

need to in\cnt <lbsurd refinements of generic denomination, or to make the

mesh of the classificatory or definitional net so fine as to allow no light

through.-\t the same time, if the concept is to haye any critical utility at all,

it nt:eds to be able to make meaningful discriminations: 'scene indiyisible' or

'poem unlimited' seem unhelpfully broad as workable categories for genre

criticism. Polonius seems unconsciously to exemplif~' Jacques Derrida's

(1992) dictum that texts - ,Ill texts, any text - neither 'belong to genres'

(because texts can ahYays exceed specific expectations and labels), yet nor can

thC\ escape being generic (because all texts are encountered in contexts that

in \ ohe some, often major, measure of expectation on the part of readers in

reg<lrd to style, identity, content, usc, meaning: a text is necessarily 'placed'

as ,I \cry condition of its heing able to be read at all).

}lo\\C\er, e\en if 'there is ahyays a genre or genres' (Den'ida, 1992: 230),

this merely establishes that the task of film genre studies must be to establish

the p,lrticular A'illds of genres that arc characteristic of commercial n,lrrati \c

cinema, the \ arieties of assumptions and expectations that play around and

through them, the uses to \\hich they are or haye bcen put, and finally the

identities, roles and interests of the different stakeholders (film-makers, film

distributors and exhibitors, ,1Udiences, critics and theorists) in this process.

One approach might be to emphasise those relatiyely concrete and \erifiable

aspects of the film-industri,l1 process that historically subtend genre pro­

duction, aboye all though by no means exclusi\ ely in Hollywood cinema, to

dCllurcate a field of study..\t the same time, one might want to look at the

\\,IYS in \\hich indi\,idual films seem either to conf()l'm to or to confront and

challenge the (assumed) e:\pectations of the spectator.

Douglas Pye ([ 1<)75 Il<)<).~: [1\71'.) has described genre as a context in which

meaning is created through a play of difference and lin repetition, one

'naITO\\ enough f(Jl' recognition of the genre to take place but wide enough to

allo\\ enormous indi\idual yariation'. This combination of sameness and

\ariety is the linchpin of the \.!,"Cneric contract. While it may reasonablY be, ..assumed that audiences do not \yish to see literally the same film remade time

and again, considerable pleasure is to be deri\ed from g"Cneric narratiyes

throug'h the ICliS/lIll between no\ el clements and their e\ entual reincorpor­

,nion into the expected generic model. The confirmation of generic expec­

tations g'enerates \yhat Rich,lrd \laltby (1995a: 112) describes as a 's,ense of

pk.lsurable mastery and control'. In an analysis of genre {ilms in the 1970s,

a period \\ hen many traditional genres unden\cnt considerable re\ision and

8 FtLM GENRE

revamping, Todd Berliner (2001) has argued that even 'revisionist' genre films'bend' rather than 'break'- that is, manipulate and modify, but do not \\hollydispense with - generic conventions as they seck to engage their alilliences ina more conscious scrutiny of genre conventions and the values they embody.

l'or most film genre theorists, the concept of 'genre' has implied a greatdeal more than simple conventionality. On the contrary, genre was historic­

allv an important means for writers interested in popular, and abO\e all

HI;lIvwood, cinema - as distinct from, for n:amp1e, European art cinema

(tho~gh sec Tudor, [Il)731 11)76; i'\eale, tl)l)I) - to establish the value and

interest of their chosen field of critical enq uiry. This was an important mme

because some mid-twentieth-century critiques of popular/'mass" culture

tended to blur the lines between genre, formula, stereotype and simple cliche

as part of a critical project to deprecate popular culture generally on groundsof unoriginalitv and derivativeness. Those popubr cultural forms to vvhich

genre is ~nost ~vidently indispensable vvere on that v"Cry ,1ccount discounted:

for carl\" twentieth centurv modcrnists, for C'\ample, this included such

Victoria~ relics ;IS the bout:geois nmcl and theatrical melodramas both of

which C'\erted a strong shaping influence on early cinema .Ind so to speak

helped damn it by association.Such deprecations of the popular/mass may partly be attributed to the

cultural privilege attached to 'orig;in.dity' by post-Rolllantic literary theory.

Whereas earlier ages had judged works of literaturc 'lccording to their up­

holding or replication of, and consistency vvith, pre-existing standards ofartistic e\.cellence and \lecorum', from the late eighteenth ccntury onvvards

aesthetic theorv laid increasing stress on the irreducible particularit~ of theartwork that 'is, the vvays in vvhich it stretched or transgressed the '1.1\\ s' of

!.!,'ood taste, craftsm'1I1ship, and so forth (see l(ress and Threadgold, ll):-;:-I). In

~he age of industrialisation, a growing divide grevv up betvveen the 'merely'

workmanlike or 'well-crafted' arteClCt - vvith the implication that such vvorks

vvcre the products of apprenticeship and the aL'l]uisition of essentiall~

mechanical skills and the 'true' vvork of art; the latILT vvas increasingly seen

as the product of inspiration not perspiration, of gTnius not hard graft. .-\rt,

in short, was henceforth to stand IIlIlsldc rules and com entions: th.1I is vv hat

made it art. Writing in the I{!30s, Walter Benjamin (I lln(l! 1<)70 ) noted that

the vvork of art had come to acquire an 'aura' born in part of its uniqueness and

indivisibilitv, an 'aura' th;1I f:lcilitated art's institution.llisation as secuLlI' cult.

!\ dclini;ion of art th'lt places such heavy emphasis on originality and self­

expression vv ill incvitably tend to dev'alue vvorks that appL';lr to be produced

through collectivc rather than individual endeavour, and .1long quasi-industrial

lines: this vvill be all the more true vvhen the resulting artefacts themse1vTs

seem to manifest qualities of repetition and stereot~ picalit~, or vv hen they

seem to have been designed vv ith an existing template in mind. Questions of

WHO :'\lEEDS GENRES? l)

;luthorship are implicitly invoked by such critiques of genre - for in the new.Iesthetic orthodo\.y that emerged out of Romanticism, the individual authorhad become the best guarantee of a vvork's integrity and uniqueness. So it isvv holly logical that it vvas through the category of authorship that the firstserious critical attempt to recover Hollywood genre te\.ts like \Vesterns andI1lusicals for the category of 'art' vvas undertaken, in the French auteur

criticism of the ll)~os.-\uteurismseeks to (and claims to be able to) identifysubmerged patterns of continuity - them<1tic preoccupations, characteristicpatterns of narrative and characterisation, recognisable practices of 1111.1('-('11­

s,':lIl' and the like - running through films with (usually) the same director.

Est.lblishing such individuating traits makes a claim for that director'screative 'ovvnership' of the films he has directed: the director earns a status

as a creativc originator - an {II/Il'llr - along; the traditional lines of the lone

novclist or painter. Thus, for C'\ample, John Ford's films can be seen to work

through .1 repeated pattern of thematic opposition between vyilderness ano

civilisation ('the desert ano the g'arden '): this is Ford's auteurist 'signature'

(sec Caughie, Il)NI).

.\lthough the limit.ltions of auteurism arc often correctly identifieo as an

important factor motivating the development of genre studies, without

auteurislll it is doubtful genre vvould h,IVC made it onto the critical agenda at

al1.-\uteurism provcd particularly effectivc in establishing the serious criticalreputation of directors vvho had rarely if ever hitherto been conceived of as

artists becllIse their entire careers had been spent filming \Vesterns, gangsterpictures, Illusicals and the like· quintessentially disposable US junk culture.

The\lllerican .luteurist critic .\mltTvv Sarris proposed a model of 'creative

tension' hetvv een the creativc drivT of the film director and the constraints of

the cOlllll1Cl-cial Illedium in vyhich he vv orked. Thus, fill' Sarris, vv hether a

director (()1I!d st.llllp his myn artistiL' persOIulity and concerns on essentiall~

stereotvpical Ill,lterial vvas in a sense the qualifying test fill' being avvardedauteur stat us .

.\uteurislll at least dn:vv g'enre tnts vv ithin the scope of serious critical

attention. I Imyevcr, within auteur criticism gUlre itself remained nTv much

the poor rdation - since the unspoken assumption in Sarris's schel~1a that

aut curs vv CIT more desen'ing of crit ical consideration than non-a uteurs (or as

Fran~'ois TrufLllIt notoriously classified thelll, mere 'lIIl'!!mr,H'II-S(;1/l") relied

111 turn on the claim that vv hat distinguished an auteur vyas precisely his

~rallsjilrl1l.ltionof formulaic gTneric materi,d into something pnsona1. Genre

1: thus in some measure the culture· like a petri dish on which genius

feeds, rat her than meaningful material in its 0\\11 right. Directors and film'sthl1 st' . '. b k I I" f' I' ... lam ag'amst or rea t le lmlts 0 t le11' gl\cn !.!,'CIllT are thus evaluatedas \uperior' to texts that remain unashamedl; and 'unproblematically, eyen

hanalh. generic. In this vvay auteurislll recapitulated the birfurcation, i~lll1iliar

10 FILM GENRE

as we have seen since the early IRoos, of (true) 'artist' and (mere) journey­man, It was the transcendence, not the comfortable inhabitation, of genrethat marked the auteur (as I1IJun:lle I'ague film-makers, the orig'inal Frenchauteurist critics mostly used genre as a fi'amework for transgressi \e indi\i­

dualising gestures),Obviously, such an approach will discourage sustained attention to the

particularity of genres themseh'es, other than as tedious normative values forthe inspired artist to transgress or transcend, The desire to find a means oftalking about the things that typified com-entional commercial narrative filmas well as those that challenged or sub\'erted it, \\as a gO\erning factor in theemergence of genre studies in the late H)60s and early 1970s, Early genrecritics stressed auteurism's inability to e\:plain such important questions aswhy genres t10urish or decline in particular cycles; how spectators relate togeneric texts; how genre artefacts shape the \\"Orld into more or less mean­ingful narrative, moral or ideological patterns - in other \vords film genre's

history, its aesthetic C\"olution, its social contexts,The problems [ICing early film genre theorists \\ere not especially

recondite, and indeed ha\'e not changed fundamentally in the thirty-five

years since Edward Buscombe first tabled them:

IT]here appear to be three questions one could profitably ask: first, dogenres in the cinema really exist, and if so, can they be defined? second,c - -

what are the functions they fulfill? and third, how do specific genres

originate or \\hat causes them? (Buscombe, 119701 1995: I I)

Most accounts concur that generic labelling historically preceded organisedgenre production in early cinema, with distributors prior to H) 10 classifyingfilms in a variety of \\a\s including length as \\ell as topic for the benefit ofexhibitors, Duri~g and :lfter the First World War, \\ith film production in allnational cinemas increasingly concentrated in a small number of studios andfeature-length narratives becoming the norm, more closely defined and con­ventionalised generic categories started to appear. .-\ltman (I 99S: 16-23)suggests that the crystallisation of a genre may be traceable in its e\ohingnomenclature, as the defining term moves fi-Ol11 adjecti\al and modifying (asin 'Western melodrama') to substantival ('/he Western'), This shift alsoseems to mark a shift of emphasis in terms of production, as genre conceptsmove from the descriptive to the prescriptive: a '\\-estern melodranu' issimply a melodrama (a term generally used by exhibitors before the FirstWorld \Var to describe non-comic dramatic narratives of any type) set in theAmerican West; a 'Western' is a film set specifically in the his/orical \restthat also involves certain strongly comentionalised types of cluLICters, plotsand, rather more debatably, thematic motifs or ideological positions,

WHO NEEDS GENRES? I I

Since such a degTee of comentionalisation ob\iously happens over a larg'enumber of films, the concept of film genre in turn implies a system for some­thing like the mass production of films, The studio systems that developed inEurope as \\ell as the CS.-\ during the 1920S all relied on genre productionin some measure, but it \\as in the American film industry, the world'shll'gest, that genre became most fundamentally important. Most theories ofrfilm gcnre are based primarily on analysis of the Hollywood studio system,Contemporary theories acknO\dedge Tom Ryall's (1975) argument thatg:enre criticism needs to triangulate the author-text dyad in which auteurismconccin:d meaning by recognising the equal importance of the role of the<ludience as the constituency to which the genre film addresses itself. Theresulting model recognises genre as an interactional process between producers

\\ho develop generic templates to capitalise on the previously establishedpopularity of particular kinds of film, ah\ays with a \ie\v to productrationalisation and efficiency - and generically literate audiences \\ho antici­pate specific kinds of gratification arising from the genre text's fulfilment oftheir g:eneric expectations, Thus, as Altman summarises:

_\ cinema based on genre films depends not only on the regular productionof recognizably similar films, and on the maintenance of a standardizeddistribution/exhibition system, but also on the constitution and mainten­<lnu: of a stabk, generically trained audience, sufficiently knowledge­able about genre systems to recognize generic cues, sufficiently familiar\vith genre plots to e\:hibit generic expectations, ,md sufficient": commit­ted to g,-encric \alues to tolerate and even enjoy in gcnre fiims capri­cious, \ioJent, or licentious beha\iour \\hich they might disapprO\e ofin 'real life', (.-\Itman, H)96: 279)

The importance of the audience is worth emphasising here since, as we shallsec, in lllost genre theory and criticism the audience has remained a some­\\ hat e1usi\e presence, n(;tionally an indispensable interlocutor in the genericprocess but in practice, in the general absence of clear e\idence about itsI:istoricl! composition, remaining largely a projected and undifferentiatedfunction of the text (or rather, of the meanings ascribed to the text), itsresponses 'read' at best hll'gely in terms of the spectator 'implied' by the

genre text. 2 The difficulty of verif~ing the responses conjectured for histor­Ical genre audiences helps explain \vhy the unfolding history of film genresand critical readings of genre films ha\e dominated critical discussion, ,

, Broadly speaking, genre criticism has e\ohed through three stages, eachof \\ hich roughly corresponds to one of Buscombe's three questions, A firstphase focused on classification - the definition and delimitation of individualg-cnres, :\ second stage, overlapping \\ith the first, focused on the II/callings of

12 FILM GENRE

individual genres and the social funcrion of genre in general, \vithin broadlyconsensual generic definitions and canons - principally, through .malysesthat understood [!;enre in terms of either ritual or ideology (as we shall see,there is some overlap between the terms). Alongside int1uential \\"Orks ofgenre theory, mostly in essay fi)f\11, se\cral book-length studies of individualgenres, each informed by a distincti\'e understanding of genre but tending tofollow either the ritual or the ideological approach, were produced in thisperiod, including Basinger's (H)H6) study of the war/combat film, Sob­

chack's (I9Ho, 19H7) study of science fiction, analyses of the Western byWright (H)7S) and Slotkin (1992), Doane's (lgH7) study of the 19-+os 'woman'sfilm', Altman's (lgH7) book on musicals and Krutnik's (lgg1) study of/illll/1(11,., FinallY (to date), more recent scholarship, as part of'l generally renewedinterest aC1:oss film studies in understanding film historically and reacting inparticular to what has been seen as the second phase's at times essentialistand decontcxtualiseu accounts of g'enre idcntities, has focused on thehislonm/ (1iI/le.\"/s of genre production the forms inherited from other medialike the novel and the popular theatre, and the institLltional practices (studiopolicy, marketing anu publicity, modes of consumption, .Iml so on) throughwhich genres become available, in .111 senses of the term, to audiences,

The ven earliest studies of film genres, of which probably the best-knownarc ess.l\S '1)\ Andre Bazin ([ 1<)561 I(nll on the "'estern, and by Robert

Warsho~ (I ;g-+31, u)7sa, [Il)5-t1 Il)75b) on the Western and the gangsterfilm .\ were onlv indirectlv concerneu to define their novel objects of stuuy:that'is, in the 'very act (;f arguing fill' the serious critical consider.ltion of

popular film genres they were necessarily performing some basic ddinition.dwork. Like many later wTiters, RlZin set the Western \\ithin existing mrra­tive traditions, <ira\\ing' parallels \\ith traditional 'high' literan forms such asthe courtlY romance; he indicates core thematic material, proposing therelationshi'p bet\\ een individual mOLdity and the gre.lter commun.d good, orthe rule of law and natural justice, as the issue which charges the genrc; andhe makes the first attempt .It establishing a genre 'canon', identifying the

period Il)37-' -to .IS the \Vestern's moment of 'classic perfection' \\ith JohnFord's SIi/I.:I'(Oac!1 (HH9) as thc 'ideal' \\'estern- and contrasting this \\'iththe postwa'r period \yJ~en large-budget 'supcn\csterns' stLl\ed Ii'om the true

generic path by importing topical politicd, social or psychological concernsthat Bazin sees as extraneous to the genre's core concerns (although the '13'Westerns of the Il)50S in his opinion m.lintained the form's original vigour

.Iml integrity). Both Bazin and especiall~ - \\arsho\\ based their argumentson a rather small sample of genrc films (just three in the case of \Varsh()\\''s

gang'ster essay), and treated genre history, by today's academic standards,

rather casually (B.lZin identifies as examples of H)50S '13' \Vesterns such majorstuJio releas~s as Tbe CIiI//ig/ill'!' (lg50), .md simply ignores the thirty-fi\c

WHO NEEDS GENRES? 13

years of \Vestern genre production before Slagccoac!z (fi)r more on problemsof sampling and genre history in relation to the \Vestern, sec Chapter 3).

.\lost fundamcntally, while Bazin and \Varsho\\ both insisted on theintegrity and distinctiveness of generic character, their project did not extendto considering the means whereby indi\idual \Vesterns or gangster films canbe identified as such in order to then be periodised, classified or evaluated,Setting the terms for such recognition then became the project of the first\\a\c of genre theorists proper starting; in the late 1960s.

PRO B L E 1\1 S 0 F DE FIN I T ION

Fairlv early in the dC\elopmcnt of film genre theory, Andrew Tudorsuccinctly nailed an incscap'lble and basic crux in trying to definc individualgClllTS, '-.'oting that most studies of this kind start out with a 'provisional'notion of thc ficld thcy .Ire working' on that they then set out to define moreclcarly, he suggests there is ~l basic problem of circularity:

To LIke a gcnre such .IS the 'wcstern', analysc it, and list its principalcharacteristics, is to beg the question that we must first isolatc the bodyof fIlms \\'hich arc \\cstcrns', But they cm only be isolated on the basisor the 'principal charactcristics' which can onh he disCll\cred from thefilms themsehes after they ha\c been isolated. (Tudor, 1I<)731I<)7(): 135)

Onh \ery recently has the fClCUS on industrial discourses .\Ild 'relays' su[!;­gesled <1 means of squaring this circlc. .\luch prC\ious \york on genre defini­tions cither ignores the problem or proposes itself as an empirical approachthat nonethcless c1carly begs the questions Tudor asks,

In his uno essay quotcd abo\(.', 1-:dwanl Buscol11be proposed to identif~

gen res I hrough their illl/lrlgrapli J' (a term deri \ed from art theory) - theirCh.1LlL'teristic 'yisua I cOl1\cntions', such as set! ings, costume, the typicalpl1\sical at tributes of characters and the kinds of tcchnolog'ies ayailahle to the

characters (six-shooters in the \,"estern, fill' e\ample, or tOl11my-g'uns and\\hite\\<1lkd motorcars \\ith running boards in the g;angster fIlm). TheseIC(l11o:,;raphic conyentions WClT to he seen not only as thc fCJrln.l1 markers of

.J gi \ ell :,;enre, but as important vehicles fill' explicating its core themat ic

m'Herial: in a celebrated passa:,;e, Buscombc ([ uno] 1<)()5: 22--+) analyses theOpening of S.lm Pedinpah's Ride I/Il' fhgli CO/llllr)' (LI(: G/II/S III IiiI' .1jicr­

1/1}l11/) and notes h()\\ the juxtaposition of cOl1\cnlional and non-col1\entional(a policeman in uni!i)rm, a motor car, a cllnel) \\estern clements, with the

non-col1\entiOlul ones nrioush signihing lJrogress or at least ch.\l1ge, by]' , , " c , ,

<1St llrbing the genre's standard iconographic balance communicates the

14 FILM GENRE

film's 'essential theme', the passing of the Old West. Iconography was alsocentral to Colin McArthur's (U)72) Clldenl'urld Us.oJ, a book-length study ofthe gang'ster film. Iconographic analysis is as subject to Tudor's circularitycharg'e as any other, hut its taxonomic yalue is apparent: an empiricallyderiyed set of generic attributes helps both to establish the domin'lOt yisualmotifs and by extension the underlying structures of a genre, and to determinemembership of that genre, A particular strength, as Buscombe pointed out,is that iconographies are grounded in the yisuality of the film medium: theyare literally what \\'C see on-screen. Nloreoyer, as the cOl1\cntional meanings

that audiences understood to inhere in iconographic de\ices (for ex'lmple, theWesterner's horse) deriyed not from the genre alone, but from the interplaybetween common-sense understandings of their \'alences and their specificgeneric usage (as Buscombe notes in his analysis of Ride the High CUlIllt':)', inWesterns the horse is 'not just an ,l11imal but a symbol of dignity, grace andpower'), iconogTaphy potentially established a porous fi'ontier where thegenericltcxtual and the social interacted \yith one another- hence a basis fordiscussing a gcnre's larger socio-cultural currency. Finally, inasmuch asiconographic analysis took its force from those clements that \\cre repeatedlyor consistently present in genre entries, it centred on those yery qualities ­conyentionality and repetition - by \\hich genre as a \\hole is typified.

One limitation of iconographic analysis \las its limited applicability.Buscombe and McArthur focused on the Western and the g-angster film,well-established and Clmiliar g;enres that both lend themsehes particularlywell to iconog-raphic interpretation. Ho\\e\cr, .IS se\'Cral writers \yho hayetried and biled to disC()\ er such \\ ell-defined and defining- \isual cOI1\cntionsin other major genres (comedy, biopics, social problem films, etc.) hayenoted, the \'Cry consistency of their iconog-rap hic con \cn tions makes thesegenres atypical of film genre generally; the \\'estern is particularly unusual inhaying such a tightl~ defined physical and historical setting (sec Chapter 3).Also, iconography's interest in film as .1 yisual .Irt form, a considerable Yirtue,stalled in the pro-filmic (the space fi',lI11ed by the camera) ,lI1d Cliied to

engage \\ith yisual style (ClIllera mO\cment, editing, etc.), :\or did it seem to

offer a means of identifying and discussing narrati\ e structures, althoughnarratiYe models - such as the musical's basic 'boy meets girl, boy danceswith girl, boy gets girl' template - probabl~ f()rm as or more important a partof the audience's expectational m.ltrix than abstracted iconographies.

An issue to which the discussion of iconog-raphy interestingly relates is

that of generic \crisimilitude, since one function of yisual cOI1\entions is toestablish .1 representational norm, de\iation fi'om \\ hich constitutes genericdiscrepancy (which can of coursc also be generic iI1I1o\'ation). These norms

are in turn hound up \yith our sense of \yhat is likely or acceptable in theg:iyen generic context, \\ hich mayor m.1Y not relate to our underst.lOding of

WHO "JEEDS GENRES? 15

From S"" II! FIIIIIA'<'I/s!<'111 (193<)). Reproduced courksy Cni\Tl'sal/The Kobal Collecriol1,

What is possible or plausible in our liyed reality, Regimes of\erisimilitude arcgenerically specific, and each hears its own relation to reality as such. ,Manygenres include 'unmarked' \crisimilitudes like the laws' of the physic;1

unl\ erse ", whose obser\ance can simply be taken for granted and establishesthe continuity of the generic \\orld with that of the spectator. On the other

hand, the suspension of those laws (teleportation, trayelling t:lster than lightor through time) may form a basic and recog'nised element of the Yerisimili-

From. fill 0/ Fralll.:wslein (1939), Reproduced courtesv Uni\'ersal/Thc Kobal Collection,

16 FILM GENRE

tude of an outer-space science fiction film. As discussed in Chapter 4-, theclassic Hollywood musical has its own quite distinct, specific and readilyrecognisable verisimilitude. Altman's summary of the genre audience quoted

above suggests that the audience's willingness to 'license' certain departuresfrom what would normally be considered desirable and/ or believable behavi­

our constitutes an important part of the generic contract. (For fuller discus­

sions of genre and verisimilitude, see Neale, 2000: 3 1---<); King, 2002: 121 f.)Considerations of verisimilitude extend iconography's implicit socialisa­

tion of genre convention further into the domain of the everyday and this has

important implications for discussions of generic meanings (see below).

Clearly, too, while iconographic conventions are entailed in verisimilitudes,

so are the narrative dimensions iconography lea yes out. Yet lifelikeness, even

conventionalised lifelikeness, is not the principal agent of generic form. The

model for genre analysis proposed by Rick Altman (llqR4-] H)9), IqR7) seems

usefullv to combine many of the strengths of each approach. Altman argues

that ge·nres are characterised, or organised, along two axes which he nomin­

ates, employing linguistic terminology, the semantic and the syntactic. If the

semantic axis imolves the 'words' spoken in a genre, the syntactic concerns

the organisation of those 'words' into 'sentences' into meaningful and

intelligible shape. Every film in a particular genre shares a set of semantic

elements, or components: these certainly include traditional iconographic

aspects like setting, costume and the like, but range more widely, taking in

characteristic narrative incidents, \ isual style and even (as hard as this mig'ht

be to quantify) typicli attitudes. A contemporary action blockbuster like

PiI(e! O/n J()q7), then, might number among its semantic components port.lble

armam~'nts ranging from automatic pistols to light artillery, car (or bo.lt or

plane) chases, large set-piece action sequences usually involving; explosions

and/or the destruction of buildings and expensive consumer durables (the

aforementioned cars, boats, planes), and a distinct disregard for the v,due of

human life. Genre films' svntactic dimension imolves their characteristic

arrangement of these semal;tic elements in plots, thematic motifs, symbolic

relationships, and so on. (FiI(e! O./.( shares a recurrent motif of H)l)OS action

films: the hero's defence or reconstruction of the f~llllily through, paradox­

icallv enough, ever-greater violence to <1nd destruction of people and objects ­

see C:hapter 10.) Altman (Iq<)6: 2R.1-4-) adds that \\hereas semantic elements

usuallv deri\ e their meaning's from pre-existing soci'll codcs, generic synt<1X

is mor-e specific and idiosyncratic and thus more fully expresses the meaning;(s)

of a given genre.The major problem of Altman's interpret<1tive matrix, as\ltn1<1n himself

acknowledges, is knowing where to draw the line bet\\een the sen1<1ntic and

svntactic. For example, if as suggested ,Ibove spectacular action seq uences are

a' semantic 'gi\cn' in the action film, it would be highl~ surprising if at least

WHO ~EEDS GENRES? 17

one of these did not occur at the climax of the film and resolve the central

n<1ITative connict in other \\ords, enter into the syntactic field.Q_uestions of definition cycntually became somewh<1t discredited as insuf­

ficiently critical and inertly taxonomic, and g'enre studies st<1rted to focusincreasingly on the functions of genre. Recently, ho\\-e\cr, genre definition(s)

h,l\c been put back into critical play. Collins (uN3) and others have argued

that postmodern tendencies to generic mixing or hybridity e<1ll into question

the tr.lditional fixity of g:enre boundaries. 4 Perhaps partly in response to this,

,I historicist trend has emerged - Gledhill (2000) compares it to the innu­

cnti,il 'ne\\ historicism' in literary studies in the late IqRos - that has used the

empirical anahsis of hO\v genre terms \\cre and are used \\ithin the film

industn itself (by producers and exhibitors) to reassess traditional under­

standings of and claims about the historical basis of genres. This has indeed

challenged some fundamental assumptions about genre stabilit~ and

boundaries, and suggests that much of the postmodern preoccupation with

gcneric h~ bridit\ relics on a historically unsupported notion of classical genres

as ElI- more rigid .lnd secure and much less porous and prone to generic

mixing th'lll \\as actualh the case. One docs not have to deh'e very deep into

genre historY to find ex'lmplcs of g'eneric mixing: for example, a quick scan

reveals \\estern musicals (ClilillIIl!y .JiI/le, 1<))3; PilllI! }-o/lr II ilp:r!ll, ({)6(»),

\\estern melodramas (/)/ld III !lie S/I/I, 1<)4-6; .JolillllY GIII!ilr, {(ISO), /loll'

\\ esterns (Pllrs/led, I<)4-R; Tlie 1"111'11'.1', 1<):")0; RiI/lrI/1i .Vo!rJr!o/lS, 1<):")2), horror­

\\"esterns (HilI)· !lie kid ,'.1'. /)1'110111/, H)(»; Grilli Prairie Tilles, 1<)<)0), even

science fiction \\esterns (Gene .\utry in nrc PI/il/r!olll fllljJ/re, HU))."eale (2000: 4-3) argues that the industn's 'inter-textual rela~' (see abO\c)

must constit ute the primary evidential basis both for the existence of genres

:Ind fi)r the boundaries of any particular g-cneric corpus:

... it is only on the basis of this testimon~ that the history of anyone

genre and an analysis of its social functions can begin to be produced.

For a genre's history is as much the history of a term as it is of the films

to \\ hich the term has been applied; is as much a history of the

consequently shifting; boundaries of a corpus of texts as it is of the texts

themselves. ("eale, 2000: 4-3)

PRO B L L\I S 0 F 1'1 E A "J I l" G

\s \\e have seen, earh ozenre studies, in aiminoz to introduce and identifv the• ... "- w

core groupings of films in kev genres, also made obsen-ations about the

function of genres; indeed, the~e ~)la\'ed .In important part in their argument

for the value of genre texts. Ho\\c\cr, they typically stopped short of theories

Ii{ FILM GENRE

of genre as a whole. Subsequent critics advanced various theories of the kindsof meanings that could be deri \'ed from the genre text. Despite diverseapproaches, they commonly centred on an understanding of genre as a formof social practice - as ritual, myth or ideology. All were motinted by theconviction that film genre offered a privileg'ed insig'ht into 'hmv to under­stand the life of films in the social' (Gledhill, 2000: 221). And all proceededfrom a shared basic assumption about hmv that insight \\as generated. Genrefilms by definition are collective rather than singular objects: their meaningsarc comprised relationally rather than in isolation. Whereas to attempt to'read off social or political debates in the broader culture onto individualfilms is thus likely to prO\e reductive and speculative, the sheer number offilms in a given genre means that changes in generic direction and attitudesacross time may reasonably be understood as responses and/ or contributionsto the shifting concerns of their mass public. Genre films solicit audienceapproval throug'h both continuity and \ariation; audience responses encouragegenre film-makers to pursue existing generic directions or to change them.

The closely linked concepts of 'myth' and 'ritual' aim to relate thistransaction to the underlying desires, preoccupations and L\ntasies of audi­ences and to ascribe these in tLIrn to the social and cultural contexts in andthrough which film genres and their audiences are equally constitLIted. In thestandard anthropological sense, 'myth' denotes something like an expressionof archetypes on the part of a particular community (grounded in thatcommunity's social experience of the natLIral world and/or its collectivehuman psychology). Sometimes 'myth' is in\Oked in genre critil'ism inprecisely this sense: in his study of the \Yestern, Wright (r<J7 5: I H7) statesthat 'the \Vestern, though located in a modern industrial society, is as mucha myth as the tribal myths of the anthropologists.' ~lore often, as applied topopular media fi)rms, myth in its most neutral filrnlulation designates fimnsof (culturally specific) social self-representation, the distillation and enact­ment of core beliefs and values in reduccd, usually personalised and narrative,fimns. Myth is also characterised by specific kinds of filrlnal stylisation, filrexample extreme narrative and characterological COl1\ entionalisation. Thestrongest influence on mythic readings of popular culture is the structuralistanthropology of Claude r,c\i-Strauss, which argues that the role of myth isto embody in schematic narrative form the constitutive mntradicrions of asociety - typically in the fimn of pairs or net\\orks of strongly opposedcharactersh'alues - \\hile throug'h the stories \\0\ en about these oppositions,and filrnlally in the Llct of their integTation into mythic narrati\c, partiallydefusing their potentially explosive force. Thus in film genre theory, 'myth'broadly desig'nates the ways in which genres rehearse .1I1d \\ork through theseshared cultural values and concerns by rendering them in symbolic narra­tiws. 'RitLIal' mean\\hile redefines the regular consumption of genre films by

WHO NEEDS GENRES? 19

a mass public as the contractual basis on which such meanings are produced.The ritual and mytholog'ical models of genre quickly encounter genre

theory's characteristic problems, noted earlier, \vith the audiences whoseparticipation in g'eneric ritual plays so central a role. Thus although mytho­logiGd analyses frequently pay scrupulous attention to individual genre textsa~d Glrefully differentiate their negotiations of generic conventions, theaudience features as a homogeneous and largely notional presence. The pre­\ ailing assumption appears to be that audiences seek out, and respond to, themytholo!:6cal address of the genre film - \\hat the Marxist theorist of ideolog'yLouis .c\.lthusser would term their 'interpellation' - in the same ways. Thereseems little possibility of concretising this claim, at least as regards historicalaudiences. Box-office popularity·· of individual films or of entire genres - issometimes cited as an apparently objective criteria filr demonstrating thepopularity of a genre - hence of the values sedimented within it. Yet to

purchase a ticket fill' a film of course docs not (as academics studying popularfilms \\ ould certainly have to acknmdedge) necess'lrily prove assent to all orindeed any of a film's ideological content. It is also enormously difficult tocompute popularity: \Vesterns, filr example, were by no means universallypopular and \\ere sho\\n by audience surveys in the 1930S to be stronglydisliked by a considerable proportion of mmie-goers. Regular Western LlI1s,ho\ve\cr, \\cre dedicated filllO\vers of the genre and likely to see most or allthe \Vesterns that made it to their local theatre: thus the reliable market thatsupported the huge number of 'B' (or series) Westerns produced during' the1930S. Docs this nalTO\\ but deep audience base make the \Vestern more orless representative of the national temper than a genre with a broader butperhaps less 'committed' filllowing, such as scre\vball cornel"'?

To complicate matters further, recent research has sho\\~ how even themost apparently orthodox and classical genre films \\ere not necessarilvuni\crsally percei\cd in that \\ay at the time of their orig'inal release. Lelan~1

Poague (ZOOT H9) demonstrates that SlagC(lIac!" partly to counteract the\Vestl'rn 's recei \ed image at the end of the I930S, a decade dominated bv 'B'\\esterns, \\as publicised in \\ays that de-emphasised the film's generi~allv

'\Vestern' aspects (\\hich \\(mld limit its appeal to exhibitors and aUdience~,

especiall\ in metropolitan areas) in f:lvOur of elements of broader appeal suchas the dramatic interactions of a disparate group of characters in enfilrcedproximity ('Grand Hillel on \\heels', as a contemporary review put it) or the~hardly realised) promise of sexual tension among '2 \\omen on a desperateJourney \\ith 7 strange men!'. While the expectations created around a filmdo not of course exhaust its range of possible meanings, such examplesII1(lIcate that large assertions about the ritual function of individual genres areeqllall~ incapable of dealing with the range of responses audiences may bringto he,ll' on any single genre film.

Claims that the \Vestern or the musical articulate dominant or f(lUnda­tional paradigms for American national identity also need to take account ofthe presence within the same industry at the same time of genre films thatseem directly to challenge those yalues: jillll lIoir, for example.' In the mostint1uential argument for genre as ritual, Thomas Schatz (H)X I, rqX3) partlyaddresses the latter question by identif\ing different genres \\ith different setsof key American ideas and dilemmas. Each g'enre has its o\\n 'generic com­munity': thus

what emerges as a social problem (or dramatic conflict) in one genre isnot necessarily a problem in another. I,a\\ and order is a problem in theg'angster film, but not in the musical. COlWCl"Sely, courtship and marri­

age arc problems in the musical but not in the gangster and detectiye

genres. (Schatz, ]()Xr: 25)

In so far as these problems arc discrete, each genre has its o\yn specific set ofconcerns and per/l)rms a particular kind of cultural \york; in so Llf as theseissues arc generally relc\ant to :\merican life, the system of Holly\Yoodg"Cnres as a \\hole enables a kind of ongoing l1<ltional cOll\crsation about suchissues. The classical Holly\yood studio system, Schatz argues, \\as especiallywell-suited to this 'ongoing' discourse - the process of cultural exchange'because of its mass production of genre films and domination of theAmerican popular imagination (I<)XI: 20-X). In the di\crsified entertainmentmarkets ,IIlll weaker gTneric landscape of the :\e\y Holly\Yood, b\ contrast, asSchatz acknO\dedges in his I<)X.1 book, this cOll\crsation and hence themO\ies' ritual function is greatl~ \\eakened.

In its association of core generic preoccupations with specific ritual func­tions, Schatz's argument seems to presuppose ,I degTee of generic segregationand consistency the generic record h'lrdly bears out. The t\yO examplesquoted aboye - the musical and the gangster film arc rendered as distinctand their concerns clearly differentiated. It is cert.linly a(I\ antagTous to hayea model of genre that allo\\s fin' the possibility of different 'solutions' to

comparable problems in line \\ ith the changing cult ural undersundings thatsubtend such solutions (sec, for ex,lmple, the analysis of Si'JI' ) ·or/..:, .YelPYor!..', 1977, in Chapter -J. bel()\\). But \yhere does this le<l\C a gangster

musical like (;11)'.1' illld Dolls (I9S':;)? A.lternati\ely, what arc likely to be the'problems' tackled by a series of detectiye films about a married couple (like

the popular Tllill .HI/II series, I93-J.--J.7)? Schatz ,llso seems to o\erstate gTnerichomogeneity - not all musicals, for example, ,Ire about courtship and

marriage (backstage musicals, an extremely important sub-genre, may be at

least as much about professional prestige).;\lyth-based readings of genre ,Ire rehlted to ideolog'ieal critiques: in a

WHO NEEDS GENRES? 21

foundational text of semiotic analysis, indeed, Roland Barthes (r (57) namesthe per\"asiYe ideological fictions in contemporary capitalist culture as, pre­cisely, 'mytholog;ies'. Place (197X: 35) states that popular myth 'both expresses,Ind reproduces the ideolog;ies necessary to the existence of the socialstructure'. Yet in general myth is, as :".'eale obsenes, ideological criticismminus the criticism: that is, \\hereas writers such as Judith Hess Wright

(I I<)7-J.) 19<)':;) identif~ genre's ideological dimension with its prO\ision ofimaginary and bogus resolutions to the actual contradictions of liYed experi­ence under capitalism, proponents of genre as myth tend to a more neutraldeseriptiYe account of hmy genres satis6' the needs and answer the questionsof their audiences. In other \\ords, they do not stigmatise such satisbctions,IS delusion designed to maintain iIllIi\iduals and communities in acquiescentignor'll1ce of the real conditions of their oppression. wloreoYer, the dialecticaln,lture of the J,c\"i-Straussian schema implies that underlying social contra­dictions arc less resol\"ed a\yay than repeatedly re-enacted and thus - at leastin principle exposed by their mythic articulations.

Initial ideological accounts of gTnre like Wright's often imputed a some­I\hat monolithic character to the ideolog;ical work perfllrIned by genre films..-\s products of a capitalist film industry, genre films must necessarily pro­

duce meaning's that support the existing social relations of power anddomination: their ideological function, in bct, is precisely to organise percep­tions of the \\ orld in such a \yay as to elicit acquiescence and assent to theproposition that this is not onl\ the \\ay the world is but the way it OLwht to.. , . b

be - or e\en the only \\ay it e\er could be. In Theodor Adorno and Nlax

Horkheimer's excoriating' account of the 'culture industry' ([ ]()HJ H)7Z:l2o-(7), the standardising imperatiYes of genre production signified theabsolute unfiTedom of contemporary mass medi'l fl)rms (and conYCfseh therclatin: and onl\ rclati\e - truth-content of their mirror-imao'e cou~1ter-. t'

parts, the recondite practices of high modernist art).

On all ideological analysis, genre closes off alternati\es, resists multiplenwanings and symbolically resohes real contradictions in imaginary (here

meaning illusory) \\ays. Specific generic outcomes (like the gangster'snempLIn LlIe reiterating' that 'crime docs not pay') also work to promote alarger pattern or acquiescence in conyentional and rule-g'()\"erned methods of'soh ing" problems.

One \\ould ha\e to say that if the genre system is as secure and sealed asthis \ ie\\ holds, it is hard to see \\here the impetus fill' any kind of changeComes fi-om- still less \\hy a genre mig'ht be mo\ed to perform the kinds ofquite Lldical sclf-critiq ue undertaken by numerous Hollywood \Vesterns,

l11usieals, gangster films and other tradit ional g'enre films during the 197os, amOIl' t I I I" '" f' h . I .1.lt moreO\"er encompasse( exp IClt cntlClsm 0 t e \10 ence and racl<llprejudice of _-\.merican society (as in such 'counterculture' films as /:'i/s)'

WHO NEEDS GENRES? 23----------------------------------

22 FILM GENRE

Rida, I<)69, or the contemporaneous 'Vietnam Westerns': see also helO\\} Ofcourse, American society and the core ideologies sedimented in its principalcultural f(lrmS confi'onted a major crisis of legitimation in the late I960s; butwith contemporary opinion polls shm\-ing a majority of Americans stillsu pporting consenatiye positions on \\ar, race and sexual!gender issues,genre films ought to haye heen \\"(lrking harder than eyer to sustain rather

than to challenge the status quo. Ideological analysis also seems to hayedifficulty acknmdedging the real differences het\yeen genres: eyen if the

'affirmative' nature of Westerns and musicals is granted, this still leaves

unaccounted for the strongly critical charg'e of much .lillll 1/011', to say nothing

of the gangster film's historically well-attested ideological amhiyalence (seeChapter 6). In this sense, ideological criticism's yinY of genre is hoth too

reductive -- in that all genre films are held to relentlessly promote a singularmessage of conf()rmity and not reflecti\-e enough - in that it seems not to

allow filr the possihility of interference in core g'enre propositions by changes

in social and cultural contC\t such as those pm\Trfully at \\ork in ,\meriean

society from the late I960s ol1\\ards. The \irtual disappearance of the'woman's film' since the I960s, to take ,mother C\ample, seems hard to

account f(lr without ackno\\ledging the impact of the \\omen's moyement on

traditional concepts of gender roles (sec Chapter 2).

Ideological criticism in the later I970S generally started to modify the

inflexible model inherited from Alth usscrian ~ larxism, inspired in particular

by the rediscmTry of the writings of the Italian .\ Luxist .-\n tonio Gramsci in

the 1920S. Gramsci's concept of 'hegemony' reinscribed ideological domina­

tion as an ongoing process in \\ hich dominant orthodoxies continually

stru[!;g-Jcd to retain their mastery mer both residual (older and outmoded)

and emergent (newer and potentially n:yolutionary) positions..-\pplying this

to the study of popular culture allowed critics to trace the fractures and

contradictions in the apparently seamless structure of classical Holly\\'Ood,

and thus to discmer ways in \vhich e\Tn the genre film could perhaps

unconsciously - take up positions at variance \\ith dominant ideology. \luch

contemporary film analysis remains rooted in the critique of ideology, in f~let,

in the sense that it addresses itself to the ways in \\-hich films \H)rk through

(or act out, to use psychotherapeutic terminology) the values and interests of

different groups in society. An increasing dissatisfaction \yith the older

monolithic models of ideological domination, ho\\c\ er, as \\ell as the \\aning

of explicit Marxist critical affiliations, means that analyses f()cused on issues

of gender, race, ethnicity or sexuality - and on the ways that the popular

media structure attitudes t()\\-ards minority groupings - are less clearly

marked as ideology critique in the older sense,

PROBLEMS OF HISTORY

The 're\-isionist' tendency e\-ident across se\Tral major Hollywood genres in

the 19705 (including the Western, the gangster, pri yate-eye and policethriller, and the musical) impelled se\eral genre theorists to propose 'eYoJu­tionary' models of generic deyelopmenr. .-\ccording' to John Cawelti:

One em almost make out a life cycle characteristic of genres as they1110\e fi'om an initial period of articulation and discO\cry, through a

phase of conscious self-a\yareness on the part of both creators andaudiences, to a time \\-hen the generic patterns ha\-e become so well­

knm\Il that people become tired of their predictability. It is at this pointthat parodic and satiric treatments proliferate and ne\\- genres generally

arise, (Cmelti, IH)791 I995: 2++)

Schatz (I9i\I: 36-+ I) deyelops this theory of generic e\olution much morcsystematically - indeed, naming' it as such - yet f()lIows the same hasic

outline, \\hile gTounding his account in his 'ritual' thesis. Thus 'at the

earliest stages of its life span' a genre expresses its material in a direct and

unsclfconscious manner - hecause 'if a genre is society speaking' to itself, thenany stylistic flourishes or f()rmal self-consciousness \\ill only impede the

transmission of the message', .-\fi:er this experimental stage \yhere its con­

\Tntions are established, the g'enre enters its classical stage (a phase heloyed

of genre theorists since RlZin). This stage is marked by ~/;mllilllrill/SpilrCl/{y.

Both the narratiye formula and the film medium \york togTther to transmit

and reinf(lITe that genre's social messagT ... as directly as possible to the

audience' (emphasis in original). Eyentualh, the genre arri\Ts at a point

\\ here 'the straightfonYard messag'C has "saturated" the audience': the

~lutcome is that the genre's 'transparency' is replaced by 'opacity', manifested

111 a hig-h degree of f(lrmalistic self-consciousness and retlexiYity. Schatz

Suggests that both the musical and the Western had reached such ,~ stage by

the earl~ 1950S, and he cites as examples such 'self-reflexiYe musicals' as The

BarNc)'s oj Broad/pay (I9+()) and SllIi~/II' III Illc Ralll (J().:;2) and 'baroque

:' esterns' like Red Rlc'a (I9+i\) and Tlte Sl'iIl'dlas (I95S), .'\t this stage theunspoken' conyentions of the genre - the centrality of the courtship ritual to

the musical, the heroic indi\idualism of the Westerner - themselves becomenarrati\ ely f()regTounded,

From today's perspecti\l\ howeyer, the Il):;OS seems yen t:lr from the

ultimate dnelopmental stag'e of either the 'Yes'tern or the m~sical. . .JII Tltill

.~( ~~ (l<)i\o) and J1em'el/ '.I' Gille (I 9i\0) are \ery differen t fi'om .JII _-llllerloill III

fal'/S (I9.:;I) or Tile Seanltas (U).:;.:;), and .HUIIIIII RUllge (200I) and Tlte

- \II.\.\III,~ (200+) are different again. So to be \vorkable the nolutionan model

24 FILM liEN/U.

would at least need extending: one would probably want to differentiate afurther stage where 'opaque' self-consciousness intensifies yet further andmutates into outright genre 'revisionism': this period may also often be accom­panied by a slowdown in the rate of production of genre films. 'Revisionism'implies that traditional genre attitudes may be seen as articulating a world­view no longer applicable, perhaps in changed social circumstances: thus akey aspect of revisionism is that the genre is no longer self-sufficient, but iscriticallv scrutinised for its abilitv to offer a cognitive purchase on the i,

contemiJorary world. Yet another '-stage' might involve the re-emergenc.elof .~.:.>I".the O'enre under altered (industrial or cultural) circumstances, partla Iy

Q

purged of ils original ideological or mythic content (or those parts thereof .1which no longer speak to a contemporary spectatorship). Such texts neverrecover the unselfconsciousness of the 'classical' period, but equally they are ~neither as serious as the 'mature' period or as corrosively critical as the'revisionist' period; rather, they will often display a playful degree of refer­entiality and generic porosity of the kind frequently regarded as charac­teristically postmodern, for example by injecting anachronistic elements intoperiod settings (a 'riot grrl' Western like Bad Girls, 199-1-) or highlighting theracial diversitv traditionallv suppressed by the classical genre text (forexample, the t;ansformation -of gangster to 'gangsta' in the New Black Cinema

of the early 1990S).Such a model of generic development is appealingly straightforward. However

-- even if one overlooks the obvious objection that genres, as a form ofindustrial practice, are not organisms and to propose generic phylogenies ofthis kind risks a category error - it raises several problems. In the first place,its historical account smacks of special pleading - seemingly designed to justifythe critical attention alreadv bestowed on certain groups and periods of genrefilm. If one accepts the en;1 utionary model, the allegedly more complex andself-aware films of the 'mature' and 'revisionist' phases arc always likely to

command more attention than the str;lightforward presentations of genericmaterial in the 'c1assictl' period. In fact, as Tag Gallagher ([ 1936] 1005: 237)argues, earlier films are to an extent set up as naive 'fall guys' for later, allegedlymore sophisticated, challenging and/or subversive approaches. However,as earlv film historians are quick to point out, many pictures from the silent .and ea'rly sound periods in a variety of genres display a surprising degree of .generic self-consciousness (surprising, that is, if one assumes as the enllu­tionary model suggests that these classical phases should be typified by the'straight' presentation of generic material). In fact, the entire, rather literary,notion of self-consciousness, inwardness and ret1exivity as a function of 'latestYle' seems to bear little relation to the realities of market positioning, apl:ocess which is more likely to be typified by a variety of approaches rangingfrom the steadfast and generically secure to the playful and experimenLl1.

WHO NEEDS GENRES? 25

.·\nother problem, as :\eale (2000: 2 qf.) notes, is that the evolutionarymodel necessarily, despite Schatz's (I 9S I: 36) citation of 'external (cultural,thematic) factors', tends to attribute generic change to intra-generic factors:,,'enre is in Llct hvpostatised, sealed off from social, cultural and industrial~ontf\ts. It is a~ idealised and implicitly teleological model (that is, itsoutcomes are predetermined). As "'lark ]ancovich (2002: 9) observes, 'narr;ltivehistories of a genre .. , usually become the story of something ... that existsJbove and beyond the individual moments or periods, an essence which isunfolding before us, and is either heading towards perfect realisation .,. orf:lilure and corruption.' Yet one of the most obvious examples of genre'rClisionism' already referred to, the cycle of strongly, even militantly pro­Indian Cl\alry \\'esterns made at the start of the 1970S - such as Lillie BigHilll, So!di(/' Bille (both 1(70), C/~ll1lil 's Rilid and Cha/o's Land (both unl)

.- th;1I depict white Gl\alrymen or paramilitaries almost to a man as venal,brut.II, sadistic and exploitative and thus neatly invert nuny of the categoriesof the classic Western (in Solid(/' Bille it is the white clvalrymen, not theIndi.ms, \\'ho threaten the white heroine with rape, and at one point thesoldiers break out in ,,'ar-whoops while scalping ;\0 Indian brave), are trans­\1<lrentl) intended as allegories of and statements about US military involv'e­ment in Indochina: they .Ire not 'natural' or ine\ itable outcomes of thegeneric lifecycle.

Genre revisionism thus appears to be a function of larger trends within the.-\merican film industry, and in turn within American popular and politicalculture, as much as, or more than, of evolutionary change in a genericuniverse closed off hom interaction with the world outside. Manv criticsindeed ha \ e filund genre a useful tool fill' mediating large and hard-to-gTaspsocio-historical issues and popular media texts: rather than simply readingofr, sa\ , th<: cynicism and paranoia of the \\'atergate era onto bleak mid-u)7osWesterns like Posse (197.1) as a set of one-to-one correspondences, the idea ofgenre allm\s social reality to be mapped onto individu.l1 fictional texts in aIllore subtle and indeed plausible way. Robert Ray (19S): 2{Sf.) has suggestedthat the binary 'ret1ection' model can helpfully be triangulated bv the addi­tion of the audience as the missing link bet\\een text and (soci;l) context.Thus th<: accretion of con\entions mer the totality of a genre's historicale\olutio!l, the film-maker's modulation of these conventions and the role ofthe audience as both a p'lrticipant in and in a sense the arbiter of thislnt erani \ e process, together map the evolving' assumptions and desires of theculture.

111 bu, research on the _-\merican and global film industry in the both itsclassical and contemporary periods has increasingly tendcd- to suggest thatthe film stud ies' preferred notion of genre is likely to need some importantrnodifications..-\s f:ll- .IS the ':\e" Hollywood' (broadly speaking, Hollywood

WHO NEEDS GENRES? 27----------------------------------

20 FILM GENRE

since the late It)60s, with an important watershed within that period around1(77) is concerned, new genres (or sub-genres) such as the 'yuppie night­mare film' (see Grant, 1(98), the road moyie (see Cohan and Hark, 1997;Laderman, 2002) or the serial killer film seem to be difTerently constitutedthan those of the classical period. Put simply, earlier generic structures - theindiyidual genres and the system of genre produetion as a whole - were partof a system for mass-producing films in \\hich regularised production, acarefuilY managcd, monitored and highly centralised machinery of distribu­tion ,lO~1 exhibition, and on the audience's part regular mming-going in a

relatiYelY undiYersified entertainment markct, together enabled the kind ofinformai \ct powerful generic 'contract' .\Itman describes. A well-knownseries of e·yents oycr about 20 years starting in the late 19-1-0S - including the

legal ruling that compelled the studios to sell ofT their theatre chains; the riseof teleYision, itself part of a general transformation of American lifestyles andleisure pastimes; the loss of creative fi-eedoms and personnel as a result of the

anti-Communist witch-hunts and blacklist of the 1950S - largely put a end tothis system (sec Ray, 1985: 129-52; Schatz, 1993; Kr~imer, 1998; King, 2002:24-35). (her the course of the late It)50S and 1960s, the deceptiyely .singularterm 'Holhwood' masked an increasingly dispersed and decentralised mdustryin which 'agents, stars, directors and writers \vorked \vith independentproducers to orig'inate indiyidual projects conceived outside the assembly­

line and economy-of-scale principles of classic Hollywood. The role in thisprocess of the m'ajor studios \\ho by the end of the 1<)60s had themselvesmostly been taken oyer by larger conglomerates for \\hom the entertainment

secto; was merely one part of a di\crsified business portfolio W,IS in manycases limited to prmiding' finance and distribution. The armies of craft andtechnical personnel who under the studio system had contributed so much tothe stvlistic continuities bv which studio identities \\ere detined, and whohad ~ade LIeton-st\ Ie g;e~eric production possible, had long since been laid

off. Although the 1980s and '990S would see further major chang'es in theAmerican film industry, including the major studios' return to the exhibitionsector in a changed re~uIatory climate as their corporate parents increasinglyrestructured themsehcs into dedicated, yertically integrated multimedia

businesses (sec Prince, 2000: -1-0-89), neither the majors' eyer-greater empha­sis on blockbuster production (sec Ch,lpter 10) nor the rise of 'independent'

production enabled anything like a return to the generic production of theIt)30S. Ne\y genres such as those mentioned aboye are br more likely to

appear as relatiycl~ short-Ii\ed cycles.The latter may in Llct be a <.!;ood deal less nmel than this menie\\ implies.

In bct, an arg'l;ment can bee made that the very concept of 'genre' -- if

understood as it usualh has been as a large, diachronic yehicle for producingand consuming meanil;gs across a rang'e of texts -- needs radical modification

if it is to be made releyant to the practices of an industry that has more oftenrelied on shorter-term series or cycles of films seeking to capitalise upon)ro\en seasonal successes or topical content. The fluctuating patterns of

~)llpularity.'lOd ideological address i~ genre ~Ims owe as .much ,t.o continge~tindustrial factors as they do to generrc eyolutlOn or the krnds of mtra-generrcdi,lkctic f~l\oured by critics. Writing in 1971, La\\Tence Alloway argued thatit \\as misleading to import into the study of popular cinema approaches to'fenre inherited from ,Irt criticism that sought out thematic continuity and~ni\crsal concerns, insisting rather that Hollywood production was typifiedby ephemeral cycles seeking to capitalise on recent successes, hence bydiscontinuities and shifts in meaning and fllCus in what only appeared (or\\LTe critically constructed as) consistently eyohing 'genres' . .c\laltby (1995:, I 112) states t1atly that' Holly\\ood never prioritised genre as such', instead\\ orking in the studio era as today in 'opportunistic' ways to pull togetherclements from different genres into a profitable \\·hole. Barbara Klinger(199-1-a) has proposed a category of 'local genres', such as the teen delinquent

films of the mid-1950s (Tlte Wild Olli', '<)5-1-; The Blackboard .Jllllgle, Rebel

lIl!holl! a Calise, l()55), marked by clear topical affinities and competing inthe same markets, and which comprise a clear and time-limited c1assificnionO\er ,I particular production cycle.

,\n added iron~ is that even as the classic Holly\\ood system of genreproduction was disappearing, film genres - newly understood in the light ofan industr~ 'rehly' that for the first time included academic film criticism ­took on an increasing importance as explicit points of creatiye reference for

emerging' '\e\\ Holly\\ood film-makers. As is again \vell established, the\\ riters and directors most strong;ly associated \\ith the :\'ew Holly\\ood, the'mmie brats' of the [(nOS (for example, ,\lartin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Peter

BOt!;danO\ich, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Brian dePalma) andtheir diverse successors (James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, Oliyer Stone,Quentin T,lrantino), came to professional film-making throug'h pathways(tele\ision, film school, film journalism) that equipped them with a differenthistorical understanding of film culture than their classic Hollywood pre­

decessors. \rhether or not :\ew Hollnyood film-makers arc actuallY moreself-conscious and film-literate than (li;r example) John Ford, Hmvard'Hawks

~)r '\icholas Ray, or whether they simply possess and exploit those qualitiesIn different \\ays, is an open question. Hmyeyer, as the \yeb of generic inter­

tC\tuality that enfi)lds (some might say constitutes) a film like Tarantino's

Aill Bill (2003, 200-1-) amply demonstrates, not\\ithstanding the end of thesystem that created and supported genre film production, the historicallegacy of classical film genres clearly proyides :\e\\ Holh\\ood film-makers

\\ ith a preferred means of establishi'ng not onlY (in c1assi~ auteurist fashion)

their own creative identities, but connecting t~ larger traditions of national

28 FILM GENRE

identities, social conventions and ideology. In this sense, to adopt .\Itrnan's(1996: 277) terminology, while 'film genre' may have become a questionablecategory, the 'genre film' remai~s very much alive. _ ,..

Between the institution(s) of him genre and the genre hIm text s activatIOnof those institutions arc of course the structures of indi\idual genres, eachwith its individual history, thematic concerns and representational traditions.But underlving and informing those structures there may also be less tangiblemodalities' that can neither be identified firmly with larger ideological

categories nor located or contained within individu~l g.enres. It is ~o such amodal form, crucial to the history and in all Ilkellhood the luture ofAmerican film genre, that the ncxt chapter \vill turn its attention.

NOTES

I. Th()u~h habitu'llh confused, thc terms arc tw no me"ns s\non\mous and hal e been

hoth deb"ted: sec Strinati (T<)i)S: 2 50).

, ;\ p;'obkm shared \\ith film app"ratus thcon, \\ hich has somc intcrcstin~ affinitlcs with

~cnre thcon.

3. On WarshO\\"s ~ang-ster cssa\, scc Ch"pter () plissilll. .-1-. Srai\.':er (2001), ho\\c\Tr, arg-ucs that 'Inbridit\·' is an inappropriatc conccpt to brrng to

bear on film.

5. COIl\C!"sch, as l\laltb\ ([ f()I\-1-1 Il)i)2: .'17) poillls out, neithcr shuuld /loi,. be uscd, 'IS it

oftcn Ius i'ccn, to cmbmh thc Zeitg-cisr. Lither constrm·tion, hc sug-g-csts, cntails 'a

proccss of historical distortion \\hich comcs about from the practice of gcneric

idcntification, and has [I might prcfer to sa\, em h']IC I thc effect ot Imposmg- an

artiticial homogcncit\· on t(olh\lood production'.

CHAPTER 2

Before Genre: Melodrama

M ost of this book is concerned with generic categories that have, overthe course of decades of sustained production, established dear generic

identities in the eyes of producers, audiences and critics alike. As discussedin Chapter I, this does not mean that all or any of those groups share thesame generic understandings, nor that these identities arc in any way fixed orimmutable. On the contrary, as Derrida observes, if the 'law of genre' dictatesthat e\ery text belongs to a genre it also dictates that texts do not belong\\holly to any III/C genre, hence that they can and will find themselves servinga range of different interests and put to a range of dilTerent uses in a varietyof contexts of reception, distribution and consumption. Thus generic identities_. those of genre texts, and those of genres themseh'es as ultimately the sum ofthe texts that comprise them - arc prO\isional and subject to ongoing revision.

Such obsenations apply strongly to melodrama. Critical debates inparticubr ha\e played a gO\erning role in consolidating' melodrama's g'enericpanldigm(s). Indeed, no genre - not e\en the endlessly debated .film noir -- hasbeen so extensi\ely redefined through critical intervention. (On the contrary,as we shall see in Chapter 9, the initially esoteric critical conception of noirbecame naturalised by widespread usage to the point where noir eventuallyrealised an autonomous generic existence within the contemporary Hollywood.By Contrast, a gulf persists between the Ii1m-theoretical and the industrialunderstandings of 'melodrama'.) By identil~ing' melodrama with the allegedlymarginal female-centred and oriented dramas of the studio era, feminist~riticism in the 1970S and 1980s successfully overlaid a new definitionalIrame\\ ork onto a long-standing industry category - a project that successfullyreoriented the gender politics of film theory itself. Feminist criticism locatedmelodrama in the intense pathos generated by narrati\-es of maternal andrOmantic sacrifice in lilms such 'women's films' as Sldla Dallas (1937) and.\l)iI', I O)'agcr (19+2), and has fiercely debated the g'ender politics of these

30 FJLM GENRE

texts - the gendered social roles created by and for their female protagonists,and the 'viewing positions' they offer female spectators. ",1e1odrama has alsobeen identified with a rather different body of films, the emotionally wroughtdramas of family conflict directed in the 1950S by Nicholas Ray (RebelWithout a Calise, Il)55; Bigger Than I,iff, 1(56), Elia ~azan (East or Eden,1(55) and above all Douglas Sirk (MagllljicCIlI Ollsessioll, 195-1-; ,-1.11 Thill Heal'enAlloms, 1955; WrillCll on the Wind, 1959; II/Iltation or Lire, 1(59), dubbed'family melodramas' in the 1970S by such critics as Thomas Elsaesser ([197 2]

1(91), Geoffi'ey N mvell-Smith (1977] H)<) I) and ehuck Kleinhans ([ 1978]Il)9 J), whose high emotional pitch and 'excessive' visual style arc held toeffect a subversion of ideological norms. I Behind and beyond all of these

studio-era films in some way lay the melodramas of the silent era and furtherback still the legacy of popular nineteenth-century theatrical melodrama, aseemingly separate tradition whose connection to Ray, Sirk, et al. film studieshas until recently conspicuously failed to address.

Clearlv, to what extent these strains constitute (a) genre(s) is a questionthat can "be needs to be, and is endlessly debated. As in other areas of filmgenre studies, recent historical research has uncovered new fields of melo­drama - notably in pre-Hollywood silent cinema while problematisingpre\'ailing assumptions about others. The exact status of the 'w'oman's film'as an industry category, for example, is open to question: while Rick :\ltman

(J999: 27-."') labels it a 'phantom genre' (i.e. critically rather thanindustrially constructed), Steve Neale's (2000: 1SS-9-1-) research on the filmindustry's own generic terminologies as reflected in the trade press from atleast the 1920S to the 1950S indicates that the term was used from the 19IOSonwards, but in neither as localised nor as consistent a way as feministcri ticism has suggested. Recen t research has also placed a question mark overthe woman's film's 'subaltern' status in studio-era Hollywood, an important

dimension of its retrieval!construction as a critical object. On the other hand,based on the same research methodolog;y Neale (1993, 2000: I 79-S()) arguesthat in studio-era Hollywood at least 'melodrama' was a term w'hich, while itcould and did mean many thing's, rarely meant what 'melodrama' has come

to mean in contemporary film studies and in particular meant almostanything /Jut '\\"()men's films'; 'family melodrama', meanwhile, is a term

Neale declares himself unable to locate anywhere in this 'industry relay' at

all. 'Melodrama' seems generally (though by no means exclusively) to havedenoted blood-and-thunder dramas of passion, crime, injustice and retribution

- in f~lct the term was widely used to describe films across (in standard genre­critical terms) a wide variety of classical genres, hom \Yesterns to crimethrillers and exotic adventure films. Richard ",laltbv (Ilj();: III) notes that of .

the si\: major categories used to classify pictures for the Production Code

Administration in the 19-1-os, melodrama was by far the largest, accounting

BEFORE GENRE: MELODRAMA 31-for between a quarter and a third of all production.

-\ growing body of scholarship, starting with Gledhill (1987, 1(94), has,Irgued for the centrality to Hollywood film in general of a melodramaticmode that extends back to and derives directly from the popular nineteenth­century stage. While the theatrical inheritance is most clearly visible in silentfilm, the melodramatic mode in this larger, even capacious conceptionextends well beyond the silent film-makers most readily associated withmelodrama such as D. \Y. Griffith, into not only studio-era film, butcontemporary Hollywood too. ;\'1oreover, this melodramatic 'mode' mapsdirectly onto neilher the earlier gender-based critical constructions of sound­era melodrama (Sirk, :\linnelli, the woman's film, etc.) nor onto the 'industryrelav' e\:plored by '\:eale. As a set of narrati\'e comentions, affective formsand" ideological beliefs present across a wide \ariety of genres in different

periods, melodrama is at once before, beyond and embracing the system of<renre in US cinema as a whole. Linda \Villiams offers perhaps the clearest,t'

as \Yell as the most ambitious and far-reaching recent statement of thisreconception of melodrama:

\lelodr,lma is the fundamental mode of popular .-\merican movingpictures. It is not a specific genre like the western or horror film; it isnot a 'de\iation' of the classical realist narrative; it cannot be locatedprimarily in woman's films, 'weepies', or Elmily melodramas - thoughit includes them. Rather, melodrama is a peculiarly democratic and.\merican form that seeks dramatic revelation or moral and emotionaltruths through a dialectic of pathos and action. It is the foundation ofthe classical Hollywood mO\ie. (Williams, 1995: -1-2)

Thus any discussion of film melodrama needs to begin not by defining thegenre - because if \Yilliams is right there arc clear grounds for arg'uing that

melodrama is not a genre in the same, relatively if ah\'ays questionably well­ddined, sense as the other genres described in this book - but by demarcating

a field. \\illiams and several other wTiters, indeed, suggest that melodrama isa 'mode' or 'tendency' that has been taken up at different times and withdiffcn:nt formal and stylistic characteristics in numerous different literary,theatrical, cinematic and more recent!y tclevisual genres (f(>r example, soap

Operas). In her celebrated studv of the woman's film, ~lan Ann Doane

(19 ST 72) suggests that, '[\YJheti1er or not the termmelodram"a is capable ofdefining and delimiting a specific group of films, it docs pinpoint a crucial

and isolable signifying tendency within the cinema which may be activateddifferentlv in specific historical periods.'

I II ill be employing; this notion of melodramatic 'modalities' in this chapter

and el"ewhere in this book. In a seminal study, Peter Brooks (H)76) speaks of

32 FILM GENRE

'the melodramatic ima[!:ination', which he finds informing a wide \'ariety ofnineteenth-century cultural practices from the popular stage to the novels of

Henry James. 'Melodrama' here is something like the specific literary Orperformative expression of a 'world-view' that can be compared to those of

tragedy, comedy or satire. Like those lar[!:e categories - \\hich are referred to

in literary theory as [!:enres but which, as Alan Williams (I<)H.j.) and others

observe, mean something very different !i'om the more localised genres of

film studies and film history - the melodramatic finds expression in a rariety

of contexts, styles and media. If this is starting to sound dangerously

amorphous, one \\-ay to translate the reified concept of 'the melodramatic'

back into the critical practices in film [!:el1l"C theorY discussed in the pre\'ious

chapter might be to sug[!:est that, in '\Itman's terms, melodrama has a syntax

but lacks a clear semantic dimension. In Llct, such a proposition may be

essential if the term is meaningfully to take in, as it usually does, D. W.

Griffith's mostly large-scale historical films of the late I<)IOS and 1920S

(Brnl.,l'II BIIISSIII/IS, I<)H); WilJ' 1)1111'1/ EilSI, I<)20; Orplwl/s IIrll,C .')'IIIrt/l, 1922),studio-era 'women's films' such as .')'Idlil J)iIIlils, Til f'ildl His 01/'1/ (1<).j.6), or

Lclla 1"1'111/1 illI Ul/hllllNI 1/111/11111 (H).j.()), as \rell as the I(»)OS films of Ray,

Sirk, Kazan and Vincente :\linnelli (Tltc CII/JII'C/J, 19)5; SIII/IC CIIIIC R/IIlIling,H)5<)). If the nOlion of melodrama is extended, as Limb Williams (I<)<)H) and

Deborah Thomas (2000) have recently proposed, to take in either science

fiction films like Tltc III({cdi/J/c Sltril/hl/g\IillI (1<)57) or such contemporary

films as Rill/I/JlI: F,rsl Bllllld Pal'l 11 (19H5) or Sdlll/(lla's I,isl (H)<)3), it becomes

clearer still that we are indeed talking about a fimn that, in Thomas's words,2

goes well 'beyond genre' in the con \cntional sense.

MEL 0 D RAM A AS G E N REA N D AS 1\10 D E

Altman (r <)96: 27(») states that melodrama was, along with comedy, one of the

two fi>undational strains of the :\merican narrati\c cinema that formed the

basic 'content categories' used by early film distributors in their catalogues to

distinguish rcleascs fill' exhibitors. The later 'substanti\al' generic categories

of Hollywood cinema originated as 'adjecti\-al' modifiers - '\\estcrn melo­

drama', 'musical comedy' -- of these parent genres, But if melodrama was a ,

catch-all category fi)r non-comic films, this does not mean it was either random

or unfi)cused. On the contrary, the strong int1uencc of nineteenth-century

popular theatre, in which melodrama was the dominant fimn, ensured that the

characteristic forms of theatrical melodrama - w-hich were unified f:\]' more

by narrative structures and ideology than hy strict icono[!:raphic conn-'ntions

- transferred wholesale to the screen. The question is not ,P/lcll,a melodrama's

established attrihutes - including stolll and simplified oppositiom bet \\ een

BEFORE GE:-.IRE: MELODRAMA 33.----------------------------------_.:....::....

l1lqral absolutes personified in broadly drawn characters, eyentful narratives

packed with sensational incident, a ~trong scenic element and a powerful

Cl1lQtionai address - carried mer to CS cinema, since even this brief summary

makes it quite plain they did and indeed continue to do so. The real questio~IS 11'/,· .f' . I' I ' h \ ' . , I .. III I e\ er - me o( rama s grasp on t e .,mencan cll1ema s (ramatlc

From III That IJem;e1I.'I/IU1I's (1955)- Reproduced courtesy Cni,-eTsal/The -obal Collection_

34 FILM GENRE

imagination slackened and gave way, wholly or in part, to a more recog­nisably 'realistic' mode, and also whether the emergence out of melodrama ofsubstantiyal genres like Westerns and gangster films leaves behind a distinctgeneric residue of 'melodrama' that can be identified as a separate genericcategory in its own right. Neale's research suggests that at least as far as theindustry was concerned, melodrama remained a 'live' taxonomic presencethroughout the classical period and indeed beyond. 1 The wide-rangingrelevance of the term is apparently testified by the industry usage that, asalready noted, encompassed or modified virtually nery standard generic

category and type of genre film used by subsequent critics and theorists (withthe notable ('-,"aptio/l of the 'womcn's films' or 'family melodramas' on which

critical debates about film melodrama in the 1980s focused).~

A furthcr problem in determining what 'melodrama' might usefully mean

in relation to Hollywood film invohes the distinctly pejorative qualities theterm acquires in some critical usage starting in the early twcntieth century.Undoubtedly, the negative associations of the form - including a reliance on

stcreotypes, cliche and formula, a reductive and gross simplification ofcomplex issues and emotions, and a sensation-oriented appeal to the lowestcommon dcnominator of the audience grounded in emotion rather thanreason arc bound up with larger debates about mass culture in elite andacademic circles from the U)20S on in particular. They also dra\y on astrongly gendered critical lexicon in which the audience for melodramaticfictions is 'feminised', that is ascribed a 'feminine' sensibility based uponassumptions about femininity itself as 'hysterical': unreflectiyc, irrational,easily swayed and prone to outbursts of violent, excessive and undirectedpassionate emotion (sec Huyssen, 1(86). ~le1odrama thus becomes both aform of representation damned by association with '.Ill undemanding if notactually debased audience, and itself the embodiment of the Llilings withwhich such an audience is typically aff1icted. In fact, one could argue that

melodrama becomes the generic text pilr c-,"allmCi', as the failings attributedto melodrama essentially recapitulate the negative aspects of popular genregenerally (as discussed in the Iwevious chapter). To the extent th~\t the(critically) privileged concept of realism became increasingly associated withrepresentational and perf()rmative restraint, excessi\l~ display in these areas

was understood as trivialising or caricaturing the richness of emotional andimaginative experience. This divisions operated not only to separate high

from low culture, but to discriminate relati\ely privileged modes of thelatter: thus, that the Western emerg;ed as (white male)\merica 's preferredself-representation may ha\c as much to do \vith its valorisation of a

restrained virile masculine style as with the myth of the frontier.

There is an irony of sorts that this negative association of melodrama witha sexist construction of the 'feminine' was implicitly endorsed by feminist

BEFORE GENRE: MELODRAMA 35---~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-------

theory which collapsed melodrama into the narro\ver category of the 'woman'sfilill'. :\s wc shall see, the acceptance of a g;endered version of melodrama wasnlOtiyated by the intention both sceptically to interrogate and also torecuperate for a female subjeethood the terms on which women/'woman'\\ere constructed and/or interpellated by these texts .~ a polemical criticalintenention that is in no way discredited by recent research. A key theme ofthis book is thM genres arc not static entities with clearly defined essencesand meanings, but rather moving targets - subject to ongoing reappraisal andreconstitution not merely at the leyel of interpretation but at the Inel of basic"eneric identification. Thus the reorganisation of 'melodrama' into a clearlydefined generic tradition, even one with a questionable basis in film historyor ~let ual industry practice, can itself be historicised without being dnalued1)\ that historicisation. !'\onetheless, this critical strateg-y left unexplored the\\~aYs in which the melodramatic mode functioned in Hollywood film moregmer,llly, possibly to destabilise the apparently secure gender/genre cate­gories of such 'male' forms as the \\estern, the combat film or the gang'ster

film.It might be, hO\ye\cr, that by bringing the ncgative cultural construction

of the 'melodramatic' to bear upon the (somctimes dismissive, but oftenstraightf()nvardly descriptive) industry understandings of melodrama unearthedby :\eale, we can relHe the construction of melodrama as a gendered modeto the expanded field of meanings opening up throu[!,"h current research.

Christine Gledhill (2000: 227) suggests that 'if male-orientated action mo\"iesare persistently termed "melodrama" in the trade, long after the term is morewide! v disg-raced, this should alert us to somethin[!," from the past that is ali vein the present and circulatin[!," around the masculine' ~ the implication beingthat this 'something' il1\ ohes an uneasiness or instability in the apparentlysecure concept of 'nusculinity' that subtends its representation in 'male'genres like the crime thriller, whose presence is 'confessed' through the

ad.now ledgement of 'melodramatic' elements in such films. If \ye refer backto the thumbnail sketch of melodrama abO\c (pnsonified moral oppositions,com cJ1tionalised char~lCteris~\tions, action-packed storics, scenery and emotion)it is ,lhcr all evident how much the Western continued to owe to its melo­dLllllatiL' origins even as it achined substantiyal generic status and hegemonic

• 'co

maleness. In bct, a great deal of critical \\ ork has been done on constructions

ofnusculinity in [!,"cnre films - for example, :\Iitchell (1996) on the Westcrn,or Jdf()rds (1989) on the \ietnam combat film - but thc identification of

Il1dodrama \vith the woman's film or the Llmily melodrama has generallyinhibited considering these issues in lig-ht of their melodramatic affinities_ In

this book, the explOl~ation in Chapter ~ of the paradmical ways in which thegangster's dominating phallic individualism is bound up \\ith the 'weakness'

of reliance on others might seem to bear Ollt Gledhill's obsenation.

3() FILM GENRE

None of this is intended as an argument for radical generic surgery orgenre reassignment. Even if Film Dail)' or T'ariet)' characterised The Lor/.'el(194-6 ), .Jesse James (1939) or Ps)'cho (1960) as melodramas or 'mellers' (seeNeale, 2000: 179--81), this docs not mean that their conventional genredesignation as jilm 110ir, \Vestern or horror film somehow becomes either

misplaced or redundant. Quite clearly, at any number of Inels, semantic and

syntactic alike, Jesse James has a good deal meaningfully in common with

Stagetoilch (J(B9) and Bill)' tlie Kid (194-1), and more in common with them

than with either Tlie I,odet or P'J'clio, let alone such 'critically assigned'

melodramas as The Ral'/css ,110111ell I (194-9) or _'111 I Desire (I(),3). Yet by the

same token trying: to understand what is being said about these films by

attributing 'melodramatic' qualities to them may help us understand the

operations of horror films, \Vesterns or 110lrs better - particularly if acknow­

ledging the force of the melodramatic mode encourages us to question our

assumptions about realism as a norm in ('male') popular cinema.

REALISM AND EXCESS

The ongoing- debate that has both bnl,ldened and deepened the undersLlI1d­

ing' of film melodrama has involved a crucial reassessment of some sLlI1dard

thinking about the place of realism in Hollywood cinema, and according:l~

the extent to which melodrama and melodramatic 'excess' can or should be

seen as a deviation fi'om or a challeng-e to standard realist codes. To cbrify

this point, we will need to digTess briefly into film-theoretical history.

In the HnOS, a series of essays .1I1d articles published in SacCll identified

the domin.lI1t representational mode of Hollywood (and other mainstream

narrative) film with the 'classic realist text' of the nineteenth-century nmcl.

The proponents of 'classic re.l1ism', notabl~ Colin \lacCabe, cited certain

common discursive properties shared by the novels of, for example, George

Eliot and Honore de Balzac - principally their alleg-ed narrati\c transparency

and <\\'oidance of 'contradiction' in Ll\our of homo~?:enised narLlti\es that

reassured the reader \vith their comprehensive grasp of the narrative situation

- and argued that the underlying principles of this brand of literary realism

carried mcr into the classical Hollywood film. Classic realism's most chaLlcter­

istic attribute, its reassuring narrative integrity, \\as ,lCcomplished ,lccording

to NlacCabe by the deployment of a 'metalan!,?:ua!,?:e'. In literary terms this

meant the (usuall~ unmarked and impersonal) narrati\c 'voice' through

which all of the other voices in the text - the \vords spoken by characters, for

csample, or letters - \vere placed in a 'hieLlrchy of discourses'. \Yhile

individual speakers in a narratiYC might be characterised as untrust\vorthy or

mistaken, the voice that brought their error or deceit to the reader's knmv-

BEFORE GENRE: MELODRAMA 37

ledge - that declared it to be raining or foggy on a given day, that was in aposition to \\Tite the words 'he said' before a passage of direct quotation ­

\\as not capable of challenge: its absolute competence, even 'omniscience',

\\as a condition of the \'ery readability of the text itself. In Hollywood andother mainstream narrative film, the equi\-alent of the novelistic 'meta­

LlI1g:uage' was, so it was claimed, the 'third-person' gaze of the camera (any

shot, that is, not nplicitly marked as a point-of-view shot).

This account of realism \vas linked to a larger theoretical project ­

influenced by psychoanalysis and by Althusserian Manism - for explaining

the cOl1\cntions of the continuity system and the ways in which the spectator

\\as discouraged from attending to the mechanisms of representation ­

I(H'mal (i.e. tC\tual) or institutional (the studio system) - in f:nour of a whole­

sale illusionistic and identificatory immersion in the unfolding narrative and

in turn, by some\\h,lt debatable extension, collusion in the social and ideo­

10!,?:ical norms sedimented in those narratiYes. Opposed to 'classic realism'

\\ere a variety of modernist textual practices that in various \vays (and with,

it should be said, a \\ide variety of aims) served to highlight the textuality of

the filmic arteElct, from the decentred narrati \e style of Carl Dreyer (t(lr

example, J -a1IIpyr, S\\cden I ()34-) to the didactic dialectical montag"C of Sergei

Eisenstein. Gi\en the clear impossibility of such radical fllrmal experimenta­

tion in classical Hollywood, critical attention f(Kused on those texts \vhich

seemed throu!,?:h v'lrious flll"lnal devices !,?:athered together under thl' category

of 'excess' to indicate ironic distance from, and thus call into question, the

ideological, aesthl'tic and !,?:eneric col1\cntions of thl'ir basic narr<lti\e material.

Thl'sl' 'ncl'sses' mi!,?:ht include such 'melodramatic' elements as a high­

pitchl'd, extreme or 0\ ersLlted emotional tl'nor, florid and/or ostentatiously

symbolic 111lsc-ell-SU;lle, an ovcrstated USl' of colour or of music, and plots

k.Iturin!,?: a hi!,?:h degree of ob\ ious eontri\ancl', improbable coincidcnce or

sudden reversals. Through such dl'vices, as Thomas Elsaesser ([ 1972[ 199 I:

p. 1'\,) arg:ued in a hu!,?:ely int1uential paper that effectively set the terms for

the next 20 years' criticall'nga!,?:l'l1lent \\ ith the genre, melodran1<i 'f(lrmulate[ s Ia devastating critiqul' of the it!l'olo!,?:y that supports it'.

The idea of 'classic IT.dism' \\ as challeng:ed almost as soon as it was

proposed, in particular by \\Titers \vho made the ob\ ious point that the

ninetl'l'nth-centun novels invoked as a benchmark and model for the trans­

btion of the concept into cinem.1 \Vl'IT themselvcs Ell' from the stable,

monohwic arteLicts constructed b\- the theory. The motlernist orthodoxiest" ~.

underpinning: the arg:ument \\cre also questionl'd (as neither as wholly

origin,11 nor as thoroughlv subversi\-e of normati\c Glteg-ories as \vas arg'uedc c •

lobe the case). Ironically enough, Brooks's study of the 'melodramatic

inl'lO'inat ion' focLlsed on t \\ 0 \\Titers - Ihl/.lc .lI1d Henr\ r<[mes \\ho as, t" • ~

much as or more than any Wl'IT ('lI1d .Ire) identified \\ith Iiter,lr~ realism.

jO 1'1 Ll\1 l, Ie:'>! Kle

More ironically still, however, the leg-acy of 'classic realism' is still ,isibletoday in (what became) the standard account of melodrama in the 19Sas.Many of the most widely cited accounts of melodramatic 'e:xcess' - farexample Rodowick ([19S2] 19(1) -- continued to assume the centrality to Holly­wood film of a realist mode whose integrity was predicated upon a systematicrepression of its own signifying practices. The presence of melodramaticexcess could according;ly be read as 'hysterical' symptoms, deformations andeffusions on the textual body dnlwing attention to those 'unspeakable' butfundamental dimensions of American social life - such as class and se\:uality- on whose repression the ideological coherence of the realist film relied. This'symptomatic' rC<lding of the melodramatic text mirrored the understandingof melodrama's generic place within the larger system of realist representationas locateu at the point where intense ideolog-ical oYerdetermination elicitedrnelatory confessions" albeit in the coded form of hysterical symptom - ofthe unacknowledged forces g-O\crning the whole.

Yel it may be possible to read these melodramatic symptoms in otherways, not as deviations from or challenges to a normati'"e realism but as thecharacteristic e\:pressive forms of a different, non-realist order of represen­tation. For instance, the deprecatory identification of melodrama w"ith one­dimensional characterisation, ob, ious narrali,c contri'ance and so on mayindicate, as Elsaesser's essay suggests ([IlJ72] 1<)<)1: 73-SI), that melodramaabove all abjures ililaillril,)', locating its conf1ictual content not within thefully realised psychological landscapes of comple\: indi,iduals but in styliseuand acted-out, interactional form. \lelourama e\"(Jhed a st~ lised and guiteformalised hut at the same lime f1e\:ible set of dramatic structures andcharacterolog"ical cOl1\cntions thal aided the audience's interpretation of theirlived realities b~ rendering those realities and resohing their contradictionsin clarified, simplified and emotionally satisf\ing moral and dramatic terms.\Vhereas realism often Uses an indi,idual character to guide the spectatorthroug'h a compie\: narrative tow,Ii"lls greater understanuing, melodrama ismuch more likely to situate mC<lI1ing not as a process but ,IS a sil/lillillll, fi\:edanu e\:ternaliseu in a binary oppositional structure (good/had, desire!frustnltion, happiness/misery, amI so on).

Ben Singer (zoo I: -1--1--9) identifies five 'key constituti,c [lCtors' of melo­

drama, not all of which are always present in e'"ery indi,"idual nample:pathos, overwrought emotion (which includes pathos but also other highlycharged emotional states such as jcdousy, greed, lust, anger and so on), moral

polarisation, non-classical narrali ,"e structure (with coincidence, e\:tremenarrative reversal, plot cOl1\olutions and dellS ('.\ "wel/illi! resolutions all

exacerhating a tendenc~ to\\ards episodic rather than integrated/linearnarrative) and sensationalism Can emphasis on action, ,iolence, thrills,

awcsome sights, and spectacles of physical peril'). This list certainly suggests

BEFORE GENRE: MELODRAMA 39

the ongoing modal affinity of major Hollywood genres - in particular thecontemporary action blockbuster (see Chapter 10) - with the melodramatic,while also clearly allowing room for classic Hollywood 'women's films', which'llthough they largely lack moral polarities and sensationalism are certainly

rich in pathos and other overwrought emotions.Sing-er's 'constituti'"e factors' still fall, as he himself acknowledges, into

the category of 'ncess'. Howe,er, 'excess' here is reconceived not in relationto a normati'e realism that it either knowingly ironises or symptomaticallydeforms, hut to the moral world melodrama seeks to render that simplycannot be hodied forth except under stress. Byars (199 I), among the firstcritics to argue the case for hroadening film studies' operati"e conceptual­isation of melodrama hack out from explicitly female-oriented 'weepies',describes melodrama as 'the modern mode for constructing moral iuentity'

and argues, following Brooks, that

tradition,llly, melourama has focused on the problems of the indi,iuualwithin established social structures, and as it attempted to make up forthe loss of the categorical but uni(,ing myth of the sacred, melodrama'sm'thmaking functioned at the 1e,e1 of the indi,"iuual and the personal,

drawing its material from the e,"eryday. (Byars, 1991: I I)

The desacralisation of modern culture - the rise of secular society and theconcomitant decline of established religion and its capacity to supply a'master narrati,e' for nuking sense of the world - forms one of the generallyagreed conte\:ts for the rise of melourama. \lelodrama takes its cue not fi'omthe di,ine or the ineffable (the traditional domain of tragedy) but from themodern world around it, and aims 10 enact the key terms for understandingthat world. While retaining abstract notions of good and e,il inheriteu froman older, tragic episteme, in the absence of trag;edy's sustaining religiousti'amemJrk these concepts are personitieu in stock characters whose function

moral embodiment - renders them almost equally abstractions.Byars argues for melourama as a fundamentally non-contestatory mode,

one that insists on the rightness and '"alidity of binding social (but uepictednot as social but ,IS uni,ersally human) institutions as marriage and the

bmily. "lelodranu addresses, and seeks to resoh"e, conf1icts Il'il hill a givenorder (what :\eale (I <)So: 22) calls an 'in-hollse arrangement') rather than

conf1icts of order as such: it seeks to recli/i' the situation- by 'anguishing''illainy and ha'"ing ,irtue and innocence triumph -- rather than to transformthe conditions upon which that situation of injustice or ,"ictimis,ltion has

arisen or challenge the terms in which they are concei'"ed. It is the impossibi­lity of this project that generates both the ntremity of melodranu's narrativednices and its char,lCteristic affect, pathos. Rainer \Yerner Fassbinder, the

40 FILM GENRE

major figure in the 'New German Cinema' of the 1970S and a fen'ent admirerof Sirk (whose All ThaI Heill'i'll "-lIlo]l's Fassbinder transposed to modernWest Germany in Fear Eills lhe Soul, 1974), explained that he cried \Ihilewatching Sirk's Imi/illioll orL~fi' because 'both [the film's main characters]are right and no one will be able to help them, Unless \\T change the \Iorld,

At this point all of us in the cinema cried. Because changing the \Iorld is so

difficult' (Fassbinder [19721 199T IOh). And, he might ha\'e added, because

melodrama indicates no way of making it happen. Pathos, and the tears that

are its trade mark, are functions of helplessness. This does not mean that

melodrama is fatalistic; on the contrary, melodrama's huge energies strain

violently against their perfllrmatile contexts, intensifying the sense of entrap­

ment that is also one of melodrama's hallmarks (for example, the rigid social

hierachies and prejudices that both Stella Dallas and Cary Scott (JaneWyman) in ,III Thill IIefl7.·l'/l .111001's must battle against).

On this reading', melodrama takes shape as the fllrm that seeks to make

moral sense of modernity itself. HO\\T\Tr, at this stage \\T ha\T come a long

way from the specifics of film melodramas. In order to understand hml the

issues outlined here 'bOlh themseh'Cs fllrth' in ,'\merican film melodrama in

its \arious fllrms, we need to look at the particular perflmnatile tradition

inherited from the popular stage by early cll1ema.

MELODRAMA FROM STAGE TO SCREEN

Broadly speaking, melodrama emerged during the late eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries in England and France to supply the need fll!' enter­

tainment and diversion of the burgeoning \\orking class in the rapidly

C\:panding urban centres of the industrial 1'C\olution. Since in France the

officiall~ licensed theatres enjoyed a monopoly on the spoken \Ionl, the ne\\

popular theatres relied on music, spectacle and a strong'ly perfllrmative

gesturallan[!,'uage (,melodrama' literalll means 'm usical drama', a point notl:d

by Douglas Sirk in ,I 1<)7 I intenie\\ - sec Halliday, 1<J71: <nf.). (her the

course of the nineteenth century, these Imler-middle-class and proletarian

entertainments increasingly intersected \Iith the needs of the ne\1 industrial

middle class, \Ihose gTO\\ ing economic and political influcnce seemed as yet

unsatisL1Ctorily reflected by the ossified eOl1\cntions of the neoclassical and

aristocratic theatrical tradition. Facing both competition fi'om unlicensed

melodramatic perflll'lnances and the demands of an increasingly so(idl~ dilerse

audience, 'official' theatres responded by appropriating the ne\1 popular

styles. By the time that theatrical perfllrmance lIas delicensed in the middle

of the nineteenth century, melodrama had become the dominant theatrical

style across both popular ,1I1d elite theatre.

BEFORE GENRE: MELODRAMA 41

Stage melodrama bequeathed both stylistic and institutionallcgacies to thecinema. An important clement of nineteenth century theatrical melodrama,for example, \Ias its stress on \'isual forms of audience address, to somecxtent at the expense of spoken dialogue, \\hich became increasingly inert.1Ild stylised. As ne\\ theatrical technologies of lighting, set construction and

scene-shifting,' de\'eloped, ne\1 storytelling' styles with a strongly pictorial

dimension also emerged. In some of the largest-scale late-nineteenth-century

spectacular productions, the proscenium arch became a picture frame, estab­

lishing,' pictorial com'entions (for example, the elaborate historical or exotic

t,lbleau) that would be carried O\'CJ' into early film. The huge expansion of

the theatre 'industry' in this period also necessitated a new rationalisation

,lIld professionalisation of the processes of writing and producing dramas: the

r,lpid turno\'er of the melodramatic stage encouraged a promotional emphasis

on spectacle and on readily recognisable sub-genres that followed intense

ncles.

\ lelodrama \Ias characterised by a strongly polarised depiction of moral

lJualities- \Ihat has often been termed a '~lanichean' \\orld-\'iew with equally

halanced fllrces of absolute good and e\'il battling one another in the person­

alised shape of hero and \illain, their contest usually wagcd mer the symbolic

terrain of an 'innocent' \IOm,1I1 or child. Other classic melodramatic opposi­

tions included those bet\leen country and eitl and (closely related) between

the bmih and the world of \Iork (and money). The melodramatic imaginary

lIas strongly motivated by a nostalgic reaction ag'ainst the complcxification

.tlld perceiled challenge to traditional modcls of g'emler and the family posed

b\ new urban \Iays of liling, a reaction that flllll1d narrati\'e expression in

plots that obsessilely reworked themes of injured innocence.

TO\lards the end of the nineteenth century, a 1'C\i\al of 'serious' drama

(partly reflecting the desire in some sections of the nOlI-hegemonic middle

classes to difkrentiate their cult ure fi'om that of the pelt ~ bourgeoisie and

\\ orking classes) l'Cne\\ cd the scission of popular and elite theatrical fllrms,

\\ ith the ne\v topical, political and symbolist dramas of Ibsen, Shall and

Ilarley Gramille Barker reasserting the primacy of speech mcr spectacle

'lIld reflection mer sensational action. The emerging modernist reaction

.tgainst Yictorian proprieties flllll1d in the pious sentimental cliches of melo­

drama a ready target for derision and, more importantly, a structure for self­differen tiation.

Thus at the moment of cinema's imention, a \\ell-established tradition of

pictorial and episodic narratile mass entert<linment prm'ided a ready repertoire

of both narratives, creati\'e personnel (actors and writers) and represen­

tational cOl1\entions fllr the ne\1 popular medium to draw on. Howe\'er,

cinema's emerg'ence - as of course a silent medium - coincided with a renewed

cOl1\iction of the importance of (spoken) discursiH' reflection and debate in

4Z FILM GENRE

the most advanced serious theatre of the time. High cultural practice wasthus recentring itself on a dimension cinema was specifically unable to pnnide.This further cemented the association between popular narrative cinema andthe melodramatic tradition (see Brewster and Jacobs, 1(97).

That tradition, however, was itself 'in process' - evohing and dividing ­in the late nineteenth century. Thus while the 'ten-twenty-thirty' centtheatres in America offered blood-and-thunder narrati\es in the traditionalearlier nineteenth-century melodramatic \'ein to a mostly working-classaudience - the same audience that would soon crowd the nickelodeons - atthe same time modified forms of melodrama and the 'wcll-made play' ofTeredmore respectable pleasures to middle-class audiences alienated by the moreboldly experimental and confrontational forms of the realist and socialtheatre. 'Modified melodrama' mitigated the narrative and pictorial extLl\a­gances of the traditional popular model and placed a greater emphasis oncharacter, morc nuanced and deeply felt states of feeling, and emotionalrather than grossly physical conflict. 1'\eale (zooo: ZOIf.) and Singer (ZOOI:167-77) suggest that subsequcnt critical confusions around the valances of'melodrama' in film may be attributable to inadequate understandings of thisprior bifurcation with the melodramatic tradition. \V,liker (198z: 16-18)suggests that a genealogy of film melodrama distinguish bet\veen 'actionmelodramas' - out of which emerge such film genres as the \Vestern, thewar/combat film and thc various forms of crime thriller - and 'melodramasof passion, in which the concern is not with the external dynamic of actionhut with the internal traumas of passion', and which g;ive rise to, among othercinematic genres, the woman's film and the LIl11ily drama. (As wc shall see inChapter <), .fillll 11011', in its classic form at least, might be seen as straddlingthese fl)rms of melodramatic inheritance in a unique w'ly.)

SILENT MEI.ODRAMA

""lc1odrama thus offered cinema at least two difkrent popular dramatictraditions on which to build. Initially at Jc.lst, in the era of the nickelodeonsit was the now culturally denigrated forms of working-class theatre thatdominated the new medium, and early cinema's strong; appeal to urbanworking;-class audiences (and the anxious commentary this prO\oked in eliteopinion circles) has been well documented (see Hansen, UN 1; RabinO\ itz,1998; Charney and Schwartz, 1995). HO\vever bourgeois spectators certainlydid not deprecIte the pictorial ,llld episodic. On the contrary, as the successof Bir/h lira lVa/11I1I (H)I S) shows, it \vas primarily the perceived 'excellence'- measured in terms of scale, narrativc ambition ,md historical 'seriousness' ­or othcnvise of a form that coloured its class reception. Griffith's film owes

BEFORE GE:-.rRE: MELODRAMA 43

a great deal more to popular melodrama than to the 'well-made play', but itsactual and perceived enhancement of the cheap ephemera of the nickelodeons(actualised not only in the film but in its exhibition contexts, with reservedselting and ticket prices during its premiere run closer to the leg'itimate theatrethan to storefront cinemas) made it - and through it the cinema generally ­more attractive and acceptable to a middle-class audience.

The importance of melodrama to silent film has always been recognised,but melodrama's reconception in film theory to denote studio-era domesticand Llmilial dramas has meant that silent melodrama has until recently beencomparatively little discussed (an important exception being' Vardac, 1(49).Two exceptions to this rule .Ire D. \Y. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, whosehistorical importance to cinema's development as a mass medium hascompelled consideration of their preferred dramatic modes. As a comedianChaplin would seem to stand outside the melodramatic tradition, yet hisfilms repeatedly - particularly tl)llowing his move to features - draw onrecog;nisablc melodramatic motifs. In The Kid (19Z0), when the fl)l\ndlingadopted by the Tramp is forcibly remmcd by the authorities, Chaplin andJackie Coogan as the child pantomime their anguish in a parade of wretchedg-csticulations and facial contortions. Both the scenario heing played out - the,ictimisation of the innocent by the heartless and powerful, here as elsewherein Chaplin's work given a powerful dimension of social criticism by thedepiction of Charlie's destitution and the rigidity and indifference ofestablished authority (the medical senices and the police) to human misery

and the manner of its performance are unmistakably melodramatic.Griffith's debt to melodrama is equ,llly apparent and has always been

recog-nised by critics, from his earliest short subjects at Biograph as a specialistin sensational melodramatic narratives to his celebrated features of the latet cens and e'lrly 19zos. Griffith's films ,Ire universalh marked by the presenceof such melodramatic hallmarks as pathos, the victimisation of innocents (thetranshistorical subject of Ill/olerilll(e, H)I7), threats to the Llmily and sensa­lional sequences rendered 'respectable' by their integ;ration into carefull~

de\ eloped LIther than episodic narratives (such as the climactic ridc of theh.lan in Bir/h lira S,UiOIl, I<)IS, or the escape across the ice in Tray DOII'IIrast) . .-\nother 'abduction' scene, in Griffith's (hp/wIIs or/he Slilrlll' whenHenriette recog-nises the mice of her blind sister Louise in the street below,but is plTvented from rescuing her ti'om the beggar's life into which a malignbeldame has forced her when she is arrested ,It the behest of an aristocraticLIther who aims to prevent her marriage to his son - displays a similar stylisedg-estural intensity to The Kid, but in a narrative context that hetter typifiesmelodLlm,I's reliance on coincidence and sudden reversal to generate andintensify pathos (on Griffith and melodrama, see Allen, 1999: 4z-74; theOlp/IiII1S recognition scene is analysed in detail on pp. 98-103).

44 FILM GENRE

The general tendency in early bellelettristic film criticism was to regardthe melodramatic aspects of Griffith's and Chaplin's work as fll "'S that either(depending on the writer's attitude) qualified their artistic achieyement orcould he set aside in estimating it. The perceiyed legacy of Victoriansensibilities in Griffith - for example, the model of Dickens, first noted witha different emphasis by Eisenstein - elicits such judg'ements as:

[W]hat we haye in Griffith is the surface \\orld of Dickens - that which

made him so popular because it touched on the surface neryes of the

public - but not the wit or the penetration, the insight into complexity

and emotional depths that underlay the surface simplicities, the types, the

sentimentalities of situ.1tion and emotion. What is left is the energetic

rendering of the shell: Griffith's cinemat ic embodiment of exaggerated,

sentimental emotionalism, naive, simplistic confEct and tension, and

one-dimensional character stereotypes. (Casty I J(nzl H)9I: 3(q.)i

The modernist orientation of much film scholarship in the IlnOS eneourag'ed

an approach that 'retrined' Griffith's technical and stylistic innovations

from the surrounding Victorian baggage (or reconeei\Td Chaplin in terms of

modernist urhan typologies). Alternatively, as in Belton's (11<nz] 1(9 1) com­parative reading of Griffith and Frank Borzage, the 'intensity' of the artist's

engagement with a melodramatic 'world-yiew' can be seen as conferring upon

their work an 'integrity' lacking in more routine melodramatic production.

As with several other classical genres to be discussed in this hook, the

upsurge of interest in silent cinema and the allied historicist trend in recent

film scholarship has resulted in studies that aim both to broaden the

discussion of silent melodrama beyond the 'canon' of major auteurs and to

engage with the historical specificity of the forms of speetatori,d address

characteristic of silent melodramas. Singer (ZOOI), for C\ample, focuses on

the popular sensational melodramas of the 1<) 1os typified by seria I at!\entures

such as TlIl' Perils III' PI/II!illl' (1<)1.4-) and TlIl' J!I/::;I/u!s III' J!l'!<'I1 (J()q-17)

(films notable not least f()r their acti\T heroines),

THE WOMAN'S FILM

The woman's film has recei \ed the most sustained critical ,ltten tion of ,my of

the Hollywood g:enres in the melodramatic genealogy. "henever the term

'woman's film' became \\ idely used in Holly\\ood (see Simmon, 1<)<)3), it is

clear that from at least the late 1910S and probably before, the notion that a

certain type of film mig'ht h,I\'e a particularly strong appeal to women was

present in the industry 'relay' (:\eale, 2000: 191-2). This type of film centred

fBEFORE GENRE: MELODRAMA 45

on women's experiences, specifically domestic, familial and romantic (though\\ith romance subordinated to or at least crossed with the domestic orf~lmilial rather than carrying the story in its own right); their protagonists\\ere women, and women's friendships often fig'ured importantly (f()r example,the professional partnership of Mildred Pierce and Ida Corwin). Woman's

films \vere frequently hased on literary properties written by women, and

fem,lle script\\Titers were also often il1\olved (see Francke, 1994.). The value

of such films to the film industry stemmed from the perception - which by

the J(HoS had firmed up into something like an orthodoxy - that women

comprised both a simple majority of movie-goers and the most reliable and

regular yiewers, that they often had a more decisive voice in choosing' the

films thev attended \\ith their male partners, and that this important

constitueI~cy was dra\\n to films on cOI1\'entionally 'feminine' subjects. l)

These last points are \vOrlh emphasising because of the sometime assump­tion in feminist criticism that the \\omen's film was a Cinderella genre,

occupying a subordinate position in Holly\\ood's aesthetic and economic

hier,lrchy, The \\oman's film's attraction to melodramatic rather than realistic

modes of representation - 'realism' being a privileged category in elite (male)

opinion (sec Gledhill, 1<)1'7) - confirmed and exacerhated the general depreca­

tion of the gT11re, Thus, it was held, like other f()rms of women's expression,

\\ omen's films, ho\\C\ er numerous and popular, remained suhject to mascu­

linist interests and perspecti\es. In reality, in line \\ith the received industry

\\isdom concerning female audiences, a "om,m's film was if anything likely

to be a more rather than a less prestigious production in terms of hudget,profile and \ery often critical reception too, .\s cOI1\Tntional and middlehrow

as producers' assumptions ahout 'quality' may seem today, quite clearly

\\ omen's films along: with other prestigious product like costume dramas,

biopics and literary adaptations (all of these could of course be women's films

too, though biopics usually featured male subjects), sened as adYertisements

of the 'best' Holly" ood could produce, "'omen's films \\Tre almost il1\ariably

major studio productions, usually ':\' features, and were assigned top stars

,md directors. (This industrial prestige need not of course have ref1ected the

personal tastes of male studio heads ,md indeed, as Gledhill (zooo: 2z6)

obsenes, economic importance is not neccssarily an indcx, e\Tn in a

Llpitalist enterprise, of 'cultural value'; but H,lITy \Varner's remark to Bette

1),1 \is that he hated her films and onh made them because the box office

demanded it surely cuts both \\ays.) .\s ?\Ldtby (1<)<)5a: 1336) notes, the

deprecation of the \\oman's film feminist theory set itself to contest existed

Llr more among the male critics \\'ho dominated the early years of film

studies and tended to carry through their theoretical propositions through

such 'male' genres as the "'estern and the gangster film ..\s Llr as melodrama

is concerned, it f()llo\\s fi'om \\ h.lt has alreadv been said about the general

46 FILM GENRE

industry usage of the term that, as far as contemporary film-makers and(presumably) viewers were concerned, women's films \\'ere I/ot melodramas(like thrillers or combat films) and quite likely all the hetter for it. It does notat all follow from this that it is 'wTong' to focalise critical discussion of suchfilms through the theoretical matrix of melodrama, merely that it is hard touse the melodramatic address of the w'oman's film to press arguments aboutits cultural status.

Of the many women's films of the studio era, Stella Dallas (1937, follow­ing a silent version in H)2 5) has become perhaps the paradigmatic example.The film tells the story of a working-class woman who, ha\'ing married'above her station" ewntually drives away her belO\ed daughter Laurel to bebrought up by Stella's estranged hushand so she will not be dragged down byassociation with her mother's \'ulgarity, and was the focus of an extensivecritical debate among feminist film theorists in the mid-I980s that encapsu­lated the ditlcrent and frequently ambi\alent responses prO\oked by thefemale-oriented films of the studio era. Crucially at stake was the extent towhich Stella's sacrifice at the altar of bourgeois domesticity represented asubmission the film was recommending to its female spectatorship, oralternati\'e1y the possibilities fllr that spectatorship's recO\ery of a positivesense of female strengths from her story - albeit strengths that Stella's socialcontext and her interpellation by patriarchal ideologies ensure she is unableto actualise. The nature and degree of women's imestment in the comen­tions to which Stella finally surrenders wcre crystallised in the film's extra­ordinary final scene, where the rain-drenched Stella fights her way to thefront of a crowd of g;awkers outside her ex-husband's mansion so that, tearfulyet triumphant amid this crO\nl of strangers, she can view Laurel's wedding- symholic of her acceptance hy the high society that has shunned Stellaherself. This pathos-filled scene, which seemed to position Stella as a specta­tor analogous - in her rapt, teary intensity -. to the female cinema viewerherself in ways that made a clear judgement of hn choice almost impossible,summarised the woman's film's compelling yet deeply amhiguous attraction.

Another much-discussed \\'oman's film, .Hi/drce! Plcl"i"t' (!()-J.5), presented aconflict of gender roles articulated through .1 generic contest bet\\'een the'wom.l11 's film' and the I/olr thriller. The film's I/olr elements include theextensive use of geometric patterns of light and shade, expressionist lighting,a con\'oluted narrative presented largely in flashback, and strong strains ofpessimism and paranoia; the contrasting; 'woman's film' elements include thedomestic focus, the centrality of ehildrearing and specifically motherhood,and a narrative centred on female experiences. Hi/drcd Plcnc is an unusualand interesting film inasmuch as it straddles the different (contemporaryindustrial and critical) undersLlI1dings of melodram'J and indeed acti\.ltesthem as its central conflict.

BEFORE GENRE: MELODRAMA 47

THE FAMILY MELODRAMA

Identifying the part played by the family in American life of course opens up" \'ast field of enquiry, but as Gallagher (1986) suggests, as a subject thefamily is often absorbed back into other genres and accommodated to theirnormative coneerns: The Searchers, for example, is more likely to be read as,1 film about white racism or the pathology of masculinity than as a parableof the struggle to emision and constitute or maintain a family. It is alsonotahle that the traditional dramatic construction of numerous genres ­including romantic comedy (sec Wexman, 1(93), the series Western, etc. ­locates the moment of f;nnilial imestment (that is marriage, or at any rate theconfirmation of the couple) as the climax and the conclusion of the dramarather than as the central dramatic situation. By contrast, according toLieoffrey '\()\\"ell-Smith ([ H)771 H)<) 1: 268), the family melodrama is inscribedby 'a set of psychic determinations ... which take shape around the family',1l1d takes its subject matter primarily and consistently from the hmilialdomain.

.\lthough of all 'phantom genres' the 'f;1111ily melodrama' is the mostelusi\'e, appearing nowhere in the contemporary relay (see Neale, H)<)3), ithas become as closely identified with the critical construction of melodramaas any, largely owing to the revi\al of interest in Sirk's 1950S Hollywoodfilms during the 1970S on the ironic terms noted above (strongly encouragedby Sirk himself). Family melodramas intensify, arguably to a parodic degree,the pathos of the woman's film, relocating melodramatic excess to thestylistic domain. The f1I11ily melodrama is often understood in terms of itscontradictory imperati\'es to rC\cal and to repress issues, tensions andstresses around the hmily - the arena in and through which psycho-sexualidentity is most importantly constituted -- denied either a 'polite' hearing in.\meriean society, or direct cinematic representation under the terms of theProduction Code, hence its characteristic resort to the fl11tastic, the highlystylised and the 'contrived'.

.\Luxism suggests that melodrama's emphasis on conflicts within andaround the hmily enacts a classic bourgeois displacement of problemsactually present in the economic and political field onto the personal anddomestic scene: morality thus becomes a personal rather than a political issue.Once on that terrain, ho\\'e\cr, e\en if class conflict is displaced ontodomestic types, nonetheless the unspoken - and socially unspeakable - tensionsinside the hmily matrix within which the indi\idual is formed inC\itablypush their way to the fore. The hmily is (in .\Ithusserian terms) a classically'O\erdetermined' arena: it is both inadmissably social and political (becausebourgeois ideology denies the impact of the economic upon the hmily, wherepersonal morality reig"ns supreme), al/d the site of the equally unspeakable

48 FILM GENRE

desires and drives of the Freudian f:mlily romance (Elsaesser, (1972) 199 I:

81] punningly describes the family melodrama as 'where Freud left his Marxon the family home').

Sirk's films in particular constitute a repeated investigation of the wayswhereby normative social demands are enforced or regulated, and socialauthority refracted, through the institutions of the family. In All Thatl!ecl1'ell Allmps, the widowed Cary's relationship with her younger gardenerRon Kirby (Rock Hudson) - transgressive in terms of both age and class - isinitially curbed by a combination of regulatory methodologies applied by herchildren: on the one hand her son's forceful, aggressive, punishing and overtlyrepressive mode, on the other her social worker daughter's therapeutic,cajoling, professionally 'sensitive' approach. Written on Ihe Wind (1958) is adynastic melodrama that associates issues of patriarchal authority in declinewith eruptions of sexual and social deviance and further links these domesticpathologies to business and industrial crises: the collapse of one is directlyimplicated in the breakdown of the other. The apparent triviality of Sirk'ssubject matter - its consumer magazine romance material - is belied by thepromiscuous vitality of his style: an overtly stylised and incipiently reflexi vemise-en-scene - saturated and non-naturalistic usc of colour, elaborate cameramovements, the construction of frames within the frame, extensi\T usc ofreflective surfaces, etc. - combines with a heightened acting style to manifest'hysterical' symptoms of repressed thematic material on the textual body ofthe film itself.

The extended range of familial representations explored during; the 1950Smay have been in part a response to the normative familial ideology promul­gated above all by television in this era. Situation comedies of the era inparticular offered an idealised vision of the suburban middle-class WASPf:mlily, significantly lacking in major problems or conflicts; possibly television'sidentity as a domestic medium demanded that it not challenge the consensusforming during the decade around the fundamental importance of the Llmily,and of conventional gender (and ag;e) roles within the family, to Americanlife. (1\ centrality perhaps never better encapsulated than when .'\ikitaKruschev and Richard Nixon confronted each other in a US show kitchen ata Moscow trade fair in \959: their famous 'kitchen debate', amidst gleamingwhite goods, defined the home as a symbolic arena, the new terrain of theCold War.) It is surely no coincidence that the 'reward' Carey recei\'es fromher children for her compliance with their demands to subjugate her sexualityis a television: a subsequent shot catches her lonely reflection in the blankscreen, ironically apposite for the principal medium of the traditional nuclear

family's valorisation. Klinger (199-t-) has identified the ways in which severalcanonical 'family melodramas' \\'ere promoted on the basis of their challeng­ing 'adult' content ". in Wrlflt'll Oil tlte WIlld, for example, psychological

IBEFORE GE;'\lRE: MELODRAMA 49

instability, incestuous desire, homosexuality, alcoholism and impotence ­offering audiences sensational material beyond the constrained domesticity of

the TY m:t\\orks.

\1 E L 0 D RAM A TIC LEG A CI E S

\lelodrama, at least in the modality that has most preoccupied contemporaryfilm theory - the family drama and the 'women's film' - would appear, as","calc (2000: 19,:;) suggests, to have lost some of its impetus with thedisappearance of the producti\e repressions of the Production Code in 1906as \\TIl as the !.II'ger transformations of gender, sexual and familial identitiesin the \\ake of the 1960s and consequent broadening of women's personaland professional options. "ie\crtheless, from [m'e SIIIIY (1970) and Terms I~r

!:'lIilearll/l'IIl (1983) to Ordll/ilr)' People (H)80) and jHolllllt~!!;hl /vIile (zooz),'\\cepies' and generically identifiable Llmily melodramas have continuedintermittently to appear. Attempts to fashion modern versions of the'woman's film', similarly updated to take account of changing social norms,h;\ \ e included" ,lila Dllesi/ 'I LIu' Here, "JII)'II/Ilre (197-t-),JII Unll/ilrried ~VIIIII(1I1

(1()78), Slarllllg (her (1979), Bear/ii'S ([()88), Siellil (a remake ofSlellil Dililils,1(90), Fried Grel'll Tlllllilllli'S (1991) and !l1I11' Til ,HilA'r ilil ,·JlllerlwlI Qllill(1995) . .\laltby (H)f)5a: 1Z-t-) notes that the psychological romance The PUlneIIr Tides (I 9()I) \\ as described by se\cral re\'iewers as a 'melodrama',sug-g-esting that, as with .lillll 1/1111', critical usage may have crossed mer to

industry and popular generic understandings. In zoo3 two films, The {{II/II"Sand Far Froll/ !Iea-ceII, presented themsehcs quite explicitly as intertexts ofthe classic woman's film - the latter a quasi-remake (in period) of .-111 Tf/ill

!lCiI,'l'II ,lI/IIII'S, complete with lush Sirkian ",Ise-Cl/-scclle and emoti\ e Henry\Lmcini score, but no\\ using' stylistic excess to point up the contrast ofmode and pre\iously off-limits content (homosexuality and miscegenation)rather than as symptom of the textu;llly inexpressible.

This diminution of the domestic and maternal melodrama, h()\\C\cr, docsnot mean that melodramatic modes ha\'e reduced in their centrality toI Iolly\\ood generally. On the contrary, as Chapter IO \vill explOIT, a renm'atedmelodramatic mode combining' aspects of both blood-and-thunder and modi­fied melodrama characterises the most important contemporary Hollywoodg-enre, the action blockbuster. .\loremer, an understanding of the melo­dramatic imag-ination may indeed prmT an essential tool for comprehending;lnd responding' to the political climate of t\\enty-first century America (ofwhich the action blockbuster is itself an important g'auge) - \\hich is to sayfor citizens of e\ery nation in the \\orld. In his study of the sensationalmelodramas of the H)IOS, Ben Singer quotes LULkig Lewishon, a critic for

50 FILM GENRE

the liberal Nation who in 19Z0 associated melodrama \\ith 'the primalbrutality of the mob'; in the age of the 'war on terror' and a successful re\i\alof the i\Ianichean sensibility in American politics, his words haye an uneasilyprophetic ring:

[For the a\erage American I his highest luxur~ is the mass enjoyment ofa tribal passion. War, hunting, and persecution are the constant di\er­sions of the primiti\e mind. And these that mind seeks in the grossmimicry of melodrama. Violence, and especially moral \iolcnce, is shO\\nf(lrth, and the audience joins \icariously in the pursuits and triumphs ofthe action. Thus its hot impulses are slaked. It sees itself righteous anderect, and the object of its pursuit, the quarry, discomfited or dead. Forthe great aim of melodrama is the killing; of the yillain ... The melo­drama of this approved pattern brings into \icarious play those forces inhuman nature that produce mob yiolence in peace and mass atrocitiesin war. Nations addicted to physical \ iolcnce of a simpler and moredirect kind ha \c cultiYated the arena and the bullring. Those \yhodesire their impulses of cruelt, to seem the fi'uit of moral energysubstitute melodrama. (Q.uoted in Sing;er, 2001: -1-0-1)

NOTES

[..\11 of these l'SS,11 s and Schatz's chapter on E\llli" melodramas are eoIILTtl'l\ in J .allLh

( [<J<J I ).

2. Though her olin usc of thc eonecpt of melmlram'l is in somc "'1\S quitc IdloslncLltic.

3. I lis namples of lilms identified as 'mcllcrs' include citatiollS from [;lri"lj' in thc IIl70S

(elillill's /'ill/d. a "'cstcrn) and thc I<JSOS ClllsslIIg iI/ [(1/111/. I<)S+, a 'ictnam eomb,1t

film)

+. ]\oote. hOllcler, that 'IS :\ltman (I<)IJS: 72) points out, '\eale tcnds somcllhat to eollapsc

thc distinction bctllccn (trade) film critil'ism and film production, .IS if thc perceptions

of the former neecssarih or il1\ ariabh retkctcd the crcatil e praeticcs of the lattcr.

J' Sergei J':isenstein's [<)H eS"1\ 'Dickens, Grirtith and Film Tml'1\' Ius ellSurcd th,1t the

relationship has bccn the subject of cnthusiastic critiLtI discussion. Dickens is of course

the nO\ e1ist IIho morl' than al1\ other c,;poses the bogus claims of 'classic re'llism '.

Altman ([1<)X<)JII)<)2) np\ores Dickens's mdmlramatie Ieg'ael to (irirtith ('lIld

Eisenstein).

(,. It should also bc noted th,1t in thc [Ii [as. as thc film industn 'Ittcmptl'd to bre'lk out

past its core urban lIorking-ciass audiencc to thc hitherto inditlLTent middle-class

'1lIdiencl" (attraeti,e beLluse of its abilitl and lIilling'ness to 1"1\ morc I<l!' ,I tickct 'Illd

also bCLllIse of its political support in thc industn 's battles lIith municipal and st,lIe

ecnsorship hodies). attracting' female licllers lias an Important benchmark of cillt'm'I's

gro\\ing' rcspcetahilitl (see I Jansen, [<)<)1: ho-SI)).

Part I

Classical Paradigms

I The four genres considered in this section, along with the romantic or'screwball' comedy, are \irtual embodiments of classical Hollywood. Theseare the genres which, on account of their long production histories -- stretch­ing back in each case (bar, obYiously, the musical) to the silent era - andexceptionally high degree of generic codification and con Yentionalisation, aremost reliably inyoked in support of the \arious iconographic, semantic/syntactic or ritual accounts of genre film generally discussed in Chapter I.

T.ess consideration has generally been giyen to the ways in which theseg:enres can also be seen as modalities of film melodrama (the musical aside,\\hich as 'musical drama' combines melodrama's basic elements - me/os [music]+ drama - in different ways). All of these genres haye in common apreoccupation with how masculine identities - as cowboys and caYalrymen,soldiers, singers and dancers and gangsters (sometimes as sing'ing cowboys ordancing gangsters) - are constructed and portrayed, a concern that might beunderstood as the specific ways that such 'male melodramas' articulate themelodramatic mode's characteristic concern with gender and family outsidethe context of the domestic melodrama.

Giyen the long production histories and the rich and extensiYe criticalliterature on all of these genres, these pages do not aim to proyide eithersummary O\eniews or critical historiography. Rather, each genre is discussedin a specific interpretatiw matrix: fix the Western, its relationship to(generic and social) history; for the musical, questions of form; for the war/combat film, questions of nationhood and national experiences of modern\\art~lre; and for the gangster film, the relationship between the gangster asan exemplary figure and the social context out of which he emerges and to\\ hich he ans\yers. While not pretending to exhaust the releyant issues in anyof these genres, these frameworks for discussion and analysis arc intended toshed light both on these indiyidual genres and on questions of genre theory;llld interpretation as a whole.

CHAPTER -'

The Western: Genre and History

M ore, and larger, claims han: been made for and about the \Vestern than

any other film genre. It has a fair claim to be the longest-li'ed of all

major film genres, as "ell as the most prolific. \Vesterns are immediatelyrecognisable- anybody, C\en a nm'ice, can identif\ a Western within a few

minutes' ,iewing time - and almost e,eryone knows, or thinks they kno",

what makes a \Vestern a \Vestern. Instan tly recognisable '\Vestern' qualities,

including not only the genre's classic iconogTaphy .. corrals and ten-gallon

hats, swinging saloon doors and Colt re'ohers, stagecoaches and Cnalry

charges, schoolmarms, saloon girls, showdowns and shoot-outs - but itsabiding thematic clements - the frontier, 'the desert and the garden', 'dead or

ali'e', ' a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do' -' are lodged deep in the

American and indeed the global popular imagination. And this despite the

fact that with the precipitate decline in production since the late [(nOS and[fl'i17:i'11'S Gilll' (H)~O) (only in small measure, hm,e,er, because of that film,

Hollywood folklore notwithstanding), \\esterns han: increasingly become

curiosities, relics of an older age in a film culture dominated by ne" er

technologies of action spectacle like science fiction and techno-blockbusters.

Westerns ha'T long been seen as a kind of master key to unlod.:ing andunderstanding the most basic elements of American identity. '\Vesterns appeal

so much to us [i.e. AmericansJ,' according to Joan .\lellen (I<)<).t: +II),'because they are explorations of who "T are, dr.lmas in "hich :\merica's

soul, the national identity, hangs in the balance'. The particular complex of

history, fantasy and ideology clustered around the 'frontier myth' codified in

the Western has been assigned a central, e,en defining, place in the forma­

tion of American national identity and national character. This renders

Western motifs, in particular the genre's emphasis on ritualised and usually

lethal ,iolence as .1 means to personal .111l1 social regeneration, a handy and

concise means of commenting' (usually negati\cly) on aspects of ,\merican

,'.

THE WESTER": (iE"RE AND HtSTORY 55

domestic or foreign policy. (Such critiques of course can be and ha,e beenmounted from "ithin the genre itselt~ notably the 're\isionist' Westerns ofthe late 1<)60s and H)70S and the highly successful and influential European

'Spaghetti' Westerns of the same period.).\lore than any other genre, too, the Western illustrates the use of genre as

a means of mapping historical e:xperience onto popular media texts through

an analysis of shifts in genre comentions. The exceptionally high degree of

codification and comentionality to be found in Westerns makes tracing this

process unusually' transparent. It is not necessarily true that the \Vestern

possesses a more distincti\e iconography than other genres ,. a shot of Rz-Dz,

Illr instance, sends just as clear a generic signal as John Wayne cradling a

shotgun· but its semantic elements generally ha,e remained unusually stable

()\ er time. It is these constants, themsehes rooted in a clearly defined and

limited (albeit he.nily fictionalised) historical setting, that in turn make the

\\'estern's limited repertoire of narratin: situations and thematic preoccupa­

tions seem e:xceptionally condensed. Hence, perhaps, the "idespread belief

that \Vesterns are both exceptionally formulaic and, partly as a result,

gcnerically 'pure' in a "ay that genres less fixed in a particular time anu

space, and less tightly bound by narrati'e con\ention (melodrama, say, or

action-ad'enture films), are not. This consistency makes the \Vestern an

attracti'e point of reference for theoretical accounts of genre film but also, as

se'Tral recent commentators ha,e noted, probably an atypical example of

genre film in general: in particular, setting up the \Vestern's unusual degree

of (in ,\ltman's terms) semantic/syntactic continuity as a yardstick of g'eneric

integrity seems an unduly prescripti'e and restricri'e critical approach (see

"-cale, zooo: 1.",-+).In any case, e,en if as Buscombe (I<)~~: 15-16) says the Western's basic

generic material displays a 'remarkable ... consistency and rigour', the

perception of generic purity is at best only partly accuratc.·\ny ,iewer with

more than a passing bmili'lrity with Westerns knows that the bad guy only

occasionally wears a black hat, and that rarely if e'er is the only good Injun

a dead Injun..\s the list of 'hybrid' Westerns in Chapter I m.lkes clear,\\'esterns are as prone to generic mixing as any other gTI1IT. '\loreo,er, as we

shall see, the genre's syntax (in ,\ltman's terms) has not only 'aried in some

important ways mer time but has de'eloped une,enly in different intra­

generic strains in the same period.

:\c\ertheless, it is certainly true that the Western is ,I 'strong' generic

fl)rm; Saunders (ZOOI: 6) notes the Western's 'ability to digest and shape

,tlmost any source material.' Of all genres it has been perhaps the most

reliable to the widest audience for the longest period of time. This long and

continuous history of a (notionally at any rate) historical genre makes history

itself an appropriate frame for considering the genre. The sections below

56 FILM GENRE

address, respectively, the history of the genre and ongoing critical debatesabout that history; the influence of Western historiography on the Western'snarrative and thematic material; the particular versions of the 'real' history ofthe West favoured by the Western at different points in its evolution; and theimpact of contemporary historical events upon that evolutionary process.

HISTORIES OF THE WESTERN

The Western's semantic constituents coalesced at a remarkably early stage inthe history not only of the genre but of cinema itself. Edwin S. Porter'seight-minute The Great Train RoMer)' (190 I), a landmark in the history ofnarrative cinema and often claimed as 'the first Western', \vas probably notreceived as such - rather than, say, a crime film or a train film - by its originalaudience (see Musser, 1990: 352-5; Altman 1999: pp. 3+-H). Ho\ve\u, itsprincipal elements would become instantly recognisable iconographic andnarrative touchstones for the genre: the masked outlaws, the carefully engin­eered hold-up, the fight atop the moving train, the posse, the chase onhorseback, the climactic shoot-out. Even the structural opposition of ci\ilised/effete East and rugged/savage West emphasised by Kitses (1969) and othersis embryonically present in a barn dance interlude where the assembledcowboys torment a 'greenhorn' or 'dude' (immediately identifiable by hisderby hat) by shooting at his feet. The film's status has undoubtedly beenenhanced by the f:lmous extra-diegetic shot I of the moustachioed outlawshooting directly at the camera, an iconic image that resonates through thesubsequent century of Hollywood's most popular and prolific genre (SergioLeone echoes Porter's act of specular aggression when Henry Fonda fires at

the camera in 011ce Upon a Tillie in tlte HfSI, 19(9).Out of the very large critical literature on the Western, a fairly standard

genre history has emerged whose outlines might be summarised as follows:having established itself as a popular genre if not with Porter then certainlyby H)05, the Western thrives throughout the silent and early sound eras. Thegenre reaches its peak of both popularity and cultural centrality in a twenty­year period starting in the late 1930s. During the postwar decade, theWestern is characterised by a self-conscious expansion and 'deepening' of itsgeneric remit and takes in a greater range of psychological, narrative andsometimes political complexities. The 'adult' Westerns of the 1950S ­

including such classics as Slta ne (195 I), H/~~1t XOOIl (H) 52), Tile Sfa rcllers(1955) and Rio Bral'o (1958) - are often either ostentatiously mythic (Sllil/le)or directly contemporary (H/~~II SOOIl, or the cycle of early 1950S 'pro-Indian'Westerns including BroA'Cll _~/TOlfJ, 1950, De1'l1 '.I DOOl'l/Jll)', 195 I, and _ipac!le,195+) in their address. During the H)60s and intensifying in the 1970s, a

THE WESTERN: GENRE A:-.ID HISTORY 57

combination of interrelated factors - generic exhaustion, ideological confusion,md shrinking audience appeal - led to the Western's 'demoralisation'(Slotkin, 199H: 6) and ultimately, despite (or, depending on the writer, partlybecause of) the injection of \'iolcnt pop energy from the Italian 'Spaghetti\\'estern', its eventual demise as a mainstream Hollywood genre by the endufthe 1970s. Although the subsequent decades have seen occasional nostalgicITvivals and the genre's core thematic preoccupations - in particular, themyth of the frontier - persist in other genres (notably science fiction), the\\'estern must now be regarded as a largely historical form.

\ reliable feature of such histories is the assertion of the Western'sccntrality to the history of the American film industry, reflected in thecnormous number of \Vesterns produced - more than any other g'Cnre - fromthc early silent period until the 1970s, and the Western's consistentpopularity with (some) audiences throug'hout much of that period. Yet mostsuch accounts imolve a striking if unacknowledged anomaly. On the onehand, the sheer scale of Western production, which during the genre's yearsof peak popularity saw wTll mer a hundred \Vesterns released each year(Buscombe, 1<)8H: +26-7, estimates some 3,5°0 films in the sound era alone),importantly sustains the large - sometimes \Try large - critical claims madefor the \\'estern's importance as a cultural document. On the other hand, inpursuing such claims \\'estern criticism has tended to rely very heavily onrather a small selection of this enormous filmogTaphy perhaps two dozenfilms, almost all of them made after the Second World War II. The mostinfluential and frequently cited discussions of the Western have tended toconduct an internal comersation about a \TrV limited number of films thattogether f()rm an established Western 'canon': Slage(()ac!1 (I<J39); infi'equentl~

.I1lother late HnOS prestige Western such as .lesse .lallles (H)+O); Ford's AI)'/)adillg C/elllCllI ille (19+6) and his 'en aIry trilogy' - Fori. iparlle (19+H), Site/I ore a } clio II' Ri/J/)(I/l (1<).10), Rio Gtilllde (19.11); Howard Hawks' Red Ril'erand RIO Bra,'o; SllilllC; Anthony ~lann's series of 1<).10S Westerns - especiall~

lIilldlcsler '7') (1950) and Tltc\"alml Spllr (I<)53, both with James Stewart),,1l1dHall oFillc ifni (19.1H, \vith Gary Cooper); Ford's Tltc Scanlters, andperhaps one of the 19.10S 'pro-Indian' Westerns, most likely BroA'cII .'lrrolfJ;nlc Jlall IU/() SI/()I Li/Jerl)' "alallte (H)62, Ford ag'ain); Sam Peckinpah's Tltc/lilt! BUllc!1 (1969). These, plus a few post-197° films, notably LilliI' B/~r: .Mal1(((no), _HeCi/lle alld .HrsHlller (1971), Peckinpah's Pal Carrell alld Bill)' Ihckid (r973), and the newest candidate for entry into the pantheon, Unjil/-gtl'en(I<)92), are rewarded with ongoing debate and reinterpretation. 'The Western'thus concei\ed becomes all but synonymous with a selection of prestigc\\'esterns from the postwar era, \yith moreoyer a strongly auteurist slant in

the emphasis on Ford, .\lann, Peckinpah and most recently Eastwood.Slagt'Coac!1 remains in such accounts - including most recently Coyne (1997)

5~ FILM GENRE

and Saunders (2001) - as it was for Warshow and Bazin, a watershed if notactually a foundational film in which the 'mature' genre's principal motifsand concerns crystallise for the first time. Nobody of course claims thatWesterns had not been made prior to 1939; rather, it is asserted that onlythen was 'the time ... evidently ripe for the Western to take its place as amajor Hollywood genre' (Coyne, 1997: 16). Like Wright (1975) before him,Coyne (1997) attempts to construct clear and transparent criteria forproducing a representative sample, using either production budgets or boxoffice returns as a useful and, on the LICe of it, relatively objective measureto identify 'major' Westerns within this 'major genre'.

The question is whether such 'major' works alone - e\Tn if one accepts thecriteria fix selection - necessarily constitute the most appropriate sample forunderstanding a genre. We encounter here an important problem in genrestudies: the process of selection and exclusion through which a genericcorpus is constructed. Largely \Hitten out of the standard accounts are notonh many 'A' Westerns of the [()50S amI early- to mid-1960s, but thelite;'ally thousands of silent Westerns and the 'B' (or series) Westerns of the[()3os and early 1940S - the menvhelming majority, in EICt (at a very roughestimate some 75-i{0 per cent), of all of the American \Vesterns eyerreleased. 2 Thus the \Vestern constructed through comentional genre historiesis a somewhat inex,ICt mirror of the Western as actually produced andconsumed fex approximately half its life-span. Of course, the criticalconstruction of almost any artistic field, the Victorian novel no less than the\Vestern, is marked by a process of emon formation through \\ hich classicsand major artists arc established, subsequently del\ving the greater pro­portion of critical attention and defining the key terms of debate in the field.i\nd developing any coherent account of 'the \Vestern' out of a vast field \\ illquite clearly require some degree of selectivity: few critics have been \\illingto undertake the truly Herculean vie\\ing' task a truly comprehensive accountof the genre \\ould entail. But this problem of requiring a quite clearlyunrepresentative sample - in purely statistical terms at am rate - to 'stand in'for a \asth Iaru;er field and the difficultv of g,lUging the merit of the claims_..' -made for or about that larger field through analysing such a sample, is a long-standing one; it is particularly vexed in the context of popular media studies,where it is compounded by problems of marketplace competition and accessto material (infrequently screened on television, rarely featured in genre orautcur retrospectives, even the rene\ved profitability of the major studios'film libraries during the video explosion of the early Iqi{os did little to restorethe visibility of series Westerns produced by Republic or .\lonogram).

Beyond the usual questions of bi.ls and ideological preference that canonformation inevitabl~ raises (sec Fokkema, [()q6; Gorak, H)9 I), the specificcritical problems \vith such extreme selectivity in relation to \Vesterns are

, THE WESTERN: GENRE AND HISTORY 59

perhaps twofold. In the first place, a general rule of Hollywood productionthroughout the classical period was that the larger the budget, the moreextended a film's audience appeal needed to be. Whereas routine, low-costprogramme \Vesterns could earn a decent return from the Western's coreextra-urban and regional audience alone, bigger stars and higher production,.liues necessarily entailed outreach beyond that core eonstitueney.3 Thisrequirement of generic amortisation becomes all the more pressing with thespiralling budgets of the 0.'ew Hollywood: accordingly, when embarking on\\hat eventually became Ht'{[l"CIl's GI/lt' (198o), the infamous $40 millionrmge\\ar catastrophe that would lose most of them their jobs and virtuallyb,mkrupt their studio, United Artists' production executives balked at\ lichael Cimino's script's original title - PI/ydlrl - which struck them as 'very\\cstern indced' (and undesirably so, given the genre's long-term decliningpopularity) (Bach, 19i{5: (76).~ This is not simply an issue of marketing ­,lithough if box office returns are to be used as sampling criteria, whataudiences expected to sec in a particular film is surely as important as whatmodern critics of the Western see today -' but also of content. A prestige\\cstern might, felr example, include a more fully developed romantic interestto dra\\ in female audiences, as in the Errol Flynn-Olivia de Havilland star\chicle ThC)' Dit'd IVllh Their Bools On (Il)41). In short, 'A' Westerns- acategory into which most of the canonical films listed above would Eli I ­might \\ell be less generically representati\c in so f~lr as, by design, theyk,lture elements that transcend, and hence extend, the \Vestern's essentialgeneric hame.

Indeed, much of the discussion of these canonical \Vesterns turns out toti>eus on just such qualities of generic innovation and extension. The postwarfilms on \\hich most scholarship has f(lcused are typically disting'uished frompre\\ar 'B' \Vesterns (not to mention the progLlmme \Vesterns that con­tinued to be produced in sig'nificant numbers until the late 1l)50s) by higherhudgets, more complex approaches to character and history, and quite explicit

in many cases hig'hly elaborate and self-conscious - attempts to extendand/or transgress generic comentions and boundaries: all characteristics thatnaturally recommend themse!\'es to critics frequently schooled in techniquesor literary analysis for whom complexity, formal experimentation, etc., areprivileged qu,liities. This in turn raises a second difficulty: felr the claim ofthese films' generic nme!ty (hence usually, at least by impliCltion, artistic'>uperiority) necessarily relics on their deviation hom or ad'lptation of genericnorms \vhich, however, are thcmsehes typically .lssumed rather th,m exem­plified or explored.

It is timely then that the history of the \\'estcrn genre is currently thesubject of a scholarly range war, or at least a border skirmish. The standardnarrative of the genre's evolution is being' challenged ,1l1d the Western's

60 FILM GE:-JRE

generic map partly rewritten. This inevitably complicates matters for students- not least because it inevitably tends to emphasise films outside the existingcanon, many of them difficult to access - but should nonetheless be \\e1comedas rebalancing a long-standing problem of critical bias. Gallagher (I (95)argues that the standard account rhetorically constructs a large, and largelyunseen, body of prewar films as naively primitive purely to prO\ide anunflattering comparison with the psychological and ideological complexitiesand ironies of thc postwar Western. S Neale (2000) and Stanfield (2001),among others, have also strongly criticised the distortions caused by theobviously partial .~. both incomplete and also pa rl i pris - version of a long andextensive genre history summarised above.

The loss of so many silent films of all kinds, and the extremely limitedcirculation of all but a few of those that h,ne sunin:d, makes serious studyof the silent Western very difficult for all but specialists. Seminal Westernstars such as Broncho Billy Anderson, Tom \'lix and William S. Hart,although their films established many of the genre's enduring formulae, arefor most modern viewers dimly glimpsed figures the other side of a sizeablehistorical and cultural chasm. HowC\er, contemporary scholarship hasstarted to give the silent Western its generic due, as reflected in recent booksby Lusted (200.r (>7-94-) and Simmon (200T 3-rn)..\longside studies of theearly Western as an important discourse for mediating and refining .\mericanwhite male identity in the Progressin: era, a period in which mass immigra­tion and the spectre of racial pollution troubled the white imagination (Slotkin,1()9R: 24-2-52; Abel, 199R), a growing body of \vork has paid attention to theunexpected complexities of the representation of Native .\mericans in pre­First World War Westerns (Aleiss, 1995; Griffiths, 1996, 2002; Jay, 2000).The latter research sug;gests that some prevailing; assumptions about thenovelty of canonical postwar 'pro-Indian' \Vesterns such as BrokclI .·lrrllll',Dail's DillinI'll)' amI .,lpad/c may need to be re-examined.

The problem posed by the critical neglect of 'B' - or, more accurately,series - \Vesterns is even more acute, particularly since unlike the silcnts thisbody of films is largely extant (and has recently started to find its way ontohome video). !V1ore than a thousand Westerns were produced during theHnOS. Howe\er (following the box-office failure in HnO of the prestigeWesterns Thc BI~I!, Trail- the film intended to break John Wayne as a majorstar, which instead consigned him to series Westerns fClr the rest of thedecade - and Cill/arrllll), only a handful of these \\ere 'A.' pictures. :\ot untilthe very end of decade did the' .-\' Western see a renaissance that persistedthrough US entry into the Second World \Var at the end of 194-1. Yet today,as Peter Stanfield (2001) points out in the introduction to his pathbreaking'recent study, the series \Vestern is almost entirely forgotten, consigned to thesame memory hole as the silents, treated as juvenile ephemera of interest only

ITHE WESTERN: GENRE AND HISTORY 61

to collectors and their numerous buffish enthusiasts. As with Hart and Mixin the silent era, the names at least of some series Western stars remain veryfamiliar - Wayne, of course, and in particular, the 'singing' cowboys' Gene.\utry and Roy Rogers - but the films that made their fortunes, to saynothing of their writers and directors, are today hardly known except tospecialists and 'bufTs'. Similarly, the series Western has been mostly ignoredby serious criticism. Slotkin (1998: 271-7) devotes just seven of Gun./ighter\allllil's 850 pages to a consideration of 1930S series \Vesterns. In his seminalcssay on Westerns, Warshow ([1954] HJ7Sb) in the same breath dismissessilents and 'Bs' alike ell nIasse as 'nothing that an adult could take seriously'. \\hile confessing to having never seen a single example of either! It seemsthat the popular conception of the Western as formulaic and simplistic reliesupon a sort of folk memory of childhood Saturday matinees or fadedtelevision showings of such films.

Stanfield (I 99R, 2001) argues that the settlement of the frontier (seebclrm) is much less important to 1930S series Westerns than issues aroundland O\\Oership, regionalism and urbanisation. The critically despised singing\\esterns of Gene Autry - most of which featured contemporary, not frontiersettings - directly addressed 'the difficulties his audience confronted inmaking the socioeconomic change from subsistence farming to a culture ofconsumption, from self~employment to industrial practices and wage depen­dency, from rural to urban living' (Stanfield, 199R: 1q). Leyda's (2002) workon a variant form even further below the critical radar of standard accounts,the 'race' (black audience) Western, has found striking similarities with themainstream series \Vestern.

Such research, simply by extending the genre's historical and criticalpuniew, changes the context for understanding the Western. In the case ofthe post-Second World \Var \Vestern, more research remains to be done onthe significant number of routine Westerns still being produced until thel11id- 1960s. The key task facing genre criticism of the post- 194-5 period,however, may be less the extension of the canon _. as we have seen this isalready heavily \veighted towards the postwar \Vestern - than critical interro­~!;ation of the received understanding of the genre's central preoccupation inthis period- the frontier.

THE WEST(ERN) OF HISTORY

:\eale points out that the critical focus on the theme of the frontier largelv, L.

constructed in terms of the 'desert!g'arden' opposition derived from JohnFord by structuralist critics, not only obscures large portions of the historicalrecord of \Vestern production but has also tended to have difficulty with

62 FILM GENRE

such important categories of contemporary criticism as gender, sexuality andclass. 'It is at least worth asking whether the male-orienled \ersions offrontier mythology promoted by post-war western theorists are borne out in

full by the industry's output, or whether the critical preference has tended to

obscure the existence of ... other trends and titles' (:\eale, 2000: q2). It is

equally important to consider whether, in light of renewed critical interest in

the series Western, the Western's apparent preoccupation with the idea of

the frontier itself represents a significant shift of generic f(Jeus, and what the

factors impelling that shift might ha\e been. Whereas Slotkin (I99~), for

example, argues for the ideological centrality of the frontier myth throughout

the twentieth century and indeed before, Engelhardt (IlN5) proposes that a

prog;ressi\e crisis in the dominant '\ictory culture' in the post\\ar period,

attendant on social change and setbacks and confusions in f()reign policy,

made con\entional notions of American identity, such as those \Tsted in the

frontier myth, objects of urgent debate,

The institutionalisation of the myth of the frontier as the dominant

paradigm for discussing the Hollywood Western owes a good deal to two

influential, loosely 'structuralist' studies that adapted U~\i-Strauss's model

to identify the Western's basic conceptual materials - its imaginati\e

building-blocks. Jim ~itses (19()9) identified a set of 'shifting; antinomies' (p.

I I) org.mised around a central opposition of \\ilderness and ci\ilisation,r'

while Will Wright (H)75) outlined f(lUr main models of Western narrati\es

and their numerous \ariant subsets.! These and other accounts of the \Yestern

in many ways take as their point of departure the \\estern's imbrication in

American history. Nor is this surprising: the Western is, ostensibly ,It least,

the most historically specific and consistent of all film genres. :\ccording to

Phil Hardy, 'the Western is fixed in history in a relati\e1y straightforward

way': specifically, 'the frontier, and, more particularly, the frontier between

the Ci\il War and the turn of the century, forms the backdrop to most

Westerns' (Hardy, 1991: x-xi).

Hardy freely acknmYledges, as do most similar sur\eys, the need f()r

g'enerie boundaries flexible enough to accommodate such ob\ious '\Yesterns',

albeit displaced in time and/or space, as Drullls ..Jlli/lg f/ie .Hlilllll!'J: (1939, set

in Colonial :'\iew England), Clili,I!.IIll's BIIII.! (I96~, a contemporary urban

thriller) and Wesf}}Jlirld (I<)73, a science fiction film), Hardy's identification of

'the frontier' as the general organising imag'inati\e and conceptual axis of the

\Vestern is also entirely cOl1\entional. :\nd like \irtu,llly e\ery other \\Titer on

the \Vestern, he asserts from the outset that the \Yestern transf()rms

historical material into archetypal myth. Yet there is nonetheless an inherent

underlying problem in using 'the frontier' as a straightf()\'\\ard historical

category and a means of arguing the historicity of the \\estern. For, as this

section explores, the \ersion of history that in such accounts is 'mythified' by

I;

THE WESTER:"J: GE'JRF. AND HISTORY 63

the Western is itself already as much myth as history - and, like so many

\Yesterns, consciously so,'The frontier' has a decepti\ely precise and stable ring: but according to

its most influential chronicler, historian Frederick Jackson Turner, whose

celebrated ([ 19.+71 1986) essay 'The Closing of the American Frontier'

defined the terms of Western historiography for oyer half a century, in reality

the frontier was always and by definition mobile, not a clear boundary but an

uncertain and shifting; prospect alongside, or just ahead, of the leading edge

ofthc \\hite colonial ad\'ance across the North American continent. Although

"hite settlement took some three hundred years, from the early se\enteenth

century to the uawn of the t\\entieth, to span the continent fl'om the Atlantic

to the Pacific Ocean, the generic f()Cus of the modern Western is usually on

the decades f()IIO\\ing the end of the Ci\il War. These \\ere decades of large­

scale industrialisation and population grm\lh during which, with the support

of the federal gO\Trnment in Washington and encourag'ed by enthusiastic

hoosterism in the Eastern press, the major \\'a \e of white colonisation

penetrated the Llstnesses of the American interior west of the wlississippi,

The defining images of this epochal story - the co\ered wagon; the construc­

tion of the transcontinental railroad; the 'claim' staked out in the trackless

prairie; the one-street frontier township; the cowboy as the paradig;matic

\Yesterner; abO\T all, the encounter of white settlers with the 1'\ati\e

\merican tribal populations they aimed to displace and the subsequent brutal

[ndian \Yars, the C\:terminatiH~ campaigns of pacification waged by the US

Cl\alry on the colonists' behalf - in turn became the key motifs of the

\\estern film.

Turner's fi'ontier thesis is worth exploring briefly- not least beCiuse

recent challenges to the Turnerian account of \Yestern history ha\'e had as

decisi \e, if mediated, ,\11 impact on the Western as did the intellectual and

conceptual hegemony of the origin.ll argument. For Turner, the mO\ing

lI'ontier had been the defining element of :\merican history, .'\s a source of

'fi'ee land', the seemingly inexhaustible \Yestern wilderness allowed American

society to grO\\ and de\e1op in unique ways (Turner, [1<).+7] 19~6: 259 6 I).Because of the challeng'Cs of pacifying and settling the fi'ontier, the American

national character \\as shaped not by the urban class conflicts that typified

the industrialising European economies during the nineteenth century, but

by the encounter between ci\ilisation and untamed, sometimes sa\ag;e nature

(p. 3f.). In fact, the frontier acted as a 'safety \ahc' for potentially explosi\'e

cLJss conflicts by allowing marginalised social elements - the poor, newly

arri\ed immigrants, etc. - to start afresh and f()I'ge their O\\n destinies while

playing' their part in the inexorable athance of :\mericm ci\ilisation (pp.

263~). The frontier \\,IS thus nothing less than the 'crucible' of :\merican

democracy, and its singular and defining aspect.

64 FILM GENRE

Even on such a heavily abbreviated account, the power of Turner's thesisis clear. Its historical sweep and the bold, broad brushstrokes with whichTurner outlines an entirely novel account of American historv certainlycaptured the public imagination as fnv other academic theses did, a resuitthat Turner doubtless fully intended \\hen he deli \cred his original paper atthe Columbian Exposition in Chicago in July IH93 (see Peterson, 199.r 743­5)· And the influence of the e:xtensively popularised 'Turner thesis' on thefictive \Vest is widespread and profound, Sometimes the debt is e:xplicitlyacknowledged, as in the debate concerning the nature of 'progress' conductedby the civic worthies heading to the frontier to\m of Dodge Cil)' (1939) on thefirst westbound train. More generally, the schematisation of the frontierexperience in terms of a Turnerian opposition bet\\een the \'alues of (White)civilisation and the r~l\\ wilderness (tvpically including the non-Whitecultures of Native .\mericans) is readily identifiable in numerous \Yesterns,and figures consistently as the central preoccupation of the genre's t\VO pre­cminent directors in the sound era, John Ford and Sam Peckinpah,

Although a full exploration is beyond the scope of the present work, abrief look at the genre's treatment of social space reveals the impact ofTurner's ideas on Westerns, The most quintessentially 'civilised' of spaces,thc city, enjoys a very mixed reputation in \Yesterns, .\s ELhvard Buscombe(I9 HH : HH) notes, a significant proportion of the population of the Old Westlived in cities; \ct cities as such arc offscreen presences, railheads, unreacheddestinations (such as Junction City, \\here the train \\ill be held 1<1I' Senatorand Mrs StOlltLtrd at the end of Th1' Hall Who SI/()l 1"A'l'll' [ilii/llce), pointsof pioneer departure or cultural reference' pre-eminently such paradigma­ticIlly 'Eastern' cities as Boston, \\ hence hail Doc Holliday and Clementine\\ith their ambivalent baggage of both culture and corruption in. H)' Dar/illgC!('///('111ill1' (194-6). The inclusion of an actual cityscape in a \\estern (Casparin //('(11.'1'1/ 's Gille, or "lachine in neill!. HI/II, 199.5) is a cast-iron guarantee ofre\isionist intent. Numerous \Ycsterns Ii'om /fell's flillges (I<)16) on h,1\ewhat mig'ht be ca lied proto-urban setting,'s, usually '\\'ide-open', i.e. ,1S yetvirtually tl\\less, to\\nships \\ hose sustailubility remains \ ery unceruin, and\\ hose pacification thus prO\ides the basic narrati\ e material of the 'to\m­taming' \\'estern (I<Jr example, J)odge Cil)' and its se\eral imitators). The'settled' Tonto and the '\\ ide-open' Lordsburg', the t\VO to\\ns that bookendthe EIleful journey in Slil,!;(,(OilCh, respectively embody snobbery, bigotry andhypocrisy, and \iolence, anarchv and degradation: the decided Iv mixed. .'blessings of civilisation', as the lilm's L1l110US closing line puts it.

Similar ambiguities beset the representation in \\esterns of the city's'other', the \\ilderness. The \\'estern is, of course, supremely a genre ofexteriors, .\lore accurately, it is a genre \vhere definitive experiences andunderstandings are usually to be 1<)lll1d out of doors, preferabh in the

f

THE WESTERN: (jE:'oJRE AND HISTORY 65

unconfined spaces of prairie, sierra or desert. Although interior spaces dorc,lture regularly, they usually have the rough, unfinished, provisional qualityone \\ould expect of frontier settlements - sometimes literally, as in thedlllrch, as yet barely a scaffold outline against the big sky, around which theI1<1SCen t community of Tombstone gather in dedication of the building and ofthemsehes in one of the most celebrated sequences in any Western (in fact,in all .\merican cinema) in Ford's H)! DI/r/illg ClemClliille. By contrast, thejl'1'r~-built, half-finished \\Teck of a house built by Little Bill, the brutal,,11110ral sheriff of Big Whisky in Ulljiirgi,'CII, points not to an evolvingci\ ilisation but to one in civic and moral decline. The crudely functionalquality of most \\'estern interiors ,- saloons, homesteads, cabins - confessestheir ne\\ness and confirms the need for ongoing decisive action beyond thethreshold if their fragile purchase on the wilderness is not to be swept aside.(Refinements of design and elaborate architectural features tend to denotesL',\ual licence - such as the brothel in The C//(]'ClII/(' Socilt! Cll/h, 1970 ­1l1Oneyed corruption - the palatial ranch house in The B/~I!, CO/l1Iirv, 19.5H -. orboth Barbara St~lI1\v~Tk's altogether 1111 I/'(; mansion in Samuel Fuller's\\ildly stylised PorlV Gllns, )().57.)

It is not, however, purely in the depiction of these apparently dichotomousspaces, interior and exterior, urban and wilderness, but in the ambivalentrelationship bet\\een and the \alues reposed in them, that the Western findsits determining ground. In the Ltmous paired opening and closing shots ofnil' Smrdlers, Ethan Ed\vards respectively arrives li'om and retreats backinto the desert that is his only real 'home', filmed in both cases from illsidethe \\,lrm darkness of a domestic space he is committed to defend yet within\\ hich he is a po\\erfully disruptive, even a destrueti\e, f<)ITe ..\nd althoughFt han's e\ ery action bears po\\crfully on this sheltered E1milial spacedefending, avenging and finally restoring it - the sphere in which he conductssuch decisive ,Iction, like the man himself, remains fundamentally separateti'om and outside it. .\lthough he docs not cite Turner, I\..itses' 'shifting,1I1tinomies' reflect classicalh Turnerian attitudes to\\ards the almost contra­dictory interdependency of \\i1derness and ciyilisation. For on the one handTurner's account is a hymn to progress; hence the taming of the \\ildernessis a, perhaps lltl', quintessential .\merican triumph. But as the ad\ance ofsettlement moycs the (i'ontier \\'est\\ards, it also ine'l:orably shrinks it. Turner's

p'1per therefore not only sought to make the case I<Jr the frontier as thedcfiniti\l~ aspect of the .\mcrican national experiencc, but explorcd theimplications of its disappearance. The closing of lhe frontierX formally

pronounced by the 1H90 Federal Census three years prior to Turner'spresentation in Chicago - parad(nically threatened the Ycry .\merican demo­cracy to \\hich it bore \\itness by climinating the force that made\mericaunique, Thus there is an undertow of both nost,tlg'ia and anxiety for thc

66 FILM GENRE

future in Turner's survey of an ostensibly triumphant present: contradictorybut powerful impulses that the postwar Western in particular would take upand make its own.

The ambivalences and ironies of the 'closing' of the frontier came todominate the imaginative landscape of the postwar Western. AlthoughWestern film-makers have largely ignored the conclusions Turner drew,9Westerns have long drawn on the yaledictory quality of his account as a

source of dramatic tension and elegiac colour. 'Boys,' intones \Villiam S.Hart in his final film Tumbleweeds (1928), 'it's the last of the West'. Ford'sThe Man Who Shot Libert)1 Valill/re deals quite explicitly with the 'closing ofthe frontier' theme, with the film's protagonist Ransom Stoddard anadvocate of statehood and the rule of law and the yillainous Valance the

hireling of big ranching interests who have profited from the more looselyregulated territorial status. Valance is a psychopathic thug and there is noquestion where the film's sympathies lie. Yet Valance's actual killer, thehonorable frontiersman Tom Doniphon, retreats into the (literal and figura­tive) shadows and subsequently declines to an alcoholic pauper's death in away that suggests that the cry - 'I jberty's dead!' - that rings through Shinbonefollowing Valance's murder carries an ironic charge. The film's rich symboliclexicon makes it clear that the story of Shinbone is a parable of the closing ofthe frontier and an object lesson in the 'yalences' of 'liberty'.

Two other notable Westerns released along'side Libcrl)' Tii/allre in 1962,Lonel)' .cJre the Brllz'e and Peckinpah's Ride the llip,h COllllliy, dealt with thesame theme. With these three films, the elegiac strain present from the

Western's inception emerg'ed as the dominant theme of the decades duringwhich the genre itself experienced its most marked and seeming'ly terminaldecline. The 'end-of-the-Iine' Western, in which the Western hero is broughtLICe to LICe with the inescapable Llct of his 0\\11 redundancy, dominated the

genre in the I960s and I970s. BIIlth Cassidy IIl1d the SlIl/(llIlIte Alii (1969) meettheir doom in a mood of amiable acquiescence rather than bloody despair,and with the consolation of their crystallisation into legend; the doomed

heroes of Dealh (~r a Gllldighicr (1969), Wild ROn'rs (1971) or Tom Hom(1980) are less fortunate, their ugly, painful deaths merely testif~ing to theyenality of the societ y that has lost its use for them. TT ill PCI//lY (I 9(n), ,HllllieWalsh (HnO), seyeral modern-day Westerns including The .Hls/ils (1962),Hlld (1963) and a cycle of early I970S rodeo films - J. W Coop, TUCI/ IheLegends Die, The JJOIIJ.:crS and Peckinpah's .lll/lior BOllller (all I97r) ­

rendered the mythic West's heroic codes bleakly irrele\ ,mt to the workingWesterner's subsistence-Ieyel daily grind. :\lany of these films seemed to be

claiming to strip away the trappings of myth to sh(J\\ the \Vest 'as it really

was'. On the other hand, their interest in doing so was clearly motivated bya desire to provide a counter-history (or myth) to the dominant one. This

, THE WESTERN: GENRE AND HISTORY 67

raises questions about the kind of history-making process in which Westernsthemselyes participate, which the following pages \yill explore.

THE HISTORY OF WESTERNS

'This isn't the Wild West. I mean, e\Cn the Wild West wasn't the Wild

West'. John Spartan (Syhester Stallone), Deff/olitioll MI/II (1993)

Recent critiques of the Turner thesis make it very clear that Turner self­consciously rendered his account of frontier history in the simplified, arche­typal terms of national myth. Much the same can of course be said about thefilm Western. Film-makers consistently attest to the rigour of their historicalresearch and the resulting historical 'authenticity' of their productions ­

indeed there is a sort of generational contest in this, each new wave of\\estern film-makers aiming to retrine a 'truer' picture of the 'real West'.

But nen the first great Western stars of the silent era, Broncho Billy\nderson and (especially) William S. Hart, derived the outward trappings of

their screen personae from the elaborate paraphernalia of the Wild West ShowcO\yboy more than his comparatiyely drab real-world working counterpart(see Lusted, 200]: 90)..\nd the powerful character types they synthesised ­notably Hart's 'Good Bad :\:lan' - in their turn established firm represen­

Lltional parameters (and created audience expectations) against whichsubsequent film-makers wcre inn-itably compelled to define their own\ crsions of the \Vest, even if their stated intention was to return beyond such

fictions to a putative historical actuality.In the wake of modern histories of the West - which have had an

undeniable, if usually rather delayed and unpredictably mediated, impactupon the fictional \Vestern (see \VorLmd and Countryman, H)98) it hasbecome apparent that some of the \Vestern's most central motifs have their

origins in the intersection of popular memory, cultural myth and ideologicalnecessity rather than 'real' history. To take one example, the professional

~unfighter, a key figure in the postwar Western from The Glllljighicr (1950)to The QllltJ.: alld Ihe Del/d (1995), 'for whom formalized killing \vas a callingand e\Cn an art,' is, as Slotkin (1998: 38-4-) puts it, 'the imention of movies' .. the reHection of Cold \Var-era ideas about professionalism and yiolence

and not of the mores of the Old \Vest'. Even guns, or at least handguns, may

have been less ubiquitous than \Vesterns would have us believe: Robert

\Itman is perhaps on to something in .HtCl/he I/lld JlrsHiller (1971) whenthe sidearm .\lcCabe sports proHlkes curious/alarmed comment upon his

arriyal in the mining settlement of Presbyterian Church (it is left deliberatelyunclear whether .\lcCabe is indeed, as the townsfolk assume, the notorious

68 FILM GENRE

gunslinger 'Pudgy' McCabe, or indeed whether 'Pudgy' is himself merelyanother figment of the frontier imagination).

MoreoHT, the process of rendering history as myth is the explicit focus ofa significant number of important post\yar \Vesterns. Historians themselyes- especially if one broadens that categ'ory to include reporters and dimenoyelists - feature surprisingly frequently in Westerns, particularly from theIg60s onwards as the genre becomes marked by ,1 gnl\\ing self-consciousnessabout its role in fabricating the national self-image. The I I2-year-old JackCrabbe in J.ilt/l' Big /HI/il tells his life story to a bemused ethnographer, \\hilesensationalising hacks arc a standard feature of most yersions of the Billy theKid story. Perhaps the most LImous line of dialogue in any Western (theapocryphal 'a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do' aside) is spoken by onesuch chronicler towards the end of John Ford's The /HI/II Who Shol J.//Jl'rl)!VI//allce. The local newspaper editor in the \Vestern outpost has just listenedto hometown celebrity US Senator Ransom Stoddard's startling confession:the heroic reputation on which Stoddard has built a national political career- that many years before in the streets of Shinbone, then a Ia\yless fi'ontieroutpost, Stoddard shot down the notorious gunman Liberty Valance - is inf;'lCt a lifdong lie. In reality it was local rancher Tom J)oniphon, \\hosepauper's funeral Stoddard has returned to Shinbone to attend, \\ ho shotValance unseen to saye the greenhorn Eastern Ll\\yer fi'om cert.lin death.Stoddard W'll1ts to set the record straight as a form of restitution - to the deadDoniphon, to his \yifi: Hallie (originally Doniphon's girl) to history, to himself.Yet the newspaper editor refuses to print Stoddard's truthful, but IT\isionist,account on the grounds that 'This is the \Vest, sir. \Vhen the legend becomesLler print the Ieg:end!' - a m,lxim often cited as a reflC\i\c summary by thegenre's most celebrated film-maker on the \\estern's o\\n ambiguous rela­tionship to history.

In the film's account of ho\y hisron is \\Titten, alternate \ersions ,1l1dperspecti\es arc .1\ ailable onl~ through Ellltasy, a point Ford underlines byemploying' a self--consciousl~ stilted, almost archaic \isual style duringStoddard's flashback, marking the element of self-sening distortion in hisaccount; ho\\c\er, this remains the only account \\e ha\c. 'History' beginsand ends in leg"Cnd, and that legend is essentially autonomous of eilherhistorical LIct or any indi\idual retelling of it. So the lesson RansomStoddard finally learns as he, like Tom Doniphon in his coffin, is nailed backinto the mythical identity \\ hich time, circUmsLll1Ce and historical necessityha\e all forced upon him, is that while this may not be the (\\cstern) historyhe (or we) want, it remains the histor~ \\e\e got. lIence ,my nai\-e ,lttemptto 'set the record straight' is doomed by its O\\n idealistic illusion that historyexists outside of retellings of it; the ideological 0\ erdetermination of somestories prohibits their redemption fi'om \yithin the representational paradigms

THE WESTERN: GENRE AND HISTORY 69

b\ which those stories are comeyed. By this pitiless generic logic, not only~ust the legend, famously, be printed-, but the possibility of printing (orfilming) anything else - anything more 'truthful' - ne\er really existed.

:\ similar implication is communicated by the rather majestic final shot ofSergio Leone's OIlCl' CPOII 1/ T/Ille /11 .1/11er/cl/ (1969), the Spaghetti Westernmaestro's first American studio picture. As the dust settles on the climactic~lInfight to which the entire epic film has been inexorably building in orthodox~Tneric fashion, and the suniying gunfighter, with equal predictability, ridesinto the sunset, the first train arri\"Cs on ne\Y)y laid rails into the embryonicto\\I1 of S\yeet\\at<:r and the frontier life fades before our yery eyes. As if toconfirm that the railroad and the monopoly capitalism it represents areindeed harbingers of historical time and the simulLmeous retreat of them~ thie \Vest into legend, the film's title (excluded from the opening credits),etched in classic '\\estern' typeElCe, spirals into the frame and eyentuallyLldes ,I\\ay into the dusty plains. Thus OIlCl' .,. purports to prO\ide theprehistory of the \\estern. But for the specLltor, the film's representationalparadox is that this prehistory has itself been ,lCcessible only in the terms ofthe \\estern itself. For \\hile the action of the film may address the Westernmyth's foundational moment, it CIll do so only in the genre's own para­digmatic narrati\e and characterological norms (silent re\Tng-er, 'outla\\hero', Bad \lan, unscrupulous businessman, \yhore, etc.). OIlCl' ... strips barethe \\estern's claims on historictl \crisimilitude .111d pushes its innatel~

ritualised and stylised aspects to near-parodic extremes that cyacuate the filmof narrati\e credibility and ps~ chological realism alike, to the point where wehecome fundamentally a\yare only of the pre-gi\en structural reh!tions het weengeneric clements. Leone's ludic film at e\ er~ stage cha lIeng"Cs the \Vestern's,lbility to sustain g"Cnuine historical enquiry ,111d dC\e1ops the object lesson ingcneric necessity taught Ransom Stoddard in 1./IlerlJ' l-il/IIIICl' into its centralpcr/()rmati\c contradiction. The not-so-simple truth is that f()r the spectatorthere is no ,Iccess throug'h representation to any putati\e time 'hcf()re' the"-estern itself - and no spectator of 0/1(,' L pOll II 1'/1111' /11 lhl' Iresl coulddoubt it hence no possi bi lity of direct his torica I represen ta tion. In ot her\yords, in the \Vest it h,ls ah\a~s already been 'Once upon ,I time'.

Cii\cn this ineluctable textuality, it should come as no surprise that thefilm \\estern's \ersion of "estern history is often only loosel~ \\edded to thehistorical \\est ITeo\cred by historians. For example, although the story ofthe settlement of the \Vest is in large part a story of Elrming and entre­preneurial acti\ity, Schatz (1981: -t~'n notes that the \\estern typically paysmerc lip senice to the agrarian \\ays of life that it narrati\e1y champions:from ,')'//(/111' to PiI/l' R/da (IgSA) the \irtuous, ind ustrious husbandsman isopposed to the ruthless rancher, prodig.11 of l1<ltural resources and indifferentto communitarian principles, yet 'HollY \\oml's \ ersion of the Old \Vest has

70 FILM GENRE

as little to do with agriculture - though it has much to do with rural values- as it does with history'. Farmers and small businessmen (as opposed to

cattlemen ,md rohher harons) are rarely central figures in \Vesterns - unlesslike Jesse JlIl/les (1<,)39) or The Olltlllll' JIl.I'e)1 TVllies (H)76) restlessness orinjustice compels them to abandon their homesteads. Exceptions to this rule,such as GollI' Soulh (1978) and The Bllilad o(Llllle]o (I<)()S) tend also to begenerically atypical in other ways.

It is after all not the rich loam of Missouri or Idaho but the red dust ofArizona and the austere peaks of the Rockies that supply the genre's mostreadily recognisahle landscapes. In f:lCt, the postwar Western often discO\·ersa pathos in the conflict of irreconcilahle values bet\\een the itinerant cowboyor gunfighter and the Llrming communities he defends and to which he ispartly drawn, yet which he can never become part of. Despite little Joey'sheartbroken appeals, Shane rides ~l\\ay into the plains whence he arrived,perhaps [Hally \\ounded..\s the t\\O suniving memhers of The Hagl1ljirclltSCI'ell (lq60) depart the :Vlexican village they have saved from maraudinghandits (a third has returned to his own peasant roots), it seems to Chris, theSeven's IClder, that 'the [lrmers won. \Ve lost. We always lose' (HUOS 'B'Westerns, hy contr,lst, typically ended \\ith the hero romantically paired offand headed directly for the altar, supporting Sunfield's (I qq8, 200 I) argu­ment that the settlement of the frontier is much less important to these filmsthan land ownership, to which since the Regency and \"ictorian novelcomedies of marriag"e ha\c heen intimately linked).

In short, the image of the historical West in the Western is ahvays andalready just that· an inugT, {i-amed in the lig·ht of a historical record that isitself anything· but innocent and impartial. This of course does not mean that\Vestern history is in any facile sense 'unreal' or 'false'. It does, hmvever,mean that such histories ha\c heen hom the outset 'mcrdetermined' culturalproductions"· that is, subject to multiple and sometimes contradictory causalt:lCtorS. As ·\Iexandra Keller (ZOOI: 30) observes, 'if \\·esterns had no realrelationship to historical discourse, they would hardly have the p(mer theydo. But the relationship is far more complex than the genre itself typicall~

suggests'. Janet Walker (ZOOI) points out that Westerns are rooted in historyin some fairly ol1\ious ~et also fundamental ways. \Vesterns clearly draw onthe documented history of the West for their narrati\c premises. Individualhistorical figures likc Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, GeorgeArmstrong· Custer, '\\ ild Bill' Hickok, 'Calamity Jane' (.\larthy Cannery),Geronimo and many others figure centrally or peripherally in many \\"esterns,while the larger narrati\es of the Indian \Yars, the building of the trans­continental railroad and the Gold Rush supply a number of the basic \Yesternnarrative paradigms identified by \\"right (I(ns) ~md sene ~IS a backdrop tofictitious stonlines.

THE WESTERN: GENRE AND HISTORY 71

.\-lore complexly, h()\\C\er, given that the 'real' history the Westernexploits is itself 'fragmented, fuzzy and striated with fantasy constructions'(Walker, 2001: 10), it \\ould be equally naive to insist on any unambiguously[lCtual historical reality (to \\hich \ve could in any e\·ent have no unmediatedaccess, since all history is of necessity constructed through discourse andnarrative). The railroad- (and nation-) building epic The Iron Horse (1924)claims in its opening titles to be 'accurate and faithful in every recordedparticular', and climaxes in a tableau-like restaging of the famous meeting ofthe Continental and Pacific Railroads ,It Promontory Point in Utah. However,given that the image Ford recre~ltes here \vas itself carefully staged by;'ailroad photographer .\. J. Russell, the precise nature of the 'history' being·rendered is open to question. As the final section of this chapter will discuss,most analyses of Westerns in [lCt emphasise the importance of the immediatecontexts - industrial, social and/or political - of their production, or the\\estern's internal conversation around its O\vn evoh"ing generic paradig·ms,rather than focusing on the elements of Western history being recorded, evenif those elements, as they frequently do, dramatise real events and personalities.

THE WESTERN IN HISTORY

Sam Peckinpah's Westerns of Iq6q-73, The Wild Buuth, The Bililild o(Cil/J/elloguc and Pill Gilrrell illld Bill)' lite Kid arc quintessential examples of the'end-of-the-line' Western discussed abme (p. (6). With Jllllior Bonller as aless tragic modern pemhmt, in these films Peckinpah explored the West'sshrinking horizons and the \Yesterner's few remaining options in an era\\hen, as the Bunch's leader Pike Bishop (William Holden) memorablyobsencs, '\Ye\c got to think beyond our g·uns. Them days arc closing· fast.'Peckinpah's protagonists typically find themsehcs unable or uO\\illing to'ldapt to the new times, but equally unable to hold back the inexorable paceof soci~d change..\s Douglas Pye has commented (I C)1)6: 18), their 'range ofaction [is I finally limited in some cases to a choice of h(m to die' - as at theclimaxes of Ride Ilze High COIIIIIIT and, above all, the notorious bloodbath in\\ hich the \\"ild Bunch finally immolate themsehes (and se\·eral score of\kxicm soldiers and camp foll(mers). Tellingly, the Bunch m~1ke their fin~11

stand surrounded by avatars of a technological modernity compared \\·ith\\ hose industrial killing practices their own brutality seems merely the violentchild's pLly depicted in the film's viscerally upsetting opening sequCI1ce(children torturing insects). These murderous modern monuments include aPrussi,ll1 military ~ldvisor and a .\laxim gun, both foretelling the imminentl11ech~ll1ised mass slaughter of the First \Yorkl War (the film is set in 1<)!3),

\mericll1 entry into \\hich conflict would definitively export the frontier of

72 FILM GENRE

American experience away from the Old West and into the \vider \vorld. Thistraumatic transition to modernity is at one level a moment in and of history;at another, this recorded history is also continuous \vith the historicalmoment of the film's production, within which one historically contingentconsequence of America's own violent modernity was the Vietnam War, II-hoseescalating bloody barbarism Peckinpah explicitly intended The Wild BIlIliPSunprecedented ferocity to invoke. (On Peckinpah, see Prince, H)<)<); Dukore

1999; Prince 19<)8; Seydor 1997.)Jack Nachbar (200T 17<)) writes that 'the suhject matter of Westerns has

usually been the historical \Vest after 1850, but the real emotional andideological subject matter has ill\ariably been the issues of the era in whichthe films were released.' The WIIrI Bllllch and other, more explicit' Vietnam

\Vesterns' of the early H)70S such as LI///( B/~~ .Hall, Silidier Billc andU!::.af!a's Raid (1()7 I) are ob\ious instances where the \\-estern addresses

itself to an immediately topical e\cnt outside its ostensible historical frame.In the case of Vietnam, the tang:ible if impressionistic sense of Jl.mericanfilreign policy recapitulating the mythic \ersion of frontier history combinedwith the outrage at the war some film-makers shared \vith the anti\var move­ment to make such rnisionist Westerns not only socially and industrially(given the impossibility of m,lking actual \'ietnam combat films: sec Chapter

..f.) but also gcnerically necess,lry (on Vietnam and the \Vestern, sec Slotkin,1<)<)8: 520--..f.8, 578-()2; Engelh,mlt, [()()S: 2.H-..f.0). In general, the 'rnisionist'\Vesterns of the late [(iloS and [(nOS arc usually seen as confi'onting' andsubverting the genre's tLlditional affirmati\c mythologies in the contnt ofVietnam, the civil rights struggles ,1Ild the '\e\\ Left. In various \vays, filmssuch as .;\i[cCa!Jc allil_Hrs. MilIa, The 1AIsIHIIL'le (l(riI), Aid BIlle (l(ri3), The'vIlssllllrl Brcaks (I<)7S), BlI/lillll Bill alld Ihe 111dlillls ([(ri,) and !leac'm's Gall'

arc motivated at least in part by an anti-Establishment cultural politics thatfinds expression in transgressing this most 'official' and normative of

HollYI\'()od genres, In LIet, although the critical interest in the 'mO\ ie brat'New IIollywood directors of the [()70S has tended to 01 LTemphasise thee\tcnt of attitudinal and artistic shifts within the industry in this period, in

the Western at least oppositional and revisionist attitudes undoubtedlypredominated.

Both because the \Vestern has such a long' history and because its o\lnostensible subject matter is historically circumscribed, the imprint of its

\,lrious contingent historical contexts has to different degTees and at different

times been especially marked. Some of these - such as the wartime mobilis,l­tion of series Western heroes to combat '\,lzis and Japs- arc superficial and

obvious, \lhile others arc deeper rooted. Stanfield's \\ork on the series

Western (\lhuT in Clct the sense of historical period is often \vc;lker)

percei\l~s an emphasis on struggles OITr land OIl nership rehlted directly to

THE WESTER'\!: GENRE AND HISTORY 73

the immediate economic preoccupations of the 'B' \Vestern's primary(mostly rural) audience during the dustbuwl years of the Depression. Afterthe \var, as several writers halT remarked, the gnming emphasis on thevictimisation of .-\meriean Indians in Westerns since the 19SoS has in mostcases less to do with a rene\ved interest in Indian rights as such than with thecivil rights struggles and racial politics of the postwar period, for which 'theIndian' offered a usefully displaced and relatively uncontroversial metaphor(though '\eale (1998) rightly warns against simply eliding Indians and Indianhistory - \vhich after all are concretely present in the pro-Indian Western,whatever its metaphoric intent - with African-.-\mericans).

\Vesterns in g'eneral had been no more (or less) cOIl\Tntionally racist intheir limited portrayal of .-\frican-Americans than most classic Hollywood

films (for instance, the timorous, reluctantly Iiherated darkies deploring the

ntremism of anti-shl\cry crusader John Brown in Sanla Fe Trail, 19..f.O,direct descendants of Griffith's 'f~lithful souls' in Blrlh oj'a Nallllll, 1915).But unlike other genres, race was already explicitly a core element of the\\-estern, since dramatising the settling of the frontier necessitated depicting

relations bet\veen \vhite settlers or soldiers and the indigenous Native\merican population. Issues of miscegenation and interracial confEct were

carried O\Tr \vholesale from the \Vestern's principal narrative sources, fromeighteenth-century captivity narrati\-es to dime novels and melodramas,typically fiKusing on \Vhite-Indian relations but with some treatment of

I Iispanic characters too. \Vhile there arc exceptions to this general rule ofIndians as 'stand-in' victims of persecution and genocide (which might

incl ude Ford's Chc)'l'lllie III I 1111111, [() (l..f. , f)a /Ices If Ii/I II IIhI'S (I <)<)0), and themodern \Vesterns If-ar Pari)', [()88, and Tllllllilahcarl, I<)<)2), even whenreconceived as victims of genocid,d ,-\mericlIl imperi,dism, Native Americansremain constructions of a \vhite social imaginary, 'Pro-Indian' \Vesterns arc

,J1most always narrated from the perspective of a classic Western fig'ure, the\lhite 'man \vho knows Indians'. This ethnocentric frame remains largely intactfrom HI'II!.."'lI _11'I'1I1I' and f)enl's /JOlinI'll)' throug'h Tell Thel/i Ill/lic /Jill' Is 11<'1'1'(l<){)(») to Dallres Ifllh Wllhes and Gel'llllil/ill: _Ill _Il/ierlca/l 1,(~md ([()()3),

The ad\ance of the LS civil rights movement ensured that Black faces

gradually started to appear in substantive though still suhordinate roles fromthe early I <) {lOS , \\ith \Voody Strode establishing himself as a member ofJohn

Ford's repertory company (Sgl RlIi/edge, 1<)60; Tl7'Il Rllde TlIgclhl'l', I<)61;

[,i!Jall' 1ii/illli'<') to the point where he could function as a symbol or thecbssic \\'estern fil!' J,eone in Ollre CplIII a 1'11/1<' III lli<, II <'.I'I amI ,\brio van

Peebles in PIISS<' (I<)<)3). Sidney Poi tier directed and starred in the carefully

revisionist Blld' <!IIJ lli<, Prc<!i'licr (197 I), \vhich features an alliance betweenfilrmer sb\(~s and Indi,lIls based in their common victimhood at the hands or

the \\hitt man. Yet possibly because or the genre's indelible association

74 FILM GENRE

with white supremacist attitudes - Black-centred Westerns have remainedvery rare: notably, both blaxploitation-era hits like The Legend or NiggerChllrley (1972) and Posse, a 'gangsta' \Vestern, distance themselves ideologi­cally from the mainstream tradition of the American Western by adoptingthe stylistic motifs of the Italian Western, which has a distinctly differentpolitical and cultural trajectory (see below).

The role of the Western in constructing models of American masculinity,

particularly in its 1950S heyday, has recently been the subject of considerable

critical interrogation (see, for instance, Tompkins, 1<)92; Mitchell, 1(96).

However, situating this in a determinate historical context (beyond general

evocations of 'the 19Sos') has prO\ed somewhat harder: Leyda (2002), in

attempting to speci(v the audience (jU\cnile African-American males)

interpellated by black singing Westerns and consequently concretising the

particular kinds of male behaviour identified as worth emulating, is notably

successful in this regard. In Llct, for all the voluminous commentary on the

genre, the postwar \Vestern has only rarely reCl:i \cd as rigorous a

reconstruction and exploration of its historical contexts as, for example, the

silent Western in recent years (see above, 'Histories of the Western'; though

Slot kin (1<)98) and Corkin (2000) have related e\oh'ing post \var reconcep­

tions of the ti'ontier myth to concurrent ideological delxltes among elite

opinion-formers and policy-makers).A wholly different, and admittedly speculative, perspective on the

Western's decline since the early 19{jos might note the simultaneous rise to

national political prominence of the West and South-West, the Western's

traditional geographic heartland. 8etween J<)OO ~lI1d J<)-I-S, the hitherto rather

marginal and underpopulatnl 'Sunbelt' states had sent just one representa­

tive (Herbert HoO\er) to the White lIouse; since I<)-I-S all but t\vo presidents

have hailed either from west of the ?\lississippi (California, Texas, '\ebraska

- t \\ice each - and l\lissouri) or from the former Confederacy (\rkansas,

Georgia). One possible outcome of this decisin~ and much-analysed shift in

the political g;eography of the CS is that the West, no\\ a highly visible,

influential and (some would say) all-too concrete political and economic force

in US life, is less easily over\\Titten by the traditional mythic terms of the

Western. Although such mythic rallying-points as the .\lamo remain

enormously popular tourist attractions, the West may no longer be the space

onto which metropolitan America projects its bntasies of national identity:

now increasingly it is the (urbanised, entrepreneurial and polluted) West that

itself defines the terms of :\merican culture.

Nonetheless, the Western is not \lead': the e\olutionary model of genre

history is disprO\cd b~ nothing so much as allegedly moribund genres'

refusal to g:i\e up the ghost. Rather, the \\estern lives on both as point of

cultural reference and a source of narrati\c and thematic motifs in a \vide

THE WESTERN: GENRE AND HISTORY 75

variety of Holln\ood films, including Slar Wllrs (1977), Die Hard (1<)86),Falling DOlTm (199-1-) and Toy Storr (1995), and as a permanent part ofHollywood's generic repertoire available for periodic renewal. The Westernhas seen at least three major revivals in the twenty-five years since Heaven'sGille allegedly killed it off, in 198-1--88, a more extensive and successful cycle

in 1990-<)5 centring on the major critical and commercial successes DancesITIlh WO!c'es and Unfi!lglun, and most recently in 2004, with the release of

Open Rallll:e, The .ilan[(), The /HIsslng and the European Western Blackberry;IS \vell as the HBO mini-series Delldwood (on the two earlier cycles, see

'\eale, 2002: 29-3-1-).

BEYOND HOLLYWOOD

So intimately is the Western \\oven into the imaginative bbric of American

life that it is surprising to realise that the genre has been successfully taken

up by senTal other national cinemas at different times. \Vesterns were

successfully produced in Germany, t()r example, from the silent era through

to the outbreak of the Second World War - including scyeral productions in

the '\azi era - and ag;lin in the 1960s, in many cases drawing on I\..arl J\lay's

popular turn-of--the-cen tury nO\els (the best-knO\\ n probably Der Sdlill:::. 1111,,,'Ilhersee! Tile TrCilsllre 11/ llie Silt'a Sell, filmed in J<)62, and Old Sililllallil/ul,filmed in 1<)6-1-). I\..oepnick (199S) finds in German Westerns of the J<)20S aspecific redaction of the ubiquitous \Veimar Republic Llscination with

'\mericmism', using the primitivism of the mythic West to balance and

ground the rationalised hyper-modernity with \vhich the US was typically

associated. Thus German audiences were enabled to make 'crucial com­

promises with modernity' (p. 12), compromises that in Nazi-period Westcrns

predictably tipped O\cr into more unequi\ocally reactionary attitudes.

By br the best-known as well as the most numerous European \Vesterns,

hO\vC\er, arc the Itali,m 'Spaghetti Westerns' (often, in tlCt, trans-European

co-productions), of \vhich \\agstaff (1992: 2-1-6) estimates some -I-So were

released bet\\een [()6-1- and 1978 (br outnumbering American Westerns in

l he same period, and comparable as \Vagstaff notes to the rate and mode of

production of serial \Vesterns in the 19.Ws). Discussion of the Spag'hetti

\Vestern has been heavily distorted by the colossal status of its princip.t1

auteur Serg'io Leone, \vhose increasingly .Imbitious, stately and classical films

are, hO\\ever, as unrepresentative of the disorderly, pop-baroque style of

many of his contemporaries as Ford's 'Cl\alry Trilogy' is atypical of the

19SOS Hollywood \\estern, The gnming critical literature on the Spaghetti

\\estern can be diyided into those commentators \yho sec the European

\\estern as a 'critical' (sulnersive, carniyalesque, sometimes - notably in the

76 FILM GENRE

films of Sergio Damiano - politically radical) \'ersion of the "'\mericanWestern (notably Frayling, 1(97), and those - in disciplinary terms morelikely to be specialists in Italian cultural studies than in film st udies - \\holocate Italian Westerns in the institutional and cultural contexts of the Italianfilm industry and popular culture in the 1960s (Wagstaff, 1992; Eleftheriotis,2004). Landy (2000: 11\1-204) locates the Italian Western in such performa­ti\'e traditions as the co1nmedla del'arle and also explores the direct implicationof many films in debates about class and reg'ional (Southern) identity incontemporary Italian politics. Many commentators in both schools note thegeneral absence in the Italian Western of either the empathy or the ethicalconcerns that had come to typif~' the Hollywood \Vestern in the H»)OS. Whatis certainly clear is that the sometimes crude but \'igorous style of ItalianWesterns decisi'ely shifted the tenor of the US genre, dramatically increas­ing' the le\'e1 of gTaphic ,iolence (including not only gunplay but oftenelaborate torture) while diminishing the ethical significance of indi,idual\'iolent acts, and establishing new motific codes filr the staging' of showdownsand other set pieces. A routine early I(nos CS Western like Lall'lI/all (1971)clearly demonstrates the impact of the Italian style, as do the baroquef10urishes and bizarre gamesmanship of a later rC\i \alist \Vestern like TheQIIICA' alld Ihe Dead (H)<))).

CASE STUDY: TIff:' Ol1'l"11/ .rOSie'} II /fJ'S (1976)

Clint Eastwood's Tile OllIla}}' ]0.1'1')' H'ales is by no means as aggressi\ely're\'isionist' a genre entry as many of the decade's other notable \,"esterns,from Arthur Penn's I,ll/Ie BIP, Hall and Ralph :'\elson's sensationally grue­some Sli/tIler Bille in 1<)70 to Cimino's 1<)1\0 epic of range \,ar as classstruggle, IIem'ell's Ga Ie. In bct, it maybe more instructi,e to consider ]11.1'1')'

Wales alongside John Wayne's \aledictory Western, Tlte SI/IIlIllsI, directed by))on Siegel and released just six \\eeks after East\\ood's film. (luite unlikemost of Wayne's obstinately traditional 1<nOS \\esterns, many directed byAndrew \. McLaglen (e.g. Blp,]aA'e, Tlte Tralll RIiMers, Call/II ['lIiled SlalesMarsltal/), Tlte Sl/IIlIllsl is both elegiac and highly ref1exi,e, explicitly imitingthe audience to identify the dying gunfighter \\a~ ne plays \\ith \\aynehimself (the career of Wayne's character J. B. Books is summarised beneaththe credits in a montag'e of sequences from \\ayne's silent and seriesWesterns) and the 'golden age' of Westerns filr \\hich he is the metonymicsig-nifier. The film's deployment of the tropes of the 'end-of-the-line'

Western by 1976, itself a \Cry \\ell-\\orn generic 'ariation took on anadded poignancy from the common knO\Y1edge that \\ayne himself \\asf:lcing death from the same cancer that \\as eating a\\a~ J. B. Books's insides.

THE WESTERN: GENRE AND HISTORY 77

I:rom Th" (Jllillill' .los,,)' 11"1,,.1' (1<J7h), Reproduced courtes~ \\arncr Bros/The J(obal

( :ollect!o!l,

Like Ste\e Judd in Ride lite Hlp,!1 CIIIIIIIIT, the Wild Bunch, and Butch andSundance but more purposefully than any of them, and with none of theBunch's Dionysiac frenzy Books arrangTs a final showdO\\O, and with hispassing the West itself recedes.

\\'ayne had been ranked lanely's I'\umber One box-office star f)'om 1<)50to I <)Cl). In Hn2 Eastwood reached th'lt pinnacle filr the first time, during; anunbroken t\\ enty-~ car run in I IlI'lel)"s Top Ten from 1<)Cl7 to 1<)1\7. East \\oodhad made his name in the three ironic, ncar-parodic, he<l\i1y stylised and (filrthe time) ultra-,iolent Sergio Leone Dlillars \\esterns in the mid-I <)(lOS. Intheir gleeful e\acuation of the \\estern's tradition.d moral codes - abo'e all,the traditional \\'estern hero's reluctance to resort to lethal fi)1'Ce and hisultimate commitment to a cause or code beyond himself - in [l\our ofindiscriminately ,irtuosic gunplay and nihilistic self-interest, Leone's pop cari­catures of the \\'estern radically redre\\ its ethical and narrati'e topographiesand established East \\ ood 's brand of cool imulnerability, de'oid of any ,isibleinner life, as a ne\\ heroic model that only gre\\ in popularity as the idealisticIq{jos collapsed into the cynical HnOS, \\hile \\ayne himsclf \\as ampl~

conscious of his O\\n ossified status as a kind of national landmark by theearly 1970s, his in'ariant character nonetheless retained some human andsocial dimension, hO\\e\er cliched (usually, fi)l' instance, granted a romanticand/or familial imohement that neither East\\ood's '.\lan \\ith :'\0 :'\ame'

hom Tlte null(/1I' ]lJsC)' II iii,s (11)76). Roproduced courtesy Warner Bros/The Kobal

C Ilecrioll.

78 FILM GENRE

nor his modern urban corollary, 'Dirty' Harry Callahan, e\-er hinted at). OfEastwood's previous American \Vesterns, Hang 'Em High (1969), TJpo _'vIllles.lin Sister Sara (1970) and Jlle Kidd (1972), had been fairlv formulaic affairsthat traded heavily on the Dllilars persona and milieu, \~hile Tlte Beguiled(1970) and Eastwood's own High Plains Drifier (1972) \vere both intense,almost hallucinatory psychological allegories with a strong sado-masochisticstrain that explored a Gothic strain in the genre far distant from the terrainof Ford or even Mann. In Jose)' Wales, adapted by Phil Kaufman (\vho wasoriginally assigned to direct the film but \vas fired by East\vood one \veek intoshooting) and Sonia Chern us from Forrest Carter's novel Gillie III Texas, forthe first time Eastwood's \Vestern character acquires a set of personal andcommunal responsibilities and a dimensionality that extends beyond hisgunslinging bcility and extravagant cynicism.

Josey J;Vales not only revises and humanises Eastwood's familiar mono­syllabic gunslinger character but self-consciously reconnects East\vood to theAmerican Western tradition and affirms him as Wayne's rightful successor.Jllsey Wales carefully establishes links, both honorific and critical, to earlierWesterns. The graphic and plentiful violence clearly differentiates Jllse)!rrides from classic \Vesterns - an early scene \vhere Josey turns ,I \:laxim gunon a Union camp, mmving do\\n scores of soldiers, many unarmed, wouldhave been inconceivable pre-I,eone for a sympathetic character even injustified anger, as Josey's surely is (he has just seen his comrades murderedby the treacherous Union commander Terrill).

The loose, almost picaresque narrative structurc (\\hich recalls both :\1ann'sJ;Villellesler '7.) and East\\ood's last film \\ith Leone, Tlte Glllld, lite Bad alldIhe UPo/)!, 19(6) alhms the film to take in a wide \ariety of traditional \\-esternscencry and narrative situations, from the thickly forested borderlands \\herethe film begins to the red Texas dcsert, and fi"om bar-room face-offs to

Indian parleys, and to make n umlTOUS allusions to previous cbssic \Vesterns.The trajectory of Josey's m\l1 chaLlcter, as Sickels (2003) notes, ii1\ites theviewer to draw parallels to Ethan Ed\\ards in Tile Searellers (something of aprivileged film in the New Holly\\ood, directly quoted in :\ tu"tin Scorsese'slWeall Streets, J()73, and providing the narrati\e model fllr Paul Schr,lder'sscript for Scorsesc's Taxi Drin'r - a film, as \\e shall see, of particularrelevance to JIISC)' IVales). Both men are on obsessi\ e quests for vengC<lI1ce;both unreconciled to the defeat of the Southern Confederacy (Ethan refusesto swear an oath to the Texas Rang'ers because 'I already took an oath ofallegiance '); both are, as it scems, 'doomed to \vander fore\cr between thewinds', existing' as itinerants on the marg'ins of \\hite society _In se\eral \\avs,ho\vever, Jose), Wales revises and critiques the earlier fil~. .

Whereas Ethan refuses to recognise the parallels - \vhich are olnious to

the audience - bet\\een himself and the renegade Comanche Scar, at his first

THE WESTER~: GENRE AND HISTOR't 79

meeting \vith I,one Watie Josey recognises in his story a kindred spirit:'Seems like we can't trust the \\hite man'. The feisty, attractive and Y()calSioux female character Little Moonlight is a clear revision of the infamouslycaricatured and objectified 'squa\\' 'Look' \vho attaches herself to Ethan and:\larty in The Searellers. :\lthough Fletcher identifies Josey as a figure ofrcmorseless \'engcfulness, in the film Josey is arguably the quarry rather thanthe pursuer of an obsessi ve hate-filled ideologue, Terrill. The key differencein Eastwood's and Ford's films, however, is less the superficial updating ofracial attitudes (Ethan's pathological racism is of course very much the focusor Ford's film) than thc resolutions they offer their respective protagonists.Lnlike Ethan Joscy is permitted - in fact invited - to re-enter society at theend of the film.

\\hen:as the end of Ethan's quest, and his ostensibly redemptive gesturein saving rather than killing Debbie, lel\CS him finally without remainingdirection or purpose, Josey's similar revelation of the limits of venge,lI1cecomes about in the context of values that have come to replace vengefulness.Josey's final meeting \\ith Fletcher (John Vernon), the former commander ofhis band of Confederate irregulars, implies an acknmdedgement by both menthat some wounds, paradoxically, run too deep to be a\cnged and can only ben:conciled. This is \vhere Josey II ales's generic rC\ isionism and its purpose,\\hich unusually for the period is con- rather than deconstructive - becomesevident. Josey's accretion of a heterogeneous, multi-racial 'f;lmily' during histravels enforces on the \vould-be lone rider an initially unwelcome host ofattachments th,lt ultimately persuade him of the impossibility of living outsidesocial relationships (unlike, say, Shane, though perhaps recalling RandolphScott's similarly encumbered Ben Brig-ade in the ironically titled Ride1,0111'sllllle, J():i9). By presenting" this passage to settlement \\ith little of thenostalgic ambivalence with \\-hich John Ford treats simibr transitions (fllrexample, in _tIl' Dar/illp. ell'llli'lIlille - nodded to in Jose), II "ales's barn dancescene at the Crooked Ri\er ranch - or !)!Jerl.l' I alalice), 1':ast\\ood undemon­stratively transforms archetypal genre patterns. While Jllse)' Wales gratifiesaudience expectations with ample evidence of Josey's prowess at sologunplay, it also rcpeatedly shmvs others coming" to Joscv's aid as his self­imposed isolation gradually modifies over the course of the film.

This aspect of Jose), Ilides might be seen in generic terms as less thefi"ustration of generic expectations than a refusal to allo\\ genre conventionsto determine outcomes as they reflexi\Tly do for so many other 1970S

\Vestern protagonists. Josey's earlier encounter in Santa Rio \vith ,I bountyhunter identifies the crux: Jose~ tries to talk the man out of starting a fightthey both knmv he will inC\itably (given Josey's speed on the draw) lose:'You kno\v, this isn't necessary, you could just ride on'. The bounty hunterturns and slm\l~ lea\es, only to return a fell moments later: 'I had to come

THE WESTER:-J: GENRE AND HISTORY HI

h. Kitses' modd IS citeJ sufticienth often to he \\'()rth reproducing in p,u·t once again

here:

I '\ameh, the 'cb'i'iicaj plot' (e.g. SIIilIlC) , the '\Tngeance \atiation' (Till' ,\'I/A-,'d .'1'/,111'), the

'transi;ion theme' (fllgh SOOIl) and the 'profession,II plot' (Till' Pm/i'ssio/ll/Is, I \)(,(»).

S. I )dined ,lS a population dcnsit\ of te\\er than two persons per square mile.'I. Turner arg:u~d that \\ith th~ loss of the social 'safet\· "lhe' of 'tiTe Lllld' .'\meriean

'iociet\ 111 the t\\Tnticth centut'\ \\'()uld tinalh h'1\e to conti'ont the problems of all othcr

1l1od~rn Industrial nellions, including class antagonism'i.

80 FILM GENRE

back', he says, regretfully. Josey nods his understanding; they shoot it out;the bounty hunter is killed. What is at stake here - why the bounty hunter'had to' come back - certainly includes status, male self-identity and thedifficulty of peaceful resolution in a culture grounded in violence, all ideasJosey Wales repeatedly engages; but it is perhaps abO\e all the rules of thegeneric game, a logic that ruthlessly subordinates individual will. (A similarlyimpersonal generic imperative is at work, as Maltby (1995a: 123-32) notes, inPeckinpah's Pat Garrett and Bill)! the Kid, 1973.) By the end of the film,Josey has successfully changed the generic situation.

This transformation has a social and political context that the tilm alludesto both in its Civil War setting and in its final dialogue exchange. As part ofthe two men's tacit agreement to let the dead bury the dead, Fletcherdeclares his intention to seek Josey in l\lexico: should he find him there, heintends to 'tell him the war's over'. By way of reply Josey (looking offscreen)mutters, 'I guess all of us died a little in that damn war'. Audiences in 1975would doubtless have understood the allusion to America's more recent 'civilwar' - the intense social divisions and the crisis of the ,'\merican politicalsystem surrounding the war in Vietnam. Jose)' Willes thus situates itself at ageneric intersection of the Western and the emergent genre of the Vietnamveteran tilm (Tracks, 1975; Rollin.1!, Thunder, 1976; Tllxi Drirer). Cnlike boththose films and The Sellrchers, however, JosC)' n'llles affirms the possibilitythat the returning veteran need not compulsively act out the traumas ofdefeat in a society whose own ongoing violence is barely under control, butcan move through and past violence into a renewed social contract - one,moreover, where the \Vestern hero's masculinity is not diminished, though itis necessarily changed, by his incorporation into communal and personalrelationships.

NOTES

I. I':~hibitors liTre free to spliu: this im'lge onto either the start or (more usu,dh) the endof the t1lm.

2. Figures of Western reLlses t()r the sound era are tahulated in Buscomhe (I()Sk: +2~-7).

For the silent period, see the IF! CI/II/log o(.HollOlI PIOWC Pmdll(cd III Ihc ['llliCiI

.'I'll/II'S: 1893 J()10 (19q~), J()11-J<)20 (lqSS), J(j2o-1930 (\()71) .

.\. Poague's (2003) account of the marketing of SII/,~l" OI/c!1 cited in Ch'lpter I is ,I gooJcxample.

+. '''We Jidn't \lant just another \\estern," ILA. PresiJent\nd\)\lbeck agreeJ. "\\'e

"anted an epic, an\cJdem~\II ,ml-\\ inning' epic'" (Bach, t9S~: 2 I 7).

~. Note, hOlle\er, that Gallag'her nukes the \\'ildh' h\perbolic cbim that from H)Oq to

191~ 'there \\Tre probabh more \\esterns released CI/c!1 ll/ollih than Juring the entire

decade of the 1930s': this \\ould mean roughh [,000 \\ estcrn'i a month, or 12,000 a

\Tar' I ha \e founJ no tig;ures to 'iUpport such a grossh intlated reckoning;.

,TI!L IInDJ:R\ESS

Tllc !1lI!i,'/iI/i1/1freedomhonourself-knO\\ ledge

int<:g-rit~

sci 1'- intcrestsolipsism

\'i//il'l'

CIIILIS. I TlO\Thl' COll/lIlll/lily

re'itrictionin'ititutions

illusioncompromisesocial responsibilit\

democrac\'

CII 1111 1'1'

CHAPTER 4

The Musical: Genre and Form

At the end of Mel Brooks's Western parody Bfa:::.!"g Saddles (1973), a

sprawlin~ bar-room brawl exceeds the boundaries not only of its diegeticsituation (with bodies and furniture flying in standard Western style through

windows and doors out into the street) but its ~eneric location: a particularly

powerful haymaker sends a cowboy tearin~ throu~h the \yall of the saloon set

and not into the adjoining room in the saloon, but into the next-door

soundsta~e, where an elaborate musical production number somewhat in there~imented Busby Berkeley manner, 'the French \listake', is being per­

formed. As burly, unshayen cowboys, dudes and saloon girls tumble pell­

mell into the gleamin~ polished proscenium to mingle with and assault thedancers, the stage is literally set for a riotous generic encounter. Brooks's

stereotypically epicene dancers, campily fleeing across their ne\Tr-neyer-land

set fi'om this sudden intrusion fi'om a definitiyely 'masculine' oTneric. ~

uniyerse and shrilly defending if not their honour then their looks ('.'\ot in

the LICe!' squeals one, hced with a knuckle sandwich; ' ... thank you!' he

gasps as the attacker redirects his punch into his balls), reflect dominant

perceptions of the musical as organised around tropes of narcissistic displayand artificiality as opposed to the Western's rugged yeracity..-\s eyer, the

parodic thrust cuts both ways: while the streamlined, pristine musical set

bespeaks an 'artifice' in contrast to the roug'h, \yorkmanlike surLIces of the

Western, at the same time the latter's incorporation into the generic space of

the musical both undermines the Westerner's monolithic masculinit\ and

also reminds us that their ostensibly more 'historical' milieu is, as .1 con­

struction of g-cnre, in its \yay as stylised and out-or-time as that of the

musical. In bct, the Western and the musical are two halyes of a whole: the

cowboy and the song-and-dance man together are strong and uni yersal

metonymic signifiers of Hollywood, and Holhwood genre, as a whole.

Ranging in structure from reyue to integrated musical dranu, in setting

THE MUSICAL: GENRE AND FORM ~3

fi'om Manhattan to medieyal England, and in musical style from light operato rock, the American musical is remarkably heterogeneous. From anotherperspectiye, hO\yC\er, the musical may be regarded as the 'purest' of all filmgenres. L'nlike the Western or the gangster film, the musical seems unen­~umbered by any ongoing commitments to social realism, historical authen­

ticity or for that matter any suggestion of performative naturalism (though

the genre may embrace any or all of these at different times). The musical

creates a hermetically enclosed generic world whose conventions and veri­

similitudes are purely and peculiarly its own, and whose function is to enable

<lOd situate the musical performances that define the form.Cniquely, the musical is named not for its subject matter (the Western,

the war film, etc.) or eyen its effect upon the spectator (the horror film), but

tClr its mode of performance. '~lusic' in the film musical of course usuallymeans singing, accompanied by inyentiye (not necessarily lush - se\eral

memorable musical numbers feature improyised accompaniment on 'found'

objects) orchestration and abO\e all dance. Although a great many non­

musicals include songs (less often dance), sometimes as interpolated 'turns'but quite often as narratiyely integrated and eyen central elements (for

(,"":,Imple, Casablal/ca (19.1-2) includes sC\eral musical performances at Rick's

Cafe .-\mericain; at least two of these, '.-\s Time Goes By' and the sin~in~ ofthe Hal"sclla!sc orchestrated by Victor Laszlo, are crucial to the story), dance

and song offer the forms of yisual pleasure that help define the musical.

\luch critical discussion of the musical has identified the construction of

narratiye opportunities for musical numbers as a focal point of the genre; this

in turn has promoted analysis of the specific fClrms of expressiyity promoted

in the musical, and the ideological positions these open up or foreclose upon.

For these reasons, compared to other genres the musical is unusually often

treated in terms of its formal mechanisms and attributes. Sometimes for

c\:ample in discussion of the musicals created by Busby Berkeley at Warner

Bros. in the I (nos· this entails the e\:plicit subordination of the considerationof the specific narrati\(: content of indiyidual films, which may be dismissed

.IS wholly stereotypical and superficial, merely an inert 'carrier' fClr the

musical numbers. Conyersely, the 'integrated' musical that renders musical

performance an 'organic' extension and direct expression of issues within a

character-dri\(:n na1T<ltiye - pre-eminently the films made at ;vIGM in the

first decade ,lfter the Second \Vorld War by the production unit oyerseen by

\rthur Freed - has often been regarded as the most fully achieyed form of

the genre .111d has drawn the larg'est body of critical discussion.

84 FILM GENRE

THE CLASSICAL MUSICAL

Self-evidently, the musical is a ~Tnre of the sound era: Tile JII:;:; Sillger(H)27), the first feature-length 'talkie', \\as also the first musical feature, andindeed the strong audience appeal of music and song' as much as or morethan spoken dialogue helped 'sell' sound technology not only to audiencesbut to sceptical exhibitors LlCed \vith the expenses of comersion. By HUO, asHollywood comerted to sound, more than 200 musicals had been released bythe major and minor studios (see Altman, 1996: 29-1--7; Balio, I99T 211-18).What the new sound technology enabled \\as the immediacy of direct addressto the audience - as in AI Jolson's 'You ain't heard nothin' yet!' in Tile JazzSingcr - that would emerge as one of the genre's distinctive formal markers.Jolson's f:lInous interpellation, like many subsequent examples, \vas mediatedby the presence of a diegetic (on-screen) audience in a live performancesetting: this establishes carlyon the film musical's adoption of live theatricalperformance and the direct interaction \vith the audience as a performativeideal, in\"Oked most clearly in the backstage musical - musicals about thestaging of musicals or musical performances but arguably a persistentstructuring presence e\'en in 'integrated' musicals \vhere the per/ilrmers singand dance in purely expressive \vays 'fill" themselves or each other, \vithoutthe self-conscious imocation of a per/ilrmance situation, It is \\orth notinghere that live musical accompaniment - including singing - \\'as the normthroughout the silent era, and dancing' \\as .1 featured attraction in a greatmany silent films. Gnlikely as it may no\\ seem, there \\TlT silent ad'lptationsof both popular operettas like Tlic .lIeITl' // idoll' (192:;) and cbssical operaslike Ca rlllL'll (19 I:;) and Dcr ROSC/lA'llutlicr. Thus there is a certain historicalirony that the vi\ idness and 'immediacy' of the sound-era musical \\as achie\'edat the cost of an actual derealisation of the audio-\isual experience of mO\ing­going that found compensation in \\hat Collins (I9~~: 270) describes as a'sense of nostalgia filr a direct rclationship \\ith the audience' that is a genericconstant throughout the classical era.

As already noted, certain kinds of film musicll have attracted much morecritical discussion than others. "eale (2000: Io~) notes the sparsity of criticaldiscussion of the musicals produced at the other majors compared to .\[G\[,let alone the minors. This sclectivitv extends also to fimll aI \'ari.lIlts. Themusical comedy-revue, filr example - comprising the majority of the early

sound musicals bet\veen 1927 and I<).W -3 I, re\i \ cd b~ P.uamount till' itsseries of I930S 'radio revues' starting \vith Tlie Big Broadwsl in I<n2, andincluding' patriotic \\artime spectacles like Sta r Spallglcd Rilyllllll (I C).p) and.)'tagc Door Calltccil (19-1-3) - has been larg-cly overlooked by serious criticism(althoug'h the recent upsurge of interest in the silent 'cinema of attractions'amI its legacy in the classical and post-classical era sug'g'ests that a reassessment

THE MUSICAL: GENRE AND FORM 85

of these largely non-integrated, 'attraction'-led entertainments may be due').:\ much longer-lasting and in the I930S very popular form, the operetta (forexample, the films starring the duo of Nelson Eddy' and Jeanette MacDonald.It .\lG.\l such as Rose J,Jarie, 1936, SrfJeetllelirts, 1938, and Bitter Sweet, 1(40)

has also received very little attention as a cinematic form (there is a moreextensive literature on the theatrical operetta that includes some discussion offilm adaptations), although individual films have been analysed (see, forexample, Altman's (198]: I6~22; also in Cohan, 2002: 41-5) analysis of the'dual-focus' narrative of the MacDonald-Eddy whicle New Moon, 1940; alsoTurk (I99~)). Whereas the lack of interest in the revue may be attributed inpart to its 'primitive' serial structure, this is clearly not the case with theoperetta - among the most integrated of all forms of the musical. Rather, itmay be the perception of the operetta as an ineradicably bour/ieois form,'lheatrical' in the bad sense, that accounts ti)r its critical disfavour. Not onlyits stilted romantic narratives but its nostalgic invocation of a pseudo­.lristocratic Old World cont1icts with the widespread perception of the Holly­\\ood musical -- pre-eminently, again, the Gene Kelly MGM series - as adistinctive expression of the (idealised) American national character: optim­istic, unaffected, can-do and democratic (see especially Schatz, I9~I: I96f1'.).In fact, this perception of at least some film operettas was current in theI (nos: Variet], described the french stage property on which Paramountb'lsed its .\lacDonald-.\laurice Chevalier effilrt Lou Me TOll(g;ht (1932) as'<llien to American ideas' (quoted in Balio, H)93: 2q). (Recently, E-eita, H)96,displays affinities with the operetta tradition.)

.\s with other classical genres, therefore, the critical canon of the classicalmusical betrays a significant degree of preferential treatment. Within thatcanon, till' that matter, the distinction between the genre's key filrmal vari­ants has decisively privileged the integrated musical - in which the musicalnumbers are woven into the narrative structure, moti\ated by characterpsychology and/or plot development and expressive of the emotions, opinionsor state of mind of the singer(s) - over the non-integrated - in which numberssimply accumulate serially, and are effectively stand-alone spectacles connectedonly loosely, if at all, either to each other or to the narratiYC in which they arcembedded. :\part from Busby Berkeley, who is treated as something of aspecial case, almost all of the most popular as \\ell as the most widelydiscussed and critically bvoured musicals -- above all, the Astaire-Rogersseries at RKO in the I930S and the .\lG.\l freed Gnit/Kelly-Donen­\linnelli productions - have been integrated musicals. Solomon (1976, quotedin :\eale, 2000: 107) states that 'there is no evident reason' for privilegingintegration in this \\ay; but it is equally plain that the perception of a unifiedaesthetic totality fits a traditionalist critical agenda quite well. Whateycr thereasons, since these structural distinctions han; been of such importance in

86 FILM GENRE

critical studies of the musical, it will be helpful to e'l:plore them in a littlemore detail.

The notion of 'integration' is not quite as straightforward as it might atfirst appear. Focusing on the Astaire-Rogers musicals, ~lueller (198+: 28-g)offers six ditferent possible relationships of musical number to plot, rangingfrom complete irrcJeyance, through 'enrichment' (a rather yague term we

could also understand in terms of amplification or complement, f(lr e'l:ample'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' in Tlte Wizard III' OZ, 1(39), to those thatclearly advance the plot. In the latter category he includes both songs like'Getting to Know You' in Tlte KIllg allil J (1956), whose lyrical content alertsthe characters to new information or insights about one another, and the verydifferent c:xample of musical numbers in the backstage musical whose staging

provides the narrative with its (ostensible) object. Howeyer, the inclusion ofthe backstage musical complicates this ta'l:onomy by highlighting the perhapscounter-intuitiYe ways in which 'integration' here is not simply synonymous,as one might expect, with dramatic 'motiyation' - that is, accounting for

passag;es of expressiye performance by proyiding narratiye situations wherethe characters (rather than the performers) can plausibly sing and dance.Typically this is achieved by creating characters who arc professional enter­tainers - which is where the backstage musical comes in, one of the genre's

most durable forms from early classics like pili/ Slreel (19.13) and Glild Diggers111'1933 (1<)33) to Caharel (1972), Fllr lite BII)'s (H)9I) and rock musicals likeThe Rllse (1979) and Grt/ce IIrH)' Hearl (1996).

The backstage musical is thus arguably the most highly 'motiyated' of allf(lrms of the musical: the characters perti)rm only onstage or in rehearsal (or,as in the 'I Only Haye Eyes For You' number in Dailies, 1<)35, in dreams or

their mind's eye) accompanied by diegetic orchestras or bands. Howcver ­and leaving; aside ti)r the time being the many ways in which Busby

Berkcley's backstagers at least play t:ISt and loose with the yerisimilitude oftheir theatrical milieu -- some l<)3os backstagers also typit~ the non-integr.lted

musical: that is, the on-stage pertilrmances haye little or no dramatic relationto the romantic and professional conflicts played out in the backstage, non­

musical portions of the tilm. Even in pili/ .)/reel, which t:lmously pioneersone of the genre's hoariest cliches '. an ingenue plucked from the chorus linesent out to understudy the injured star with the \\ords 'You're going; out a

youngster -- but you\e gill to come back a star!'· the chorus girl's ine\itably

triumphant perfi)nllance is played with almost no suggestion of or till' thatmatter interest in her emotional or psychological reaction to the esperience

during the performance itself. Rather, the yisual pleasure of the musical

numbers is Yirtually autonomous of the (usually) mundane progress of the

backstage narrative. (A useful contrast here might be the many sequences in

rock musicals such as The Rllse or Tlte Dllllrs, 1991, modern yariants on the

THE \llSICAL: GE'JRE A'JD FORM 'K7

backstage mode, where the performance itself cathartically \\orks through, or.JlternatiYcJy is yisibly wrecked by, the emotional, psycholog'ical or pharma­ceutical crises of the performer-protagonist.) J_ater backstage musicalsofkred a much higher degree of integration, either through the inclusion ofdirectly npressiYe numbers that arc part of the protag'onisfs onstage routine

(I .')'Iar Is Bllrtt, J()5+; also the 1977 rock musical remake) or by using theI1lusical numbers to offer ironic commentary on the characters' sexual, social

or political attitudes (Caharet).In t:lct, the distinction of integrated and non-integrated ti)rms is, pre­

dictably, not an absolute one. Yery few musicals are wholly uninteg-rated"ncr the fashion of theatrical yariety shll\\s: indeed, the backstage musical

itself emerged as a response to the declining bO'l:-oftice appeal of the rush ofl'C\ue-style musicals at the yery start of the sound era (til!' e:xample, The//Ii//)'/I'lIlId Renle 111'1929, 1929; Part/1I101I1I1 1111 Part/dc, and KIllg 1I!]azz, both1<)30) ..\ft:er a brief ensuing lull in musical production pili/ Slreel introducedthe relatiyely more integrated timn and its stock personae of the driYen

\isionary director or impresario (a ti'l:ture up throughlll Tltal ]a.'::,z, 1(80),the naive ingenue who gets her big break in the circumstances outlinedabmT, the wisecracking, worldly-wise chorus girls and the besotted millionaire\\ ho bankrolls the production. C:oI1\Trsely, some or all of the musicalnumbers in eyen the most integrated musicals arc to some degree 'e'l:cessiYe'in relation to their basic narrative function - inniubly, one might say, giYen

the genre's basic contract with its audience, which is not storytelling as suchbut deli\ering memorable songs and I or pyrotechnical d.l11ce pertilrmances.11I_·ll11l'1Hall III Paris (1951) 'smug'gles' many of its musical numbers into the

lilm by presenting them as fe'ltS of e:xuberant imprO\isation in workadayel1\ironments like cates and city streets, perfilrlned til!' an 'audience' of passers­

by who particip'lte with casual enthusiasm rather than the regimented high­kicking of the professional chorus line (the tilm also includes by way ofpointed contrast, and as a clear nample of pertimnati\ e inauthenticity, a

brief e:xcerpt from a stage pertilrmance in the grand nunner, complete withfeather boas and an illuminated staircase - a grandiose yersion of the Llmous

\staire/Rogers 'Big White Set'). Bowner, _111 .1l11erlrall III Paris alsobmously concludes with a lengthy rhapsodic ballet sequence with a strongly

non-integratiye driYe (like the comparable climactic sequences in other Freed

Cnit musicals such as 011 lite TIIII'II, 19+9, and SlIIglIl' III lite Ralll, 1952, itessentially recapitulates the main narratiYe in stylised, archetypal torm) whosefunction is to deliyer the postponed, but not denied, pleasures of breath­

taking yisual display in the form of both yirtuosic dancing and elaborate sets.

Rubin (199T 12-13) argues that the histor~ of the musical is 'not so much arelentless, unidirectional driYe tow anls efbcing the last stubborn remnants ofnonintegration, but a succession of different ways of articulating the tension

<HI FILM GENRE

and interplay between integrative (chiefly narratin~) and nonintegrative(chiefly spectacle) elements'.

Thus the apparent opposition of integration and aggregation is in fact anoscillating and interdependent relationship, and in this reg'ard rehearses thelarger issue of the dialectical interplay in the 'classical Hollywood style'between narrative - to whose linear, centring imperatives all the elements ofHollywood cinema in the continuity era are, according to Bordwell, Staigerand Thompson's (1985) int1uential account, ultimately subordinated - andthe contrapuntal force of spectacle, conceiwd as largely static and in narra­tive terms non-developmental. (This highlights the interesting point that atleast at this structural level there are therefore marked affinities betvveen themusical, stereotypically a 'feminine' genre, and the emphatically masculinegenre of the contemporary action film: for more on this and a more detaileddiscussion of the question of narrative and spectacle, see Chapter ro.)

In any case, a third term may have to be added to thc integration/non­integration dyad if one is to give an adequate account of the most remarkablevariant of the musical to emerge in the 1930s, the cycle of Warner Bros. filmsdirected andlor choreographed by Busby Berkeley. These - strictly speaking,their spectacular musical numbers - have provoked extensive critical discus­sion for their transformative objectifications of the human (typically female)form " what Fischer (I 19761 198 I) calls their 'optical politics' (' Pet tin ' in thePark' in Gold Diggers III' J 933 features dancers in lingerie and in nudesilhouette); their similarities to various European avant-garde cinemas of theperiod (Arthur Freed remarked on Berkeley's 'instinctive surrealism'); andeven their affinities with the 'Llscist aesthetics' of Leni Riefenstahl's films ofmass ceremonials in Nazi Germany (see Sontag, 1966). Sequences such asthe 'l.Jymn to My Forgotten Man' in GII/d Digp,ers oj'J()33, which introducenarrative and in this case social content (the descent of the First World Warveterans into povcrty and despair) quite unprepared for by and unrelated tothe backstage story, typify Berkeley's non-integrative mode. Equally remark­able, however, is their elastic treatment of diegetic space, which has no readyparallel in any other classical Hollywood form and vvhich might vvell becharacterised as 'disintegrative'. All of the musical numbers in a Berkeleymusical ostensibly f()rm part of a theatrical performance, preparations forwhich constitute the binding backstage narrativc. However, in visual styleand technique as well as sheer scale Berkeley's numbers explode till' beyondthe confines of any plausible the,llrical show or for that matter 'lUditorium.The stupefying scale and variety of these numbers renders them 'blatantlyand audaciously impossible in terms of the theatrical space in \\hich they arcsupposedly taking place' (Rubin, 1993: 58). Berkeley's approach is typifiedby his signature ultra-high-,mgle overhead shots- the 'Berkeley top shot' ­where massed ranks of dancers form shifting complex patterns ranging from

THE MUSICAL: hL"IKt. Al"IJ r ,,":Vi "'J

Oo\\ers .md abstnlct shapes to actors' f:lccs (as in DOilies), his most famous,Ind \\'idely copied dev'ice (also the most parodied, for example m Theprodllrers, H)68, \\here a chorus line of goose-stepping S5 arrange the~.selvcsinto a s\\'astika): the camera's v'antage point which renders these ~'lslOnary

biomporhic transfigurations visible to the cinema audicnce would Simply be

un.I\'aiLlble to any conceiv'able theatrical audience.Berkelev's \\ork remained unique; a wholly different, and in the long term

lllore int1~ential, approach was adopted in the series of nine RKO musicalromantic comedies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (with choreo­graphy by Hermes Pan) in the 1930S st,lrting \\ith FI)'illg P"Il)1I III R,ill (~?~3).\\"hereas Berkeley \Vas notoriously unconcerned about hiS dancers abrlltles,interested rather in achieving an appropriate blend of uniformity and com­plementary contrast in physique and physiognomy (see Fischer, [.1976) 1981 :7+), .\staire and Rogers' OV\l1 performativ'e ~ifts and th~ promise of l:yro­tcchnical dancing displays constituted the major appeal of these star vehicles.Lv cn the musical leads amid Berkeley's serried armies of dancers were suchp1cas,mt but uninteresting figures as Ruby Keeler ,~nd Dick PO\~ell (~vith thedramatic momentum in the backstage scenes mamtamed by forceful non­d'll1cing male stars like \Varner Baxter in ,12111/ Slr((.'1 and James Cagney in.(1IIIIIig/1l Port/de, HJ33); ,\staire and Rogers were at the undisputed centre oft hcir films, featuring in numerous duets (:\staire also has many solollumbers), and evcn in the larger-scale production numbers the chorus line orb,lCk,rround lLlI1cers remain anonvmous am} strictly secomhlry. This relation­ship "'is emphatically symbolised- in a Elmous number in T(/~ !lal (1~)35),perhaps the best-knO\vn .\staire-Rogers production, when Astalre transfor~ls

his cane during 'Top Hat, White Tie, ,1ml Tails' into .1 tommy-gun With\\hich he mows do\\ n his top-hatted 'riyals' in the chorus line, a routine thatEdvnrd Gallafcnt (zooo: 35) among; others has characterised as an assertionof both 'ph.llIic potency and ... (.\staire's) standing as a massively successful

professional', . .The :\staire-Rogers musicals decisively shifted the mUSical away from

mass spcctacle to individual expressivity and the exploration of theconditions of and constraints on that expressive drive. These would becomethe key concerns of the classically integrated :VIG:Vl musicils of the late1()+OS :lI1d early 1950s, a period that continues to dominate critical discuss­ions of the musical. Since the case study for this ch.lpter looks closely at onesuch .\lG.\lmusical, SlIIgill' ill Iltt' Rain (H)5z), the following section focusesless on textual detail and looks <it the relationship of the musical's

characteristic forms to ideological structures.

90 FILM GENRE

'GOTTA DANCE'

The most obyiolls formal element that sets the musical apart from the greatmajority of other American films is its radical departure from the forms ofrealism that dominate the rest of classic Hollywood practice. As limited(compared to, say, Italian neorealism or British 'kitchen sink' social realism)and stylised as this Hollywood brand of 'realism' certainly is, the musical isnonetheless quite clearly 'unrealistic' in still more marked and fundamentalways. Rubin (J()93: .17) suggests that the classic musical may eyen be definedby its inclusion of 'a significant proportion of musical numbers that areimpossible - i.e., persistently contradictory in relation to the realistic dis­course of the narratiye'. The most ob\ious and manifold examples of theseimpossibilities are the ostensibly spont,meous yet often hugely elaborate,flawlessly concein?d and executed song-and-dance routines that typify theHollywood musical, particularly in the classically integrated yersions that, aswe haye seen, are often regarded as defining the form. This quality of impossi­bility is not determined by the regime of yerisimilitude specific to a giyennarratiye: whether a musical is as anl\\cdh and yisibly f:mciful as Y%nda. .

ol/d llie T!1/i:!(J()-+S) or as social realist as TI 1'.1'1 Side Slor)' (J()6[), the trans-diegetic quality of its musical numbers is a constant. Interestingly, it is theinteg-rated musical of which this is truest. For w"hereas the impossibility of(most) BlIsby Ikrkeley numbers consists not in their spontaneous effusion ­they are in bet presented as painstakingly rehearsed theatrical performancesby professional entertainers but, as we haw seen, in their defiance ofprinciples of spati,d and temporal continuity and integrity, the impossibilityof the numbers in (most) integrated musicals innllyes the ,lpparently un­conscious, or at any rate unsclfconscious, discoyery of music and movementby the characters ,IS a perfect externalisation and expression of inner states ofmind. In other words, the integrated musical emphasises the cxpressi,'c Irill/s­./iml/oliol/ of the object world at the expense of c011\Tntionally understoodforms of realism; and its impossibility i11\ohes both the ostensibly spon­taneous perfection of the expressi\l' form, and the plasticity of a \\orld (theplaces and people in it) that consents to be taken o\cr for, or actually to

participate in, such expressiye tr'l11sformations.This aspect of the musical has been influenti,dly interpreted by Richard

Dyer ([ J()771 J()H I; also in Cohan, 2002) as lending the genre a utopiandimension: this utopianism consists less in the liter,d bbrication of ideal on­screen worlds, although this may sometimes happen - for example in themagical make-beliC\e realms of Bnj"oJo(J11 (19.:;-+) or Xil/Uu/n (J()Ho) - nor e\"en,prim,lrily, in the emphasis on reconciliation and the creation of the romanticcouple (most classic Holl~ wood genres, after all, \vould be utopian in thissense). Rather, according to Dyer the musicI1 shO\vs us \vhat utopi,l \vould

THE MUSICAL: GENRE AND FORM 9 1

fl'e/like: the reconciliation not simply of indiyidual characters (like the spar­"ring couples serially impersonated by Astaire and Rogers) or even of com­munities (like the crowds of Parisian children and street yendors whoapplaud and flow around, in and out of Jerry's (Gene Kelly) i~provisation~1

dances in .11/.ill/eriCilI/ ill Poris), but of space, style and expressive form. It IS

a quite literally harmonious experience, charged in Dyer's account with

energies of intensity, transparency, abundance and community.Of course, this utopian dimension in the musical is firmly located within

its O\\l1 social and historical coordinates, and critics have been quick to notethe clear limits on its transformatiye aspirations. Dyer himself notes that the\Trv suggestion that free expressiyity is possible in a society actually closelyco~strained by social and economic barriers can be seen as an ideologicalf,l11t,ISY, \\hile' inasmuch as the musical numbers promote hegemonic yaluesthat c'onfirm, rather than challenge, those of the narratiye (romantic andprofessiomll fulfilment and consensual social yalues) they also promote ideo­jogical homogeneity. (.\lore recently, Dyer (2000) has noted that the priyilegeof joyous self-expression in the classic musical is policed along racial lines ­it is a privilege enjoyed only by whites, never by performers of colour.)

'\onetheless, eyen raising the possibility of finding a utopian dimension ina central Hollywood genre powerfully challenges some abiding assumptions,lbout 'industrially produced' commercial popular culture. Notably, the Frank­furt School writers Theodor _~dorno and .\1ax Horkheimer, in their critiqueof the 'culture industry' (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1[9-+-+] 1(72), resenedparticular scorn for popular musical forms like Tin Pan Alley and big-bandj,IZZ, regarding their crudely pentatonic rhythms ,IS regressiye and repressiyein equal measure and their lyrics as asinine doggerel. For Adorno (who hadstudied \\ith the pioneering atonal composer Arnold Schoenberg bef(lretllrning; to philosophical aesthetics and political economy), the romantic escapismof popular music typified the duplicity of mass culture: appearing to promiseli'eedom from the drudgery of late capitalism, mass-produced popular music\\as p,lrt of the yery structures from which it blsely proposed relief. It wasquintessentially part of the problem, not part of the solution. Adorno wouldhaye greeted \vith incredulity the critical L!nlllr attracted to the integratedmusic'al in particular, and \v;luld haye been contemptuous of claims th,lt its

sophisticated interphlY of performatiye expression ,l11d dramatic and/orcomedic complexity makes it something like the \Vagnerian concept of the(;esolllA'I'illslll'crk - the 'tot,ll \york of art'. Rather, he would doubtless seizeupon those moments when musical performers, in the preamble to a number,admit to experiencing almost ,I physical compulsion to dance """ for example,~staire's lead-in to ''\0 Strings' in Top Hal, or Kelly's incantatory 'GottaDance!' at the start of the 'Broadway Rhythm' ballet in Sillgill' ill llie Rain ­as unintended textual confessions of the musical's inherently coerciye nature.

92 FILM GENRE

From SlIlgill' III IIII' Rillll (1())2). RqJroduced courtesy \IG\I/The I\:.obal Collection.

Adorno put what little f~lith he retained in art's emancipatory capacity ina few ,mmt-garde forms (Schoenberg's music, Beckett's theatre of pri'ation)which retained a massi'ely attenuated utopian aspect -- not, like the musical,in their abundance and promises of freedom, promises _\dorno reg'arded aslies, but precisely in their formal difficulty, their denial of easy pleasure or forthat matter access to the mass audience. Only by saying 'no' to the uni'ersal'yes' of the culture industry, .\dorno argued, could art hold out any image,

THE MUSICAL: GEC'JRE AND FORM 93

be it merely a negati,e one, of a world geared to a different order of humansocial relations than the one that actually exists. Adorno's commitment tothis 'autonomous' art, which is perhaps more justly criticised for its rigidityJnd g;enerality than, as it has often been, for its elitism, clearly and specifi­cally excludes such mainstream genre forms as the musical.

Hm,e,er, since musicals, as we ha,e seen, operate according to generic\crisimilitudes that differ in some fundamental ways from Hollywood'sdominant quasi-realist regime of representation, it is at least possible that thisf()1'1nal differentiation affords them a correspondingly greater freedom to

explore dimensions of human social experience closed off to more con­\ entional forms. Dyer's construction of the musical as at least potentially anideologically progressi,e form opens up the possibility that musicals mayha\c offered a space, howe,er limited, for the articulation of subjecti'itiesotherwise marginalised by classic Hollywood con'entions. Gi,en the musical'sclear emphasis on the personal and experiential (rather than, say, historical orpolitical) and also - through the centrality of performance - the bodily, itmight make sense to see whether there is a greater dimensionality than the\-Iollywood norm in the genre's treatment of gender and sexuality. Indeed,these ha,e been important areas for contemporary research on the musical.

:\s pre,iously noted, Fischer ((1970) 19H1: 7S), in line with Laura Mul,ey's(Il)7S) contemporaneous conclusions concerning ,isual pleasure and gen­dered spectatorship, argues that Berkeley's mass spectacles effecti'ely reifiedthe female form - 'a ,ision of female stereotypes in their purest, mostdistillable form' - and nullified any suggestion of acti'e female agency in thebackstage narrati'e (see also Rabinowitz, Il)H2; ~lellencamp, 19(0). "l\lorerecent writers, influenced by Joan Ri,iere's theorisation of female masquer­ade, Judith Butler's \'ork on gender performati'ity and other queer theorists,ha'e suggested that the camp excess in Berkeley's work may in fact in,ertthese ,ery techniques of objectification, throwing into relief the typicallyil1\isible ways in which female identity is constructed through, but not neces­"arily for, a male spectatorship (sec Robertson, 11990]2(02). Similar theoreticalpositions ha,e worked to reconcei'e the musical's relationship to masculinityand male sexuality. The traditional class terms in which the contrast of\staire's urbane hill/Ie !JII/I/;r;eois elegance with Gene Kelly's muscular blue­

collar physicality has been concei'ed, for example, is reassessed in terms ofcomplementary models of masculinity: Cohan (i 19931 2002: HH) notes Astaire'sexploitation of 'the so-called "feminine" tropes of narcissism, exhibitionism,and masquerade', \,hile both he and Dyer (i 19H(l] 2002: 111-12) remark onthe contradictions of the more cOl1\entionally \irile' Kelly's construction ofhis own body as spectacle in The Pirale (19-l-H) and other ~lGM musicals.

Then there is the matter of the politics of the musical text itself. JaneFeuer (l1977J 19HI) notes the ways in which the late .\staire and :YIGyl

From Singin' ill 'he Rain (1952). Reproduced counes,· 'I liThe Kobal Collection.

94 FILM GENRE

musicals in particular both de- and remystif~- the act of performance itselfthrough a dialectic of ret1exivity that works to promote the illusion of the filmmusical as a spontaneous, 'liv-e' performance. In manv W,1\S, 'art musicals' likethose of the Freed Unit perform many of the form~l m~ves associated withthe avant-garde and hence with resistant or oppositional art forms (art thatarticulates a challenge to hegemonic v'alues through its subversion or abandon­ment of the formal eom'entions bound up with the maintenance of thathegemony, for example the films of Jean-Luc Godan.l): the standard narra­tive dev'ice of 'putting on a show' ret1exiv-ely addresses the text's ownproduction; direct address through the com-entiona I 'fourth wall' is alsofrequently found in musicals - for example, Gene Kelly's announcement(direct to camera, in sudden tight close-up) that 'the best is yet to come!' asthe lead-in to the climactic number in The Pirale, and the oscillation between'ordinary Joe' character and star performer that occurs across the 'impossible'transitions from narrative to number and back again dra\\s our attention tothe gap between the musical's idealised world of personal fulfilment and ourown more constrained realitv,

We will look in more detail at hO\\ this works in the analysis of SingIn ' inlite Rain below. Howev'er, the key paradox Feuer identifies is that, all theseret1exive modernist touches notwithstanding;, the musical is of course not aradical t(lrm- it remained rather for many years securely at the epicentre ofHollywood's profitable enterprise, Critics have therefore addressed them­selves less to 'claiming' the musical for a hitherto unsuspected radicalismthan to exploring, first, the fissiparous and potentially multivalent qualitiesof what the Frankfurt School perceived as the mass-culture monolith, andsecond and comersely, the ways in \\hich uncomentional formal dev-icespreviously unprob1ematically associated \\ith radical intent may in tact bedomesticated and .lccommodated to heg"emonic systems by context. ThusFeuer notes that while lvlGM musicals appear to lay bare the mech,misms oftheir own production as commercial entertainment, at the same time theytypically end up reaffirming 'myths' of spontaneity, integration and imme~diacy. Vcry similar questions have been considered in relation to music videoby Kaplan (tl)H6) and Goodwin (1993), who recognise the extent to \\hichany number of formal devices previously confined 10 experimental and artfilm are taken over and exploited without difficulty in the supremely com­modified world of the promo. The v-alue of such debates is their recognitionof the need for film studies to move away ii'om a formalist essentialism thatattributes specific political valences to formal practices outside of their actualcontexts of production and consumption.

THE MUS[CAL: GENRE A:-JD FORM 95

THE MUSICAL IN POST-CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD

\lore than any other genre - ev'en the \Vestern, news of whose demise, as weh,l\e seen, has been considerably exaggerated - the fortunes of the classicalll1usical deteriorated dramatically with the waning of the classical Hollywoodsl\lc and the transformation of the .\merican film industry from the 1950So~\\ards. While for most historians of the musical the early to mid-19Sosmarked the musical's creative as \\ell as commercial peak, above all in theFreed Cnit musicals at \lG\l (see above), this vitality did not persist beyondthe end of the decade, It was 19.i7 which sal\' the effective culmination of thel11usical careers of both Astaire (Sill.: Sloct:lngs, HiS7) and Kelly (II's AhpilYsrilir Weillher, 1l)55, was Kelly's final film as starlchoreogr.lpher and Les Girlshis last starring musical role, though he \\ ould continue directing musicalsand making cameo appearances as a dancer into the Il)SOS). This is not to sayth,l[ musicals did not continue to enjoy considerable popularity into the earlyr<J(ws. \lusicals' scale and spectacle made them a key element in the studios'battle \\ith low-resolution, monochrome television, while their apparentlyreliable appeal across a \\ide range of audiences made them an attractiveinvestment in an era characterised by audience fragmentation and justifiedincreasinglv large budgets and roadsho\\ (limited run, reserved seating)entr.wemen ts, Blockbusters like 5,'o/l11t Panfil' (19 is), TI,e ;HIIsl( Ala II (1962 )anJ t'H)' FiliI' Lild)' (J(iq) were indeed m~ljor su'ccesses -- as \\as Hesl SlileSIOIT, which in addition won several Oscars including Best Picture and Best])ir~ctor. l-Iowev-er, as these examples - all adaptations of Broadway hits -­\vould suggest, Hollywood W<lS increasingly reliant on the 'pre-sold' cachet ofst,lge success for its properties and decreasingly successful in generatingpopular original musicals itsclf (on [960s musicals, sec ,Vlordden, J()S2).

:\ much gre,lter problem in the longer run \\as the growing disjunction ofthe classical musical's formal and thematic direction and both the \Y()r1d ,lndthe industn of \\hich it remained a part. The musical's high-gloss, studio­bound aesthetic was almost diametrically opposed to the 100v-key, location­shot naturalism f:1\ oured by ,I new gener.nion of feature film directors emer­~ing from television in the early 1960s, such as Sidney Lumet, "[artin Ritt'lI1d John Frankenheimer. Similarly, the musical's increasing escapism, typi­lied bv the trend for exotic, picturesque settings distanced either in time,place ~lr both \\as at odds with the f:lshion for contemporary urban subjects

for example Hilrly (1955), SII't'CI.')'IIIc1lo(SIIC(CSS (I95S), Thc HlIsller (J()6r)and ,I greater me,lsure of engagement \\-ith difficult social and political

realities such as racism, pO\crty, Cold W,ll" tensions and disaffected youth, allof v\hich had started to crystallise as pressing public preoccupations \\ith thedm,lmic John F. Kennellv-'s election as President in 1960, Hesl Side Slor),'stl:ansposi~i()n of Romeo a~d Juliet to g,mg" warLlre in '\ew York's \\hite and

96 FILM GENRE

Hispanic. sl~ms, shot partly on location in the Bronx, was an exception that~roYed.dlfhcult to emulate. Thus as the decade wore on the musical hecamell1creasmg'ly the province of classical-era directors such as George Cukor (.UyFillf Lild)'), .the,msehes approaching the end of their careers, and Yisibiycreaky hoth In form and content. .

N:me of this of course mattereu to the studios as long as the musical

remaIned c~~mm~rcially Yiable, and the enormous success of Disney's part­

anllnateu \! Ictor~an tan.tasy ,Wilf)' Poppil/s (19(q) anu Fox's The SOl/l/d ojAll1.I'I( (1965) which rapidly o\(:rtook GOIIC J1,1h Ihc H/I/d to become the all­

time box-office champion, seemeu to prme the genre's dur,lbIe appeal.

Howcyer, Thc SOl/l/d or. 'viI/sir pnl\Td not the harbinger of a ne\\ era for the

ch~s.sical musical, but its swansong. In the \\ake of the film's commen:i,11 and

cntlcal success - The ."'ol/I/d ol'.tIl/sir emulated 111'.1'1 Side SIOf)', also directed

by ~obert Wise,. in winning Best Pil,ture and Director Osc.~rs the major

studH~s pl~mgHl,lnto a scries of enormously e,,"pensi\e attempts at repeating

t~e tnck, 1Jlclu~lng /)oC/or f)ollfllc (1<)67), Thorollglil)' .Hodall Hillie (1967),."1111" (1<)61\), CoodlJ)'c.Hr Clllps (I<)(H»), SOllg ol'YOI"7I'ill' (uno), 01/ iI Clearf)iI.)' y (/1/ CIIII Sec FOfeUf (I <)70, directed b~ Yincen te \ linnelli) and Hellll./)011)'. (I <)70, ~Iire.c_ted hy Gene [(e1ly), :\11 of these WTre large-scale f10ps andcontrIbuted slgndlclntly to the ncar-ruinous financial situation in which the

m,ajors f()um] t hemsehes at the turn of the 1<)70S, Perhaps tbe most oh\'ious

of these productions' bilings in conception and C'.:ecution was their common

,lssu1l1ption- encourag'ed by ilic SIIIII/d or HI/sir's success of a now­

c1~imerical Llmih audience, classic Hollyw ood's deLllIlt setting, hut in the ,lge

of !]Ol/IIIC lilld e/l'dc, '!'Iic Gradualc ,md ille !)irl.J' /)0';,1'1/ (,III H)()7) neither

:,~sily reached nor, as it increasinglY prm cd, necessary li)r ,I film's profitability.I he surpnse success of /;'11.1')' Ridcr (I()(H») seemcd to confirm the commerci:Il

\iability of the youth marker; importantly, morem er, althoU!!.'h music ,1ll'd

songs k,lIured prominently in both r'lIs)' Rider and Tlic C'mdlli;lc in the f()rm

of a C<.H1temporary pop and rock soundtrack, these pointed up thematic <lnd

nanatl\ e de\elopments in a ne\\ \\ a~ th,1I differed both fi'om the standard

'throug'h-scoring' of the classical Hollywood soundtrack. and fi'om the set­piece song'-and-dance numbers of the classical musical.

_ For the young'Lr generation of film-makers emerging from tele\ ision and

hIm school by the late 1<)()OS the so-called 'mmie brats' - the musical \\as

like the Westcrn, an object both of admiring study ,1l1d critical enLjuin, ,111d

they approached hOlh genres in a ',!:enerally ironic, parollic ,111d s<ltirical'spirit.

Rare attempts at 'straight' musicals In '\ew Hollyw ood directors like FLlI1cis

I,'ord CoppoL! (1'11"'"1 's RII ill II II})" 1Q()7, sl.lrring \sLlire) and Peter Bogdan­

)vidl (JI rllll,!!, /.'1.1'1 !AJ,'C, 19,,:;, sufficiently disastrous almost to Ljualif:' as ~1

'lost: film) \\ere unqualified Llilures. Lndoubtedly the most imporL111't and

ImhltlOUS '\e\\ ~Iolhwood 'musieIl' - thoug'h on its orig:inal release, in ,I

TilE :YIUSIl.I\L. \II.,""', n"~ •

drasticalh' shortened edit, the film f()Und Lnour with neither cntlcs nor,ludience~ - ,,'as ",Lu,tin Scorsese's Sl'77' 1'111'1". NCIP '{lIrk (H)77), of all his!ilms the most intensely intertextual as wTIl as sdf-rdnential, and in effect

" complex thesis on both the utopian appeal and the ineluctable disenchant­!llent of classic Hollywood forms, enacted through a deconstructiYe per­

(ormance of Holly\\ood's most potently alluring genre. A quintessential

c:,..lmplc of \yhat '\oc\ Carroll ([ 91\2) terms the 'cinema of allusion', NelP

} lid'. SCII' 1'IIr~' includes numerous references, direct and indirect, to the

Technicolor musicals of the genre's postwar peak, including those of Kelly

,l11d \linnclli, and closely models its narrative after the somewhat ohseure

1<).+7 melodrama The. Hil 1/ 1 LII;"c - although to most audiences its story of

the marital and professional cont1icts of two musicians will more readily

reedl the 195.+ version of,.j Slilf Is Bllm (see Grist, 2000: 167f.)· Casting

Illl" Garland's daughter Liza '\linnelli in the lead role of Francine Evans

'(opi)osite Rohert De '\iro as saxophonist jimmy Doyle) highlights this deht

of inf1uence. \C1l1 1'lId', \C/l' ) lid' sulwerts the musical's optimistic romantic

nuster n,UT,lti\e hy juxL1posing.1 stylised period narrative, filmed in the

saturated colours of the postwar period, \yith Dc :'\iro's improyisational

perf()rmati\e style and nemoticdly contemporary persona. The film's critical

take on the musical - which might he summed up as 'the myths don't work'

can be compared to the contemporary tTYisionist Westerns (discussed in

(:lupter 2), though without those films' clear political dimension or topicality.

In YCII' ) 'lid'. YC})' }od', the musical's (literall\) harmonious imaginary,

quickly est.lblished in jimmy's personal mythology of the 'major chord' ­

'\\ hen you haye the \\oman you want, the music you \\ant, and enough

money to get by' is exposed as un'lttainable. !':,Irly on in the lilm, jimmy

\\ .ltches a sailor and his girl dance 'llone, silently, illuminated by the lights o!'

a passing elevated train. The couple ,Ire ,I direct and unmist,lkable allusion to

01/ llic TOI/'II, in whose most LImous number - \\hich lends NCII' ) lid', NCII'}lIr!,> its title, rell .\lanhattan locations were used as the spectacular h,lek­

drop for the three sailors' exuberant, transf(lrmatiye cclebration of self. Here,

1)\ contrast, as elsew here in .\CIl1 ) 'lJd· . .\'ell' YlJd', we arc ostentatiously and

,\;1<1chronistiCllh on a studio set, its theatricality highlighted by the st~ liseu

play of mO\'ing: iight ,1l1d shadow' and jimmy's position, 10\\ in the li'ame with

his hack to camera hut looking dm\n on the lh1l1cers ,1S if from the [i'ont row

of' the circle. The f()1'm.ll distanciation of the setting as \yell .1S the ,1bsence of

music - as if the dancers, who nlOn: \\ ith the precision and grace of their

g'olden aL!;e f(lrbears, are moving to ,1 prerecorded score in their m\ n he,lds ­

~mphasi~es the ,lrtifici,llity of' the classicII musical 'number'. ;\t the same

time, the vignette (which is wholly narrati\e1y redundant) is limpidly beautiful,

t\oe<lli\c ,1l1d oddlY melancholY - as the lL11lcers skip ,1\\ay into the darkness

around the felture'less urban S~)'1Ce they ha\e briet1y made their sl<lge, the\

'-}'-J 1.- J.L.. 1Vl UL1""'1t\.r..

carry with them a yearning desire for the simpler pleasures of the classicalmusical. That such pleasures are no longer available is, ho\\ever, confirmedby Jimmy's response, or rather lack of it - annoyed at being excluded fromhis hotel room so his friend Eddie can try (unsuccessfully) to coax his pick­up into bed, he watches the dancers silently and moves on, shO\\"ing noemotion or even any particular interest.

Impelled by the conventions of the genre and the attractions of the twostars, \ve may wish to believe that sax-player Jimmy and singer Francine belongtogether; they may eYen for a time belie\e it themsehes. But as the filmunforgivingly unfolds the realities of a dysfunctional and abusive relationshipwe become increasingly aware that it is cOl1\ention alone that keeps the pairtogether when they would be - and indeed, once separated, are- far betterapart. NCI]) Yor!.:, IVc/lJ YOrA' climaxes with 'Happy Endings', an extended film­within-the-film-within-the_film 'starring' Francine as a theatre usherette

CPeggy Smith') who dreams of becoming a star. Predictably, a chanceencounter propels Peggy to stardom, heartbreak and ultimate redemption _only, in a dizzying ",iSC-Cfl-ll!JilllC, for her to realise, tirst, that it has all beena dream, and second, fiJr her dream to actualise itself in the 'reality' of 'HappyEndings'. Shot in the stylised, oneiric mode of Kelh's climactic extendedballets in Oil Ihc TOI7JII, An .·llllcr/nill ill Pllris and S;'IWIII' ill Illc Raill likethose sequences 'Happy Endings' (excised fro~l the ori~inal release pri'nt ofNm' Yor!.:, NCI/! YOrA') echoes the narrati\"e in which it is embedded. Unlikethem, however, it acts not as a utopian fusion of desire, music and mO\Tmentbut as an ironic commentary on the unsustainahility of such desires as \\"ell ason the liJrm - the musical, in which such hopes are fostered. The large-scale

production numbers that climax the sequence (includin<T Francine/PelTO'\"t" t"'~~

heading a chorus line of usherettes ag.·ainst a backdrop of giant popcorncartons) are self-consciously absurd. l\lorei)\'er, in an echo of the earlier scene

by the El, we view thc entire sequence through Jimmy's unimpressed e\es.In the lilm's uneasy g.'ender politics, although Francine is depicted s~'m­pathetically, Jimmy is clearl\" portrayed as both the more dyn.lIllic (often\"iolent) and realistic of the couple, and Francine/Peggy's yearning immersion

in the seductiH~ Cdlacies of the sihTr screen recalls the frequent .lttributionby mass culture critics of such stereotypically 'female' qualities as passi\itvand suggestibility to the 'dupes' of the culture industries." \\hen Jimm~dismisses Francine's hit lilm as 'sapp)' ending's', she significantly has n;Janswer.

Jimmy, a figure of 'street' realism \\ho rejects the musical's palli.ltive m\ths,stands in a sense liJr the 1<)70S audience, assumed to be intolerant oj' the

classical musical's optimism and romanticism along \\"ith its defining stylisticcharacteristics.~Contemporary musicals, as Telotte (2002) notes, have had to

find various ways to deal \\"ith modern audiences' apparent reluctance to

THE :\lUSICAL: GE:'\IRE AND FORM 99

countenance the staple and distincti \"e gesture of the classical integratedmusical, the moment \\"hen a character breaks from speech into song..\ttempts have periodically been made to rC\i\"e this traditional lorm ~f theli\"e-action musical, \\'ith some success in the late 1970s, for example Grells:,

T/le Wi;::: (both linS) and Hair (1<)7<)): perha~s sig~ificantl,y, all nost~lg.la

films that also adopted softened and homogel1lsed forms of rock musIc 111

phice of Tin Pan Alley standards. Since the 1<)8~s, hO\\T\Tf, tradition~1

integTated musicals hale largely failed to find an audience (I\C/7'SICS, I<)<)Z; [ /1f)o '-JII)'lllillg; [()9-+, Eeila). The fe\\" exceptions to this rule ha\e tended to

rel\' h~avih on camp and knO\\"ing irony (Thc Rod.]' }fol'i'IIr Piclllrc ,')'holT',

I<Y7S; [,illl(: Slllip o(Hlirrors, 1<)86; JJolIlI1I Rllugc, ZOOI) orf;lI~r~lIlll(nostalgia(/;'I'<'Iy!JoJ)' Sal's [ Lon' YOII, It)<)6). The surprise success of Ulln~go (zooz)relied on numerous tactical accommodations of contemporary audience pre­t'crences, notably establishing heterog'eneous discursiYe spaces - one broadlyn'lturalistic, the' other essentially a straightfilf\\ard recording of the originalsta!!;e shO\\' - for narrative and numbers in \\hich the latter reiterated and

iro~ically expanded on the liJI'mer. CII/ca/!,II also relies on a technique pioneeredin FlashJalicc (I<)Xj) and Footloosc (I<)X-+), in th'll its musical numbers largely(.md necessarily, gi\en its principals' strictly limited .lbilities as crooners andhoofers) deny the audiencc the traditional genre pleasure of seeing skilledpcrtiJfIllerS u~dertake complex and technically demanding routines, filmed inlong full-figure takes; the film instead relics on \lTY-style fast cutting andregimented team dancing in the style pioneered by Paul .'\bdul as choreog.Ta­pl;er li)r Janet Jackson and others in the early I ()(jos (see Dodds, 200 I: -+9-56).

:\longside this apparently irre\crsiblc decline in its traditional he-actIonform, h;J\\e\er, the classic musical has strikingly re-emerged in the animatedfeature. DisneY, the traditional leader in the liekl, ha\ing di\crsified into.HlLllt features ~arlier in the decade, successfully relaunched its reil1\ig.·orated

.1l1imation di\ision in 19X9 \\ith 7lic Lillie .Hcrl//aid, subsequently re-estab­lishing the animated musical as the centrepiece of its annual release schedulesand el;joying major hits \\ith Rcalll)' alld Ille RcaI'I (l<)()l), ./ladJIII (1<)()2), Till'

I,ioll killg (1<)<)-+) and Till' HlIlIlII!Jack or :Yull'e Dalllc (l<)<)fl).

HEYOND HOLLYWOOD

\1akin o' music and song is as uni\crsal a human impulse as one can imagine,.md e\;n national cine'ma \vithout exception has developed its o\vn lorms of

musical film. Fe\v of these, hO\\ever, are \\cll-kno\\n to audiences beyondthose national borders, and almost e\ery English-language study of non­Holh\\ood musicals opens \vith a reference to the near-uni\crsal identiti­catio'n of the lilm musical \\ith its .\merican liJrm, both in the popular

r J J. IV! \.) r.l~ K t.

imagination and in historical criticism. Furthermore, one problem studies offilm musical traditions repeatedly encounter is determining the n:tent towhich the Hollywood musical established standards, generic norms or, forthat matter, conventions fi'om which indigenous musicals can consciousl\"distinguish themselves. .

Probably the best-known non-Hollywood and non-English languagemusical form is the Hindi film. With its high le\els of output, rang'e ofproduction yalues fi'om blockbuster to bargain-basement, strong generictraditions (far more rigidly cotl\cntionalised and policed, in bct, than an\"

Hollywood genre) ;lnd industrialised production system, 'Bolh\\ood' offer:snumerous points of suggestive comp;lrison \\itl~ the c1;lssi~ Holl\wood

musical. One obvious and major difference is that the gre;lt m;ljority (iHindifilms feature music;ll (\()cal and dance) performances, and to a viewer accus­

tomed to the integrated musical in particul;lr the transitions from seriousdramatic content to upbeat and dieg;etically heterogeneous musical number is

bound to seem jarring. In flct, the COtl\ entions of musical integration inHindi cinema are fundamentally different, operating not at the sub-genericlevel (i.e. the distinction bel ween the Berkeley and Freed musical) but in a

trans-generic manner: musical performance is an accepted dramatic cotl\'en­

tion in a discourse which operates according to different regimes of \"eri­similitude and concepts of realism than the Holly\\ood or European model.

Thus whereas to a \Vestern \ie\\cr the Hindi musical might be concei\ed as

a single if cxpansi\e 'musical' gTnre, in opposition to the social realist cinemaof Rhit\ak Gh~ltak or the international art cinema of Sat\ajit Ray (Bint()rd,

I<)S7), to Hindi audiences powerful g'eneric distinctions operate }}lil//l1I a setof representational cotl\cntions that operate in parallel to the equally cotl\cn­tionalised and itl\isiblc 'realisl' ground of \Vestern cinema. Pendakur (200j:

\ I<) q+) sug'gests that both the musical (\\ith decreasing reliance on tradi­tional instruments and tonalities) and \isual styles of musical perf()rmance in

conlemporary Hindi cinema sho\\ the impact of urbanisation and \\estern­isalion in Indian society as a \\hole.

Folkloric traditions, a marked feature of Hindi cinema also li,rure in othernalionalmusical cinemas and mark a significant point of'dinlTe~ce li'om the

Hollywood model. Hope\\cll (\<)S6: +S) describes the folkloric musical as 'thebig genre' in Francoist Spain during the I<))OS, \\hile BergfClder (2000: SI-3)

stresses Ihe im portance of folk song to the post \\ar German f{,'illlillIi/III

(,Homeland films'). In both cases, it appears that the inclusion of distinctivenati\T musical traditions in lilm musicals expressed po\\erful ideological

dri\es towards Ihe re-eslablishment ofcohesi\c national identities in societiesli'actured by major historical traumas.

THE J\lUSICAL: GE'-IRE AND FORM 101

CAS EST U D Y: S 1\ G 1 X' LV T 11 F R .1 IN (I 9 5 2 )

Si//!;ill' ill IIII' Rilill is generally regarded as the apotheosis of the integTatedmu~ical: indeed, it has no real rival as the most popular and highly regardedof all musicals, making the BFI's Top Ten in its most recent polls of all-time"Teatest films (the only musical to do so). Gene Kelly, who starred in and co­

Jirected the film (\\ith Stanley Oonen) himself regarded it as his most suc­cessful achievement, and more than any other film it embodies the spirit and

character of the musicals produced by the Freed Cnit at MGM between

I (H() and 1<)3<). :'\iot only does SiIlP:III' ill I/Ie Rilill typil'\ the domesticatedlll(~dernism that Feuer ([ J()771 I<)S [) sees as characterising' the Hollywood

musical, but \\ith its numerous interte'\tual glances and allusions, the filmampll nt,lkes the point that reflni\c parody/pastiche as generic functions

,Ire bv no means limited to the post-classical :'-:ew Wa\c of the \(nOS, but can

~mo(;th" be incorporated into a lilm that is often seen as a \irtual emblem of

classic tIoll\\\Ood . .\loreO\cr, as Cuomo (1<)<)6) arg-ues, SiIlJ!.ill' ill l/ie RilIII

C'\tcnds the'musical's characteristic rcllc'\i\ity into a reflection on the genre

as a \\hole at a kev stage in its e\olution - one might e\en say it rdlects on

g-cnre in g-eneral. .\'illgll~' III I/Ii' Rilill after all tells the story of an actor \\ho is

compelled by technolog-ical and industrial changes (the cOl1\crsion to sound)to change his star and generic personae.

S""()/~/' ill I!li' Rilill 1;1<1\ not be a critical modernist te'\t, but it remall1sc1earll" a modernist rath'er than a postmodern lilm: indeed, it illustrates

the d-ifferences bet\\cen the t\\O quite clclrly. \\hile many of its traits

intertntualit\, reflC\.ivit\, nostalgia (the lilm is set in I<)2S IIolly\\ood during

the cOl1\ersi;m to soun,i) - arc confusing-Iy associated \\ith both modernist

.l11d postmodern f(lrms, in SlIIgill' III I!li' Rilill these are .tli located in relationto a di~course of (re-)integration that marks out ,In essential difference

het\\een the modernist le\:t and the postmodern celehration of untra11lmclled

heterog;eneity, difference ~lI1d fLIg-mentation.

Inte!.!;rat ion, in LId, ma\ be seen as at once the narrative and thematic

focus a~ld the perf(>rIllati\: modc of .),illgill' III I!I" Rilill. In narrali\c terms,

intc'rration is crucial in terms of the illicit disassoci~It ion/ disinteg-r;ttion of

\ oic~ and image that occurs \\hen Lina L1l11Ont appropri,lles as her ()\\Il the

lOcal talents hatl1\ h,1S 'lent' her lllr T!I" f)illI(//l~ CIt'iI/,cr. The g;oal of the

narrati\c thus bec;lmes the reintegration or voice/speech and body (linalll

.Ichin cd through Cosmo's oposure of Lim at the lilm's premiere). Peter

\\ollen (1<)<)2: ~3f.) relates this .Ispect of the film to J'ICqucs Ikrrida's thesisof the organisin!.!: 'Io!.!;occntrislll' of \\ estern culture in \\ hich speech, its

authentici~\ \ouc'hsal~d b\ the singularity ,l11d integrity of the spe,lkillg; body,

is pri\ i1ege-d O\cr \\Titing: \\ hose tr'lI1smissihility and multi\alence 1ll.1kes it

potentially untrust\\orthy. It is ~uggestj\e ill this regard that the film clo~es

[02 FILM CiENRE

with Don and Kathy rt:garding; a billboard advertising tht:ir new star vehicle,'Singin' in the Rain', 'a clinching self-citation' (Starn, 1992: (3) throughwhich, as StC\cn Cohan (2000: 57) puts it, 'the film and its diegt:sis mesh ...perfectly'. The unity of the romantic couple is associated with the restorationof Kathy's voice and ht:r belatt:d rt:cognition as a musical star in her Ownright: this climactic and celdmnory accumulation of successful integrations

effectively o\cf\vhelms our awareness of film's necessary mt:diation (as film)

of performanct: and accomplishes the same nostalgic invocation of immediacyas tht: backstage musical. Thus ,)'IIIP, III , III lite Ralll justifies Feuer's ([1977]J()H I: 16 I) claim that tht: Freed Unit musicals 'used the backstage format to

present sustained rdlections upon, and affirmations of, the musical genre

itself. The film promotes a distinction of image and inner reality in the on­

going conviction that bt:hind and beneath the mask of the former it remains

both possible and ethically vital to t:ncounter the latter. Ho\\ner, this

straightforward appearance/reality di,lleetic is complicated in SllIgllI' III IheRalll because the reintegration of (personal, priYate) self and (professional,

public) style is accomplished not, as in integrated backstage musicals like TlteBalltllt ilP,IIIl, through the representation of live and unmediated (i.e. theatrical)performance but in relation to the 'second-order' reality of film itself.

\)on and Kathy's duet 'You \Vere "\lcant For ~le', set on an empty sound

stage, epitomises the film's playful engagement with these multiple contra­

dictions. As has been \\idely noted, the number at once ackno\\ledges and

disavow.s the artifice of the musical: acknowledges it, by establishing Kathy's

idealised image as a function of the technology I)on arranges around her to

produce it coloured gels, a wind machine, a spotlight - yet disaHl\\s it, by

excluding these tools of illusion from the frame once the song begins and

pIa.' ing 'straight' the resulting c1assicall.\ idealised image of the romantic

couple. In this regard, the number rC\ises and updates for the medium of

film what Feuer characterises as the 'let's-put-on-,I-sho\\!' myth in the

musical, \\herc thc artifice of musical performance is registered by making

the principal characters professional performers, but cancelled by represent­

ing their (successful) performances as originating in their 0\\11 vigour and

native enthusiasm. :\lusical numbers in the musical promote 'the mode of

expression of the musical itself as spontaneous and natural rather than cal­

culated and technological' (Feuer, [19771 19H1: 1(5). (In the case of SillgllI'III tlte Ralll, the \ isible artifice of 'You \Vere ~leatlt For \le' contrasts

interestingly \vith the unacknO\dedged use of similar technologies in Llct,

aeroplane engines ' to create the draught that billO\vs up Cyd Charisse's scarf

in the 'Broad\vay Rhythm' ballet.) Since film performance by its nature ne\er

encounters its audience 'live', Don and Kathy's duet that simultaneously

evokes and cancels the technological artifice and mediation of cinema can be

seen as stag'ing the return out of artifice to the sclf and creating an imaginary

I

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III

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space, at once inside and outside the diegesis, \vhere perception ,1l1d reality

can be reintegrated.Else\vhere, integration is foregrounded in, for example, 'Fit as a Fiddle',

\vhere the discrepancy bet\vet:n Don's voiceO\er account of his early career,narrated to the Louella Parsons-like gossip columnist Dora Bailey, and the

flashback vignettes \ve see of Don's and Cosmo's 'real' past - not, as Don

m,lintains, 'dignity, always dignity', high society and the (ollserI'atlilre, but

pool halls, the bread line and the hard grind of the burlesque and vaudevillecircuits - enact a mismatch of public and pri\'ate self that must be rectified.

(Don's LIke bio is quite literally a public affair: Don speaks to Dora over a

microphone in front of an audience of fans at the premiere of his latest film

\\ith Lina Lamont, Tlte Ro}'al Ras(al.) Don, like several of Kelly's other

characters in his ~lG\l musicals, for example Fill' Me allil /H}' Gal ([()..p);ind Oil lite Til IIJ II , must retrieve an authentic inner self from underneath a

shallO\\ defensive veneer '. often associated \\ith a 'slick' urban persona, a

carapace to cope \vith the vicissitudes of big city life - if he is to achieve

happint:ss. Characterising Don as in 'a state of self-division', Cohan (2000:

()2) nott:s ho\\ the 'real' biography revealed in 'Fit as a Fiddle' casts him

1'L']Katt:dly as a substitute, literally ,I 'stand-in'. In such a contnt, '~1ake 'Em

l.augh' - \\hich \\as conct:ivt:d as a virtually ,Iutonomous showcase fllr Donald

O'Connor's gymnastic abilitit:s - prO\es thematically integratt:d, as it reprt:­

st:nts a reconnection of sorts \vith Don and Cosmo's suppressed perfllrmativt:

past. In tht: narrative, it is Kathv - t:stablished in her initial appearances as

unaf1ccted and attractively artless compared to tlw 'Like' Lina Lamont who

provides the means of Don's redemption.l<'inally, tht: film is not only formally but in the most concrete way

predicatt:d on tht: principle of intt:gr,ltion, as a 'catalogut: musical', that is a

\chicle fll!' tht: recycling of an existing catalogue of song' m,lterial (in this cast:,

the 1920S songs of Frt:t:d and his \\Titing partner :'\iacio I Ierb Bnl\\n, to

\\ hich \lG\l had purchast:d the rights in I<H9) around \\hich a narrati\t: had

to be organist:(1. \Vollen (H)fJZ: 31 f.) records that in tht: case of SIIIP, III , ill IheRalll it took Betty Comden and .\dolph Green, the scrt:t:I1\\Titers charged

\\ith the task, 'a despt:rate mon th and a half at least' to prod uct: a \ iable

structurt: and scenario.In one rt:g,IHl ,110ne is SllIp:!II' III lite Ralll ostentatiously non-intt:gratin':

tht: ntended ballet sequenet:, 'Broad \\ay Rhythm', that climaxes the film's

performative spectacle (although it does not clost: out the narrative). Indet:d,

the c\traneous (in narrativt: terms) n,lturc of this sequt:nce is comicall.'

rcmarked by the dialogue cxchang'es that bracket it, \\ith Don first 'pitching'

the conccpt of a ballet ostensibly to be incllltkd in Tit£' Dill/Illig Cill'itller to

\ lonumenta I Pictures ht:ad of production R.I" ..\t the t:nd of the st:quence \ve

return to Don, Cosmo and R.F., \\ho responds to Don's proposal \vith thc

104 FILM GENRE

line, 'I can't quite visualise it. I'll have to see it on film first'. This ret1exivegag underlines that the q.-minute ballet \ve have just "itnessed literally hasno 'place' in the film's diegetic world of 1928 Hollywood (it also clearly hasno conceivable relationship to the costume musical Tile Dallclng ('aut/ler): itexists in a different realm of pure performance and spectacle. Kelly's co­director on Slngln' In lite Ralll (and also Oil lite TOil'''), Stanley Donen, latercriticised Kelly's desire to interpolate heterogeneous ballet selj uences into

both films as 'interruption(s) to the film's main thrust' (ljuoted in Wollen,

U)92: 59)·Yet there is, as Cohan (2000: 59f.) notes, an ironv in 5'llIgIII' III lite Rain's

integrati\e enthusiasm - that Debbie Reynolds, playing Kathy \\hose dubbedvoice J,ina Lamont claims as her o"n, \vas dubbed by the singing voice ofBetty Noyes and by Jean Hagen - "ho played Lina for dialogue. Thus thematerial circumstances of the film's o"n production gin; the lie to the seam­less integration· the 'marriage' that the text seeks so tirelessly to promote.

In f:lct, the introduction of dubbing as both plot device and dominatingmetaphor (f(lI' inauthenticity and splitting) seems almost like the musical's

textual confession of the impossibility of its o"n utopian project, settingloose a rogue, unanchored discursi\ e ficld "hose energies can only becontained by the magical deli\cry of the c\()\\n \\ho pulls aside the curtain.

NOTES

I. On thc 'cincma of attractions'. SCT hclm\ (:Jupin 10, FdLh\ SlTCTIl prCSC11l'T is .slIl'Tilll"lh Llplurul ill \\mdden\ (")~2) dc.slTiption of him

as a 'singing liTe'.

3. \\'omh \lIcn\ thr P/lr/,!r NilS,' II/em" (Il)~~) Ilukc.s simiLtr assumptions 'Ihout

\\omcn\ susccptihilil\ to thc .sircll SOIl~ of thc slhn sLTL'CIl.~. ,:otc, hm\c\n, that .\'('1/' \ "d'. \('/1' \ IIrk su~~csts that .Iillll11\ (,lI1d \\c) runaill in

Ihrall to such m\ tholo~ics: fm thc 111m cnd.s 11\ holdin~ out thc' prospL'c·t initiatcd \1\.I imm \ of the coupk\ rcullion, onh ti,l' l'c~~\ to rcfu.sc, not \\ithout lT~ITt. thc offer.

I Lt\ 1I1~ so ullspal"lll~h dcmonstratcd that thc.sL' t\\O pc<>pk ,llT ddlllitiH'h 11111 SuilL'd to

hc a l'Oupk. tIll' 111m slill pla\S on and offthL' ,ludiL'llcc\ \c'lrnin~ (IikL' I'c'~~\/

!"LllllillL') lor such a ITdcmptiH' conclu.sion, '111d C\POSCS it ,IS nLIsochistic ,111d driH'n

ollh \1\ thL' ~ellre\ pO\\nlul n'lI'LltiH' l"lll1\cntion,tlil\.

(1-1 APTER .5

The War/Combat Film: Genreand Nation

I n a spectacular seljuence one of manv - mid"av thrOLwh GiovanniP,lstrone's silent epic Ca/I/l'lil (Italy, I()I{), a po"erful Ron;an fleet lays

siege to the f(Jl'tified city of Syracuse, ally of Rome's nemesis Carthag·e. Theimminent threat rouses :\rchimedes, a Syracusan scholar, from his esoteric

ruminations to ill' ent a radical ne" "capon to save his city from the invaderby harnessing the po\\er of the sun itsclf. His "ildly anachronistic, da Vinci­like invention uses an array of mirror 'petals' around a central lens to f()Calise,I deadly beam of light and heat that incinerates everything in its path. The\\e,lpOn - particularly in its small prototype bears a striking; resemblance toone of the ne\\ high-intensity inGmdescent lights that were in the early I<)IOSrapidly tranSf()J'Jlling the nature and range of lig;hting; effects being achien~d

on sound stages throughout :\merica and Europe, its 'petals' identical to the11100ie light's adjustable 'barndoor ' shutters. The association is heightened\\ hen\rchimnles tests his ill'ention on a square of "hite camas that couldp,ISS f()r a mO\ie screen; the lethal ray itself looks for all the \\orld like aprojector beam. \\'hen the death ray is turned on the Roman fleet to dnas­

tating efkct, as \larcia Landy (2000a: 34-) notes, the combination of para­

cinematic technolog;y \\ith scenes of barrle and terrible carnage underscorescinema'5 long-standing; aninit~ \\ith the technolog;ies of ",II'.

\\arf:lre has been one of the mO\ies' principal subjects since their inEl1lC\.

The ill\cntion of cinema coincided \\ith a decade of imperialist milit,I;'y

contlicrs (the 1!'\<)!'\ Spanish-~\merican \\ar, the 18<)9I<)02 Boer \Var, the

t904- 5 Russo-Japanese \Var), and consumer demand to see these e\cntsonsereen stimulated the ne" medium (Bottomore, 2002: 23<)). :\Ithouf!,'h thetechnolog;ical ,11ld representational limitations of early cinema inhihited the

immediacy of such depictions, "hich comprised either staged recreations or

scenes filmed \\ell to the rear of the front lines, the elaborately st,lged battlescene, the larger the scale the better, emerged as a Llyourite cJ'(md-puller in

106 FILM GENRE

early feature films - including, of course, Griffith's Birth lila Na/ioll (1915).Griffith's masterful synthesis of the deYeioping grammar of narratiye film,and his innovatiye use of the close-up and object-gaze (point-of-yiew) shotsequences decisiyely relocated the audience's relationship to screen warfareaway from the simple consumption of war-as-spectacle towards narrati\'eparticipation and empathetic participation in the terrif)ing experience ofmodern war. While occasional films such as FIIII.tie/al JatA>e/ (19S7) or TheThin Red /,ille (1998) haye rendered battle as a distanced object of specta­torial contemplation, a far more consistent theme of the \V,lr film e\er sincehas been the progressiye annihilation of the self-preserying distance betweenthe cinema audience and the bloody realities of military connict, deployingincreasingly innoyative and high-intensity stylistic and technologicalstrategies, fi>om-111 Q/lie/ 1111 the Wes/em Froll/ (1930) through.-1 Walk ill theSIIII (1945), COllie alld See (USSR, 19S4) and Pia/lloll (19S6), to SaI'lllg Pri,'ateR)'a II (1997).

It is these combat scenes, playing a central dramatic role, that genericallydc/inc the war film. A comprehensi\c historical account of any connict, or ofwar as a whole, necessarily includes the home fi'OI1t, supply lines, espionage,diplomacy, goyernment and military general staff, to say nothing of thebuild-up to and the aftermath of connict, alongside accounts of battle; andeyery national cinema of course includes a large number of films dealing withmost or all of these subjects, some of them such as spy films and stories ofreturning \ctcrans - comprising; distinct sub-genres in their O\\n right.Rubenstein (19<)4: 456) identifies eig'ht major generic variants of the (Holly­wood) war film - the Embattled Platoon; thc Barrie Epic; the BattlingBuddies (in which two riyals, fi)r example for the Ion: of the same girl, fighteach other as much as the enemy but eyentually bury the hatchet, proto­typically What Price G/II/T? (Uj2(l), [ later FI)'illg Fllr/resses (1942), Crash Di,'e(J()43)); the Strain of Command; the Anti\\ar Film; the PO\\ Escape; theWar Preparedness Film; the Sen icc Comedy-.\lusical (an extremely elasticcategory that runs fi'om jO\ial Llrces like Blldi Pri,'a/es (1941) and morale­boosting musical l"C\UeS like Stage DOllr Call/em (1943) to fierce later .mti­war and anti-military satires like .H*-/*S*H .1I1d Ca/(h-22 (both uno)). Sucha list olwiously makes the war film a di \crse and expansi ye category, and forthis reason most commentators tend to foll<m lhsinger, \vho argues that the'war film' as such 'does not exist in a coherent generic fl)rm' (I 9S6: 10) andsets aside war-related strains such as musicals and the PO\\ film to isolatethe film of combat, represented primarily by the first fllUl" categories..\seyer, such distinctions .lre anything but \yatertight: combat scenes /Catureimportantly, for example, in both the classic \y.lr preparedness films TIll'Figh/illg 69/h (1940) and Sergeall/ Lnli (1941 ).2 The \yar/ combat film dealsdistinctly \\'ith modern \yarLIre: \yhile historical dramas \yith milit,lry themes,

THE WAR/COMBAT FILM: GENRE AND NATION 107

from TIle Chalge o(/Ile L/~f(ht Brigilde (1936, GB 1968) to Briluhcart (1995)ob\'iously intersect \vith the modern war film in their presentation of militaryt.lctics and staging of battle scenes, it is the experience of modern, mechan­ised warfare that gi\es the genre its distinctiye syntax. Notably, too, theconnicts which ha\'e proyided the most enduring generic variants - the First\\'orld War, the Second World War and Vietnam - were all fought by con­script armies, thus lending an important representative quality to the seryiceexperience (although more recent films dealing with the modern profession­.I1ised military like BlatA> /-fa /1'1.' /)0/1'11 and Behilld EIICllI)! Lilies (both 200 I)suggest that perhaps the notion of soldier as EYenman is so firmlyestablished that the combat genre can dispense with thi~). .

The operatiye definition of 'combat' in the warlcombat film is from themilitary analyst's point of yie\y quite naITO\Y and excludes many if not mostkey areas of modern \yarfare. The combat film usually focuses not on stra­tegic military planning - indeed the ignorance, cynicism or nen contempt ofsen ing troops for the grand strategic designs that haye placed them inh,lrm's \yay is a repeated generic motif ,- but on the direct experience of battleof the small military unit \vith clearly defined membership and boundaries(paradigmatically the infantry platoon, gunship or bomber 'crew). Badsey(.W02: 245) obsencs that these units arc 'a yen small minority in any re,;1()\crall \var-effi>rt', compared to log'istical, planning and supply ;)perati<;ns orhomeland defence, but their dramatic appeal is precisely the clarity andsimplicity of their task: they eng'agc in fighting' 'as Hom~r understo;)d it'.Pierre Sorlin (1<)94: 359-(0) argues that this emphasis on the self-containedunit, crcating: an 'imaginary \yar ... rcpresented as the sum of heroic actionsclrried out by handfuls of indiyiduals' so well suited to narrativc cinema'sdramatic needs, O\yed something to changin o' modern military theory in the

t'> "

hlte nineteenth cent ury in the light of colonial episodes such as the siege of\lafeking or the battle of Rorke's Drift (fictionalised on film in ,),) /)a')'s a/Pd-II/g (ui)3) and ZI/III ([()(q), respecti\ely).

The e\'()lution of the \\ar (or combat) film is marked perhaps more direcththan any other by dnelopments in the \vorld beyond the frame. The shif:tfrom The Big Pamde (1<)25) to Til" Slll/ds or/mo Jill/a (u)45) and thence toPla/olil/ (I<)S(l), Three Kil/gs (H)<)t)) and BfacA' Hall'l.' /)011'11 olwioush cannotsimply he explained in terms of internal ~eneric c\olution or 'lif~-C\cles'.

Changing perceptions of particular \\ars and of war itself, arising fi'o~ thecumulati\e sharcd cultural experience of difterent conflicts and their em­bedded politics, elicit unusually direct effects in the shifting: tenor, icono­graphy and generic \crismilitudes of \var films. Thus, as \ve shall sec, \\hileFirst \\'orkl \\'ar and \ietnam combat films tend to emphasise the futility,brutality and sufkring of \\ar - in the uni\ersal or the particular - Second

\\orld \\ar mO\ies are more likely to emphasise 'positi\e' \alues of valour,

108 FILM GENRE

patriotism and purposeful sacrifice. Similarly, different national experiencesof conflict and of \ictory or defeat ensure a remarkable dissimilarity in thegeneric conventions by which wars are rendered in different national cinemas- sometimes even curtailing direct representation altogether (for instance the'un,lvailability' of Second World War combat as a direct topic in postwar

German cinema). At the same time, war films exercise their O\vn pO\verful

capacity to structure popular memory and hence to 'rC\\Tite' history. Finally,the war film is also notable for the high degree of interest and sometimes

active iIwolvement (or interference) it attracts from national gO\ernments

and its implication in propaganda efforts. For all of these reasons, while

retaining a focus on Holly\\ood, this chapter will throughout consider and

compare variants of the war / comhat film across se'Tral national cinemas,

sampled primarily through their different representations of four major con­

fliers: the two World Wars, the K.orean War and \"ietnam.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR

The consequences of the First World War (Il)q-18) for global cinem.] \\ere

in their way as far-reaching as for \\orld politics and economics. The deform­ations the war eff(lrt inflicted upon the economies of the \v.lITing' European

nations retarded the dnelopment of distinctive national cinemas; in Russia,

the most extreme case, military collapse, revolution and civil \var etfecti,'Cly

annihilated the domestic film industry until the mid-Il)ZOS. COl1\Trseh the

American film industrY, sustained lw its hug-e intern,tlmarket and ..\merica's" .

late entr\' (:'v1arch [()I/) into the \\'ar, \vas well placed to t'lke competiti\'e

ad\',mtage of the situ~1tion and emerg-ed from the \var enormously streng­

thened, f(JI" the first time clearly the g-Iobally dominant industry. The \var

also made plain lilm's unprecedented potential as a 1001 for disseminating

inf()rmation and propag-,mda, resulting- in sig'nificant changes to the relation­

ship bet,veen g'overnments ,1I1d national film industries. In the CS..\, as \LInt

(198:;) argues, although lilm h'ld only a limited impact upon .\merican

audiences during the brief CS il1\ohement in hostilities, intlustrygo\'ernment

collaboration on \\ ar bond dri\ es led to former Trelsury Secret.lry \Yilliam

:YlcAdoo's .Ippointment to a senior position at the ne\\ ly f(lrmed Cnited

Artists, setting- a precedent f(JlO \vhat \vould subsequently become a L1irly

frequent l'\chang-e of personnel bet,\'een go\,ernl11ent and Holly\\ood and a

br more Ll\ourab\c ,1ttil ude in g-oyernment circles g'Cneralh I(lr the hitherto

unrespectablc medium of film. In .Iddition, the \Yilson administration's

acceptance th.n the film's industry's economic independence need not be

compromised or curtailed for the cinema to be mobilised in the national

interest would pro\'e hug-ely significant f(lr the next \\ aI'.

TilE WAR/COMBAT FILM: GENRE AND NATION 109

\Vhile all the \varring countries produced highly partisan patriotic wartimedramas and propaganda films, no clear generic template for the representa­tion of the First \Vorld \Var coalesced until later in the silent period, whenit formed part of a much larger cultural and political reckoning with themeaning and implic1tions of the \\ar. :\"otably lacking during the war itself

\V,IS the later identification of combat scenes as central to making dramatic

sense of the \var, \vith spy films, hagiographic biographies of military and

politic11 \caders and - especially - sensational melodramas that purported to

depict (largely imented and soon discredited) German atrocities on civilian

populations in occupied Fnll1ce and the Lo,v Countries all vying to define

the \var f(lr audiences at home. Perhaps the most lasting; consequence of such

in LlIllOUS en tries as TI,c Beas/ IIr Bali" (Il) I8) \vas the later reluctance of Allied

film-makers in the Second \Vorld W,lr to inflict such crude, bare-knuckle

propaganda upon sceptical audiences (sec Dibbets and Hogenkamp, 199:;).

Cinem.nic representations of the 'Great \Var' in the 1920S and Il)JOS

demonstrate \cry clearly the close relationship between this genre and con­

temporary politics. In the-\lIied countries, the initial jubilation of \ictory

quickly gave \\ay to a negati\T perception of the \var's afterm'lth thM in turn

came to colour understandings of the \var itself. The best-knO\vn expressions

of this mood of disillusionment arc t\VO larg-c-scale anti-,var melodram,ls,

\bel Gance's .7'-l(({{sc (France 1(19), \\ith its uncompromising depiction of

the horrors of \\ar folll)\\ing hard on the\rmistice itself, and The B,p, Parade(I()z:;), \\hose hero returns from the trenches minus his illusions, most of his

comrades and his leg' to find a glib and shallO\v civilian \vorld that shabbily

C\ploits fighting men's sacrifice for its 0\\ n self-interested ends.

This contr.lst het\\een the fierce integrity of the blood brotherhood of

comhat troops and the ullo\\ness or indifference ofci\ilians and, somclimes,

military brass became .1 hallmark of First \Vorld \Var films. '\otably, this

sympathy \\as able to cross the lines of fortner hostilities in the name of ,I

shared humanity, most Ltmously in /II Qllle/ 1111 /he /It's/em Fro/II ([(no), the

story of a young German soldier's suffering' and death in thc trenches. (The

rl'\Tlation of German \var crimes and the Ilolocaust \vould make the

svmp.nhetic treatment of Second \\orld \Var Gcrman soldiers much more

difficult, although a clear distinction \\as ofien dra\\ n bet\veen 'decent' Wehr­

macht oHicers such as those plaved by \ lichad Caine in Tilc h'ag/e !las I,allded(1<)I(l) and James Coburn in Cross 0( /rllll ([()II) and their cOl1\inced ;,\LlZi

superiors.·') It is \\orth noting incidentally that this \videspread ele,ation of

the experience of the trenches into a kind of C1hary or existential crucible,

geIll'!'.lting pri\ i1egnl insights tLll1scending' the Iri\ialities of the home front,

\\.IS not necessarily associated \vith pacifism or liheralism: 'Ilthough the :\'azis

(still .In opposition party) and other right-\\ ing German natiol1<llist parties

\ io!cnth' denounced _-/II Qllie/ ... and disrupted screenings, the extreme right

110 FILM GENRE

shared a perception of the war as a transcendent experiential moment thatdemanded expiation and restitution. The dominant iconography of the FirstW~orld \Var that emerged from ..11/ QlIlcl ... and its European counterparts ­notably Wesl/i'(ill! 1918 (Germany I<)3I) - is of the trenches, the moonscapeof No Man's Land, mud, decay, squalor and (physical and moral) confusion.Chambers (1994) suggests that such 'anti-war' films should be genericallydistinguished from 'war films'; Kane (1988: 87) on the other hand insists thatsuch films, which operate by complicating or imerting standard genericdualities, 'represent a predictable place on the established genre continuum'.In LlCt, very few combat films about any \var arc 'pro-\var' in any simplesense: most retain a serious awareness of the suffering and loss war entailseven if they wholeheartedly endorse the reasons for fighting (as is the casewith the overwhelming majority of US and CK Second World \Var combatfilms through the 1960s and in most cases beyond).

The situation was somewhat different in Britain, where despite the intlu­ential portrayal of the war during the I<)ZOS by (mostly officer class) veteransthrough memoirs, novels and abO\e all poetry as 'wholly traumatic andcatastrophic', films tended to cleave more closely to official versions (whichas recent revisionist histories have suggested may also have in Llet moreclosely retlected the common soldier's experience and understanding of thewar: see Burton, zooz). Thus although 'they deplore the carnage of war ...they do not question the necessity of duty' (Landy, I<)91: IZO). In this senseBritish portrayals of the Great War did not 'catch up' with other nationalcinemas until the 1900s, when according to Korte (ZOOI: IZI-Z) 'a new contcxtof sceptical self-examination' definitively disassociated the image of the FirstWorld War from positive notions of patriotic s,lcrifice ,Ind attached itexclusi\Cly to suffering and pity. (Korte notes that this is the period whenthe war poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfrid Owen became standardschool texts.) Burton suggests that it \V,lS in Llct the institutionalisation of theSecond World War as Britain's 'finest hour' that reinforced the cinematicrepresentation of thc First \Vorld \Var as, by necessar: contrast, brutal carnageat the behcst of a corrupt and cynical establishment, for instance in kill/!, illldCounlr)' (19(>4) and more recently RegClleralioll (I<)(n); such early sound-eraGreat \Var dramas as Tell Ellglillld (1931) may accordingly prO\e upon closerinspection less blindly patriotic and affirmative than often beliC\ed.

It would be \\Tong- to suggest that every cinematic treatment of the FirstWorld War is polemically anti-war in spirit and bkak in tone. :'\otably, arobust sub-genre depicting the (in strategic terms Elirly marg-inal) air warcekbrated the dashing elvalry spirit of the fighter ace (Willgs, I<)Z7; The [)il lI'Il

Pillrol, 1930, remade I<)38; more recently ~1ces High, GB I<n6) . .\loreO\er, inmany First World War combat films there is a strong train of (albeit some­times despairing) romanticism th,lt mitigates the bloodiness of the slaughter:

THE WARCOMBAT FIL:\1: GE"JRE AND NATION III

]ollrlle)"s Elld (193I), which like Tell Ellglillld eulogises the tragically honour­,Ible British officer class, is perhaps the classic example (see also Kelly, 1997;Burton, zooz). ~onetheless, so firmly \vas the image of the First World War,IS futile slaughter lodged in the American public mind by the 1930S that theearlier war presented real problems as a background against which to encour­,Ige war preparedness in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor for those studiosthat were keen to do so - notably \Varners, who did manage to produce twoof the most important preparedness films, The n:e:hling 691h and the multi­\cadem y-:\. \vard-\vinning SClgeil III }'o!'l', in First W orld War settings (secLeab, 19(3).

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Lniquely, the generic paradigm of the Second World War combat film wasestablished during the \var itself, and has been largely maintained since.\loreO\er, this generic model subsequently becomes the principal frame ofreference for almost all later combat films. Regarding the Hollywood combatfilm, key Elctors in this speedy and enduring generic crystallisation, com­p,lreu to both earlier and later major conflicts, \vould presumably include thel1luch more extensive (compared to the First World War) conversion of USsociety to the \var eff(Jr!, the high degree of consensus about the necessity,1l1d value of the \var (unlike Vietnam) and clarity about its aims and out­comes (unlike Korea). ~\merica's four-year participation in the confEct(19-P-43) also allowed ample time f()r the establishment anu refinement of a\ iable generic model (by contrast, post- \ ietnam conventional campaig-ns,with the notable exception of the second Iraq \Var (zo03-), have been com­pleted in weeks or days). \loreO\Tr, what is true f()r Hollywood is true as well!<)r the national cinema of every other major combatant. Also withoutexception, testifying to the \var's political and cultural centrality not only forthe war generation themselves but f()r those who were children during the war,InU those born in the following decade (in CS terms, the 'baby boomers'),national cinemas ha\T periodically returned to the Second World Warcombat film, updating and revising the classic generic paradigm in the lightof both ne\v unuerstandings and perceptions of the war itself~- notably, thegrowing centrality to Second \\orld War historiography of civilian suffering­in general and the Holocaust in particular - and the changing contemporarypolitical em ironment (the two arc of course closely linked). For this reason,this section is subdivided into t\VO parts, dealing respectively with Second\Vorld \Var combat films made during the war and those made subsequently.

112 FILM GENRE

The Second World War COIl1bat Film 1939--45

The experience of the Second World War highlights the extent to which thewar / combat film is implicated in the political needs of its moment of pro­duction and subject to wholesale revision. Hollywood was cautious aboutdealing with war-related, let alone explicitly anti-Nazi themes during the late1930S, mindful of the still-fragile state of its finances in the lingeringDepression, its reliance on lucrative foreign (principally European) markets,and hostility from isolationist elements in Congress. With the outbreak andspread of the European war these markets were progressi\"ely closed toHollywood, until only the UK - in any event Holly\\ood's most importantoverseas market - remained (thus confirming the studios in an anti-Nazi,interventionist line). Simultaneously, as Schatz (I 99H: 92--+) points out,Roosevelt's massive rearmament drive after 1939 both put a definitive end tothe Depression and boosted working populations and incomes in those \"eryurban industrial areas where mO\'ing-going \vas strongest - thus ensuringthat Hollywood's own rising fill'tunes \vere firmly hitched to the war economy.'Nevcr before or since', he argues, 'ha\"e the interests of the nation and themovie industry been so closely alig"ned, and nc\er has Holly\\ood's status asa national cinema been so \ital ... Iwith an I cfTecti\"e integration of Holly­wood's ideological and commercial imperatives' (p. H9). The production ofwar-related (though rarely actual combat) themes rose from a bare handful in

1939--+0 to some three dozen (still only 6.S per cent of total output) in thelast year of peace, 1941 (see Shain, 1(76).

As Thomas Doherty (1993: HS-121) argues, neither of the t\vin paradigmsestablished filr Hollywood representation of the First World War during the1920S and early 1930S - pacifist despair in the trenches, giddy heroism in theair - were appropriate to the needs of the conflict into \\"hich the US,'\. \\asfinally impelled by the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 19-+1. The gTOUpethos promoted during" the conflict would require not only the recasting: ofexisting war film motifs but the subordination of prnalent attitudes andtheir corresponding narrative templates in Hollywood g-cnres and filr thatmatter in America at larg-c, 'The necessity of personal sacrifice and the \"alue ofcommunitarian purpose were not exactly main currents in ,'\.merican thought... The cheeky newspaperman, the lonesome cO\vboy, the private detective,

the single-minded inventor, e\cn the \\"ill to power of the urban gangsterstrike chords unsounded by the re\vards of group solidarity and communalwork' (Doherty, 199]: IOS). Thus the theme of'col1\"ersion' emerged as centralto the wartime film industry, both as narrative template of \var-oriented filmsand a touchstone for the reorganisation of production processes, as studiooperations and establishcd story formulas and star personae \\cre retooled forthe war effort.

TIlE "'AR/COMBAT FII.!\I: (iE:"JRE AND NATION 113

Building on thc lessons of the First World War, the US governmentmaintained an arm's-length relationship to the film industry during the war,liaising and coordinating production of war-related films through the Officeof \\"ar Information (0\-\"1) but stopping \vell short of gross propagandisingor direct state control in the German or Soviet mode. Indeed, democraticpluralism and diversity, as \\e shall see, became the defining motif of Holly­\vood's \var effort, The dominant tenor adopted by the combat films pro­duccd by the Hollywood studios during the \\"ar itself was - contrary to thepopular recei\ed wisdom of Boy's Own heroics- a hard-bitten, sometimesg-rim professionalism rather than the sho\\y valour of prewar period militaryfilms such as Tile C/Ill/:e:e orllte J,lgltl Brigade (1936). In keeping with govern­Illent concerns not to raise unrealistic expectations of early victory, the war\vas presented as a tough, often grimly attritional struggle ag"ainst fierce,on.>;anised and ruthless enemies (in the case of the Japanese, often freightedwith negati\"e racial stereotyping). In the first disastrous months after PearlHarbor, as Allied forces \vere rolled back across the Pacific Theatre, Holly­\\ ood combat films \\ ere not guaranteed happy endings: the Embattled Platoon\ ariant found its classic expression at this time in such tales of heroicannihilation as /I id'e Islalld (19-+2) and Balaall (19-+3). In any case, with somesix million CS sen"icemen and women sening' O\erseas by the war's end,Emtasy \crsions of the \var could be quickly discredited. Such bctors, com­bined \\"ith the imperati\cs of historical immediacy - Columbia's SulJII/llrilleRaider (H)-+2) \vas in cinemas \vithin six months of Pearl Harbor, and suchtight turnaround times \vere not unusual - and the influence of wartimennvsrecls, lent Hollywood a ne\v degTee of realism,

One shou Id not o\"erstate the clement of \vartime innO\"ation as opposed to

traditional industrial adaptation: Schatz for instance notes how not onlyJames Cagney's Crmiliar tough-guy persona \\as carried over into the \-varmilieu in Tile Fig/I II II,!!, hi)lll but also a rcfill'll1ation/ cOl1\ersion narrative ­here, his suppression of his anti-social super-individualism in Ll\our of theteam bmiliar from his gangster film "Illgeis Willt Dlrl)1 Fa(es (I<)JH) andaided by the same means - a priest played by Pat O'Brien. Yet combat filmnarrati\cs did sho\\ marked differences with the pre\var norm, Dana Polan(19H6: I I2) argues that Holly\\ood's classical narrati\e paradigm with itsindi\"idual protag'onist and clearly resoh"ed conflicts unden\"ent a temporarybut profound shift to accommodate the \\"ar effilrt, subordinating the indiyi­dual to the collecti\'e (or 'team') and the romantic couple to the g-cnder­specific \\artime duties of men and \\omen (see also Ray, 19H5). The themeof sublimating personal ambitions and desires into a larger unit becomescommonplace, focusing either on the need for se\eral indi\iduals to pooltheir differences or on the lone nuverick \\ho becomes a team player. Paris(I <)<)7) shows hO\\ the depiction of the bomber ClT\V in an early Second

114 FILM GENRE

World War film like Air Pllrte (1943) consciously mo\es away from the 'loneeagle' heroics that characteriscd 19305 aviation movies, with their emphasison fighter aces, towards the prevailing model of democratic 'teamwork' ­exemplified in Air Fllree by the transformation of the initially embitteredfailed pilot Winocki into a 'team player'. As part of the dneloping pattern,war films showed how the sen-ices could reward all skills - and not just theostensibly more 'glamorous' ones -- with a key role in the team: in RearGUllller (1943), pintsize crack-shot backwoodsman Burgess Meredith findshis ideal niche in the tail cockpit of a B-2S bomber crew. Such examples,readily multiplied, support Basinger's argument that the 'hero' of the SecondWorld War movie is a collecti\e one, the combat unit - the inL1I1try platoonor the bomber crew, an ethnically and socially variegated CIT\\ whose differ­ences arc suppressed, superseded or set aside for the duration of their missionand whose different skills and abilities (and sometimes nen weaknesses)complement each other to mould a unit whose value is definitively more thanthe sum of its constituent parts. (Landy (1<)91: 1(12) identifies a similar projectin the British combat film: 'War narratives like Tile Way .iltead (19-+0) aredramas of conversion, but unlike traditional cOl1\ersion patterns, \vhich focuson a single character, this film focuses on transformations of the group.' Inboth Air Fllne and He Dic'e .11 Dall'll (GB 1<)-+3), the opening credits identifycharacters by rank or function rather than name.)

Although Kane (I<)XX) notes the general lack of er/ll/eil ideologising inSecond World War combat films, the 'tean1\\Ork' model \\.IS instantly legiblein terms of the preniling ideology of the 'good \var': Wood (H)X I: (8)describes the bomber crew as 'an idcal democracy in microcosm' \\ho achieve'a perfect balance ... between individual fulfilment and the responsihility ofeach member to the whole. The cre\v enact the v,dues they arc fighting fllr,'a reading wholly supported by contemporary industry publicity and corres­pondence with the OWl and uni\ersally endorsed hy commentators. ))emo­cronic diversity importantly extends to demography too: the ethnically diverseplatoon - emblematically enacted in the roll-call of recognisably 'hyphenatedAmerican' names - is of course an abiding genre cliche, and, as Basinger(I <)86: SS) obsen es, mcrtly invokes the 'melting pot'. This in terpretationagain confl)rms to industry and gmernment's contemporary relay and fllrmspart of the cOl1\entional critical \visdom. Thus Paris (I<)<)j: -+X) arg'ues that'from Gillig IIII! (1<)-+2), in \\hich a .\larine colonel ... orders his raciallymixed unit to "cast out prejudice, racial, religious, and every other kind", to

Pride 1I(tlte /fiatilles and 1 1/ idA' in 1111' SIIII (both J()-+S), the combat group hasstood as a metaphor fllr a democratic society.' This democratic inclusiveness,however, has its contradictory dimensions, particularly in relation to race.Not only were mixed r,lcial groups at odds with the realities of militarysegregation (in Gnllg HII! and Balaall they are accounted for dramatically by

THE WAR/COMBAT FILM: GENRE AND NATION lIS

the ad hoc nature of these films' combat units, patched together for specialmissions from the remnants of routed larger forces);-+ Slotkin (2001) arguesthat the broadening of the CS ethnic and racial community enacted in filmslike these' \\as achievable only through the outward expansion of the 'racialfrontier' and the projection of the negative stigma of the racial Other onto theenemy, usually the Japanese.

Street (2002: (3) records that British wartime films were popular andhighly regarded in the US. In Samuel Goldwyn's opinion, the war had enabledBritish cinema finally to discmer a distinctive style of its own, 'broader and11101'1.' international' than HollY\\"(lod and expressive of 'the intimate univer­s,dity of everyday living'. Like its US counterpart, British wartime cinemaused depictions of combat not only to record the course of the war but toproject the core values of the struggle: whereas US combat films reinforcedand extended traditional A.merican democratic principles, however, theirBritish counterparts helped construct a nmel collecti\ist ethos that was definedhy its differences from pre\var society: 'The ideology of the people's war\\ hich emerges from (British) wartime films is one of national unity and socialcohesion: class differences have all but disappeared and han.> been replacedinstead by a democratic sense of community and comradeship' (Chapman,[l)l)X: I(JI; sec also Kuhn, J()XI) ..\s a na\-al power, maritime combat fcaturesIllore prominently in British tl1<1n in US war films, and the enclosed com­Illunity and enfl)rced intimacy of scagoing warfare lent themsehes readily toobject lessons about about the ne\v professional alli.mces emerging from theliar effort, challeng.-ing and superseding traditional class differences. In thesubmarine film Ifi' lJ!L'e al Da!l'n, successful soldiering resolves the con­fusions and complications of domestic and civilian life. (The British war filmhas probably been the most thoroughly explored of any national cinema: secalso Hurd, «)X-+; Landy, 1<)<)1: q6-66; Chapman, Il)9X; J'Vlurphy, 2000;Paris, 2000.)

'\oting' the relatively small number of Smiet front-line combat films madeduring the \\ar - particularly in light of the genre's notable and consistentpopubrity in the post\var era - Kenez suggests that 'perhaps the struggle wasfllr the SO\iet people too serious an aff~lir to be depicted as a series ofadventures. Or maybe the directors considered the st.lbility of the home fronta greater concern than the behaviour of soldiers under fire' (2001: 176). Bycontrast, films about partisans \vere more numerous, more popular andgenerally regarded as better quality. Parallels to the multi-ethnic combat unitin the Holly\vood war film <:<111 be flmml in the stress on multinational andpan-Slavic cooperation against the ~azi threat - an important propagandaline gin:n '\azi attempts to exploit (justified) anti-Bolshnik nationalistresentments among the minority nationalities in the Soviet Cnion. Hmvever,a distinguishing; feature of Smiet films such as Site De/ends lite _Hllt/lerlant!

116 FILM GE:"JRE

(USSR H)+3), The RIlII/liOIl' (USSR 19H) and Zolll (CSSR I(J-!.-I-) is theirftlcus on female protagonists whose sex mitigates neither their inyolyementin the resistance to the Nazis nor indeed thc ferocity of their yiolence (herednnving on Soyiet cincmatic precedents, ttl!" example PudoYl.;in's Thc .Hother,1(26). Another notable difference was the stress in Soyiet 'historical' wartimeepics on heroic inspirational leader figurcs such as l(utUZO\ (with theincvitable and transparent analog'y to Stalin). Gillespie (zOOT IzR-9) findsthe Russian war film 'deadly serious, with a more \'isceral immediacy' thanits western counterparts, and notes the much more graphic depiction ofextreme and sadistic yiolcnce. Unsurprisingly, gi\ en that thc Soviet filmindustry \\ as wholly state-owned and con trolled, Soyiet \var films were alsooften more crudely propagandistic than Amcrican or British films, asreyealed, for example, hy a comparison of the deliberately low-key depictionof submarine warfare in We DI,'c 11/ DIII/"Z w'ith the absurd heroics ofSIl/Jlllilril/e T-q (USSR 1()+3), in which 'a single submarine sinks countlessenemy ships, raids a German port and C\ en lands some marines ashore toblow up a strategic hridge, <Ill with the loss of just one man' (Gillespie, zo03:

130).The wartime films of the defeated :\xis powers are rarely seen and hence

little known except hy specialists. There is, howcyer, a t:lirly considerableliterature on Nazi film generally, including war films, of \vhich probably thebest known is the historical epic A"o/lierg (11)-1-.5), produced under Goebbels'personal supenision (but ironically barely seen by German audiences beftlrethe war's end since Allied bombing had closed most German cinemas by thetime A"o//Icrg premiered in Januar~ J<)-I-.5). Japanese \\ar films are c\"Cn lesswell-known in the West: hlme,,:r, according to Freiberg (1996), Japanesecombat films of the late 1<)30S - responding to the mixed f()rtunes of the 1937imasion of China - surprised suhsequent western viewers (ineluding militaryanalysts) in their hleakness, austerity, relatin' lack of propagandising andcardhoard heroics, and acknowledgement of suffering. Fol1<l\\ing Pearl Harborand Japan's initial spectacular successes in southeast .-\sia, howcyer, a fullymobilised film industry increasing;!y employed nationalist and military rhetorichitherto absent fi"om the genre. 'Generally', Freiberg notes, '\v<utime filmsposit the army unit and the nation as an extended family, or surrogate family,to replace the biological LlInily ... All personal relationships, including thoseamong re,d family memhers, were to be subordinated to national sen'ice,Romantic IO\"C and e\ en family affection had to be repressed in these films ofnational unity' (pp. 33-.5). (On Japanese combat films sec also .\bmell. 197-1-,and Anderson and Richie, 191'3).

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THE WAR-COMBAT FILM: GE:"JRE A:"JD NATION II7

The Second World War Combat Film since 1945

Broadly speaking, the Second World War combat film was a staple of theprincipal Allied national cinemas -- the USA, the USSR and Britain - untilthe late HnOS, at which point the genre Ellis into disuse until the end of theCold War and a series of large-scale public commemorations of Second\\orld War anniyersaries prO\oke a revival in the 1990s.1> Kane (1<)88: 86)identifies Z-I- Holly\yood combat films produced between 19-1-2 and 19-1-5; afterthis there is a two-year hiatus until production of combat films resumes in1l)+7, follo\ving which at least one Second World War combat film is releasedeach year until 1970. By contrast, in the defeated Axis powers, the combina­tion of defeat, wholesale social and economic reconstruction, rapid incorpor­ation into the western anti-communist alliance and the shameful but largelyunaddressed legacy of \\'ar crimes made the production of combat films,particularly in (West) Germany or Japan, too problematic and contentious aproposition to generate more than a handful of films until much later. Themythology of resistance in Italy and France offered alternative narrativep<lradigms for the \yar, but the nature of partisan warfare sets these in somedegree outside the mainstream combat genre tradition.

The dinTgent British and American experiences of actual warfare post­19-1-5 of course pnl\ide essential context for the differences between thedirections taken by the combat g'enre in their respecti \'e national cinemas. Inboth America and Britain, the cessation of hostilities saw a correspondingimmediate demobilisation of the film industry, upon the assumption that\var-wC<lry audiences f.l\oured a return to either lighter EIre or seriousdramas more relevant to the new challen[!:es of 'winning the peace' (as in thecycle of postwar social problem films dealing with racial discrimination in theLS: Gl'II//CI/IIII/ '.I' • Jg/'Cl'IIll'II/, H)-I-7; Pil/I.T, 19-1-9). Upon the genre's re-l'lnergence in the late 19-1-0S - coinciding with the renewal of !arg"e-scaleo\"Crseas military operations in h.orea (see below) - interesting diyergencesappear bet\\ecn the CS and British models.

British \\<lrfare during this period was typified by the series of bloodv,protracted and messy campaigns against nationalist insurgents in the shrink­ing Empire, but these \vere massi\ely O\'ershadowed by the 1956 Suez Crisis,a disastrous, divisive and humiliating episode which effectively extinguishedBritain's ambitions to remain a Great Power on the \yorld stag'e, Counter­insurgency and postcolonial adyenturism alike compared yery poorly to still­fresh recollections of wartime experience where military yalour allied to moralrectitude and national unity laboured to secure ultimate Yicrory, The ensuingboom in \\ar film production in the 19:;OS both contributed to and reflectedthe rapid crystallisation of wartime memory into defining nostalgic nationalmyth. Richards (1997) and Geraghty (zo03) identif~y in British war films of

118 FILM GENRE

the H)50S a moye away from the collectiyist tone of the \\ar years towards arenewed focus on the officer class alongside a new emphasis on processes ofelite planning' and decision-making. The Cmel Sea (1953), one of the decade'smost successful war films in the UK, eliminates much of the below-decksmaterial in adapting :'\ieholas Monserrat's best-seller and focuses morenarrowly on the captain's sometimes intolerable burden of command. Thepopular sub-genre of POW-camp escape films such as Tlte lJoodt'll Horse andTlte Coldil;:, Slor)' (both [()55), confined to the ofEcer class, emphasise meti­culous planning and the role of a 'management class' (the escape com­mittees). Scientists and strategists - 'boffins' in wartime lingo - emerge fromthe shadows to stand alongside selected cadres of specialist commandos inrecreating notably nmTl, and now declassified, tactics such as midget sub­marines (Abrn'e Us Ihe Wat'es, [()55) and the 'bouncing bomb' (Tlte DamBuslers, 195+). (On the postwar and H)50S British \\ar film, see \ledhurst,11)8+; Pronay, 1988; Rattigan, 199+; .1\1urphy, 2000: 179-239; Geraghty, 2003:175-95; Chapman, 2000).

Far more than its US counterpart, the British 'war film' is yirtually syn­onymous with the Second World War: colonial and postcolonial conflicts(such as the 1982 Falklands War and British military il1Yohcment in :\'orthernIreland from H)67) haye not been depicted on-screen as generic combatsituations (see McIlroy, 1998). The British combat film shri\clled alongsideother traditional genres during the near-collapse of the domestic filmindustry in the [(nOS; \\hile it would appear to offer suitable material foreither of the dominant genres of the 1980s, social realism and the heritagefilm, combat films of any kind did not feature until the turn of the millen­nium, and then only in such generically marginal examples as the FirstWorld \Var-set Regmcralioll and f)ealhll'a/(It (2002, a trench \\arelIT-horrorhybrid).

The defining US engagement of the immediate postwar period \\as the'police action' in Korea (19+9 53), in which US fi)ITeS, leading a liN­sponsored international coalition, confronted the new Communist enemy forthe first time in the shape of first the :\'orth Korean and subsequently theRed Chinese armies. The absence of an~ immediate thre,lt to US territory, aswell as the anti-Communist hysteria dominating the domestic politicallandscape throughout the war's duration clim,lxing in the diyisiye Red­hunting campaigns of Senator Joe ~lcCarthy, made Korea a difficult war to

'sell' in the inspirational terms of the Second World \\',Ir by now firmlyestablished in US national mythology as the 'Good War'. Despite its laterreputation as the 'fi)rgotten \\'<11", hmYe\cr, at le,lst t\\"() dozen \\ar / combatfilms dealt with Korea, the great majority made betwcen 1952 and 1956. Inthe absence of a distincti\c iconog-raphy, Korean combat films like Relreal,Hell! (1952) and .Hol al War (1957) tended largely to adopt the established

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Second World War platoon model, superficially updated to include newmilitary technologies such as the helicopter and jet plane (e.g. Sabre Jet,H)53) and new social realities - notably the racially integrated military. Theconfusing, attritional nature of the conflict (in which periods of stalemate.dternated \\ith enormous campaigns of manoeU\Te, while objectiyes changedhands seyeral times oyer the course of the war), howeYer, may account fi)rthe weary, unillusioned tone that increasingly characterises both Korean andSecond World \Var combat films in this period.

Porl' Chop Hill (H)59), a late Korean War entry - released closer to thestart of full-scale liS military in\"()lyement in Indochina in 1965 than to theend of the Korean conflict itself - includes most of these elements alongsideinteresting glances at earlier genre traditions. The action takes place duringliterally the final hours of the conflict, and depicts an inf:mtry battalion chargedto retake and hold a North Korean position of minimal strategic yalue otherthan as a counter in the negotiations concurrently taking place between theL.'\/CS and Communist commands. Some traditional Second World Warclements are updated: the multi-ethnic platoon now includes a Nisei (secondg;eneration Japanese-,\merican) junior officer as well as Black soldiers, oncof \\hom is mutinous (it is implied, as a result of his experiences of racisttreatment) and has to be persuaded that his country desencs his loyalty.Enemy propaganda - often glancingly featured in the genre in the fi)rm of.Iirdropped leaflets or (as in Balaall) a radio operator inadyertently tuninginto 'Tokyo Rose' '. is a major presence in POI'/'" Cltop IIill yia the characterof a Chinese Communist broadcasting morale-sapping news to the troops.(So-called 'brainwashing', a nmTl Korean War fear prominently featured inLS media, \\ould supply the premise of TltcHaudl1lrli/l1 Caudidale (19 62 ),\\hich opens with a Korea combat sequence.) A striking; anachronismremarked upon as such by the protagonists - is a fixed-bayonet 'oyer the top'assault on the Korean lines: in fact, the cross-cutting between the fightingmen, the operational HQin a shell-beset bunker and the \\ rang;ling top brasswhose choices about lines on maps are life and death to the men under theircommand combine with the iconography of trenches (complete with streetsigns and chicken hutches) and barbed wire to lend the film at times adecidedly First World War ambienceJ

Giyen the \\idespread interest in gO\erning elites disseminated down from-\merican sociology during the 1950s, one might expect a similar pattern inCS combat films to the prominent 'boffins' in the British war film. However,this is not ob\-iously the case. Arguably, the bbrication of technocraticmilitary-scientific-gO\ernmental alliances in confronting external enemiesbecomes a major feature of the science fiction films of this decade (seeChapter 8; see also Biskind, H)83), bu t it is noticeably less prominent incombat films. In fact, second-waYe combat films retain the wartime films'

120 FIUvt GENRE

focus on the day-to-day experience of ordinary fighting men. If anything,more than eyer the infantryman's perspecti\e, which (possibly with Korea inmind) now emerg'es as clearly the paradigmatic combat experience, isdepicted as remo\ed, e\en bamingly distant, from the grand strategies ofgenerals and politicians. Baftlegro/llld's (HJ-I-9) portrait of 'the battlingbastards of Bastogne' shows the platoon poring; oyer week-old copies of Sfarsand Stripes to determine \\hether they are in France or Belgium. Thefootslogger's perception of his role in the opaque workings of grand militarystrategy is a simple one: 'nobody cares'. Here and elsewhere in the period,with the real war won and in the past, morale-raising' and O\ert ideologicallessons arc superseded by weary resolution and an eyer more hard-bittentone that increasing'ly \erges on outright cynicism: Balliegrollllil's reluctanthero explains that his PFC rank stands fllr 'Praying For C:i\ilian'. Theimplicit indi\idualism of such attitudes, strongly at odds with the didacticcollecti\ism of the classic Second World \Var model, emerges strongly post­Korea in the loners played by William Holden in T/ie Bridge Oil flii' Ril'erAIl'ai (1<).17) and StC\c McQueen in Hell is For Ili'l'oes (u)6z). In Tlie DirtyDo::,ell (] <)67) and other late I<)60s 'dirty group' films, almost any sense ofshared endea\our has been jettisoned in Ll\OUr of a brulally Darwinianlandscape in which friend and foe alike are percei\cd as merely obstacles tothe o\erriding objecti\e of imli\idual suni\al.

While undergoing these generic shifts, Second World War combat filmscontinued to thri\e into the late 1<)60s in the contest of the bipartisan con­sensus on CS stratq6c objecti\es and policies: the ideological dogmatism andruthlessness of these films' l'\azis and Japanese could be readily construed asstand-ins for the equally Lmatical Communist opponents .\merica con­fronted in theatres from I tl\ana to Hanoi. :\s this consensus fractured underthe combined strain of military Llilure and increasingly strident domesticpolitical opposition during the \ietnam War, howe\er - with student pro­testors decrying GIs as 'babykillers' and comparing CS leaders to :\azis - theresulting ideological \acuum appeared not only to put Vietnam itself offlimits as a dramatic subject, but to ha\e stripped away the credibility of alland any heroic depictions of US military action, Disaffection with unac­countable authority and disinclination to concei\e e\en the 'Good War' interms other than imli\idual self-preser\ation arc elements that grow stronger

in the coming decades: Neale (1991: -1-8) identifies .illart:.! (19.16), Tlie DirfyDo:::,eJ1, Play Dirty (19(l7) and Tolmil..' (1967) as films in which representati\esof command draw up plans and issue orders "\hich arc both contrary to thein terests of the men and (in some cases) ... of Ii ttle or no strategic \'alue'.Rather earlier th,m the \Vestern and in a more condensed period, theideological disjunction between genre and its socio-political contnt results ina heightened re\isionism foli<l\\ed by a wholesale generic collapse. Thus,

TIlE WAR COMBAT FIL\\: (jE'JRE A'J[) NATION 1Z1

between July 1969 and July I<)70 ten US-made Second \Vorld War combatfilms (and one Korean War film, AI*.i*S*H - although the film's anarchic'Korea' was uni \ ersally umlerstood as a transparent mask for Vietnam) werereleased onto US screens, a rate of production in keeping with the rest of thedecade..\nd just as highly traditional Westerns like Chis/lll/ (uno) and B/~f!;

7(/1:1' (Hnl) were being released alongside re\isionist landmarks like I,illie'Hi~ \la II (J<no), some of these combat films, like T/ie Bridge af Rell/agell(J<J6<)) and 11OSij/l ifo Sijuadroll (1970), hewed \ery closely to the traditionalmodel; others (Too !.afe f/ie Hi'l'o, 19(9); KellJ"s Heroes, 1(70) - in both casesl he titular 'heroism' is beyond ironic) pushed the demythifying tendency to;1n extreme, while still others (Ca{(/i-22, 1(70) were coloured by counter­cultural sensibilities. The poor box office of the massi\e CS-Japanese co­production Tom.! Tom.! Tom.! (uno) tarred the combat film \\ith the samebrush of npensi\e f;lilure as the Lunily musical. Thereafter productiondwindles to almost nothing: the next twel\e months saw just fi\e releases ­and then no Second \Vorkl War combat films of any kind until the block­buster historical recreation ,\lidII'Il)! in un6 (possibly encourag;ed by theupsurge of patriotic sentiment attendant on that year's Bicentennial cele­brations). ~ The late I <nos saw a handful of prod uctions, including Cross of!rOil, the 'critical epic'} Bmlgc Too Far (1977) and Samuel Fuller's magis­terial Tlie IJi~f!; Red Olle (1<)1'\0); following the release of The Deer Hl/llter(Un7), howC\cr, the combat film's centre of historical gTa\i ty had shifteddecisi\ely to \ietnam (see below) ..\part from oddly anachronistic \ehicleslike, \lempills Belle (I <)90, a fictionalised retelling of William Wyler's J()-I-.1documentary of the same name), the Second \Vorld \Var combat filmremained in abeyance until its spectacular re\i\ al in Sa,'IIIp, Pn,'ofe Ryall(liJ<)X), fol!<med by Tlie TIl/II Red I,ille and h'IlClll.J' af fllc Gafes (zooo, a pan­European co-production about Stalingrad shot in Eng-lish with British and

\merican stars).In the other major wartime\lIied nation, the SO\iet Union, the 'Great

P.ttriotic \\ar' (as the Second \\orkl War was officially known) became thefocal national cult during Stalin's last years and beyond; numerous wartimere-etuctments produced according to rigid Socialist Realist principles glori­fied SO\iet military accomplishments and Stalin's personal military genius(most notoriously T/ie Fall or Ber/ill, 1<)-1-9). Critical attcntion h,IS focused onthe ways in which, starting with the 'thaw' period under Kruschn in the lateJ()'=;os and earl~ 1960s, new approaches to this central plank of So\'iet ideo­logy became a means of exploring hitherto illicit complexities and alternati\eperspeeti\'es on the Communist experiment in Russia, and ultimately ofchallenging the \alidity of the entire system (sec Ll\\ton, 199Z; Youngblood,1<)96, ZOOI; Gillespie, ZOOT (l-l--79). Collaboration, for example, long a t,lboosubject in CSSR cinema, emerged tentati\ely during the 'thaw' (e.g. Tile

122 FILM GENRE

Fate ora Mall, 1959) and with much more force in the 1970S anu 19i\os, witha growing suggestion of the unuerlying moral equivalence of Nazi andStalinist tyranny in Trial Oil lite Road (1971, rdeaseu 1986), Tlte ~.Jsrelll (H)76),Sign o/Disaster (lqi\6) anu the shattering Come af/d Sec. Youngbloou sees thelatter film as 'a cinematic reflection of the SO\'iet public's morale near the end

of the regime, No one belie'"es in the cause in Come alld See; no one seemsto unuerstand it. All humanity h,IS uegenerateu, ,I1though the Germans are

unueniably much worse than others' (Youngbloou, 19q6: 9+).

As the uefeateu aggressors in the most uestructive connict in world

history, further burueneu by the re"elation of war crimes anu crimes againsthumanity, Germany anu Japan, the principal Axis powers, in uifferent ways

confronted throughout the postwar periou the challenge of what Charles

Maier (199 I) has calleu 'the unmasterable past', This still incom plete processof cultural reckoning in both cases, although to uifferent uegrees at uifferent

times, entaileu processes of abjection, amnesia, uenial, guilt anu uefiance,

The perception that Japan anu Germany hau faileu fully to work throughtheir tarnisheu historical legacies ensureu that any representation ofJapanese

or German combat experiences woulu be greeteu with suspicion and sub­

jected to an unusually high degree of critical scrutiny in the former Allied

nations. It is therefore understandable that before the late twentieth century

very few combat films of any kinu emerged from either country, A conspicu­ous exception - and a major critical and commercial success - was Das Boot(The Bo(/I, 19i\1), which earned a theatrical release as a three-hour film edited

down from the original ten-part West German tele,"ision series. Possibly the

perception of the Battle of the Atlantic as a 'dean fight' largely unembar­

rassed by the atrocities of the Occup<1tion and the Eastern Front (to say

nothing of the Holocaust) accounted for its enthusiastic reception as a stir­

ring story of men and the cruel sea. The attempt in Slalilign/(1 (1992) to

recast the Russian war in similarly unproblematic generic terms was corres­

pondingly less successful. Japanese war films ha"e until ,cry recently focused

almost exdusi'"elv on the national trauma of atomic devastation at Hiroshima

and Nagasaki; the 2001 release of JJerdd:a marked virtually the first point at

which the combat nperience of Japanese forces was made the central

uramatic focus of a major Japanese film.

VIETNAM

The history of the Vietnam combat film is well km)\\n: absent, with the

notorious exception ofJohn \Vayne's Tlte Greell Berels (1968), from CS screens

during the conflict itself (US troops were engaged in Vietnam from H)65 to

1973; South Vietnam finally fell to the Communist :\orth in 1975),<) the

THE WAR'C01\lBAT FILM: GENRE AND NATIO;\J 123

Vietnam combat genre emerged in the late 1970S in several diverse forms,some (Go Tell lite Sparlalls, Tlte Boys III COif/pail)' C, both 1978) clearly

p,ltterned after the stanuard Second World War model, ~t~ers (Th:' DeerIllllller, 1977; ~ .Jpoeal)'pse ;Von" 1979) owing more to the stylIstIC expenmentsof the early 1970S 'Hollywood Renaissance', The Vietnam combat film peaked

in the mid-Iqi\os with Plaloon (19i\6), Hall/burger Hill (1987),8.; Char/le Mople(191\9) and others: these too largely adopted the 'embattled platoon' variantof the Second World War combat film (notably, given the jungle setting, the

p"cific campaign version), but combined a familiar generic syntax with novelscmantic elements such as napalm, drug abuse, 'fragging', rock music sound­

tracks, graphic, visceral violence and a distincti'"e and memorable jargon

('grunts', 'gooks', 'clicks', 'on point" and so on) to cstablish a distinctive and

brieflY yen popular generic strain (see Adair, 191\9; Auster and Quart, 191\1\),Both the Vietnam combat film's belatedness and the terms on which it

eventually crystallised into a recognisable sub-genre reflect the intense andonlToin lT J)oliticisation of the ,var and the fallout from modern AmericI's first

C' C'

experience of defeat (see Klein, J()9+)" The Vietnam film foregroundeu athematics of male identity formation through combat that drew on the

consenative discourses that had developed by the late 1970S for makingsense of the war. To some extent, the Vietnam film's focus on masculinity

C"xtends a well-established aspect of the combat film generally, which Susan

Jeffords characterises as

first and foremost, a film not simply about men but about the con­

struction of the masculine subject, and the combat sequence - or, more

generally, scenes of violence in combat films, whether as fighting in

hattie, torture, prison escapes, or explosions - is the point of excess, not

only for the film's narrative, but for masculine subjectivity, .. Ueffords,

191\9: +1\9)

It has often been pointed out that the combat film is one of the few genres

in ,vhich men are 'allowed' to cry without being diminished, This element of

pathos points up the combat film as another melodramatic modality, albeit

one in which, unusually, masculine rather than female subjectivity is explicitly

thematised.

That issues around the (re- )construction of masculine identity would come

to the fore once Vietnam emerged as an acceptable commercial proposition

Was perhaps innitable, given the terms on which the CS defeat in Indochina

had already been culturally concei'ed. During the conflict itself, US

President Lyndon Johnson repeatedly justified his obsessive commitment to

the war in terms of competitive phallocentricity - a 'pissing contest' between

himself and both :\orth Vietnamese leader Ho Chi \linh and "Iso anti-

124 FII.M GENRE

communist hawks at home (see Dallek, IqqX). According to Johnson's suc­cessor, Richard Nixon, post-Victnam thc US risked ~Iobal ridicule as a'pitiful, helpless giant'. C nsurprising;ly, therefore, in this climate of urgentphallic anxiety the principal foreign policy project of the '\e\\ Right, \\hichtook the White House with the election of Ronald Reag'an in IqXO, becamewhat Susan Jeffords (lqX9) calls 'thc remasculinisation of .\merica'. Vietnamfilms, both combat and homefront, were highly recepti\e to this culturaldiscourse around masculinity: sexual dysfunction as a result of \yar \\oundsis the dramatic focus of both CIIII/Illg HIIII/e (J()7X) and Bllm /III Ihe Fllurlh of

]/1 I)! (J()X9), the Vietnam yeteran anti-hero of Rllilillg Tllllllder (1977), asurviYClr of VC torture, suffers a symbolic cmasculation by haying his handforced into a \\aste disposal unit, and a G r is actually castrated by the NVAin J)eild Presldellls (J()<)5).

Hollywood's mobilisation of these tropes of damaged and/or recoyeredmanhood has been highly ambiguous. The idealised images of '\lichael, thehno of The Deer Hlllller, posed on the trail against misty peaks and mountainstreams as a model of the American frontiersman, explicitly il1\oking -"lattyBumppo, the eponymous J)eerslayer in James Fennimore Coopcr's celebratednineteenth-century nmel and thus by extension associating :\Iichael'spersonal 'one shot' ideology of the clean, 'pure' kill \\ith the long; .\mericantradition of 'regeneration through yiolence' (see Slotkin, 1<)<)X) - also pro­voked comparisons \\ith Liscist imag;ery. Ho\ye\ er, \\hether 'one shot' and allit metonymically stands fCl!' should be seen as undermined or reaffirmed byits tr'lLlmatically parodic IT\\"Orking' as Russian roulette in the film's pi\otalVietnam combat anti captiyity sequence, the film lcayes (deliberately?) un­clear. Oliyer Stone's two Vietnam films of the I<)XOS, Pia 11111 II and Rllm 111/ IIII'

Fllllrlil 111']111)' - the first a 'pure' combat film, the second like The Deer

I1l1l1ler a would-be epic sag;a whose Vietnam combat episode organises anddefines the film's thematic and ideological concerns- explicitly foregroundthe emnging trope of Vietnam as ,I mythic bndscape across \\hich symbolicnarratives of American Illale selfhood are enacted. \\'hile its dominant modeis clearly the Second \Vorld \Var comtxlt film, Pia 1111111 also disintcrs someFirst \Vorld War 'lost g'eneration' motifs in its Llble of :\merican e\erymanChris Taylor's passage to disenchanted manhood and lost innocence (thejung'\c setting; offers opportunities fClr such hCl\yhanded Edenic touches as alurking coiled serpent) Yia the symbolic intercession of 'good and bad LIthers'in the shape of his platoon's t\\O sergeants, the saintly Elias and the demonicBates. Bllm 11/1 tile Fllllrlh IIj]lIl)' is e\Tn more explicitly Oedipal, as idealisticrecruit Ron KO\ic returns from Vietnam a paraplegic. The film deYCltes thegreater part of its second half to Kovic's reckoning \\ith the loss of his sexualfunction, an emascubtion the film strongly associates - in a repla~ of Iq50Spop-Freudian myths - with his 'castrating' patriotic mother and KO\ic/

TilE WAR C01\IBAT FIl."'!: GE'JRE A'JI) NATION 125

:\merica's entrapment in an infantile dependency, both sexual and ideo­logical. The film's climax, in \\hich the radicalised Koyic leads lello\\veter,ms in 'taking" the hall at the J()72 Republican "\ational C:ol1\cntion,.Ipparently proposes a commitment to the public and political as a \yay ofbreaking' free from this complex; ho\ye\cr, it is notable that the \Try lastimages of the film - which see KO\ic, no\\ an honoured actiYist, taking thepbtfclI'I11 at the 1<)7(1 Democratic COl1\ention - arc filmed as a recapitulationof the opening, \\ith applauding expectant f:lces beaming down at the\\heelchair-bound KO\ic as befclre at his childhood self, fulfilling hismother's yision of his destiny \\hich echoes, \yithout ohyious irony, on the

soundtrack (see Jeffords, IQX9: J(»).If Stone's Vietnam films chart an Oedipal trajectory of sorts from depen­

dency to\\ards adulthood, the hugely successful FIrsl Bllllld (IQX2) andNOII/IIIi: FIrsl Bllllld Pllrl 11 (I <)X4) fix their eponymous hero, the child-man\ietnam yeteran John Rambo, in a rq~Tessi\e spiral. The monosyllabicsimplicity of Rambo's understanding of the \\orld - he is \\ounded by theah,lIHlonment of his symbolic 'parents', the nation betrays an emotional andideological ndnerability at odds \\ith the hypertrophic masculinity of hispumped-up hody, and the key mediating figure in his battle to make sense ofthe incomprehensible complexities, insincerities and hetrayals of the adult\\orld is his former commander and surrog'ate father, Col Trautmann. At theend of FIrsl Blo/ld, it is Trautmann to \\hom the besieged Ramho \\hosesClpegoating in the film represents an extreme \crsion of widespread cultLIral111~ ths ,Iround the yictimisation and rejection of returning Vietnam \Tterans(sec Lembcke, j()<)X) - explains that '\\e li.e. Vietnam \etsl just want ourcountry to Ime us as much as \\e Ime it'. :\t the start of the sequel, given theopportunity to return to Vietn,lm on ,1 PO\V rescue mission, Ramho fi'amesthe film's ensuing Lmtasy rerun of the \\ar ,IS a GI Joe-style LIntasy \\ith thechildish question 'Do \\e get to \\in this time?' RillI/f,o's centr,Ji premise that.\merican troops remained, to obscure purpose, capti\ e in Vietnamese campsa decade and more .lfrer the \\,lr'S end, a i\e\\ Right shibboleth shared by( 11(111111111111 l'iI III,. ( IqX3) and. HIsslug 111 . lellliu (1 9X4) - offers a 'rescue bntasy',

analysed by Burgoyne (1994) in terms of a rq?;ressi\e complex operati\e at\arious Inels. (.\mong others, these films 'return' to the goal-orientedcertainties of O/J/t'iII7.·l'. Bllrll/lI.' (lq45) and its like: RIlII//Jo's 'Vietnamese'soldiers are indistinguishable fi'om the Imperial Japanese in Second World\\ar combat films.) It also connects to the Yietnam film's preoccupation \\ithIll,lsculinity inasmuch as it offers ,I contemporary \ariant of the captivitynarrati\cs that featured prominently in :\merican popular culture during thenineteenth century of the Indian \\ars, In the Yietnam PO\V myth, howe\er,the tLlditional object of sa\age capti\it~- \\hite \\omen - arc substituted bysoldiers. The soldiers' reco\ery (they arc usu,l11y roused fi'om passi\e despair

126 FILM GENRE

to play an active role in their own liberation) represents a parallel restorationof American manhood - particularly since defeat of the Yietnamese enemy(sometimes accompanied by Soviet advisors, in an even more uncannily exactinversion of US involvement in Vietnam from 1<)60) is typically accom­plished in the face of indifference or actual opposition from an incompetent,hypocritical or even outright traitorous governmental bureaucracy. [0

POST-VIETNAM CONFLICTS

The 'asymmetrical warf:Ire' of post-Vietnam conflicts - "ith CS forcesdeploying overwhelming manpower and military technology pO\\er in light­ning campaig'ns against hopelessly overmatched developing-world opponentsin Grenada, Panama, Iraq and Afghanistan- apparently offered fn\ compel­ling: narratives to shift the combat film's dominant paradigm a\vay hom theSecond World War/Vietnam composite. Certainly, these mismatches haveenjoyed little screen time: Hear!break RI{~l!,e (H)S6, Grenada) and TitreI' Kings

(I<)99, Iraq) are exceptions. In fact, as perhaps the 200-1- remake of The

/Vland711rlal1 Calldldil!t' suggests (relocated to the first Gulf \Var of 1<)91 but,with obvious overtones of the second, substituting for the original's mind­bending Communists a ruthless military-corporate entity clearly patternedafter Halliburton Inc., f()l'mer employers of Vice President Dick Cheney), theramified, op;1que and infinitely extensible 'war on terror' declared in thewake of the September I I th attacks will propel film-makers closer to theespionag'e thriller's shadowy world of sUr\"Cillance and cO\"Crt action than thecombat film's terrain of pitched battles aIllI firefig·hts. ,'\daptations of TomClancy's bestselling techno-thrillers such as Pil !rio! Gallles (1992) and Clear

ilnd Prt'st'll! Danger (1<)9-1-) illustrate the f()rm these spy-combat hybrids mighttake. 'Humanitarian' interventions, "'hether successful (I\..osovo) or cata­strophic (Beirut, Somalia), have proved equally unattractive as combat filmsubjects, although Blaik HillI,k Do 11'11 , an account of the disastrous Somaliaepisode that adopted many motifs of the standard 'embattled platoon' type,was released amid the post-September 11th "ar on .'\fghanistan and quicklypressed into service as a true story of American heroism in llcfence ofuniversal freedoms.

CAS EST LJ D Y: .~·.1 T J S G PRill Tl;' R LL\ (I 9 9 8 )

Upon its release in July 1998, Steven Spielberg's SilL'llig PUL'iI te RJ'II// waSquickly recognised as a self-consciously traditionalist Second \Vorkl \Varcombat film, thus reviving a strain of the combat film that had been largely

THE WAR/COMBAT FILM: liENRE AND NATION 127

From Slii'lllg PUi"Ilt' Rpll/ ([()<Jil). Rcproduccd c"urtcS\ I )rcarl1\\'()rks I J .C/Thc "-"hal

C"lkcri"!l/I)a\ id Jamcs,

in ,Ibeyance since the late I<J7os..-\s noted above, from that point on thellolly\\ood ",Ir/combat film became largely synonymous with the Vietnamfilm albeit the latter in numerous \vays appropriated and adapted theSecond \\'orld \\ar p'ILHligm. '\Jone of the few clear inst,lI1ces of the f(Jrm inthis period - including as "ell ,IS the films noted ,lbove the somewhatIT\ isionist .1 .HIdlll!!,I/! Cleilr (I ()1)2), "hich imported the well-known Great\\ar trope of festive-season felll)\\ship across battle lines" into the Second\\orld \\'ar 'embattled platoon' genre model - ,,"Cre commercial successes,

and it has been suggested that studio executives "ere unn:ceptive to whatt he\ perceived as an uncommercial subject. SiI"'"g Prl,'iI!(, R)'all is, as hasalso been "idcly perceived, very much a post-Vietnam (film) Second World\\ar film: both the beach-head sequence (in its unprecedented bloodinessand hyper-realism) and the subsequent rescue mission (in recalling the'missin!!" in action' Yietnam sub-genre: see abme) imoke the Vietnam film.\\hat has been less remarked is that Sm'illg PriL'iI!e RYillI not only rehabi­litates the Second World \Var combat model but in so doing undertakes aclear project of generic correction in specific relation to the intenening

\ictnam combat film."Sill'llIg Prl,'lI!e RYlIlI is carefully modelled after the classic Second \Vorld

\\ar platoon film, "ith its ethnically and reg:ionally diverse company includ­ing in time-honoured Llshion a Je", an Italian, a Southern Baptist (a deadeye

From m:'illg Prii'llle RYflll (r99' ). Reproduced L:nurtes, Drearnworks LLC/The KobalCollecrion/! alid Jllm:s.

128 FILM CiE'JRE

sniper who prays before shooting), a tough-as-nails ~CO and e\cn theinevitahle platoon member from Brooklyn. Unlike many Second World War(and even more Vietnam) combat films, ho\\e\cr, in R)'illl it is an officer,Captain Miller (Tom Hanks), \\ho is the dramatic and affecti\c centre of thefilm. Many wartime comhat films, as Basinger (1<)86: 53--\-) notes, kill off thecommanding officer early in the narrative - demonstrating, she suggests, inthe loss of a symholic Elther the inevitable costs of \\ar. C-\ Second World

War film with an officer hero that R.J'il II closely recalls is O/~jC(! Ic'c, Burma I,whose combination of quest and 'last stand' narrati\·es R)'il// also echoes.

Errol Flynn's Capt. Nelson in the earlier film is a schoolteacher, a professionshared with Miller in R)'illl, although \liller is - pointedly - a lils!lIr)' teacher.)In making' a commissioned officer the protagonist and moreO\er renderinghim as a model commander: tough, sensitive and principled -- R)'illl estab­lishes a positive attitude to\vards established authority that informs the entirefilm. The ultimate example of this attitude is the portrayal of Gen. George

~larshall as a beneficent and Llrsighted paternalistic leader (explicitly identi­fied with Lincoln hy his quotation fi'om memory of the 'Bixby letter').

The respectful - in .\ larshall's case \\orshipful treatment of authoritymight be read as an act of generic restitution in relation to the Vietnam filmsof the I<)80s, in \\ hich combat officers \\ere typically portrayed as irrelev,mtor incompetent (Lt Wolfe all but imisible in Plil!OIlIl; Lt Gorman in theVietnam/SF h~ brid lliclIS, H)86) or dO\\I1rig;ht craz~ (Col h:ilg;ore inlpllCilI)'psc NIII/'). It mig'ht also be considered a 'screen memory' (in every

sense of the phrase) cancelling' out the traumatic history of 'fi"ag'ging'(infantrymen killing their commanding officers) in \ietnam. (Fussell (1<)8<):

1-\-21".) cites instances of this occurring' in the Second \\orld \\ar as \\ell.)I lowe\ er, it also re\ ises the e\cn longn"-standing comhat film trend noted by:\'eale (H)<)I: -\-8; sec ahO\c) to\\ards ,I deficit of accountability and duty ofcare by officers to thc men under their command. This is of consider,lhle

importance in R)'illl sincc thc mission Capt. .\ lillcr's team arc sent on initiallydamncd by :\liller himself as a 'puhlic relations stunt' \\ould seem to

excmplif~ "'eale's cltegor~ of orders issued that arc 'contrary to the interestsof the men' or 'of little or no stLltegic \alue'. \liller and his men come to

belie\ e that finding, and saving', Ryan is an ohjecti\ e of enormous, C\eninestimable, value. Rather as in O/Jjn!ic'l', BUrll/il.', the suniving GIs realise

only at the \er~ end of the film the role thcir mission has played in the Ln"ger

strategic plan, the higher humanit~ of miliLlr~ authority hecoming ,lpp,lrentto the diminishing' ranks of \ liller's platoon ,IS the~ fight their \\,Iy to\\ards

the rendez\(llls \\ith R~an. HO\\ever, the military \\isdom thus justified is if

anything' even more rarefied than in OII/cc!lc'l', Bllrt/lil.' as it relates not to amiliLlry objective - the im asion of Burma - but to an ,lbstr,lCtion, the deeper

humanity of .-\merican v,dues as exemplified and embodied by Gen. \Iarshall.

THE WAR CO:\IBAT FtLM: CiE;\lRE A'JD NATION 12<)

This tics in elosely \vith R)'i1Il's depiction of the Second World War as the'Good \Var', an understanding fully in line \vith that of Stephen Ambrose,the author of se\eral hestselling popular histories of the European war fromthe perspective of the CS inLmtryman (1<)<)3, uN5, 1<)<)7) that heavilystressed the unique contribution and heroic, unstinting sacrifice of America's'Greatest Generation' to the ClUse of liherty and democracy. Amhrose's,lpprO\al of R)'illl \\as solicited (and secured) by Dreamworks prior to thelilm's release. (.-\mbrose \\as suhsequently an adviser to the Spielberg­prod uced HBO mini-series Eil wi IIF Bm! liers, 1<)<)<).) While challenged bysome historians (notably Fussell, 1<)<)3 and Zinn, 1<)<)5), this remains un­doubtedly a dominant mainstream understanding of the war in US culture.The question is \\hy this memory needed to be reaffirmed at this juncture,and h(m R)'ilU exploits genre to do this.

Three contextual ElCtors defined the terms of SilL'lllg PrlL'il!c R)'illl's rnivalof the Second World \\ar combat film. First, a rediscO\ered confidence inLS military pnmess f()llo\\ing victory in the I<)<) I Gulf \Var diminished theappeal of the then-dominant combat genre paradigm, the Vietnam film, withits typical focus on victimhood and disenchantment. -"\t the same time, as\uster (2002) notes, the Gulf \Var itself \\as too one-sided (and its final

outcome, \,ith CS ally-turned-archenemy Saddam IIussein forced out ofI'\..u\\ait hut still in po\\er in Baghdad, too amhiguous) to offer viable gnlCricmaterial as a direct alternative. The 50th anniversary of the end of the Second\\ orld \\ar, in particular the commemoration of the D-Day landings, thusIl:licitously spurred Icne\\ed interest in a hard-fllllght, purposeful \\ar \\ith adean and dearcut victory. Finally, the \\ar albeit an aspect of it remote

li"om, and in the main suppressed in, com entional combat films had retaineda strong and disturbing presence in .\merican collecti\c memory \\ith theincreasing' \ isibility of the IIolocaust as a subject of public education, poli­tical debate (Ill[" example, on possible parallels \\ith the ongoing ethnic and

confessional \\ars in the Balkans) and cultural product ion, culminating in1<)<)3 \\ ith the opening of the CS Holocaust \Icmorial .\luseum in Washing'­ton, DC and the release of Spielberg's 0\\11 multi-_\cademy-.-\\\ard-\\inning

Sellilldin's 1,ls! (1<)<)3): Holocaust awareness is one of the nO\cl elements in

Silc'llIg PUc'il!e R)'illl's careful mixture of generic tradition with innO\ation(see also Chapter 11, section III). _-\uteurist Llctors also played a part, with

Spielberg's elnation to the status of 'serious' historical film-maker securedby the success of Sell/lldler's 1,ls!. Cniquely among; the 'movie brats', as

Doherty (1<)<)<): 303--\-) notes, Spielberg's films had repeatedly il1\oked the

\\ar e\en prior to Sell/l/dll'r's Lis!. \loreO\er, Spielberg's assiduously culti­\ated personal mythology stressed the centrality of the \\ar - or an imag;e of

the \\ar mediated by film and television - to his creat ive imagination since hisyouth.

130 FILM GENRE

Rvan unusually frames its combat narrative within an explicitly retro­specti\e framework: the film opens with an elderly man (revealed as Pri\'ateRyan when we return to him in the film's closing moments) stumblingthrough a vast war cemetery and falling to his knees before one among thethousands of headstones. A slow dolly close into his grief-stricken face thencuts to 'June 6, 1944' and leads directly into RVilll's most celebrated passage,the astonishing 2s-minute sequence at the Omaha beach-head. This framingof the war as a past event both remembered (by the \eteran) and com­memorated (by his family - \\ife, children and grandchildren - tagging alongbehind him) is generically atypical: while many combat films both during andafter the war opened or ended \vith title cards recalling to the audience theactuality of the events dramatised in the ensuing film and dedicating the filmto the memory of those who laid dO\m their own lives, R)'l/Il's eulogisticopening is more typical of nostalgic hnitage films like LilJI)rCl/(c o( Arabia(1<)62) - one of Spielberg's most admircd films - or Chariots o(Firc (1981),both of which unfold as (unmotivatcd) flashbacks from memorial sen'ices forthe protagonist.

At the samc time, Ryan's 'memory' is both uniquely his O\vn and clearlycollective ' thus, in a sense, generic: for not only is his recollection situatedphysically in a space of public commemoration, \\ith other veterans and theirbmilies glimpsed among' the graves and thus generalised, but the 'flashback'which ensues is not R)'l/lI 's 011'11. Ryan, as we learn in due course, parachutedbehind enemy lines \\·ith the IOlst A,irborne Division: thus thc landing atOmaha, and indeed everything th'1t foll<)\\s until the point at \\hich \liller'splatoon of Rangers meet up with Ryan's decimated compal1\ in the cornfield,is known to Ryan himself only second-hand at best (and then only if weimagine he either heard the story from \liller in an elided offscreen exchangeprior to taking on the Panzers, or elicited it from the sole suni\'()r Uphamafter the battle). Yet the hyper-real quality of the beach-head sequence atleast allO\\s us no room to accept it as anything but 'reality' experienced ,11 firsthand indeed, traumatically so. In some \vays, the landing sequence standsoutside genre conventions, a traumatic assault on the spectator that cannot bereadily accommodated to any expectational matrix and simply has to beexperienced 'survived' -. by the audience as by \liller ,1ml his platoon, "ithwhom an intense identification is thus sutured, \\'hile this might be con­sidered another instance of Spielberg's 'Cmtasy of witnessing', discussed byWeissman (199S) in relation to ,')',.hilldlcr's Lisl, equally \arious devices in thefilm- including the presence of the elderly Ryan's camera-clicking gTandson,the almost subliminal re-enactment of Robert Capa's famous war photo­graphs amid the frenzy of the landing, and the inclusion of the bookishoutsider Pn C pham in the platoon as a more ambiguous version of the

reporter familiar from O/Jialiu', BIII'II/iI.r, Thc Stor)' o( G.1. .loe (19-1-5) and

THE WAR/COMBAT FILM: GE"JRE AND NATION 131

other combat films (see I3adsey, 2002) - hint at the mediated, collective and(re-) constructed nature of this history / memory. I would not suggest that theC'-plicitly generic terms of Ryan's remembrance (a suitably ambiguous termthat denotes both personal memory am! collective acts of tribute) suggest,like Ransom Stoddard's unreliable memories in Thc .\Iii II 11'110 Shot LibertyJ Il!all(C (discussed in Chapter 2), the il1\idious inescapability of myth: rather,R)'illI's explicitly generic aspects may in L1ct sen'e to adYl:rtise the repre­sentatin' quality of the story and its trans-personal dimension - an importantelement given the film's generically atypical emphasis on individual rescue.

1\\OTES

I. Thi, strain \\as sOIllctimcs ]..no\\n a, '(~uirt-I:lag:g;' aftl'!' thc sparrillg; protag:ollists of

fllilll 1'1'1'<' Glorl'.i

, S<'Igi'lllll } roFs publicit\ pac].. includcd 'Ill authoriscd statcmcnt h'om thc rcal-life First

\\ orld \\ ar hero II hosc stOrl it dram'ltiscd alII crti,ill~' thc film's timclillcss (scc

Shindler, '<)7 'j: +3)·". ,\ distinction larg:cll cra,ed hI recent rcseareh alld thc cOlltrllll'!'sial Il)l),:; nhibitioll of

\\ ehrmacht Il'ar l'!'illlCS in Ihmbur~·.

+. L S armed forccs IITrc dcscg:rcg:ated In Truman's prcsidcllti,d ordl'!' ill 1(I+X.

, filllllill/'S orig:inal sl'!'cenpLII Includcd a \,'atil'c ,\ml'!'ican character.

1>. Russian lIar film production continucs throug:hout thc period of g;lasno't <md

percstroika in the Il)XOS until thc dissolution of thc LJSSR in ")l)': scc hclllll.

/. Pori.' Cliop IIi/I lIas directed hI LCllis .\lilestonc, Illw also dirccted III QII/(/ 011 III"11 <'.\11'1'11 Fro II I as \\cll as thc nujor Sccond \\ orld \\ ar comhat films I 1'1111.· III 11i<' SI/II

,lIld 'l'1i" III/lis rI Iioli/<'~.IIIIII/ (Il)S I),

.~. For a com]lrchensill' annotatcd listing; 01',111 comb,lt films rcleased onto thc LS markct

bUllcen Ill+' md Il)XO, scc Basing:er (ll)X/>: 2XI ,13.1).l). Bcnjamin Siorr (ll)l)7) Ius l'\plolTd parallels bl'tlleen thc tr;\LIm,ltic and contrlllersial

l'\peril'nccs of thc \'ieln,ml \\ar In thc L S,\ and the :\Ig:erian \\'ar in Francc. The

,lbscl1l'l' of direct im'lges of thc conflict itself is notahle, as is the scnse of an 'absencc'

surrounding: rhc 11;11' despire SOIllC thrcc dozcn \']ellch tilms ,incl' Iljll2 dcaling: direct"

II ith thc conflict (,I1most II hoI" throug:h homcfnml m I l'teran l'\pl'ricnccs). III thc "Imc

toJ..cn, I ,a l\'ton (llll)2: I (7) and others ha I c com]l'lI'l'd btl' SOl il't-era and post - [<)() [ films

ahout the lIar in .\fg:hanist'lil (1Iidc" characteriscd in thc Ilestcrn media throug:hout

the Il)XOS as 'thc SOIil't \ictnam' alld itself illladcd in 'I surrcal ju\uposition bl thc

\ iclILlm leteran/rcdccmer John Klinho in RI/I11/Jo III, Il)XX) in thcir emphasis on the

confusioll of phlsicalil and p'lchiLII" maimcd Il'teram Ilith thc \ il'[]um Il'teran tilm.

10. Scc also rhc di,cussion of ,,)XOS al'tion film in C:hapter 10,

I I. 1'01' ,1 compcllin~' account of thc leg:cndan 'Christmas trucc' on thc \\cstl'rn l-'ront in

Il)q (,dso illlflkcd on film in this period in Paul .\kCartl1l'l \ lal ish I idco promo f(lI'

thc sing:1e 'Pipes of Pcace', I<)X3), scc Eckstcins (Il)Xl): rOll 1+).

I' "'rin Gahh'lrd (2001) sccs S<"'III~ l'rl,'1/11' RYI/II as 'I ITbutt'll of thc \ictnam era,

I'l'ndering: 11'11' oncc a~'ain 'lll object of 'tClscin'ltion 'lild I'l'l ercnce' in thc sen icc of a

rcnellcd patriotic militarism I ,Ig:rce Ililh this rcading: and Ilould 'Idd tlut il has bccn

'Imp" bornc out bl suhsl'Llucnt clcnts. HllIlcler, Ciabbard docs not 11m].. his critiquc

of Rr<1I1 throug'h ,m 'Ina"sis of thc film a, ;1 ~'l'IHl' tl'\t.

CIIAPTER 6

The Gangster Film: Genre andSociety

L os /\n~·des,.1<)<)+. Professional hit~llL'n \.incellt rega and Jules \\infield,ITrurnlng' from another successful assignment, h'l\e to deal \\ah an

unnpected problem: engaged in an ,1I1imated discussion of chance and fate,

Vincent unintentionally prO\es a point by accidentally discharging his pistol

and killing their assoL'iate l\lanin more nacrly, he splatters his brains

copiously O\er the bad; seat and \\indo\\s of their Lincoln Continental.

Understandabl\ 'Ipprehensi\c of the ul1\\e1eome attention their sanguinary

state might dLI\\ should they continue cruising the L\ IiTe\\ay, Jules

arranges an emergmcy pitstop at his friend Jimmie's pbee. The cool \\deome

Jimmie gi\'es them has nothing to do \\ ith any moral re\ldsion or e\en

physiL'al squeamishness ,Ibout murder and bloodshed, and L'\erything to do

\\ ith his apprehensions at hO\\ his \\ ife - a night-shift nurse, entirdy innocent

of Jimmy's unden\orld connections - \\ill respond upon her imminent return:

'I f she comes home and sees .1 bunch of g;ang;sters doing a bunch of g.lngster

shit, she's going to /lip',In this celebrated (or notorious) sequence fi'OI11 his bre'lkthrough hit Pilip

FI(lloII (I ()(!+), (.b.lentin Tarantino's characteristically memorable slllllm.ltion

of his (ddibeLIt eh) t \\o-dimensiona I criminals and their milieu .IS 'g.ll1g'ster

shit' re\c,lls a good deal about the place the gangster genre occupies in

contemporan I Iolly\\ood film. In the first place, \\C .UT referred to .m inst<mrly

recognisable and moreO\er highly stylised and cOllified \\orld, \re, Jules and

Jimmie's \\ife all knO\\ 'g.1I1gster shit' \\hen \\ e see it. This bmiliarity is

accentuated, flattened out comic-book style, and pushed to a parodic extreme

by T.lrantino, recasting the gangster's tradition,d interest in self-expression

throug;h person,d cool .1I1d sartorial style as an ironic mod uni/()rmity: rincent

and \'brcellus inherit fi'om the LTL'\\ in Tar.mtino's debut film Rcscr-i'lllr Dogs

(1<)<) I) a parodic unden\Orld 'uniform' of black suits, \\hite shirts and skinny

bhlCk ties, in homag'e to the earh I()(JOS style of the contract killers playnl by

THE CiA"JfiSTER FILM: GENRE AND SOCIETY I]]

Lee \lanin and elu Galag;er in Tlie Killers (196+), among others, This retrointertextual styling immediately ,mnounces these gangsters' distancc from'rcal' crime and their imbrication in an ebboratc, hermetic \\orld of theirO\\n (it also makes the 1L1\\aiian beach gear in \\hich they begin and end the

film still morc richly incongruous) (see 13ruzzi, I()9T 67-9+),Tarantino's \crsion of gangsterdom may be by some distance the most

highly stylised and re/lni\e in contemporary CS cinema, but the in\ocltion

of a codified, sdf-consciously ritualised flctin? uni\'erse is common to manyother films of the H)90S and zooos, In Tlilllgs 10 Do III Dem:er H'II('// YOII're

I)(ilil (]()():i), the sharp suit and slick mO\ es of doomed gang'ster Jimmy 'the

Saint' instantly out him as a gangster to the society girl he dreams of

rom'll1cing, \Iiehad \Iann's gangster films push to a hermetic cxtreme a

'professional ising' tendency built into the genre from its emergence in the

earl\ j(J3os, excluding' the ordinary public almost entirdy fi'om their daborate

L'ops-and-robbers (and killers) arabesques: in nl/e( (lq'K I), !fcill (I()9S) and

Cllililicrill (zoo+), theft and murder arc largdy impersol1<ll afhirs in \\hich

indi\ idual interaction is simph a means to \\ork through obscure principles

and opaque codes; \\ealth is not the ohject of crime as a means to personalemichment hut a \irtualh ahstract entity that prO\ides a notional stake for

the essential contest bet\\cen pursuer ami quarry, In many \\ays the kn()\\ing,

stag\ tenor in \\hich such n.llTati\cs unfold recalls the Italian 'Spaghetti

\\esterIls' of the IljCJOS and early IlJ70S it is no coincidence that Sergio

I ,cone is a major in/luence on, and is fiTqumtly alluded to by, both Tarantino

(parriclllarh in AI/I Ihll. /o!. I, Z003) and other contemporary gangsterill/l,'llr( such as John \\00 (notahly ,1 Bcller 7il/l/llrrlll/', Hong I(ong H)'K'K),

(:olltelllporar~ g'angster films often make the .Iudience's assumed t:llnili­

,lrit~ \\ith g',lI1g'ster film codes and COI1\ ent ions a source of kno\\ing' humour,

such as \ !arIon Brando's imperson,ltion of his o\\n L1I11OUS God Lither

chaLKter - a kind of 'Corleone drag' - in 'Ilic Fr",dl/lli111 (1<)<)0), or similar

COI11ic turns by actors \\ ith est,lhlished \Ioh personae such as Joe Pesci (VI)'CIIIISII/ / II/II)', j()<)z) and J.II11L'S Ll<1n (llol/c)'II/OOII II/ /CgilS, H)()Z; VllcI:c) , Bllie

r),C', ]()<)l»). ,\lthough thc l'Omic stylis,aion in the successful HBO T\ series

iii" SlIprillios (H)<)'K ) is less broad, the series still takes as a gi\cn the post­

cbssical g.mgster's ine\itable reli'action through the archaeology of the g-enre;

I'ellni\il\ and intertntualit~ here arc less stylistic /lourishes than naturalised

1,IUs of \Ioh life, as Tony Soprano and his suburban CIT\\ constantly il1\ oke

.Ilheit they reliably bil to lin' up to the heroic l110dels of their screen

1<1\ ouritcs, abO\c all the GOII/ii/lil'!' trilogy (HJ72, IlJ7+, I()(jl). In het, Tlie

SlIprrl//lis' central conceit - that .1 contemporan organised crime boss is liable

to find the challenges of modern ~\meric1l1 suburban life as taxing, and

harder to resohc, than the traditional ,\lafia business of murder and

c\torrion is comprehensible .1I1d enjoyahle hirgely because the audience .IIT

134 FILM GENRE

assumed to be familiar "ith the g'enerie norms and hO\y Tlie Soprallos playswith them (sec Creeher, 2002; Nochimson, 2003-+).

OUR GANGSTERS, OURSELVES: CRIME, AMERICAAND MODERNITY

As these examples help demonstrate, the gangster has become a highly yisible

figure in contemporary cinema. Indeed, "hile recent decades haye seen

Hollywood's other classical genre protagonists (the CO" boy, the song-and­

dance man, the pri\ate eye) suffer a Elirly steady decline, the gangster has

gone from strength to strength. Since Tlie Godlii/lia launched a major

generic re\i\al in the early l(nOS, the genre's popularit~ has gnmn, to the

point where the gang'ster can Elirl~ claim to stand alongside the Western hero

as a glohally recognisable :\mericm cultural emblem (albeit a much more

ambiyalent and contrO\ersial one).\s "eale (2000: 77f.) notes, the film

gangster like the Western hero has often been discussed in socially symp­

tomatic terms; in EICt, the gangster is frequently reeei\cd as the \\'esterner's

urban mirror imag'e, en,teting the conflicts and complexities of an emergent

urban modern imaginary as the cO\ybo~ enacts those of a residu,d agrarian

myth. r Like the VVesterner, the gangster and his yalues ha\c been embedded

in a Elirly stable thematic and iconographic uniyerse established and consoli­

dated throug-h decades of reiteration and reyision, and ,I certain masculine

style and the claboration of a code of beha\ iour throug-h acts of decisiye

\iolenee arc central concerns in hoth g"Clues..\ number of "Titers draw

parallels bet"cen the t\yO genres: "lcCarty (llJlJJ: .xii) describes the gangster

film as 'the modern continuation of the Western - a ston' the \Vestern had

gTO\\"Il too old to tell.' Direct narratiye translations from one genre to the

other, lHl\\eyer, thoug;h not unkn()\\n, arc infrequent - Tlie ()lda!lOlIIa A.'id(I(n(») is a straightfof\yard transposition of the \Varners gangster model to

the frontier, complete "ith Cagney and Bogart, during a transition,d period

f()r both genres; fAlSI .Hall Slallililig (H)lJ(») relocates ,1 FislliI! of Dolla rs(llJ6+; itself a Western remake of Akira Kurosawa's samurai film 1"!J/III1/!O,

Japan 19(2) to a Depression-era gangster milieu. The rarity of these generic

exchanges may point to some more fundamental di\ ergenLTS.

In the first place, during the classical Holly"ood period the gangster

featured Ell' less frequently as prolagrlllisl than the CO" boy or gunfighter. The

sensational success of the first "aye of sound-era g'angster films in the early

HnOS fired a (larg'el~ synthetic) moral panic that has been "idely cO\ered by

g'enre historians (sec Roso" , IlJ7H: 1,:;6-71; .\laltby, J()9:;b; .\lunby, IlJ99: 93­

110) and \\'hose outcome \yas the announcement in IlJ3:; by the Production

Code Administration of a moratorium on Holl~ ,,00l1 gangster film production.

THE GA"IGSTER FILM: GENRE AND SOCIETY 135

In f~\Ct, the gangster cycle may haye run its commercial course by 1935, and

since the Production Code - an enforceahle reality from 19.H - was going tomake the sympathetic or eyen balanced depiction of any kind of professional

criminal \ery dif1icult if not impossihle, the studios may haye felt the

s,lnifice of the gangster film \yell \\orth the public relations benefits it

secured, The upshot in any e\ent \\',IS that after 1935 gangsters became

hCI\ies - antagonists to such 'official' heroes as police detectiyes, FBI agents

,llld T-.\lcn (Treasury .\gents), or the balefully anti-social presence that

ensured that an 'outla\\ hero' like the priyate eye, howeyer often at odds with

official h1\\ enforcement, nonetheless remained yisibly on the side of the

,lllgcls (sec Ray, H)H:;: :;9-(6). Often enough, the same actors \\ho had risen

to stardom in the first \\a\e of gangster films, like James Cagney and Edward

cr. Robinson, nO\y represented the f()rces of hI\\' and order (frequently with

t:lirly minimal retooling of their screen personae). As early as IlJ3lJ, the

tr,lditional racketeering, bootlegging mobster had already become something

of a nostalgic figure: Cagney laments in Tile Roarillg TII'C11lies (llJ3lJ) that 'all

the .\- I guys are gone or in ,\leatraz ... all that's left arc soda jerks and

jitterhugs'. Films f(JCusing once again not on heroic gangbusters and under­

cm er agents but on the career criminal himself ,md his organisation became

possible only \yith the gradual relaxation of the Code during the IlJ50S and its

final ,lbolition in IlJ6(). Tlie Godlii/lia- by no means the only Mafia chronicle

of the late IlJ60s and early I (nOS, though by far the most successful combined

a careful sense of prior genre history \\ith a ne\\ emphasis on the intricate,

hermetic inner \\orld of the .\1<1Iia, and its scale and seriousness as well as its

huge popularity established ne\\ and durable parameters f()r the genre.

\Vesterns and gangster films share a defining amhiyalence with \\hich the~

engage the yalues of settled ciyilis'ltion. Howeyer, where the \Vestern

t\ pically offers the spectator a subject position olllside comntunity fi'om

\\ hich to measure its gains and losses, the gang-ster's story unf(llds f(ll' better

or \\orse wholly \\ithin the domain of a highly dC\cloped and aboye all urban

culture. In E\Ct, just as the \\'estern \yorks through issues around the closing'

of the historical frontier, the gangster genre ans\\ers to the metropolitan

experience of rapid, large-scale urbanisation. Both distil nuteri,ll history into

a set of narratiye p,lradig:ms, character types and typical settings that reshape

historical experience into meaningful aesthetic form. The gangster is the man

of the city as the cO\yboy is the man of the frontier., ,

In terms of genre history, the same endemic critical selectiyity we haye

already seen at \york upon the \\estern and musical canons has in this case

ensured that the reeeiyed \ersion of the 'classic' gangster film and its iconic

prorag:onist in the most influential and \\idely-read accounts has been deri\cd

fi'om ,1Il extraordinarily small number of films. ,\eeording to Schatz (llJH I:

~6'-9:;) 'the narrati\e formula seemed to spring fi'om no\\here in the early

1]6 FILM GENRE

I<)3os', when eflecti\ely just three films make up 'possibly the briefest classicperiod of any Holly\\ood genre'. These films - Tltc PI/Mic Dll'II/J' (1930),[jl/lc Cacsar ([()JI) and Scar/ilcc (193Z), the first t\\O at \rarner Bros., thelast independently produced by Ho\\ard Hug'hes ha\e hugely o\er­shadowed both their predecessors in the silent and \ery early sound eras andall but a few later g'angster films until the gangster rni\al launched by TheGlld/ililter. IIardy (I<)<)R: 304-lz) direclly contradicts Schatz's account of thegenre's origins, Slating that 'the genre did not spring to life fully formed', butwhile extending Ihe gangster film's prehistory back into the late silent periodand [ftlilcrtl'lIrld (I<)Z7, scripted by Ben Hecht, \\ho also \\Tote the screenplay

for Scar/ilce, also cited, though not discusseu, by Schalz), he too takes thecanonical 1<)30S trio as generically ddiniti\e. Shadoian (ZOOT .P--()[) declaresthat 'the flurry of early thirties gang'ster films laid dO\\l1 the bases for futurede\c1opments', but discusses only [,il tic C(/CSI/ rand Tltc PI/Mic 1:'I/CII/J' and

otherwise refers in his section on 'the Golden\ge' of the 1<)30S only toS({/r/iw' and one other 11)J0S gangster film, the comedy Tltc I,il/lc Giant(().n), \\hich is cited in passing' to exemplif~ the \\ays in \\ hich (exactlyt \\ehe months after the release of SCilr/i/(c, 'the ultimate expression of theg;enre's early phase'2) the HollY\nJod gangster had become 'a domesticated

creature ... an anachronism ... the stuff of legend more than bct' (p. 3 I).Howe\er, Roso\\ (llnR: 120-ZI0) lists at least nine other directl~ contem­poraneous gangster films of the late 1<]20S and early 1<)30s.

In bct, Hardy, Schatz and e\ en Shadoian do all make reference to one\ery much earlier film abou t urban criminal gangs, \). \ \. Ciriffit h 's ThcHl/sA'i'lars II/P/~~ IIIC)' (1<) 12), but none of them explore either the intencning

t\\O decades or the possible relationship bet\\een the (earl~ /Iate) silent-eragangster and his more celebrated successors. Shadoian's \ ie\\ that after

Griffith the gangster film 'strugg'led in unfertilised soil through to the end ofthe t\\enties' (p. 2<)) seems to be the majority opinion. Ilo\\e\cr, GriC\eson(2005 f()rthcoming) discusses a range of more than thirt~ silent gangster films

dating' back as early as 1<)06, of \\hich Rcgcl/aalilll/ (1<)1.:;) described by itsdirector Raoul \\alsh as 'the first full-length gang'ster picture e\er made' isperhaps the best-kno\\ n. \\'hile some of these films, such as the series of

films in the mid-I<)los on \\hite sla\C ring's (notabl~ Traffic III Sill/Is, 1<)13)and another, slightly later series about ChinatO\\l1 and 'Tong' gangs, seemremote fi'om the concerns of later g~l11g'ster films, others ha\ e quite clear

connections: f(Jr n:ample, the films dealing \\ith the Italian 'Black Hand' (in

'I'IIC Gild/it/ita, Pari !J, the predatory Don F~lI1ucci, thc young \ito Corleone'sfirst 'hit', is identified as a member of the Black lland).' This genre

archaeology is of more than narnmly academic interest since it bears directly

not only on the standard accounts of genre c011\entions but also on the \\ays

in \\hich the gangster film has most often been historicilly located.

i'I

THE GANGSTER FIL:\I: GENRE AND SOCIETY 137

:\umerous studies of the genre, including the three cited abo\e, take it as~l\:iomatic that the seminal gang'ster films are directly contemporary with thephenomenon they depict. The banner nC\\'spaper headlines screaming ofmob \\arf~ll'e that spiral dizzily out of the screen, an instant genre cliche(nostalgically i11\0ked in Tlte Gild/iI/iter's 'mattresses' montage), arc taken asmetonymic of the gangster film's O\\n determined topicality. Organised crimeh'ld of course rocketed, and hence come to national prominence, during\merica's e:\traordinary and \\holly unsuccessful experiment with Prohibit ion

from IlJI9 to 1<)33 (although as Ruth (1996: 45) points out, both as crimino­10giclI [ICt and as a public figure the gangster 'predated his bootleggerincarnation '). The unremarkable desire to ha\'e a drink set millions of other­\\ ise Ll\\-abiding citizens on the \\Tong side of the law; quenching their

thirsts required the establishment of regional net\\orks of illegal production,distribution and sale of aleohol, an immensely profitable if risky business that\\on huge f(Jrtunes and in a fe\\ cases - most notably Chicag'o's f\1 Capone,the original 'Sclrf~lCe' nation\\ide notoriety, aided and abetted by a sensation­

hungry press.,\s clearly rele\an t as Prohibition-era gangsters \\cre to the (()J0S gang'ster

cycle, hO\\c\er ' Roso\\ (I InR: 20 I-10) incidentally identifies not [jl/Ie Cacsarbut Tltc DllllrtI'il]' III !Jell ([()J0) as the first film based on ,.\1 Capone and a

,trong influence on the better-knO\\l1 later films - if the gang'ster is truly tobe identified \\ith the Prohibition-era mobster one might ask \\hy suchC\ identl~ topical and compelling material only f(lllnd its \\ay onto moyiescreens \ cry shortly bd()re the \ olsted .\ct \\as repealed in I <)33, Schatz( I()R I: R5) and ot hers argue that the gangster film had to awai t the coming' of

,ound (in IIJ27) fiJI' the soundtrack of gangland 'gunshots, screams,..,creeching tires' and also ~I specific style of [1st-paced, hard-boiled dialog'ue

to bring the gang'ster and his urban milieu fully to life," 110\\ e\ er, \\hat(irie\cson and other scholars of early cinema's relationship to urban

l11odernit~ demonstrate is that throug'hout the silent era in US politicalterms roughly congTllent \\ith the ProgTessi\c period there \\as a \\ell­

est~lblished discourse that comprehended crime and \ice in\merica'shurgeoning metropolises (abO\c all :\e\\ York and Chicago) in terms of social

11\ giene and rd(mll (see CiriC\eson, I<)In, 2005 f()rthcoming'; Gunning;,

[()In), and that the silent-era gangster \\as more likely to be concei\ed inthese terms than in the quasi-:\ietzschean mode ofien identified \\ith the

(()J0s film g'angster (Roso\\, IlnR: 67 also notes that gangster films firstappeared 'in the contnt of Progressi\e documentary realism'). In other \\ords,

the silent gangster film used a different, rather than simpl~ an inadequate,'Ll11guage' to articulate the e:\perience of urban modernity.

The emphasis on social e11\ironmental ElCtors in the production of crimin­,!lity, and the ~Issociated C011\ iction in the efficacy of refi)rm, meant that one

138 FILM GENRE

of the dominant themes of silent-era gangster films \vas the concept ofpersonal redemption from a life of crime (such coO\'ersion narrati\es alsodominated the Victorian and early-twentieth century stage melodramas thatprovided early film-makers with many of their dramaturgic models), The

striking absence of any suggestion of remorse or efforts at restitution from

the protagonists of the early 1930S films who - with the possible and limited

exception of Tom Powers in The Public Enemy - go \\'holly unrepentant totheir violent ends is often cited as a decisive break and an indication of the

classic gangster's breakout into modernity from the residual Victorianism of

the silent era, In fact, the reintroduction of such moralistic motifs into later

1930S gangster films, both pre-moratorium VHallllll/!a/l J/lelodraI/{a, 1934,

whose gangster protagonist BIackie (Clark Gable) \irtually lobbies his best

friend the DA to send him to the chair) and after (Dead E/ld, 1936, \vith its

slum setting and strong elements of social critique, and" -l/lgels W"h DirtyFaces, H)3R, whose gangster anti-hero (Cagney) feigns co\vardly breakdown

on his way to the gas chamber to save the next generation of street kids from

wanting to emulate him) is often cited ,IS evidence of their g.'eneric inauthen­

ticity and the gangster film's general decline after .')'tilrlilcc, HO\\c\er, if the

H)30-.12 classics are not regarded as the g;angster film's originary moment but

located in a longer generic history, it is if anything the repcntance theme that

starts to look like the mainstream generic tradition and the titanic SUlljilCC­style individualist the exception.

Gi\cn for example that the genre has influentially been read as an allegory

of both the allure and the potentially catastrophic consequences of untram­

melled individualism, it may be no accident that the gangster film thrives in

the early years of the Depression, in the immediate aftershock of the Wall

Street Crash of October 1929. The traumatic collapse of the 1920S boom ­fuelled by wild stock-market speculation rather than industrial n:pansion ­

not only undermined the triumphal capitalism of the Coolidge ,lI1d HoO\er

eras, but called into the question the very premises of the A.merican social

,lI1d economic system, In the years before more positi\e, pro-social models of

responding to the crisis emerged under Roosevelt's ,\'e\\ Deal, the screen

gangster \iolently articulated the disturbing; possibility that the quintessential1y

\merican values encapsulated in the 'Horatio .\lger myth'- the poor boy

who makes good throug'h his O\vn determination, hard \vork, dedication to

achieving his goals and so forth - might actual1y prO\c destructi\t~, both to

himself and to the wider society, if left uncurbed. The gangster shares the

Alger myth's ,lttracti\e qualities of vitality, \igour and determin,ltion; but he

also exposes their dark underbel1y: recklessness, seItishness, sadism and ,111

ultimately self-defeating spiral of \ iolent self-assertion, Thus the gangster

film typically stands in an at least implicitly critical relationship to the society

it depicts. In Robert \Varshc)\\'s (l194Rl rc)/ sa) inf1uential argument, to the

THE GANGSTER FIl.1\1: GENRE AND SOCIETY 139

{-\merican) audience the gangster is an exemplary and admonitory figure offatall~ o\erreaching ambition, yet one \\'ho also bespeaks some uneasy truthsabout :\merican capitalism. This critical dimension to the gangster film maybe qu,l1ified by the perception that the gangster's typical narrative trajectory, hom obscurity to \vealth and power, only to end in inevitable downfall and

defeat - is constructed to underpin a simplistic moral that 'crime does not

pay'. As ~lunby points out, hO\vever, the intense contro\'ersy culminating in

the Hays' Ollice 'moratorium' implies at the very least that such a message,

nen if intended, \vas not \\holly or satisElCtorily transparent to contem­

porary Establishment viewers of H)30S gangster films. On the contrary, eliteopinion in this period was persistently exercised at the prospect that the

glamorous portrayal of ~lob life in these films notwithstanding the

gJngster's ine\it,lble bloody doom - \vould attract impressionable urban youths

to\\ Jrds a life of crime rather than deter them from it (sec also Springhall,

J{)9R).

.\lunby and other commenutors also suggest, howC\er, that elite depreca­

tion of the gangster film \vas in ElLt less a ref1ection of real anxiety about

these films' role in encouraging an upsurge in violent racketeering than a

IlKal point for a deeper nativist hostility to the growing visibility and political

and economic po\\cr of ne\v ethnic groups in the early twentieth-century

Cnited States, directed at Catholics in general and Italian-Americans in

pJrticular. The Depression-era gangsters might thus serve JS cautionary

I~lbles not only of indi\idualism rampant, heedless of social constraints, hutalso of the dangers of ethnic particularism \crsus assimilation, Portraying

1t,l1ian- (as in Lillie Caesar and Scarline) or lrish- (as in Tile P"hlic Fl/e/llY)\mcricans as gangsters might seem to sene such xenophobic ideolog'ies

r,llher \\ell. (The scenes of public outrage at gangland e:\cesses in Scarlilcc ­interpolated just prior to reblse O\er director Boward Ha\vks's protests and

\\ ithout his cooperation include a reference to thc g;angsters as 'not e\en

citizens l ' suggesting that one part of the gJngster film's agenda is to render

criminal violence 'un:\merican'.) Cnsurprisingly, prominent ltalian-.'\mericans

like :\e\v York ~ layor Fiorella La Guardia quickly denounced such characters

'IS Rico (in Lit/Ie Caesar) as debmatory. (Vigorous protests accompanied the

production and release of The Codlil/ha, and ha\ e themsehes become theobject of satire in The Sopral/os.)

On the other hand, by implying th<lt\merican society, [II' fi'om \\elcom­

ing the 'huddled rirnmig;rant] masses' into the mainstrC<ll11 culture, relegated

ethnic minorities to the economic margins \\'here asoci<ll actiyities offered in

effect the only escape route from poverty and social e:xclusion, the gangster

[ilm could be read <IS a cO!Tosi\e critique of hegemonic American values,

\nd, endO\ved \vith so much more \'ig;our, \vit and charisma than the ossified

fl)rCeS of established authority (criminal or legal) he opposes <lnd O\ercomes,

140 FILM GENRE

the gangster prO\'ides a powerful- and a transgressi\T - figulT of identificationfor the ethnic, urban constituency he represents,

Alongside ethnicity, as an urban form dealing \\ith responses to depri\a­tion in a highly materialistic culture the gangster film also ine\itably shedslight on a greater unmentionable, not only in Holly\\ood but in :\mcricansociety generally: class, While the 'official' :\merican ideology - including theTurnerian myth of the frontier - stigmatised class societies and class struggleas 'Old \Vorld' nils that had been purged fi'om the idealised\merieancommonwealth, the gnmth of labour unions and such political mo\ements asPopulism meant that class conflict \\as in Elct at its most intense in .\mericansociety in the years immediately before and after the First World War.Lulled by the briet1y shared prosperity of the 1<)20S, the onset of theDepression S,I\\ the spectre of class cont1ict return \\ ith a \Tngeance (seeParrish, H)<J2: +O~-2I). As \\ith ethnicity, the gangster ambi\alently enactssome of the brutal realities of class in modern ,\merica, both csposing andfalling \ietim to the csigencies of class struggle. In Elct, the g;angster mightbe seen as an exemplary subject of ideological misrecognition: Tony Camontein Stilljinc mistakes the ~1(hertising slog;an 'the \\orld is yours' as a personalmessag'e and sets out to act upon it. Established at the outset of the narrati\eas belonging to a lower prokssional and social order than his boss or patron,the g'ang'stcr de\'(ltes his ferocious energies not to assaulting or O\Trturningthis social and economic hierarchy, but to triumphing \\ ithin it by a moreruthless csploitation of its \alues than anyone else. Far fi'om being dis­atlccted or alienated fi'om the system, the gang:ster displays an cstreme degreeof in\estment in it. :\s Ed\\ard ~litchell (IlJ7(l) arg'ues, he \\holeheartedlyadopts the logic of the key elements of early t\\entieth-century :\mericanideology that underpinned the existing' distribution of resources a secularisedPuritanism (\\hose concept of the 'elect' could be adapted to underpin thenotion of a heroic 'man of destiny', Elted to triumph \\here others Liil) andSocial Dan\inism (\\'here the neutral processes of natuLiI selection \\ererecast as 'the sun i\al of the fittest' and used to justify the \ieious dog:-eat­dog: contest of laissez-Eiire capitalism). The g:ang:stcr's progress up theprofessional ladder is accompanied by the traditional trappings of self­imprO\ement not only fine clothes, List GlrS and the \\oman of his dre,lITIs,but a self-conscious culti\,1Iion of taste (rony Camonte attends a perfilrm­ance of Somerset ~Iaug'ham's Rllill, 'a serious shO\\'; Bug:s Raymond (Ed\\ardG. Robinson) in the g:angstcr comed~ Tllc Ijl//c Gill 1/1 studies Plato andacquires abstract modern art). Yet his gutter orig:ins ultimately betray him,both to the audience and to his peers: Poppy finds Tony's ap,lrtment 'g:audy',the Corleones endures \\:\.SP jibes at their 'g:uinea charm' and 'silk suits';I\oodks in (JlltC ['pOll 11 Tilllc il/ .llllaim finall~ accepts his lost lo\e'sDeborah's insig:ht that 'he'll ahYays be a t\\o-bit punk'. In Elet, it is the

TIlE GANGSTER FIL\t: GENRE AND SOCIETY I4I

(j',lI1gster's deracination that finall\ dooms him: his il1\estment in ascending~1e 'ladder of class compels him t(; adopt an alien identity and attenuates thepowerful energies of self-assertion that ha\e taken him this far.

.'\ .\lar'\ist reading of the genre \\ould stress this notion of self-alienation,1S an ineradicable function of clpitalism, ,md might point to the corruptionof the f~lmily, a repeated motif in g,mgster films since the ICnOS, as a key1l1'lrker. :\ccording to .\Lin ,lOll his collaborator Friedrich Engels, thecultural pri\ileging- of the 'Holy hlmily' under bourgeois society is acharacteristic ideological ruse - di\erting the \\orker's \alid aspirationsto\\anls self-realisation in a politically harmless direction (\\hich is alsoeconomically necessary to replenish the \\orkforce) \\hik offering- him a pettytH,ll1ny of his O\\n (O\Tr his \\ife and children) to assuage the misery of hisI;\\n class oppression. The bmily unit thus becomes a gTim parodicmini,ltulT of the unjust and t\\isted pO\\er rehllions that typify bourgeoisclpiLilism as a \\ hole. HO\\C\ er, this implies th,1I the inherently unstableconi radict ions of class society and their potential for cltastrophic implosion

might also be encountered in the family. From such a perspecti\e, thegangster's characteristic obsession \\ith presen ing 'his' Elmily, \\hich none­theless leads ineluctably to its destruction, becomes enormously re\Taling. In.','((Il/ila, Tony Camonte's incestuous bond \\ith his sister Cesca, \\hieh dri\eshim to murder her husband, becomes a 100Tr's pact that sees them die sideIn side in a hail of police bullets. \Iichael Corkone insists throughout TileCod/il/iler. Pllrl II that his criminal enterprises, like his Either's, arc ,illintended for 'the good of the Llmily'; but as his po\\er crests his family isprogressi \ely decimated, and he is himself cit her direct Iy responsible for, orimplicated in, the deaths of his brother-in-hl\\, his brother and his daughter(and his unborn child, aborted by his \\ ik kay in IT\ulsion ag;ainst the 'e\ il'\ Iichael has \\Tought). His uncomprehending' mother reassurcs him th,lt 'youcan ne\Tr lose your Llmily', but \lichael realises that 'times ha\c changed'.\Iichael's blind pursuit of pO\\er, ostensibly in the n,lme of the Lunil\,unk<lshes uncontainable forces that must ultimately destroy it, perfectlyellcapsubting' the .\Linist insight that the 'protected' Llmilial ITaim cannotlin,dl~ be protected from the atomising; {(lI'CCS of the \Tn capitalism thatclaims to presenT it. In F()rce ()f r,1! ([(Hi) .\lob hmyer Joe \lorse'sil1\ohTment \\ith ruthkss rackcteer Tucker Ie<lds indirectly but innorabh tohis brother Leo's murder; Tilc G()d/II/iler. PIIII II ends \\ ith \lich<lel himselfordering the murder of his brother Fredo.

The centrality of the E1l11ily to the g'angster seems ,It first glancep'lradmical: f(lr if anything the gangster is identified \\ ith the cat,lstrophicapotheosis of the o\en\cening, e\en imperial self. The gangster film is in factthe only major genrc to he named ,Iftel' its protag'onisr. Yet as the \cn \\onlimplies, the gang-ster's ,Ipparently hypertrophic illlli\ idualism is itself only

142 FILM GENRE

skin-deep and ultimately vulnerable: unlike the Westerner the gangster - anorp;llnised criminal - is he~l\'ily reliant on others not only for his po\\er but forhis identity. For all that his story apparently enacts wild self:'assertion andradical self-fashioning, from another perspective it becomes apparent that thegangster:s selfhood is really constructed through the group. GOIII(/dias (1989)opens wIth the bald statement in voicemcr: ':\11 my lik I ahyavs \\anted tobe a gang'ster', but the remainder of the film \\orb throug'h' \\ith brutalthoroughness the mutually contradictory thrust of the desire on the one handto belong, and by belonging' to confirm an apparenth secure selthood(knowin[!: what one wants and actin[!: to achieve it) versu~ on the other theinherent logic of violence that will inevitably end up making victims of the[!:ang's mvn members and reducing the gangster himself to a state of paranoiduncertainty S

Warshow's sense of the gang'ster as thrO\ving into relief the yalues ofmainstream America is captured in the gangster's ambivalent relationship tohis 'L1I11ily' (the [!:ang or his actual blood relations), \\hich may n:press theprof(llIndly ambi[!:uous place of community in a society that supremelyvalorises the individual at the expense of the collective. Typically, the gangitself is both indispensable and a burden, even a threat, to the gangster: heneeds the support of his soldiers, and it is 1)\ his ascent from th~ r~;nks thathis self:'assertion is measured; yet the gangster knO\vs onh' too \vell howdang"Crous it is to rely on any tics, even those of blood. i'\ot o'nly the outrighttreachery, but the simple unreliability of one's associates is a repeated tropeof the genre: Fredo Corleone's weakness and resentment make him anunwitting accomplice to an attempt on his brother \lichael's life in TheGod/ii/her Part l! (in the first God/ii/her it is Fredo \\ho is drivin[!: his Lither,and who Llils to draw his own g'un, \yhen the Don is shot down in the street);Carlito spends most of Carlilo 's /I ill' (H)(J3) trying', and biling, to n:tricatehimself from the toils of his attorney Dave Kleinkld's [!:reed and recklessness.The g'ang'ster film implicitly ironises its subject inasmuch as it stresses theself-suflicicnt individual the g'angster desires to be and insists he is, vet -precisely because he is a p,lIlIp,".I·ler - he can never become. '

This performati\c contradiction of radical autonomy and dependency canalso be read in psychoanalytic terms: the gangster's 'riotous se1f:'asse~tion,

whether expressed through the violence he inflicts on others or throug'h hischaracteristic ostentatious displays of \vealth and pmver (clothes, cars,'guns,womcn), literally embodies Lacan's notion of the 'gaze of the Other'. Theg'angster concei\"Cs of himself as self-authored/authorised, in thrall to no one- in bct, as classically in Tony Lamonte's ruthless rise to pm\er in Smr/ilCe,being in the power of, or reliant on, others is intolerable to him. Y~t asLacan's account of the subject's constitu tion throug'h entry into the Svmbolicorder (paradigmatically language, but by extension' all of ;he social stl:uctures

THE GA"'JGSTER FILM: GENRE AND SOCIETY 143

through \vhich the individual is socialised) makes dear, individualit~ is afunction of relationality: identity is confirmed only by its constitution in theregard of an Other. Refusal to register the role of otherslthe Other inlil11ning the subject's selfhood is at best regressive inLlI1tile f~lI1tasy, at worstpsychotic. Elements of both tendencics .lre present in the classic 1930Sgangsters; as the genre takes on 1I0lr shadings in the post\var period, in themother-fixated sociopath Cody Jarrett Games Cagney) in Wltile Ileal (1949),both arc wholly uncontained and violently acted out.

In this section \\"C have touched on several themes that have structuredg,mgster films since the silent era, including imliyidualism and the 'American])ream', selfhood and subjectivity, masculinity, urbanism, the Llmily, class.lI1d ethnicity. ,\11 of these \\"Cre very much 'live' categories in the culturaldiscourses of pre-Second World War .\merica. Following the I<)J5 morator­iUI11, the gangster \\as displaced by the pro-social 'official' hero - the polin:detective, Treasury or FBI agent - in the later HUOS and by the early 1940Shad become a nostalgic figure. During the \\<11' years eyen gangsters (on­screen at least) placed their patriotic duty bdi.)re their priyate gain (seeYoung', 2000). Throughout the 1950s, in such films as The B(e: IIl'al (1953),/hi' Big CIIJII/JII and The Phl'lIl.\ CII)' SllIr)' (both 1(55) gangsters featured asincreasingly impersonal antagonists - quasi-corporate crime syndicates that,like the pods in 11I7.'asloIl0(tlll' Hod)' SlIlIlllters (1<)55), mirrored contemporary.1I1xieties about both Communism .1I1d the domestic culture of confi.JrInitv ­to 'official' heroes \\hose o\\n motives and methods became increasinglyqucstionable. \lason (2002: (17-119) sees the films of this period as pre­occupied with conspiracy and thc systemic Llilures of 'straight' society toprotect and enable masculine indiyiduality, consequently proyoking thatindiyiduality to take on ever more stressful and 'illegitimate' forms.

Other major genres suffered br mOlT fi'om Old Hollywood's terminalcrisis than the gangster film, which was neither ideologically central to theoutgoing system (like the Western) nor directly implicated economically inits collapse (like the f~liled musicals of the late I<)6os). The Production Code's.tl)()lition in H)66 and its replacement in 1<)68 by a national ratings system alsomeant that the remaining inhibitions on content - massiyely attenuated bythe mid-I<)6os, but still with some f(lrce to the n:tent that exhibitors wereattached to the Code Seal of _\pprO\al - \\ere no longer a problem. Theremainder of this chapter will look in more detail at the \\ays that since thereturn of the g'angster as protagonist in BIIIIJlie IIlIrI CirriI' (1967) and TlteGlld/lillter, the thematic preoccupations of the HBOS gangster cycle haye beenrene\\ed, re\ie\\cd and ntended, in a period nurked in the g'angster film asin other traditional genres by an in tensc self-consciousness concernmg:,;cneric traditions and the uses of genre revisionism.

1..1-4 FILM GENRE

THE GANGSTER REVIVAL

The Gild/it/her - whose success was a major [lCtor driying Holly\\ood's early1970s nostalgia boom established an enduring popularity fi)r the 'retro'gangster film, often layishly mounted prestige yehicles, sometimes on an epicscale, dramatising the halcyon years of the pre-Second \\orld \Yar \lob:e\amples include, in addition to GIII(lit/hers II and III, LepA>e (uns), Lucky[,ilIl), (un6), F*I*S*T(Hn'l:l), Ouce ['plill a Till/e III_iII/erica, The Clllllllchables(19'1:17), Miller's Crossing (1990), Bill)' Badlgale (1991), Bllgs)' (1992) and TlzeRoad III Perdil ill II (200 I). Grandiose thematic pretensions, generally aspiringto statements about the (lost) .\merican Dream, alongside the self-consciousrendering of the gangster as a quintessential _\merican figure, arc notablefeat ures inherited by m,1I1 y of these films from Coppola's saga (\yhich opens

with the line 'I bclin'e in America' spoken symbolically enough by anundertaker), as is a Stygian \isual register aping' Gordon \Yillis's atmosphericphotography fi)[- the first t\\ 0 films and in tended to communica te the murkymoral uni\erse inhabited by the characters. :\lost retro .\lob films fi)Cus onthe trials of leadership and seHTal ad yertise the parallels bet\yeen theobjecti\es and the methods of organised crime and those of 'legitimate'corporate business. This marks a subtle yet clear ideolog'ical shift in thepresentation of the generic material. In post-classical I lolly\\ood the gangsterbecomes less of an C\ceptional and cautionary figure, and increasinglyrepresentatiye of the fi-ustration and disillusion that ha\e terminally corrodedthe promise of America. E\ploitati\e, ruthless organised crime itself is repre­sented- most ClIllously in Tlte Gild/it/her as not a caricature but simply theunmasked truth of 'straight' contemporar~ A.merican society, in all its relent­less dehumanisation. Rumours about ~Llfia implication in the ass.lssinationof President l'..ennedy in 19(13 had gained \\ide circulation by the start of theI<nOS, and with ongoing' re\elations about criminality at the highest political

Incls, culminating in un3 \\ith flJrIner \Yhite House Counsel John Dean'sdramatic refusal to reassure the Watergate enquirY that the :\i\on \Yhite

1I0use's 'dirty tricks' would stop e\en at murder, the gangster film seemedall too apposite a \ehicle fiJI' allegorising po\\er relations in contemporaryAmerica.

SeYeral post-classical gangster films, including The Gild/it/iter, earl II,Bugs)' and Tllillgs III Do ill [)ell7.·!'r TrhCII }-11/1 're Dead, IT- (and dis)locatc the

gangster away from his natural dense urban milieu into the \Yestern

wilderness, ironically obserying the incongruities that result; 'old-school'

\'eterans such as Frankie Pentangeli in Glid/illl,er II and Joe Hess, thenarrator of Tltillgs to DII ill DCII7.·er, nostalgically figure the lost \eritics of the

gangster's urban origins and il1\oke integrated ethnic communities dissipatedby suburban dispersal. \Yith the \irtual absence of any \isible or effecti ye

TIlE GANGSTER FILM: GE"iRE AND SOCIETY 1..1-5

structures of la\\ enforcement in many of these films, the identificatoryconl1ictual locus reorients itself around the clash bet\\een an 'old-school'criminal - characterised by loyalty to cre\\, (some) regard for human life andrug'ged imliyidu.rlism - and an impersonal, quasi-corporate criminal organ­is'ltion. The anti-heroic yersion of the American Dream embodied by theclassic indiyidualist gangster seems to dissipate alongside the decline of its'ot1icial' counterpart in mainstream society; thus the old-style gangsterbecomes a nostalgically heroicised figure standing in opposition to a machine­like bureaucracy \\hose ruthlessness is intensified, rather than diminished, byits depersonalisation. This sub-genre is fiJreshado\\-ed in both some prewarl2;angster films like Ti,e Roarillg TI/'elllies and Hlj!,-II Sierra (1941) - compareC:arlito Brigante's (A.I Pacino) characterisation of the contemporary scene\\here 'there ain't no rackets ... just a bunch of cowboys ripping each otheroff with Eddie Bartlett's s\\ipc at 'soda jerks and jitterbugs' in The RllanngTJI'CIIlies, quoted abO\c .1I1d post",rr IIlIir g'angster films like Fllrce IIr /:'7.'11,Itld The Gangsler (uH9). Ho\\'eyer, its paradigmatic film is {Jllilll ElaIlA'(l<lh7), whose dream-like narrati\e sees the betrayed Walker, in sing'le­minded pursuit of the loot stolen from him, frustrated and suspended - 'onhold' in an endless series of stone\\alling referrals to higher authority. Theobsessiye simplicity of \Yalker's quest fiJr 'his' money is repeatedly charac­terised by the 'suits' he has to deal \\-ith as a relic of an older, obsolete wayof doing business. PIIIIII Bialik is narrated as a series of stylised \ignettes\\hose frequently unpbceable, dream-like quality opens the possibility thatthe entire film is the dying Walker's Pilld,l'r Harlill-like Lmtasy of rnenge ashe bleeds out on the 11001' of Abaraz, and links the film strongly to theoneiric strain injill/l IlIlir (sec Chapter <J). ~lore prosaic accounts of maycricksout\\ itting sclerotic corporate crime in the same period include Charle)'I orrid' ('the last of the independents') and Tlte Ollr/il (both 1973)·

:\Iongside mythic and nostalgia narrati\-es, another strand in the post­

classicd gangster film has been a series of films focusing not on titanickingpins but on Il)\\er-Inel gangsters: '\\-iseg'uys', 'soldiers' and day-to-day

\ illains \\ho aspire not to the Presidency but to more modest degrees of

comfiJrt and status. In this mode, .\lartin Scorsese's /vIellll Slreels (11)]3), aportrayal of a group of Italian-A.merican petty hoods critically lauded butlittle seen on its original release, has prO\ed enormously inl1uenti.rl. Scorsese's

()\\n distincti\e style, refined in Glilid/dias and Casillil (Illl)S), combines anintense naturalism of setting and performance \\ith a highly demonstrati\e

and intensely aestheticised \isual style, resulting in an almost hallucinatoryand yet also hyper-real penetration of his ch<lracters and their milieu. _11/alllicCily (19'1:11), Srale IIr Grace (1990), DlJllllie Brasm (1997) as \\ell as TlteSlipralllJS and the comedies _Had Dllg al/(I Glllr)' (19'1:19) and Ti,l' IVlllllc N IlleLlrds (2000) \\holly or in part C\plored terrain opened up by "Heall Slreels

146 FILM GENRE

(itself strongly influenced by P,NJlini's A((ilIOlle, 1(60), though lackingScorsese's kinetic, yisionary style.

The focus on urban small-timers in some cases - such as DOlillie Bmsco ­imparts to the mainstream urban gang·ster film some of the fatalismtraditionally associated with its rural yariant. Films relating the exploits of

Depression-era outlaws from Machille GUll Kell)' (I (58) to Blood)! .l1ama(I(nl) and Thiel"C.I· Like Us (197+) emphasise the roots of their protagonists'turn to crime in dispossession, deracination and despair, and offer fewer

correctiye alternative models (the priest, the crusading journalist) than their

urban counterparts. The most famous rural g·angster film, BOlillie and C!)!de(1967), identifies its highly glamorised couple explicitly with Dustbowl victimsof economic banditry - at one point, Clyde hands his gun to an unhoused

f~lrmer (and his Black farm worker) to take cathartic potshots at their former

smallholding, now foreclosed on by the bank - as well as morc loosely with

the youth counterculture then adopting a more militant stance in relation tothe straight Establishment. While both rural and urban gangsters arc typically

doomed, rural gangsters seem to enjoy few of the glamorous fruits - the

penthouse apartments, sleek automobiles and designer clothes - of theirurban colleagues: their pickings arc slimmer, their liyes more fugitive and

itinerant. The rural gang closely resembles a LJmily horde like the James

Gang or the Daltons and is correspondingly small-scale, lacking the hierarch­

ical, crypto-corporate aspect of the urban crime Syndicate. \Vhereas theurban gangster film has usually, as we have seen, been constructed in mythic

polarity to the Western, there are strong links between the rural gangster

film, some film versions of the Jesse James and Billy the Kid myths (notably

Bill)' Ihe Kid, 1930, Pal Garr{'/I alld Bill)' Ihe A"id, 1l)73, and Jesse .Jallles,1939), and the outlaw tradition that Eric Hobsbawm terms 'social banditry'.

Another traditional syntactic feature of the Western to migrate to thecontemporary gangster film is the dream of escaping 'across the border',

which features in Carlilo's 11 lI.l' and the Tarantino-scripted Tme ROil/illite(I(J9+): these films playoff the established post-God/iilher concept oforganised crime as the image of a uni, ersally oppressive and destructive

social reality and suggest that \\hereas for the classic gangster Lmtasies of

self-adYancement ami fulfilment were sustainable and nen (however briefly)

realisable within society, these arc today only achievable in an imaginary'elsewhere'.

The most obvious innovation in the gang·ster film in recent years is the

incorporation of the African-American experience into the classic ethnic

gangster paradigm, with films like Boy::. X II,e Hood (1990) and Dead PresidCllls(1995) faithfully translating classic models like Deild Elld and The Roarill!!.T,7JCIlI;cs to the modern urban ghetto. Other films, howeycr - notably" HCIlacelJ Sociel)' (1993) - evince a nihilistic despair at odds with all but the most

THE GANGSTER FILM: GE"IRE A"ID SOCIETY 147

dyspeptically revisionist ~e\\ Hollywood white gangster films. As Munby(1999: 225-6) and "lason (2002: 15-+"-7) argue, these differences can be<lttributed to the irrelevance of the mythology of the American Dream toBlack Americans -" upon whose exclusion from the possibility of 'American­isation' and ellibollrgeoisemelil the Dream is in fact partly predicated. Acontroversy yirtually identical to that surrounding the 1930S gangster cycle

erupted around the African-American themed gangster ('gangsta') films of

the early 1990S, with both White elite opinion-formers and Black religiousand political leaders inveighing yirtually unanimously against the high body­

coun ts and apparent glorification of inner-city drug lords in such films as

\(11' .Jad.: Cily (1991) and J1ena((' II Sociely. Both box-office returns and

,lccounts of audience response in African-American neighbourhoods, by

contrast, suggested that some Black audiences found in the larger-than-life

protagonists figures of these films precisely the kind of militant empower­

ment their critics so feared (sec l\lunby, 1999: u5f.).

BEYOND HOLL YWOOD

\lost national cinemas - other than those, such as the Soviet-era Eastern

Bloc, for whom domestic crime was an ideological impossibility - haye

produced their indigenous variants of the gangster genre, with particularlystrong indigenous gangster traditions in Britain and France. Few, howeyer,

have used the figure of the gangster himself in the culturally and socially

paradigmatic manner of his American incarnation. A notable exception to

this rule is Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins), the London gangland boss in TheJAilig Good Friday (GB 1980), whose plans to internationalise his operationsb\ a link-up to the CS ,\lafia and to di\crsify into property development are

depicted as a cautionary Thatcherite fable. Harold's plans are ironically

undone by the return of a political and colonial repressed, the Troubles in

'\orthern Ireland; Swain (1998: 2) argues that Harold's 'railings against an

unseen and unknown enemy (which turns out to be the IRA) are suggestiye

of a generic as well as political anxiety,' and the film indeed suggests that

Harold's aspirations to leave his roots behind (he lives on a boat) and become

a player on the global gangster stage are doomed by his (and Britain's) bloody

unfinished business at home.

Whereas the :\meriean screen gangster takes paradigmatic shape early on

in the genre's history, the British gangster mutates through several guises,

from the postwar 'spiv' cycle, including Tile)! Made HI' a Fugitire, Brt~~hfOIl

Rock (both GB 19-+7),11 "ill/Jays Raills Oil SUI/dal's and The Noose (both GB

HJ+8: see .\lurphy, 198<): q6-67) through Stanley Baker's Americanised

crime boss in Ti,e Crill/illal (GB 1<)60). HO\vever, arguably it is only with the

qH I'ILM GENRE

emergence of the Kray Brothers as mythic g,lngland archetypes that theBritish gangster film acquires its defining semantic element, the 'firm'.British gang'ster films of the early 1970S such as 1'1///1111 and Gel Carler (bothGB 1(71) as well as PerjimllallCt' (GB Il)70) clearly imoke the I(ray myth,which becomes an increasingly nostalgic informing presence in later gangster

films including The LOllg Good Friday, The IIiI (H)8.j.), Gallgsl('/" .Yo.[ and

Se,,:]! Beasl (both GB zooo), as well as the liS-made The rillle)' (ZOOI).

(Several of these, as Ste\c Chibnall (zoo I: z81-9 I) notes, adopt revenge

motifs from Jacobean tragedy.) The late Il)90S saw a cycle of semi-comic

g'angster films (including I,o(!.:, Slor/.:, IlIld 1'11'0 SII/(J!.:illp, Barrels, GB 1998,

and SnaIr/I, GB zooo) whose casual \'iolence and macho posturings hare been

connected by Chibnall \\ith the concomitant rise of 'lad culture' in the UK(see also "lurphy and Chibnall, Il)99).

Bruzzi (Il)9:;: z(J) compares the American and French genres in terms of

the g'angster's personal style, arguing that whereas classic :\merican gangster

films arc characterised by fi'enetic action and LIst talking', their Frenchcounterparts arc quiet and exaggeratedly sl(m, and despite their generic

similarities, 'the French amI :\merican films hare always diverged on the level

of tone. Though the gangster film may come more naturally to .\mericans,

the French do it with more st\le.'

In non-western cinemas, I(eiko ~lcl)onald (H)9Z) explores the long­

running popularity of the Jlpanese }a/""u::.a film since the IlnOS as an

example of a genre, like the Western, that ()\er its long lifespan directly

reflects changing Japanese social consciousness. Perry Farrell's The IIarderThe)' COllie Uamaica, 1(!7Z), set in the slums of l(ingston, reno\"<ltes tropes

fi'om both the urban (Rep,clleral/(Ju, 1,//111' Cacsar) and the rural (Bollllie andC/]!dc) US gang'ster film and demonstrates h(m the phenomenon of 'uneven

development' permits categories originating in Depression :\merica to

translate themsehes readily into the terms of other cultures undergoing

comparable socio-economic upheaval.

CASE STUDY: USCI:' L PU.\I 'jf \11:' 1,\ j\[[;'RICI (1()1'l..j.)

J.ike many epics, the plot of Sergio Leone's four-hour Oil(£, [j)()11 a Tillie in.1111('/"i((/ is a long-breatheu but simple melody, essentially a plain story of

betrayal and loss, dishonour among' thie\cs. In the years after the First \,"odd

War, Prohibition transforms four petty teenag'C hoodlums fi'om :\'C\v York's

Jewish Lower East Side into \\calthy throug'h still small-time gansgters . .\lax,

the leader of the gang, ambitious beyond his parochial comrades and restless

at their self-imposed limitations, embroils the gang with ,I more po\\erful

:Mob outfit and finally proposes a \\ildl~ ambitious and almost certainly

THE G A:'oJGSTER FI LI\I: Ci E:'oJ RE AND SOCIE TY l.j.9

.: ..'..:: ...

--\:,. ',~... ­

"-:..--:......

" '<

1:"<1111 Ollrl' l /'011 Ii 1'11111' III . I III I'I"/rli (I()~\.l). Reproduced courtes\ I.add (:<l111pany/Warner

Ilr<l,/The "-oba! Collection.

'>uicidal heist. Degg'ed by .\lax's mistress to save her l()\cr fi'om himself~ his

tello\\ g,ll1g member anu best friend :"oodles agrees to rat out the gang on

their last bootlegging run together so they em share a cooling-off period in

the can. But :\ooules misses the job, and in the police ambush resulting fi'om

his tip-off .\lax anu his t\VO other friends arc gunned u(mn - Max's body

roasteu to an unrecognisable cinder in the firefight. :'\ooules escapes the

From OIlCf UpOIl a Tillie ill !/lIIuim (198+). Reproduced courtesy Ladd Company/VII mer

Bros/The Kobal Collection.

150 FILM GENRE

Syndicate killers out for his blood and escapes ;\'ew York - but not beforediscovering that someone, sometime, has stolen the gang's accumulated loot,stashed since their first teen exploits in a left-luggage locker at Grand Central

station, and to which, as the sole sunivor, I\'oodles is now entitled. Dazed,alone and tormented by guilt for the death of his friends, Noodles buys aone-way ticket to 'anyplace. First bus.' Thirty-five years pass: it's now 1968

and the aged Noodles receives a mysterious summons back to the city.Returning to the transformed streets of his youth, he e\'entually discovers

that all those many years ago l\lax had double-crossed him, manipulating

Noodles and the others, feigning his own death and stealing the gang's money

to purchase for himself a new life as Secretary Bailey, a powerful political

player. Noodles is innocent of the burden of guilt he has carried for decades.

'Bailey' - who has also married Noodles's childhood s\veetheart, Deborah,

whom Noodles had long ago alienated by a self-destructively brutal act of

sexual violation - now bees exposure by an impending Congressional hearing,

and confronting Noodles at his opulent Long Island mansion he imites his

old friend to take his long-overdue revenge. But Noodles refuses, preferring

to cling to his memories of a 'great friendship' that 'went bad' long ago.

Noodles walks away into the night; looking back, he sees "lax/Bailey at the

gates of his estate. A garbage truck passes bet\veen them: when it grinds by,Max/Bailey has disappeared. Has he ended his life by throwing himself into

thc chopper? Or have the gangland interests threatened by his imminent

exposure assassinated him? As a passing carload of revellers dressed in the

flapper [Ishions of the 'Roaring' 1920S recalls for us Noodles's gangster

heyday, the film ends on a note of deep ambiguity.

The most ambitious of a series of period gangster films made in the wake

of the enormous success of the first two God/ii/her films, Ol/c(' .. , self­

consciously embraces Coppola's vision of organised crime as less a re\e1atory

mirror image of the American dream (the classic model) than a simple, direct

and logical extension of American \'alues into a realm \vhere their \iolence

and corruption are made manifest. As Fran .Mason puts it, like TheG()((/illher, Once .. ,

extendlsJ the metaphor of the 'double-cross' to the le\'el of American

society which is re\ealed to be a culture of betrayal and complicity ...

where a depersonalised and hostile sociality cannot be transcended, but

ultimately extends its ruthless logic. (Mason, 2002: q3)

The film's bootlegging and union racketeering milieu exploits similar

material to Llldij' Lad)' and F*I*S*T, two routine and unsuccessful earlier

entries in the Mob nostalgia cycle. However, the film's formal complexities

,- which ha\e some similarities to The G()((/il!her, Parl II, and like that film

I

I

I

THE GA~GSTER FIL:\t: GENRE A~O SOCIETY 151

encompass at once the gangster's myth of origins, the alienated present-dayreality of corporate crime and an ironic relationship between the two ­Jdn~rtise its ambitions to comment both on its parent genre and, through the!!:Jngster film's generic tropes, on American life, Leone's str'lightforward plot~nfolds as an intricate skein of memories, with Noodles's story unfolded in

.1 series of fi'agmentary interlinking f1ashbacks and f1ash-f(lr\vards with no

clc<lrly established narrative 'present tense' (the opening sequence, combin­

ing carefully obsened period detail, jarring violence and a growing sense oftemporal and spatial distortion .. , \vith two flashbacks-\\ithin-f1ashbacks and

thc disorienting soundtrack punctuation of an amplified, diegetically unplaced

telephone - establishes the film's stylistic tenor), The end of the film returns

full circle to its beginning, with a final flashback after Max/Bailey's mysterious

disappearance outside his mansion to '\oodles in 1933, taking refuge from

\vhat he belie\es to be his blood guilt in ,I Chinatown opium den. The last

image is a freeze-fi'ame of Noodles grinning broadly in stoncd reverie atsomething or someone \\'e cannot sec.

The opium-den frame imites a reading of the narrative as unfolding

Iarg;ely in Noodles's head: the teenage scenes in the Jewish ghetto his

memories, the H)6S sequence his bntasy of a story in which he turns out to

be not traitor but \'ictim, not a rat but a patsy. The slightly 'ofT tenor ofse\eral of '\oodles's encounters \vith figures fi'om his past in this time-frame

lends the sequencc as a whole an oneiric quality that supports such a reading.

In fact, Ol/CC '" shares this basic ambiguity around the exact phenomeno­

logical register of its narrative with some other major post-classical gangster

films, notably Poil/l Blank, and in rather different ways Thc God/illher, ParlI f and Ca rlilo '.I' /tay. All of these films ad vertise their g;eneric revisionism by

employing complex time schemes that fi'agment their narratives and render

theIll re\eries of their protagonists, as often as not at the moment of (real or

symbolic) death, Such de\ices both underscore the generically predetermined

downbll of the protagonist, and confirm his story, presented with all the

(Ilerdetermined and streamlined logic of J dream, as a f:l1Jle of the btl' of

indi\idual hope and ambition in [dlen corporate America,

Ol/ce ... in effect combines Poil/l Blalli/s radical modernist ambiguity \vith

Fhc God/ii/her, Parl Irs critique of corporate gangsterism/capitalism. In[lCt, the film's insistent and fetishistic accumulation of period detail across

not one but three separate periods (1<)22, 1933, 1<)6S) recalls not only the

God/ii/hi'/" but .\lichael Cimino's maniacally authentic recreation of the

li'ontier \rest in Hcal'cil ~\' Galt' (19S0), like Ol/ce ... a large-scale, lengthy and

expensi\e re\isionist entry in a classic genre that [Iilcd to find an audience

Jnd was substantially recut for subsequent release, Howe\ er, whereas

!lcal't'II '.I' Galt' seems to be un.I\\are of the kinds of textual and generic cruxes

entailed in the project of historical recO\cry through genre (see Chapter 2,

152 FILM GENRE

'The History of Westerns'), Once ... appears reflexively to acknowledge itsown periodisation as precisely a function of style and of genre. Amid theelaborate recreations, certain jarring anomalies stand out, notably in the 1968sequence: a TV news bulletin that looks nothing like TV news footage;Deborah's strangely unaged face when Noodles meets her again, thirty-fiveyears older. These devices not only sustain the reading of the film asNoodles's opium dream, but may be taken as textual parapraxes (Freudianslips), confessions of the inescapably manufactured nature of any cinematicpast. When Noodles, on his return to Manhattan, hires a car, the wall of therental office is hung with 'period' photographs of the island - 'framing' thefrozen, reified memory of the past as commodity (the scene is scored to amuzak arrangement of Lennon-McCartney's 'Yesterday'). This in turninvites comparison with another New York image glimpsed earlier in thesame Iq68 sequence: the wall in Grand Central that in 1933 bore a muraladvertising Coney Island in the style of Thomas Hart Benton - crowds ofarchetypal New Yorkers teeming towards stylised rollercoasters, in turnrecalling the milling; throngs in the film's Lower East Side sequences - thishas been replaced in Iq68 by an abstracted rendition of thc midtown skylineenveloped in New York's corporate urban logo, the Big Apple. People arewholly absent from the image, and in many ways this is a film about the lossof not only a future but a p.lst as well - one in which \\e have almost as muchinvested as Noodles, but which is as much a fabrication as his own.

Leone is significantly less invested in the mythic grandeur of his prota­gonists than Coppola. Only Max aspires to truly grand criminal schemes, andonly in his stolen second life as Bailey does he in bct become imohed withthe political circles, grand schemes and ultimately (and terminally) Congres­sional hearings with which Michael Corleone's Cuban enterprise imolveshim: and in the film this is only hearsay and TV footage, not centre stage. Asmobsters, Noodles's gang's horizons are confined to the (considerable)rewards to be gained from rum-running; Noodles himself is Clll1ceived as anobody, albeit a complex one: his romanticism \itiated by (in LICI, indissociablefrom) his brutality, and unable or unwilling; to see beyond his illusions aboutMax (and Deborah), he remains an outsider and a definiti\'e small-timer. A,sthe plot summary above indicates, in what is ostensibly 'his' story, 0:oodlesis most frequently a bystander, too confused, undirected and distracted everto match up to the Promethean gangster model of Cagney, \Iuni or for thatmatter Brando or Pacino (De :\iro of course played the young Vito Corleonein God/ii/her In. The film's meandering plot unfolds at a meditative, evenfunereal pace with few generic set-piece highlights apart from the shoot-outin the dO\m f;lclory and the drive-by shooting, \vhich Shadoian (2003; 286)suggests is included as a consciously nostalgic thrO\\back to the 'good old days'.In their place Ollce .. , prmides only a series of unredeeming', nploitative and

II

THE C;ANGSTER FtL\1: GE"JRE AND SOCIETY t53

apparently undirected elpers, {i'om the opening (frustrated) 'roll' of thedrunk to the jewel heist (\\iIh its sidebar rape) and the callous maternity wardS\\~\p. \Vhat Leone's decentred n.IIT.lti\e and simulacrum of the g'angster(Iilm) past suggests, hO\vever, is 'the old days' themsehes were never morelh~lI1 ElI1tasy projections, the dcsire to defeat the alienations and disempo\\er­Jl1ents of capitalism through violent means that, as \lax understands but'\oodles refuses to, could only ever replicate, newr challeng;e, tha t s~ stem.

,\OTES

The COllccpt of 're"idual' and 'cmug:cnl' idcolog'ics is from Ra\ mond \rilliams (111173\

['ISO: +0 2)

_. .\<llr/,lil \"h rcle.l"cd Oil I)\pril 11).12: fIJI" 1.llll.. Gli/I// prcmicrcd Oil q \pril 1<J.n,

,i. (;,I/i~' oj \"Ii' \ "d' (200,), loosch hascd on Ilcrhcrt \shul'\ \ (11J2i) popuLlI' 111';[01'\ of

Ihe sall1L' rrrk, rcturns to all c\cn carlicr (Ci\ il \rar) pCr10d of \.C\\ York g:'lllg: \\arElI'C

+ '1 1III'ii h'IS thc "plTd .\\lll thc "inister "tacLato sound qu.llit\ of a m'lchinc g'un'

(.\,I'<,III<ll/d l'l'\ic\\er, quotcd in Roso\\, 1(J7~': 1.13).

). (,'""df,'II,ls cnClpsuLltLs this douhle hind 111 a montag'c that chorcog'!'.Ij,hs an cndless

"eriL's of g:~1I1g: ,1.1\ing:" moti\,ltcd not \" hct!'.I\.rl hut thcF<lr of hCt!'.I\'ll to thc

pl.lng'L'nt pLl\-out of Eric CL1pton\ 'Ll\ la', onc of rock', most urg'cnt statcmcnts of

(!c"irl',

I

I

~ l

Part 2

Transitional Fantasies

The two genres discussed in this section both have roots - in the case of thehorror film, deep roots - in the classical studio era. Yet in important waysthey also look ahead to the post-classical period, a period of reduced levels oftilm production and corresponding'ly weakened genre identities. As fantasygenres, both horror and science fiction depart in significant ways from the;Jre\ailing canons of representation in the classical Hollywood style, whetherone takes that mode to be a form of realism (not the chimerical 'classicrealism') or, as I have suggested, of melodrama. Horror and science fiction,tlso share an identity as unrespectable genres for an undiscriminatingju\cnile audience (or an audience that has its mind on other things), withstrong roots in exploitation cinema, that have only [lidy recently emerged asattr,ll'tive genres for large-scale production at major studios. Finally, bothgenres have attracted significant critical attention in recent years, and in eachcase theories of postmodernism and - which is not always the same thing ­currents in postmodern theory have played an important part in reconceivingthe genre for audiences and film-makers alike. This critical interest is, Iargue, related to the relative weakness in hoth cases of traditional semantic/S\ 11 tactic matrices of generic identity, lending them a protean aspect that is\\ ell suited to exploiting marketplace currents and trenus. That horror and SFLIke their core generic material from the body and technology, respectively,both engines of contemporary critical en4uiry and popular cultural dehate,has confirmed their relevance.

CHAPTER 7

The Horror Film

T he experience of limits, and t~e tr.'msgression of limi~s, is ecntl'~1 to thehorror film: the boundanes of samty and madness, of the conscIous and

unconscious minds, of the external surfaces of the body and the f1esh andorgans within, pre-eminently the boundaries of life and death, Yet merely tospeak of 'boundaries' or eyen the transgression of bound.lries withoutregistering the \'ery specific affecti \e charge with \yhich the horror genreenacts those mO\es would be largely to ignore its most distinctiye aspects ..\sthe name sug;gests, while on the one hand horror insistently pierces andpenetrates the yesscl of bodily and representational propriety, at the samctime it registers that moye as profoundly, e\en elementally transgressi\e, ina f100d of \isceral, disturbing and often \iolent imagery (though yiolence isnot a giyen, being mostly absent from many ghost stories from The Jl/l/o(ml.l ,

1962, and The Ifallillil/g, 196-1-, to The Si.\'i/I Sel/se, [qqq, and The Olhas, 200 I).Death, and of course undeath and death-in-Iife, are omnipresent in horror.usually personified as fearful forces to be shunned and/or destroyed, butoccasionally as states capable of generating transcendent insight (as in

He//raiser, GB 19H7),Horror films dramatise the eruption of yiolence, often (bur not imariably.

and much less in recent decades) supernatural and always irrational, intonormatiye social and/or domestic contl'.\ts, often \\ith an undercurrent - attimes ,1 good deal more than that· of phobic sexual panic. The ag'ent of horrificYiolenc: - the 'monster' - is often seen as embodying' and/or enabling theexpression of repressed desire(s), One of the most obyious examples is Dracula,who animates intense sexual desire in the (typically bourgeois, demure)women he seduces/assaults \\hile at the same time enacting male ambiyalcncetowards female sexuality in blurring lines between seduction and rape, sex andyiolence, \Vith thc progressiye slackening of censorship this sexual dimensionhas become increasingly explicit. In SOs/I'ralll (Germany I(22), the \ampirc

I HI'. HUKtHJK 1'ILIVI I,y

Orlok's grotesque, rodent-like appearance and his yisual association withvermin (rats, spiders) mitigates the explicitly sexual aspects of the characterin Bram Stoker's original noyel of [893. Dracula's increasingly suaye incarna­tions by Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee and Frank Langella (1930, GB 19SH(US title Horror ofDram/a), [979) progressively blu: the diyiding line betw:enviolation and seduction, The 'underground' B/oodjor Dracu/a ([97-1-) speCIfIesDracula's need for the blood of yirgins, In Bra III Slo~'er ',I' Dram/i/ (1992), thevampire's first assault on Lucy \Vestenra is associated with her own unsatisfiedsexual appetites (when first seen she is paging through a pornographicallyillustrated edition of The .·1m/Ili/1/ KI/(f!)lIs and musing about 'unspeakableacts of desperate passion'), and Dracula, apparating as a man-wolf, coupleswith her in the gazebo,

In ideological terms, horror is ambi\alcnt: on the one hand, it unmaskslatent unspeakable desires in (white, patriarchal, bourgeois) society andshows the inadequacy and hypocrisy of the culture that demands suchrepression (although the graphic yiolence is restr.lined by later standards, thisis a particularly strong strain in the British Hammer horror films of the late1950S and Il)60s). On the other, it identifies its prot'lgonist(s) and throughthem the audience with a project of re-suppression, containment and restora­tion of the slailis iJlIO i/Ille through the yiolent elimination of deviance anddisturbance- the destruction of the 'monster'.

The status of horror as a critical object has underg'one a marked trans­formation in recent years (it is note\vorthy that neither horror nor SF meritsa chapter in Schatz's HO//)'I7'ood Cmres, perhaps the most 'c1assically'-orientedwork on film g'enre, but they are extensiyely discussed in the successorvolume, which focuses on the transition from classical (or 'Old') to post­classical ("":ew') Holly\\ood (Schatz, [qH3). Indeed .1S jancuyich (2002: [)notes, the horror film has superseded the Western as the genre that is mostwritten about by genre critics. This says something about not only theenhanced status of the genre but also about the changing priorities of genrecriticism. For if, as was suggested in Chapter [, early film work on film genreprioritised the project of defining secure and stable generic boundaries andestablishing a defined corpus of films in each categ'ory, more recent work hastended LIther to emphasise the porosity and leaky borders of genres; mindfulthat in am case that the work of definition, if regarded as anything more thana proYisio'nal project of practical utility rather than absolute yalue, is doomedto Quixotic failure, contemporary criticism is minded to embrace and exploretextual diyersity and contradiction,

Such qualities arc themsehes central to the kinds of theoretical paradigmsthat haye come to dominate what Feury and ?vlansfield ([9<n) call the 'newhumanities' since the late H)Hos - deconstruction, queer theory, post-Freudiananalyses of subjectiyity inf1uenced by .\lichel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze,

and a renO\~~lted, multi-perspecti\al historicism. Horror, as a notoriouslYdifficult genre to define satisfactorily- that seems itself to take on th~polymorphic, elusi\e properties of so many horror-film monsters - is \\clladapted to these altercd critical states. :'\ot only embracing' as narrati\e andthematic content contemporary criticism's concerns \\ith race, gender, sexualidentity, the body and the self - sometimes in \\ays that seem quite explicithinformed by contemporary theoretical positions (notabl\ in the films <;f

Da\id Cronenberg and in such independent productions ~s SlIllIre, 1<)<)3)

horror today, like science fiction and the action film, re\e1s ill the carni\al­esque sub\ersion and re\ersal of g;eneric proprieties and expectations.Compared to horror's trickster moyes, the efforts of traditional genres likethe \Vestern and the musical to come to terms \\ith the demands of the post­

classical context can seem sclerotic and predictable. Fimlly, horror remainsan attracti\e critical proposition precisely because of its enduring unrespect­ability: horror has ne\~er \\holly shed the 'disrepuLlble' f1anlUr noted b\

Robin Wood (1<)7<): 7.1), nor its pleasurable /;'/.1'.1'011 of the illicit or at lea~1impolite. Horror films in general remain sensational, gory and relati\ehcheap, and arc promoted in \\a\s that discour,lge 'serious' critical attcntiOl~The seriality and repetition to which horror properties arc prone (11<1//0)/'COI,

fire instalments since I<n~; Friday Ihc 131h, nine since I<)XO; Slghllllarc Oil

h'/III SI rccl, se\cn from [<)X-l- to (()<)-l-, plus the parodic franchise 'EICc-offFrcdd)' ,'.1'. ]asoll, 2003; e\en the kno\\ing post modern p~lstiches Scrc<lIl1,

1<)<;(l, SUllY .Hm·lc and I kliOIl' l1/wl LJII J)/(/ I,asl SIIIIIIII<,r, 1<)<)7, generatingtheir O\\n p<lrt-parodic hut seriously profiLlble fr,mchises) also render horror'g;eneric' in the old, pejorati\c sense of the term. \Vhereas, as Hawkins (2000:('fl) obsenes, prC\ious criticll generations \\ere minded to remO\c horrorfilms deemed worthy of critical attention (usuall\ such European films as 1,<,.1'

YCIIX Salis 1 ~isai!,cI I:')'cs 1111/10111 a Facc, France Il)5<), Pcepillg 'JIJIII, (iB 1<)(>0.and RCplI/slolI, (Tn I<)fl5) to a different, non-generic Ji'ame of critical reference

'a critical site in \\hich the film's ,If'Cecti\(: li.e., its sensational ,lIld horrific Iproperties tend to be di\()rced fi'om its "artistic" and "poetic" ones'

contemporary criticism's highly de\e1oped tr,lsh aesthetic is eager to explorethe cult ural purchase of indelibly g;eneric, e\ en exploitati\ e materi,ll ,111<1 totake \ cry seriousl\ not only its sociological, ps~ cholog'ical and ideologicalformations but its form,lI and thematic dimcnsions too.

PI.ACI:"Je; HORROR

Like other g;enres, the prehistory and early history of the horror film is dellt\\ith rather sketchily in the critical literature. There is a significant gapbet\\een the 1110st ambitious contemporary theoreticll constructions of the

genre, \\hieh largely focus on postwar and in some cases e\~en more recentfilms, and historical accounts, usually directed at a broader readership, such

as C1arens (1968), Gifford (197.1), Kendrick (1991) and Skal (1993)· Thelatter pay much greater, sometimes fondly antiquarian attention to the trickfilms of Georges .\lelies (see also Chapter X), British and American silentfilms such as the first adaptations of FraliRclIslcl1l (I<)IO) and Dr }dT// 1/111/

Mr Hyde (filmed se\cral times in the silent era fi'om 1<)08, the mostcelebrated \ersion featuring John Barrymore in 1<)20), and the films of LonChaney and Tod Bnmning at MG.\1 and Cni\ersal in the I<)20S, as well as

the influence of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theatricaltraditions, notably the g'ore-Iaden Grands Guig'nols spectaculars in Paris (secHand and Wilson, 2002) and the popular and long-running stage adaptations

of JeRJ'//, FraIlA'clIslt,11I and /)ram/II in London and :"Jew York, the last ofwhich \\as the direct source filr the first film in the Uni\ersal horror cycle,Browning''s Dram/II (1<)30), and prO\ided that film's star, Bela Lugosi.

It is useful to note the inf1uence of the domestic stage gi\en theimportance assigned in many o\eniews of the genre to European cinema,notably the German Expressionist films produced between 1<)1<) and 1923, asa defining moment in the crystallisation of the horror film as a genre and adecisi\'e inf1uence on the :\merican fl)rm. The argument fllr Expressionism'sdirect stylistic inf1uence on horror, as later \\ithjj/m lllilr (sec Chapter <)), caneasily be o\ersLlted: "\merican directors and cameramen did not need theexample of Clllip,lIri or Sli4;'ralll to teach them about the dramatic impact ofshadow-play, silhouettes and 'low-key' lighting. Such techniques \\erewidely used by both British and American directors and cameramen prior tothe First \\orld \Var and usually to cOI1\CY a sinister atmosphere, albeit moreassociated \\ ith scenes of crime and melodramatic skulduggery than outrighthorror. Domcsticated Expressionist touches are, hO\\C\Tr, yisible in the firstI930S Cni\ersal horror cycle, fl», instance in the canted, yertiginous sets of

Bride iiI' FI'iIIIR<'lIslelli (1<)35) or the sepulchral shadO\\s in the openingsequence of The tlll III IIlJ 1 (1<)33): this inf1uence owed something to exampleand something' also to the direct p<lrticipation of some key Weimar film­makers, including among numerous others Edgar G, Ulmer, a !llrmercollaborator of F. \\'. o\lurnau and Robert Siodmak whose American filmsincluded the hallucinatory Uni\ersal horror film The B/I/d, Cill (1<)35), andKarl Freund, cinematographer on the Expressionist films Del' }1I1I1I,-A'lipI(an

unlicensed adaptation of Dr ]dT//) ,111d TI/(, Gli/eill (both 1<)20) and forUniyersal Drllm/II, TlleHllu/t'I's III Ihe RIIi' IHlirglle (IC)32) and (as director)The tlll III IIlJ I, Expressionism's enduring inf1uence, howeyer, perhaps lay inthe establishment less of a specific stylistic model than of the principle of ageneric yocabulary that expressed extreme psychological states and deforma­tions of reality throug'h the integration of perfl)rmance, stylised set design

anu mise-en-scene, and aboye all in its delineation of a narratiH~ terrain thatsystematically threatened conyentional waking rationality \yith oneiric super­natural terrors.

If Expressionism points towards the classic horror film, with a hea\yreliance on sinister, atmospheric mise-en-scellc and contained yisual uistortionto create a sense of threat and uisturbance, the other internationally celebrateuEuropean cinema of the 1920S, SO\iet ","10ntage, contains important pointersto the more graphically confrontational aesthetic of contemporary horror.For example, uespite his emphatic lack of interest in the inner \Hlrkings ofthe human mind - motiyateu by the comiction that human subjecthoou wasgenerated out of anu through material circumstances and characteriseu b~

productiye labour anu interaction with the material \\O\·lu rather than internalpsychic processes - Eisenstein employeu 'shock' effects as a central part ofhis uialectical montage experiments. Indeeu, at the climax of the f~mlOus

Ouessa Steps sequence of Thc BOlllcslJip PolclI/!.:ill (1925), a Cossack officerslashes his sabre uirectly anu repeateuly at the lens: a re\Crse shot of hiseluerly female yictim, her eyeball sliced open, uemonstrates both the mutspecular aggression and gruesome \"iolence associated with the contemporary,post-Ps}'c!/(J horror film.

The first major horror film cycle, the 1<)30S anu 1<)40S Cniyersal prouuc­tions, mostly seem to mouern eyes rather calm affairs b~ comparison withlater horror films. (In Llct, as Balio (1<)93) notes, there were t\\O Cniyersalcyeles: the first inaugurateu by Dramla, including the career-ucliningper/llflnances of C ni\Trsal's series horror stars Lugosi and Boris I-.:.arloff amIrunning through until Bridc o( FraIlA'eIlSlcill, HJ35; the seconu following onthe hugely successful re-release of Dramla and FrallA'cllsleill as a uouble billin HJ3H and running through the more action- anu humour-orienteu sequelsanu 'monster meet-ups' of the 1<)40S - starting \\ith FraIlA','llsleill .Hccls Ihc/l01( MOil, H)4(1- to the :\.bbot anu Costello horror burlesques of the late1940S anu early H)50s.) Although James \\"hale in particular employed alloccasionally baroque yisual style and at key moments something like 'shock'euiting - for example, the first appearances of Frankenstein's .\lonster anu ofthe Bride - fll!' the most part the Lmtastic, uncanny anu transgressiye thrustof the narratiye material \yas held in check by a restrained lI/iSC-CIl-SC1;IlC th,11emphasiseu atmosphere anu the siueshow appeal of make-up effects oyergraphic horror. The Uniyersal horror film in which contemporary theory,with its imestment in marginality, has taken the greatest interest is thenotorious (anu unseen for many years between its initial release anu the19(1OS) Frco/..:s (193J: see Herzol-':enrath, 2002).

A uiffcrent approach, e\Tn more reliant on atmospheric lI/i.\e-ell-su;llc butlargely abjuring special effects for intense psychological protraiture, wasauopteu by the 'B' feature prouuction unit heaued by Val Le\\ton at RI-.:.O in

the mid-1940s. The films of this unit, including Gat Pcople (1942), J Wal!.:edWith a ZomlJfc (1943) and The SCl'elllh Victim (1945), haye long been highlypraised both for their 'restraint' (a term which suggests that these are horrorfilms for people \yho uon't usually like horror films, anu was in any casepartly predicateu on their budgetary ceiling of $ [50,000) and also for theirunusual focus on female subjectiyity. In some ways, precisely in theiravoidance of prewar generic monster cliches and their relocation of (often'Old \Vorlu') supernatural threats to contemporary American urban locations(the most celebrated scene in Gal Pcoplc - replayeu to lesser effect in the1982 remake - features a woman stalkeu by an unseen creature lurking in theshadows around a basement swimming pool), the RI-.:.O films bring theviewer into unsettling proximity with the limits of this rational, 'ciyilised'world's ability to tame and contain the irrational. Althoul-':h critical praise ofthe 'power of suggestion' often betrays an unease with horror's more anarchicand carniyalesque aspects, the success of the Imy-budget, effects-free chillerThe Blair Ililell Pm/c(/ (1<)99) testifies to the cnuuring power of this approach(as, in a yery difTerent way, uoes the inuistinct, uncanny, half-glimpseu terror

of Vampyr, Sweden [<)32).Sequels notwithstanuing, the Cni\Trsal cycle had run its creatiye course

well before the end of the Seconu \Yorlu \Var; after the rnelations ofDresden, ."-uschwitz anu Hiroshima, the C)othic terrors of Dracula, Franken­stein and the \Vollinan may in any null haH: seemeu too quaint to retainmuch of a Fissil/l for audiences. The cycle's studio-bound, dehistoricisedRuritanian milieu \\as also at ouus \yith the shift towards location filming andgreater topicality in post\yar cinema. During the H)50S, the debatable genericstatus of not only the 'cre,lture features' (discusseu in more uetail in Chapter8) but many other science fiction/horror hybrids bclilre and since points upthe difficulty genre historians and theorists haye always had in uistinguishingbetween the two g'enres. Inasmuch as horror anu science fiction (SF) audienceswere largely perceiyed by prouucers as identical, especially in the [950S­hence exploitation directors such as Rog"er Corman as \\ell as stuuio uirectorslike Jack ."-rnolu (11 Call/c Fmll/ OilIer Spacc, [<)53; Thc Crcalllrc Fom IhcBlat!.: Lagooll, 1(54) switched between (\\hat might be externally cbssifiedas) SF and horror \\ithout any eyiuent prior sense of generic difkrentiation- Wells (2000: 7) is probably rig-ht in arguing that 'there is no great bene/itin seeking to disentang-Ie these generic perspectiyes' and that \\T shouldinstead address our attention to 'the distinctiye elements of anyone textWithin a particular historical moment' .."-11 the same, some e\'ident points ofdistinction may help illuminate important aspects of both genres.

While in itself a uistinction between SF and horror drawn on the basis of'science' \'ersus 'm,lgic' would be quite inadequate, if one accepts thecriterion of scientific explanation not as an oillmll/c to be assessed (i.e. with

I

reference to contemporary scientific understanding), but rather as a form ofrhc/rll"/r and a Illode o( presell/I//ioll, it may proye more useful. In the SFuniYerse, that is, the appearance of aliens, monsters and other destructiye ormalnolent forces is not only depicted as e:xplicable according to the scicntificunderstanding diegetically ayailable (\\hich mayor may not map onto ourown), but moreoyer is narratiyely subject to such analysis, e:xplanation and ­more often than not - systematic response, By way of e:xample, although the

Monster in Frall!..'CIIs/eill (193 I) is manifestly a creation of misguided/penertedscience - stitched together from corpses, animated by electricity, his yiolenceaccountable by the erroneous insertion of a 'criminal brain' _. the film does

not present him as a scientific problem but as a terrifying monstrosity, bothpathetic and malign, On the contrary, Fmll!..'ells/eill's narratiye arc, spiralling:up through intensifying chaos and panic, could hardly be more differelltfrom the progress /hrollgh and PilS/ p,mic to\\ards a scientific/military solutionthat characterises innumerable SF alien imasion and monster moyies fro!1l

The Thillg (It)51) to llli/epClldCII(c DiI]' (I<)<)(»), Yiolence, to be sure, may pla~

,I ubiquitous role in defeating the intruder and restoring 'normality', but theyiolence of the SF film is LlI' more likely to be ostensibl~ rational andconsidered, that of the horror film, ritualised and reactiye (the pog:rom-likernenge of the \illagers \\ith their flaming torches).

These opposed generic rhetorics, of clarification and the occult, arc reflectedtoo in the different yisual registers of horror and SF. SF {i'om the It)50S andJ()(JOs in particular generally employs an unobtrusi\ e yisual style, \\hich

might be seen as affecting a quasi-scientific neutrality appropriate to thesolutions that \\ill nentually be fi)und to the threats at hand. This contrastsstarkly with the highly stylised and often floridly E:xpressionistic IIl1sc-se-sl,;lIeof classic horror. /\s Yi yien Sobchack (I<)1'\T 2<) .W) usefully suggests, horrorand SF arc also distinguished by the latter's tendency to lend its threats apublic and collectiYe aspect, \\hcreas horror - :IS the recent dominance ofpsychoanalytic interpretative paradigms suggests - e:xplores realms bothintimatc and - in all senses of the term - occult. The c1austrophobicall~

constricted spaces of horror magnify and condense profilllnd ami phobicimpulses regarding the body, the self and se\uality. In the 1<)70s, hO\\e\cr, inSF-horror as elsewhere, such stylistic generic markers become inLTC<lsingl~

unreliable.

Horror's status within the film industry has changed significantly in thepost-classical period, although not al\\ays in immediately obyious \\ays.Clearly, horror is no longer quite so marginal in industry terms as it mostl~

was from the end of the Lni\ersal 'Golden .~ge' in the early 1l)-f.OS until thelate 19(JOs. The massively magnified commercial importance of the collegeand high-school audience as \\e11 as the e:xplosion - intensified since the advent

of the Internet established Lm cultures \\ith a global and inst:ll1taneous reach

in the popularity, yisibility and hence market potential of 'cult' (usually SFand horror) film, teleyision and comic books, haye ensured that these former

'pulp' (or worse) genres are now taken \'ery .seri~JUsly_by studios .and film­makers. Yloreoyer, ne\\ genres such as the serIal killer hIm have splICed moremainstream forms like the police procedural thriller with horror tropes andthemes to bring ghastly generic material before a far wider audience thanhorror's traditional inner-city and jU\eniIe demographic - nen, in the case ofThe Si/mlc o( the La III/JS (199 I), earning the ultimate seal of establishmentappro\al, an Oscar fi)r Best Picture (on the generically ambiguous place of

Silence or/he LillII/IS, see J:mcoyich, [2001 I 2002).Still, horror has not fully crossed oyer to the mainstream to the degree of

its sister genre science fiction. \Yhereas since S/ilr Wars SF blockbusters (as

discussed in the ne:xt chapter) hne regularly commanded vast budgets, topstars and directors, arc often the central 'tentpoles' of annual releaseschedules, and reliably feature in lists of top bO\-oflice attractions, this israrel\ the case \\ith horror. Horror budgets remain relatiyely low, and major'abo;'e-the-line' talent is only infrequently att:lched to out-and-out horrorprojects. The more clearly generic the material, the truer this is: thus whileunderstated ghost stories like n,l' Si.r/h Sellse :lre perceiYed as relatively'classY', especially if they have a period setting (like The Others) and canattra~t m,ljor stars such as Bruce \\illis and :\icole k.idman, a slasher filmlike SacillII, a traditional shocker like Ghos/ Ship (2003) or a rem,lke likeDill/'ll 0(//'" J)cild (2003) \\ill typically fe,lture :1 cast of lesser-known actors,someti~les \\i th :1 'l1:lme' (\)re\\ Barrymore in Sacil III, fil!' c:xam ple) in afeatured or Clllleo role. \)espite the breakthroug;h success of William Friedkin's

The F.ro!"lis/ (l<J73), fe\\ leading directors in the last thirry years haye under­taken out-:md-out horror films (n,l' Shill III,!!, (SLll1ley I\. uhrick, 1<)1'\0) and Bl'i/I/I

Slo!..'('/' 's J)I'i/(f(/" (Francis Ford Coppola, H)(J2) being ob\ ious C\ceptions).Although they operate at a lo\yer le\e1 of \ isihility than the major summer

blockbusters, horror films nonetheless typif\ the contemporary 1Ioll~ woodpreference fiJI', ill industr~ parlance, 'm:lrketahility' the technique ofopening a film in as m:ll1~ \ enues as possihle simultaneously, with a harrageof high-impact print and spot '1'\ alherrising; O\er 'playability' (a film's

ability to npand its audience \\eek-on-\Yeek through LIHlLIrable criticalreception and \\ord-of-!1louth: see I.e\\is, 200,r ()3 70). Horror films usually'open wide' in hundreds of screens on the same \Yeekend, perform strongl~

enough in their Erst weck to rise to the top, or ncar the top, of the \\eeklybox-(~ftice list, hut then drop ofT sharply in subsequent \\'eeks to disappearfrom theatres after :1 relati\e1y short re1c<lse. In LlCt, horror's most lasting'contribution to contemporary llolh \\ood may ha\T heen :IS :1 paradigm fill'marketing and promotion in the post-elassie:11 era..\s I,-e\ in I lcffcrnan 'srecent research (2000, 200-f.) has IT\caled, the techniques identified abO\c as

typical of Hollywood's marketing techniques for its most prestigIOus andexpensive projects - wide opening accompanied by saturation TV, radio andprint a<hertising to clearly defined audience demographics - were pioneeredin the 1960s on a smaller (regional and citywide) basis by independent and

exploitation distributors marketing low-budget horror films, principally toblack inner-city audiences. Heffernan's \vork adjusts standard accounts that

sing'le out ]i1I1)S (and the role of \ICA President Lnv Wasserman) as

innovating' such practices, and nluably helps concretise the well-kn()\\"n

general narrative of Hollywood's increasing adoption of both genres, narrati\cs

and publicity techniques from the drive-in and exploitation markets from the

1()50S omyards, as part of its ongoing efforts to retrie\e shrinking audiences.

During the 1<)50s, the 'creature feature' cycle- \vhich \vas dominated b~

major studio releases - and the short-lived 3-D boom were clear early indi­

cators of this trend.

MAKING MONSTERS

A concept th,lt binds together much cinematic horror is the idea of the

'monstrous'. ?Ylonstrosity is not a sclf-evident category: monsters are created,

not born, Furthermore, as se\eral writers ha\e noted, //Iillisier has its

etymological roots in the I,atin //I IIIIsl ra re, 'to show': thus the monster exists

to de-llIlIlIslrale, to teach an object (social) lesson of some kind. The visual

trope indissociably one of the genre's semantic constants- of the tight

'choker' close-up on the screllning; (usually kmale) bce, giving the spectator

ample opportunity to reflect on the terror and horror expressed therein,

could be seen ,IS a textual marker of this educati\c process, an instruction in

horror (what we find horrific), In some horror films, the process of 'monster­

ing' - of rendering someone or something an object of fear and rentlsion ­

itself becomes part of the narrati ye: in different wa~ s films like Freil ks,

QUiller//liiSS i111t! lite Pil (GB I<)M\), Cronenberg's Tlte FI)' (I<)X6), EJIlJim!

SrissllrilillIi!S (19<)0) and ncn FmllJ..'i'lIs!<'ili invite their audience to rellect on

the psycho-social dynamics of monstrosity. The 1931 version of Dr ]eJ..~)'1I

i111t1 \11' ill/tic emphasises Jekyll's 'monstrous' .tlter-ego as a manifestation of

repressed sexual desires that are in themsehes perkctly 'normal', but

rendered hyperbolic and destructi \e by their systematic frustration in a rigid

social order predicated on denial. Such films might be seen ,IS taking their

cue from Franz h.afka's bmous parablel1elilllllllp!/llsis, \vhose protagonist

Gregor Samsa's sudden transformation into a giant insect and the rendsion

and rejection this transformation prO\okes in his bmily and fi'iends allegorises

bourgeois conformity, hostility to and fear of difference, and social isolation.

Far more horror films, however, .Ippear simply to exploit the 'monster

reflex', posilIoning their audiences so as to share the hatred, terror andaggression justifiably directed against the monsters they depict. Indeed, themisguided sympathy for, or attempts to reason with, the monster on the partof ivory-tower scientists or well-intentioned liberals, usually ending in the

cautionary death of the do-gooders, is a familiar genre motif. Robin Wood(1986: 70ff.) identifies this affective charge in horror as at once a graphic

enactment of and a reaction to 'surplus repression" the structures of denial

and oppression peculiar to 'patriarchal capitalism' (which go beyond the

basic repressions necessary, on Freud's account, to the socialisation of the

individual). Surplus repression relies crucially on the construction of a

terrifying and hateful Other whose embodiment of the forces suppressed by

patriarchy·, energies centred, for Wood, on sexuality, gender, race and class

_ reinforce the perception of those desires as monstrous.Wood, ho\\cyer, goes on to argue that just as repression in the individual,

on Freud's account, is liable to generate a 'return of the repressed' in the

domain of the unconscious through dreams, bntasies and in some cases

neurotic or hysterical symptoms, so too surplus repression in the social meets

with a displaced and distorted rejoinder in the transgressive energies of' low'

cultural forms like the horror film. I Horror film monsters are rarely wholly

unsympathetic, Wood argues (dra wing the majority of his examples from the

classic Cni\ersal and Expressionist horror cycles), and at some level they arc

acting out our 0\\11 unacknowledged desires: thus horror films offer

'fulfillment of our nig'htmare wish to smash the norms that oppress us and

which our moral conditioning teaches us to re\cre' (Wood, I9X6: Xo). The

doubling motif'i that abound in the genre arc a textual 'symptom' of this

ambivalence, re\caling the deeper affinity of the pro-social hero ,md the anti­

social monster. (Wood notes that in 81111 III' FrallkmslCifI (1939), the

eponymous ne\\ Baron comphtins that e\cryone thinks 'Frankenstein' is the

name of the monster his bther 'merely' created; similarly, Hardy (19X5: 107)

points out the ways in which Frankenstein's creations in the Hammer cycle

are mirror images reflecting back the Baron's O\\n 'moral flaws and emotional

atrophy'.) Thus horror is an unstable and unreliable ally to dominant ideology,

at once serving its purposes and articulating the desire to destroy it.One way of classifying horror's many monsters is proyided by Andrew

Tudor's (19X9) historical study of the gcnre, \\hich maps out the n,lture of

the threats in different periods across .1 schematic grid whose key categories

are external/internal and supernatur,tI/secular. In prewar horror, threats

mostly orig'inated from outside (the indi\idual or the community) and \\'eIT

more likely to be supernatural in origin. The postwar decade, the heyday of

atomic mutations and alien imasion, also stressed external threats but shifted

decisi\cly to\\ards the secular. External threats could usually be effectively

dispatched, given the right kno\\ ledge and technology (arcane lore, silver

hu Hets or, in the case of mutations and aliens, the combined scientific­military might of the modern nation-state). For Tudor and others, PSj'r!I{Jalong with the later Sigh/ II/he Lii'illg Dead (1968) mark the transition fromthe ontological and practicl1 security of externalised horror to the much moreuncertain and radically destabilising threats that originate \yithin. That tradi­tional Gothic horror has recently' been incorporated into the mainstream action

blockbuster (TheHIIIIII/l)I, 199<); hili He/si/lg, 200-4-), largely shorn of itshorrific elements, may suggest that the genre's focus has shifted ~l\\ay fromsuch 'external' threats towards the less \\ell-defined ground of indiYidualpsychology and the paranormal rather th~lf1 the supernatural.

I-I 0 R R 0 R SIN C E P ,..,. ) C f J()

Modern horror films ~lrc much morc likely to ccntre on threats originatingfrom inside both thc imliyidu;ll psyche (ps\chopathic killers) and . bccausee\Tn isolated indi\'iduals liye in neccssary relationship of some kind to ~1

larger human comnlltnity - our O\\n social institutions (~lbO\e all the bmi!\),

that arc patholo~6cal Lllher than supernat ural. '\ Ions tel'S ' such as "ormanBates and his successors arc all the more terrifying becausc they ~ll-c notmarked, or ~1l'C less olniollsly so, by the yisiblc indications of differencephysical dcf(Jrmities, \ ~lst size, othcl'\\orldly appearance - of their coml(JI't­in!,dy unmistakable l()\"(:bears; they retain the lransgressi\l' l1lut~lbility ofearlier shape-shilting monsters such as the \\olf \lan, but thcsc symptoms ofdifICrence and de\ iance ~II'C nOli internalised. ClO\er (1<)()2: .q) identiliesfJs)'d/ll's 'sC:\lwlisation of 1l1oti\e and action' as a feature that clearh distin­

guishl's the lilm from preyious horror tilms. Of course, Ps]'dw is 'llso(in)C1mous l(n' massi\c1y intensifying the dq;ree of graphic \iolencl' horrorfilms \\cre \\ illing ro inflict on their eh~lL1Cters and yicarioush upon theiraudiences (not\\ ithstanding that "orman's knife is ne\er secn to penetrall'\!arion Crane's lksh). Ps]'d/ll's m~1llipulation of audience sympathies to\\anl"characters (tirst \ !arion, th~n '\orm~1l1, then the im estigator\rbogast) onlY10 \\ rench them \ jolcntly allay is also \Iiddy creuited \Iith opening' ~l nc\\lickl in the play of sadi"m and the g~lze in popular cinema (echoed in thesubplot ill\ol\ing Detccti\e k:.inderm~ll1 in 'flie /;',IIJrust), .\L1ltby (H)().:;: 211'120) credits PS)'tllII with the end of 'sccure space' in Hollywood film, both

litcralh and tig'urati\c1y: audicnce" ~lfter PS)'tllli could no longer conlidenthrely on narrati\ e, generic ~1l1d representational con\cntions to 'pmtecr' the

intq;rity of their \ielling e\:perience, ~lIlY more than they could be assuredthat a \iolent attack would still be prcp;lred fiJI' - as had hitherto becn the

cOll\cntion - through eutaw,l\S to sinister fiplres shambling ~1t.TOSS mist \

marshes, etc.

Hitchcock's decision to make an inexpensi\e black-and-white thrillelusing members of the production team from his eponymous television serie.broke \\ith his then-reputation, established during the 19505, as a master 0

the \;n'ish action-suspense film (pre-eminently i'\/or/h II)' Nortllll'l's/, 1(59) andthe resulting film undoubtedly shocked and repulsed a proportion of both hismass audience and his critical admirers (see Kapsis 1992: 56-6-4-). Howe\er,his successful appropriation of such exploitation-circuit marketing gimmicksas refusing entry' to latecomers (a standby of the celebrated e\:ploitationproducer \Villiam Castle) and more importantly his adaptation, extension andintensification of lurid amI grotesque narrative material more than justiliedthe experiment and re\caled the enon~10US market beyond Hollywood'straditional, but increasingly chimerical, 'family' audience for this pre\iously

untouchable generic material. Saunders (2000: 75) describes Ps)'tllIJ as 'an actof permission for film-makers in the genre to further expose Isir] the illusol'\securities and limited rationales of contemporarY life ro reveal the chaoswhich underpins modern existence and constantly threat~ns to ensure itscollapse' .

As Tudor's careful tabuhltions ntake clear, howC\er, the generic shift thatoccurs \\ith l\yr!11I is a shift in emphasis, not an o\ernight generic trans­formation. \Vhilc \arious cheaply produc~d imitations of PS)ldlll (and of thepre\ious season's hit psychological thriller-horror hybrid lA'S J)ia/Jo/ti/Iles,France 1<)59) quickly t100ued the market (JiII/IIICida/, 1<)63; DI'IIII'II/iil 13,

1964; etc.), the older, more restrained and comforting:ly distanccd - in place,time and nature of thre<ll - Rom~ll1tic Gothic moue persisted throug'hout thc19605, notably in Roger Corman's cyck of Poe adaptations (!JOIISI' or Usher,1960; The PI/ lIl/{/ /hl' PClldllllllll, 1961; IOlllb o( I,/:~e/{/, 1<)65; etc.) and theBritish Hammer horror series; so too such low-ke\' g;host stories as TileInnocen/s and Tile Iflil/II/il/g. Hitchcock himself de~eI;)ped two aspects ofPS)Jcho - the relentless <lss<llIlt of the shO\\'cr scene ,lml the idea or the

inexplicability of \iolcnce further in The Birds (1 Q(J3). Although The Birdsseems to return to the 'external threat' model (and louks fOl"\\anls to such

1970S 'eco-horror' (ilms as Frogs, 1<)72, Pi/,(//Ii/(/, 1977, Prophl'C)', unl), andeven JIIII)S), strong; hints in the film sug:g;est that the hirds' sudden attack isin sume \Iay related to the cluracters' EI111ilial dysfunction anu emotionalrepression.

Bur it \\as arguably not until t\\O films of the 1l)()8 season, the exploitationfilm Nig/il fir/lit' 1,1l'lIIg DCl/d ;1nd the major studio release ROSi'II/{I!'J' 'I' 1311/!)',that any horror films repe~l1ed PS)'tlIO's enurmous impact. Both liims sharePsycho's key generic innO\ ation, the r~fusallO allOY\ the audience a stable orsecure final pusition, Ps)'d/ll \ refusal to allo\\' its threat to be rccupcr;1ted bythe all-roo-neat psychoanahric categories of the penultimate scene \\asinuelibly etched in the snperimposition of \lother's mummified face ()\er

Norman's in the fade-out. Nl~r;ht ... , whose horror is more explicitly sociall~

grounded, uses its principal metaphors of zombies and cannibalism to

portray US culture in the era of the Detroit and Chicago riots and the

Vietnam War as both mindlessly conformist and endemically yiolent, and

rams the point home by haying its (Black) hero shot by his supposed 'rescuers',

and his body thrown onto an .\usch\yitz-Iike pyre at the end of the film.

Night ... eyacuated comentional categories like heroism and good and eyil of

any relevance to the horror film. ROSell/illY's Bilh)' looked inwards to open up

an eyen more phobic field - the body itself.

BREAKING BOUNDARIES

In her powerful reading of the sub-genre of 'body horror', Barbara Creed

(1986, 19(3) il1\okes the notion of 'abjection' explicated in J ulia ~riste\a'sPOII'Crs o(Hol"rol" (H)8z). Emerging in the mid-T970s in lilms such as Tilt"

E,ol"cist (I<n3) and. i/iCll (Hn9), body-horror blended traditional supernatural

(demoniacd possession) and threat (alien monsters) motifs \yith a quite ne\\

emphasis on explicit bodily yiolation suffused with imagery of parturition

and monstrous sexuality. In The E\ol"cist, a pubescent girl masturbates \yith

a crucilix and spe\\-s green nllnit onto the faces of the priests ministering to

her. Carrie (1976), another adolescent girl, unleashes terrifying telekinetic

powers against her schoolmates in a lilm \yhose lirst scene sees her yiciousl~

mocked for the onset of her lirst period. In S/ll7"C1"S (Canada 1(75), ,I sexuall~

transmitted parasite produces rampant sexual anarchy. :\ lost infamous of all

is the monstrous parody of birth in .-J/iell as the embryo creature bursts out

of John Hurt's stomach. Creed understands the pO\Yerful effect of reyulsion

operatiYe in these lilms in terms of ~riste\-a's analysis of taboo and

delilement in (western) societies, a realm of the excluded or 'abject' the

construction of which is fundamental to the establishment and maintenance

of social norms: for it is through acts of primal prohibition that a discrete

sense of the self is effected.

Analysing the feelings of ITyulsion and disgust elicited by bodily secre­

tions such as 1~leces, urine, mucus, semen, menstrual blood, etc., ~risteYa

notes that these 'abject' substances share a quality of extrusion: haying once

been part of our bodies, they are ejected into the \yorld \\here they exist,

intolerably, as both part of ourselyes and as objects outside ourselyes, as us

and not-us. Ultimately, they recall to us that point at which \ye \yill all ine\'it­

ably become strangers to ourselyes, and at \yhich our corporeal persistence

will offer no reassurance of our continued existence as subjects - our O\\n

death, after \yhich the decaying shell of our bodies remain but '\\e' arc no

longer present. This indicates the source of the pO\Yerful affect in body-

- I -

horror films \yhere, in Kelly Hurley's (1995: z03) words, we find 'the human

body defamiliarised, rendered other'. Thus conceived, the larger relevance of

the abject to horror, the genre that aboye all concerns itself with death, decayand - in its su pernatural yersions at least - the persistence of life after or

beyond death, is readily apparent."Kristeya notes that this reyulsion is learned rather than instinctiYe

(animals and infants do not share it) and names the process that results in it

'abjection'. Three points of her complex argument are releyant to horror.

Firstly, as noted, the original focus of abjection is those substances and

processes that are properly o(our bodies but become detached/imll it - thus

alienating us from our sense of ourseh-es as coherent, integrated beings.

Second, the establishment of a sense of the abject is a key boundary-making

device: it sorts out what is clean and \\hat lilthy, hence (by social and

ideological extension) what is right and proper and \yhat eyil and loathsome.

That is, the constitution of the realm of the abject plays a crucial role in

setting the terms of the normati\e and desirable: only through a sense of limits

and exclusion docs the latter become a\ailable. But the process of abjection

akin to acts of primary rcpression in a traditional Freudian schema is ne\er

complete or secure, and the abject reappears in a yariety of displaced lilrms,

all sharing a similar aspect as '\yhat disturbs identit y, system, order. What

does not respect borders, positions, rules' (Kriste\a, 198z : 5).

Employing a diffnent theoretical \ocabulary, the work of the radical anthro­

pologist !\1ary Douglas, :"oel Carroll (1990: 33) comes to somewhat similar

conclusions about the issue of boundaries. 'Horrific monsters', he notes,

'often innl!\e the mixture of \yhat is normally distinct ... The rate of

recurrence \yith \yhich the biologies of monsters arc \aporous or gelatinous

attests to the applicabilit~ of the notion of f(lrmlessness to horri/ic impurity'

(Carroll cites the yagueness of the descriptions of infernal creatures in the

horror fiction of H. P. LO\ccraft).

That monster.\. is categoricl1ly interstitial [using Mary Douglas's terms Icauses a sense of impurity in us \yithout our necessarily being aware of

precisely what causes that sense ... In ,lddition, the emphasis Douglas

places on categorical schemes in the analysis of impurity indicates a \Ya~

for us to account fil!· the recurrent description of our impure monsters

as 'un-natural'. They arc un-nalUral relati\e to a culture's schema of

nature. They do not fit the scheme; they \iolate it. (Carroll, 19<)0: 3-1-)

Like much psychoanalytic theory, ~risteYa's account of abjection has been

attacked as uni\-ersalising - i.e. insufficiently attentiYe to historical and cultural

differences and contexts. HO\yeyer, there is no real reason why abjection

cannot haye an e\ident socio-political dimension, one moreO\-cr that is

immediately rele\'ant to the horror film, E\l~n if the processes of abjectionare, as Kristeya insists, uniyersal, its objects are necessarily contingent. In

our flight from the intolerable [lCt of mortality, it is possible to trace a process

whereby those aspects we loathe and fear in ourselyes - as our body's traitorous

confessions of its o\\n limitations, are projected onto specific Others \\ho

then take on a murderous qualit~, as if they \\ere somehO\y responsible for

the death that ineyitably a\yaits us,

Creed's essay suggests the importance of feminism as a context for the

films she discusses - construing the 'monstrous-feminine' as a manifestation

of male phobic rage against the empO\\erment of women (as has also frequenth

been noted, the eruption of the De\il in The Exor(isl into Washington, DC,

in the era of Watergate and Yietnam is not \\ithout ob\ious satiric appli­

cation), It is certainly possible to extend the application of abjection beyond

this time-frame to a broader engagement \\ith the horror film's dynamics of

protJna tion,

QUEER HORROR

As suggesti\e as Creed's exploration of the abject has been, she still in the

end finds horror to be a genre that articulates phobic fantasies of maternal

monstrosity with the ultimate aim of recontaining female energies in socially

acceptable forms. In this regard, her critique reflects the difficulties experi­

enced by much feminist criticism in recO\ ering a positi\e dimension from a

g;enre that seems so consistently to trade in the \ictimisation - the terrorisation

and increasingly graphic physical \iolation of \\omen. This tendency has

been particularly marked in the stalker I slasher films that emerged as belated

after-echoes of PS)'c//O in the late HnOS, One marked stylistic de\ice of these

films was their deployment of a point-of-\-ie\\ camera that seemed frequently

to put the audience in the position of the killer stalking his \ictims and to

encourag;e vicarious identification \\ith the murderous gaze, For \Yilliams

(I <)i'\.1: (l I), the female spectator of a horror film is 'asked to bear witness to

her own po\\crlessness in the [lce of rape, mutilation ,md murder'.

More recently, howe\'er, \\Titing about horror from the perspecti\e of

queer theory has fi)Cused attention on the \\ays in which the horror film's

textual instability and focus on the 'category error' of the monster em be

seen as articulating positions \\hose challenge to cOll\entional dualities of

g'ender, race and especially sexuality are ultimately not recontained by the

monster's final destruction. In some cases, indeed, \ictorious 'norm,llity'

triumphs precisely by taking on itself some of the 'de\iant' properties of the

monster. As pro-social as this mO\c may be in narrati\e terms . thM is, it is

aimed at eliminating the monster - it produces not a 1'C\crsal but a trans-

valuation of the normati\e categories that Wood and Creed understand the

horror film finally to reinforce, Thus identities are not resecured and the

original (imaginary) integrity of the subject remains in process, This has little

to do \\ith the narrati\e incorporation of gay, lesbian or bisexual characters

into traditional Gothic horror subjects, for example the homoerotic elements

in !nlerl'/eJl' Wilh Ihe Val/lpire (199-t) or the lesbian \ampires of The Hunger(1989) (see Benshoff, 1997; lesbian \ampires have a lon~ ci~ema~ic his.torydating back at least to Dram/a's Da/lghler, 19.16, and objectIfied m entIrely

con\entional 'girl-on-girl' pornogr'lphic f~lshion in Hammer's early [inOS

cycle starting \\ith The T'alllpire Lfreers, [(no: see Weiss, H)92 2).

- A relati\ely early example of a modern horror text that resists final

reincorporation (literally) is the [<)S2 remake of the classic [()SOS SF monster

moyie The TlII/lg. The 19i'\2 \ ersion replaces the confiden t if watchful Cold

War tenor of the earlier film's [lOWUS conclusion - 'Keep \Vatching the Skies'

- with a much grimmer ending in \\hich the t\\O suni\'ing cast members wait

amid the smouldering embers of their !\xetic research camp for ine\itable

death. What makes the ending notable though is not only its bleakness but

also its indeterminacy: the film's extraterrestri,JI is a shape-shifter, able

almost instantly to mimic the physical appear.lI1ce of any organism it attacks.

Although the Thing appears to ha\c been destroyed in the climactic

conflagration th,lt has destroyed the base, neither the two sur\i\ing scientists

nor the audience CII1 be absolutely sure that one or other of them is not an

imposter, .lOd the film ends ha\ing; refused to resohc the question.

The TllI/lg focuses narrative attention on the question of identit\ and

'passing' in its all-male g;roup and seemed to reflect anxieties proy(lked by the

nO\el threat of the 'gay plague' ,\IDS in the early H)i'\OS (in a key sccne, the

group members test each other's blood fill' ,Jlien con taminan ts). The film's

threat originates in a definitive 'elsewhere' (outer space) but penetrates

American male bodies in \\ ,IYS that render indi\iduals strange and terri(\ing.

The TllI/lg also relies hel\iIy on prosthet ic effects to im,lge thc monstrous

transformations and transgrcssions. Such effects (as Ne,11e ([()i)O) notes, the

object of refkxiYe commentan in The T/llllg \\hen a cll'lr'lcter responds to a

particularly speetacuhlr/grotesque effects lour t/ejiircc \\ith the \\ords 'you\e

got to be fucking kidding!') not only rcnder the hidden interior spaces of the

body graphically visible but. by ill\ iting; the spectator to register their \isceral

artifice, stress the constructed nature of apparent biological or bodily gi\ ens.

The most inbmous instances of this probably remain the embryo alien's

eruption Ii'om Kane's stomach in 11/1'1/ and the oozing \ideo slotlaperture in

James \Yood's stomach in T,t/mt/ro/l/e (Il)S-t). T,lIli,1 .\lodleski (I ()i'\i'\: 2i'\<))

finds such im.H!,cr\ '\er\ Ell' from the reJim of \\hat is traditionally called

"pleasun:" andc

m'uch I~earer to so-edled jO/l/SSil//U', discussions of \\hich. '1 \.L" "" I " "t- " "I - " I· f' ·tI1'pn\l eg;e terms 1"e gaps , \yount s, ISSlll'CS, C C<I\ ages ,alll so 01 .

Although relatively few horror films have explicitly explored thisrapturous violation - one exception might be Hellraiser, \\ith its Bataille-Iikeconfluence of pain, mutilation and pleasure- this gives rise to the notion ofhorror as a 'critical genre' \yhose subversion of identities extends beyond thetransformed or violated body to the text itself: :\lodleski goes on to a;'gue that

lthe1 contemporary horror film thus comes very close to being the'other film' that Thierry Kuntzcl says the classic narrative film mustalways work to conceal [i.e. because of open-endedness, lack of identifi­able characters, nihilistic qualitiesJ: 'a film in \yhich ... the configurationof events contained in the formal matrix \yould not form a progressiveorder, in which the spectator/subject \yould never be reassured ... '(Modleski, [19H6] zooo: Z(1)

Judith Halberstam (1995: 155) similarly asserts that 'the horror film makesvisible the marks of suture that classic realism attempts to coyer up.' Hmye\cr,Halberstam and other queer theorists differ from \lodleski and other earlierfeminist writers on horror in their attitude tmyards horror's textual politics.Q!.leer theory emphasises the disturbances and carniyalesque reyersalsinflicted upon normative (,straight') identity concepts by the fundamentallYunstable nature of categories of sexuality and gender (and in a gTmYin~'number of queer theory formations also of race, disability and nen class),and the rampant semiotic proliferation that is encountered at the borders ofsuch oyer-determined socio-sexual categories. So \yhereas \lodleski stillquestioned the political progressiYity of horror's oppositional stance inas­much as it exploited male fear of, hence relied on yiolencc tmy.lrds, \yomen,Halbcrstam sees the postmodern splatter film (Tile Texas Cllil/llSa 1/' . Hassacre,1974; The Texas Cllilil1Si1l1' ;Uassa(J'e 2, H)H6) as mmino' beyond the demonisin o'

~ ~ ~

binarism of the classic monster movie tmyards a riotous 'posthumanism'where 'orderly' categories of gender in particular are not only not reaffirmedbut exploded. Thus whereas 'monster-making ... is a suspect' activity becauseit relies upon and shores up comentional humanist binaries',

the genders that emerge triumphant at the conclusion of a splatter filmarc literally posthuman, they punish the limits of the body and theymark identities as always stitched, sutured, bloody at the ~eams, anjcompletely beyond the limits and the reaches of an impotent humanism.(Halberstam, 1995: 143-4)

The endless procession of sequels that typifies the contemporary horror genremight itself be seen as 'queering' traditional notions of narrative closure andresolution: however apparently fatal and final the end inflicted on Jason,

'/J

Freddy or :\lichael, the audience is well a\vare that this is merely a formalmarker of the film's ending that in no real sense genuinely 'ends' the story.

BEYOND HOLL YWOOD

Horror films, like the musical, are found in every national cinema. Probablybest-known outside Hollywood are the British horror films produced byHammer. Hammer revived and updated the classic Universal Gothic series ­Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy - along with a variety of home-grownmonsters in a series of mostly period films from the late 1950S until the mid­1970s. Hammer horror is often approached in terms of its scrutiny of classrelationships (with the middle-class specialist - Van Helsing , for example ­like the 'boffins' in British \\ar films of the same era, using' his technicalexpertise to triumph over the combined forces of medieval superstition andan outmoded aristocracy: see Hutchings, 19(3). These categories mig'ht nothave been so releyant in the US, where Landy (zooob: 69) suggests thatHammer horror was able to capitalise on anxieties about authority gone awryand beleaguered masculinity and femininity. Street (zooz: I 6z) adds that 'thecycle's international popularity implies that these gender issues were eq uallyrelevant to other [i.e. non-eJB 1societies.'

The horror film has also flourished in continental European cinemas, withperhaps the best-known traditions those of Italy and Spain. Italian horror inparticular received international attention as an aU/I'llI' cinema in the 1960sthrough the p, ia 110 tradition in the films of Mario Baya (The Mask o(ihe Di'7.'il,1960; Blad, SUllday, 19(0), Ricardo Freda (The Termr IdDr llilrhmd" 196z)and in the 1970S Dario Argento (SLlspiria, H)76; Iliferno, 19Ho), all of whichwon critical praise fill' their bravura visual style and their refunctioning ofart-cinema motifs in unexpected genre contexts (see Jenks, 199z). OutsideEurope, the Japanese horror film, olien with a strong basis in folkloric andnative theatrical traditions (Olli/Ja/Ja and the antholog'y film KJ7)aidall, both1964) has been one of the most notable: recently, such Japanese SF/horrorhybrids as Te/suo: The !rOil ;Uall (H)90) and its sequel TetsLlo II: BOIl}'Hammer (1991) have contributed to the 'body-horror' sub-genre, while a ne~wave of turn-of-the-millennium East Asian horror films, principally fromJapan (including Rillp,L1, 199H; fla II Ie Royall', zooo; .illilztioll, zooo; DarkWater, zooz; and The Grudge, Z003) and South Korea have achieved cult andCrossover success in CS and \\,(lrldwide markets (sec ~lcRoy, zooS).

The expansion of fan culture, as well as horror's arguably universalpreoccupations, has led to both the increasing visibility of non-Europeangenre films in the US and UK, a greater - thoug'h still limited- penetration ofEnglish-speaking markets by non-.\nglophone horror films, and importantly

the employment on Hollywood horror films of genre film-makers likeGuillermo del Toro (director of the widely distributed l\lexican horror filmsCrollos, 1993, and The Den!'s Backbone, 02001, as well as .HIII/ic, 1997, and theaction-vampire sequel Blade fl, 02002). (On the internationalisation of horror,see Schneider, 2002.)

CASE STUDY: RIVGU (HIDEO NAKATA, JAPAN

1998)/THE RiNG (GORE VERBINSKI, 2003)

Hideo Nakata's Rtllgu -- which quickly spawned two follow-up films, Rlngu

2 (1999) and the prequel Rillgu 0 (2000) - is perhaps the most celebrated ofthe new wave of East Asian horror films to be released in the late 1990S inWestern Europe and the US, securing sizeable cult followings. Rillgu wasquickly remade both in a low-budget South Korean version (Tlte Rlllg TlrtlS,

1()99) and in the US by Dreamworks as The Ring, released in October 02002.

The American remake is largely Llithful to the Japanese original and indeedincludes several shots patterned directly after :\akata's film." The plotinvolves a mysterious video whose viewers are condemned to certain deathexactly one week after watching the tape for the first time. The faces of thevictims are frozen masks of indescribable terror, and their hearts seem quiteliterally to have stopped from sheer fright A journalist (Reiko in Rlllgll/Rachel in The Rillg) following the trail of what she originally believes to bean urban myth, having watched the video finds herself the victim of thecurse. Her increasingly frantic search fill' the truth behind the video in thehope tlMt this will lift the curse, intensified when first her ex-husband (Kyuji/Noah) and then their son (Yoichi/Aidan) see the curse \"ideo, makes up themain body of the narrative. The curse is re\caled to have its roots in thestrange and tragic story of a child, Sadaka/Samara, born decades previousl~

into an island community with extraordinary but destructive telepathicpowers. It is the vengeful spirit of this girl, thrown into a well and left tostarve to death by her own bther after her mother committed suicide, thathas sent the curse video into the world. The film Lllls into an establishedcateg"ory in Japanese horror, the kaldall or 'avenging spirit' film (see .\lcRoy,

02005), typically as here fllCusing on a wronged, usually female entity returningin spectral form to avenge herself upon those who harmed her in life.

Sadaka/Samara's appearance, her Llce cloaked behind a mask of long blackhair apart from a single basilisk eye, is iconographically conventional in thistradition. (It has been sug"gested that the ongoing popularity of this motif in

contemporary Japan reflects anxious and/or phobic negotiations in themasculine imaginary of the changing role of women in Japanese society.)

The central device of the curse video illustra tes weJl the horror film'sFrom Til" Rill.~ (2002). Reproduced courtes\ of J)rean1\\orl.s JJ ,C/The hobal Collection/

Merrick \ [orton.

From The Rillg (2002). Reproduced courtesy of IJrc;Jmworks LLC/The Kobal Collectionl

I\Ierrick :\lorton.

178 FILM GENRE

capacity to update its semantic elements while retammg its characteristicgeneric syntax. The deyice of the \'ideotape substitutes for the traditionalface-to-face imprecation an impersonal medium where the identity of theyictim is irrelnant (although Reiko's response to the curse may be seen as inclassic horror-film style a challenge she rises to meet). The origin of the tapeis left deliberately obscure, as is the precise means whereby (,lS opposed towhy) it comes to be in the inn oyer the \yell. In the context of a medium inwhich sequels and series are de n~r;e/lr- and a film that would in due coursegenerate two sequels of its own - there is at least the suggestion of an ironicref1exive dimension in the idea of a Yideotape which demands to be exactlycopied and passed on in an endless chain.

Both Rillgu and The RiIlP, confront a perennial problem for the horror filmthe yisual communication of the othef\yorldly and the infernal - that has

become especially yexed as the traditional 'external' (in Tudor's classifica­tion) terrors (Frankenstcin's monster, the Wolf Man, Godzilla) haye formodern audiences lost much of their capacity to frighten. Jacques Tourneurwas compelled by his distributor to add seyeral shots of a fire-breathing giantdemon into his otherwise yisually restr,lincd satanic thriller Sight o!' theDel1loll (1<)57), a mO\'C generally held to han: damaged a \yell-regarded film.Alongside the decline - or at least the shift into ,I less horrific affectiveregister- of old-style monsters, howeyer, thc post-Psyc!to horror film faces atransf()rmed context of reception \yhere audiences anticipate and requireintensified 'shock' yalue, usually measured in C\cr more graphic simulationsof yiolence and bodily \'iolation. Films aiming to ITyitalise horror's traditionalsupernatural terrain thus perf()rm a difficult balancing; act bet\\een the'tasteful' atmospherics of T!te Si.rth .')'l'Ilse and its imitators on the one handand the full-on pandemonium of the splatter film on the other. The attemptin the SF-horror hybrid EUllt !Jori.::,oll (GB H)()7) to conn:y the experienceof a parallel uniyerse of absolute eyi\ into \yhich the eponymous spaceshiphas slipped illustrates the problem. The transition into the hell-realm isimaged for the yie\\cr by the ship's yideo log, which shifts from recordingroutine tasks to fragmentary and f1eetingly glimpsed images of yiolence andmadness accompanied by a soundtrack of shrieks, mad laughter and sonicdistortion. While this achiC\cs a modestly satisfying \'isceral frisson in acrowded theatre, as an encounter \yith a \yholly Other order of being itshorror-comic images (the ship's captain holding a denucleated eyeball in thepalm of each hand and so on) leayes quite a bit to be desired.

The key textual and narratiYe mediator of the uncanny in Rillgu and TheR illg is the curse Yideo, seen entirely or in part seycral times in both films:this is our bridge to the discourse of the Other in the film, Sadaka's demonicpsychic effusions. Riugll attempts to communicate a sense of the uncannywithout resorting to standard generic shock techniques \yhile ,1Iso not giying

THE HORROR FILM 179

,1\\<lY the secret of Sadaka's story, which unfolds oyer the course of the filmthrough Reiko's imestigations. Quite clearly, if the Yideo is risible or simplyL1ninteresting a great deal of the element of threat instantly leeches away.Rillr;H accordingly takes great care in manufacturing a series of oneiric imagesth<l~ present a sufficiently cognitiye rather than merely interpretatiye challengeto the spectator to be unsettling beyond their manifest content (that is, we aresufficicntly unsure about \I'hat \Ie are seeing as to challenge our simpledeIll,llld of\l'hat it might 11/1'1111). The Yideo contains just six separate elements

SClen if one counts Sadaka's mirrored ref1ection separately from herlllothcr's - none of them readily generically placeable or indeed placeable inany other \lay (of all the images, that of the stumbling, contorted people .\ ictims, as \Ie later learn, of Sadaka's telekinctic outburst - is the mostdisturbing in terms of its content). The yideo is extremely IO\l-definition andnone of thc (static) shots ha\c any sense of being 'composed'. The intenselydisturbing effects of the sequence are traceable to the inexplicable andincomprehensible nature of its images rather than their superficial horrificconteIlt.

fit" Riug's curse yideo is significantly longer than Rillgu's and although itrepeats key images from the Japanese yersion -, the mirrors, the yie\l of theski from inside the well. the exterior shot of the \lcll - it adds a number ofothers, seyeral of \\hich arc generic 'horror' imag'es: an electrode unspoolingfi'om an open mouth, a giant centipede snaking away from underneath atable, a finger impaled on a nail, sC\cred fing;ers in a box. The images arecOIlsiderably clearer than in Riugu, more striking'ly composed and on at leastOllc occasion - :\nna's suicide .. the camera Ste,ldicams in to\lanls its subject.nl<- Riug's yideo lacks the key discursiye elements of the yideo in Rillg/l - theII ord 'eruption' pulsing across the screen, and the ideogTam 'Sada' g;limpsedin the close-up of Sadako's eyeball substituting some technological detecti\c\I (Jrk by Rachel \lho, by manipulating the tracking on the frame of the imageof the dead horses, is able to identif~ the location depicted in the Yideo, herlirq rcal breakthrough in her researches. Indeed, sner,rl of the curse I"ideo'simages prO\ e to be straight indexical traces, Samara's memories that prol"idedirect pointers f(lI< Rachel to track dO\ln and confirm the location of Samara'shl11ih.

Rather strikingly, TIle Rillg introduces a rd1exil"e anticipation of the~llIdience's rejection of, or indifference to, this much more elaborate sequencelJl' images in :\oah's dismissil"e description of the tape as 'I"ery student film'.Oh contrast, Kyuji seems uneasy and unsettled by his first I"iewing of thetape.) This g'esture of disal"o\l,rl also highlishts the different gender politicslJf the t\lO films, \I"ith :\'oah a signilicantly more sceptical, 'realist' ('I'm sureit's much scarier \lhen you're alone', he adds) presence than Kyuji, whoselIl\estigatil"e partnership \lith Rachel is l11otil"ated by his o\ln externally

IHo FII.M liENRE

verifiable evidence (the tell-tale distorted photographs that identif~ him as avictim of the curse) rather than in direct response to her expressed fear. Thisreflects a generally morc empirical attitude in Tlic Rillg that shifts the storyaway from Rill/!./I's roots in folk myth to\\'ards the cstablished genericvernacular in contemporary .\merican popular culture for rendering the

paranormal (Tlic X-Files, etc.). The increased dramatic prominence ofSamara's f:lmily compared to Ring/l reflects these different priorities, as does

the wholesale suppression of the flllk loric e1emcnt, Sadaka as the child of a

sea-god or demon. Tlic Rillg also introduces t\\O set-piece scenes, the uncanny

panic of the horse ,lhoard the ferry and the scene in \\hich Samara's father

electrocutes himself in the bathtub. :\either of these ha\e any direct parallel

in l\akata's film and appear to ha\(~ been introduced to gi\'e an e\cntful boost

to the narrative of Rachel's quest and meet audience expectations of disturbing

and \iolent plot incidents. TI,c RlI1g also establishes a direct parallel between

Samara and Aidan by reassigning telepathic abilities from ~yuji in Rillgu to

Aidan - again accommodating the source material to LS generic cOl1\cntiol1s

by echoing TIi,. Six/Ii SCI/SC'S trend-sctting portrayal of a child \\ith para­

normal powers.

Tlic Rillg emplovs a morc g'cnericalh placeable \isual st~ Ie than Ringu,using both shock cuts, List dollies and tracks, and the prosthctic/make-up

effects the Japanese version abjures (for instance, the \cry bst track into the

first \'ictim's face as she - preSL1l11,lbly sees Samara offscreen, the last frames

of \\'hich substitute a horrific make-up effect fllr the actress' screllning f:lce,

the s\vap masked by the speed of the camera mO\ement). \Yhereas Reiko is

called to ~yuji's apartment by the police, Rachel discO\ers '\oah's deld bodyherself in a scene that is constructed as a horrific (ll1Ip d,. I!/(;cilr,., \\ith a tense

build-up to the re\Tal of :'-.;oah 's corpse, posed tableau-like atop a eLlis (this

is unexplained as \\ hen last seen [\.Jo,lh \\ as scrambling' along the floor, bur

recalls fllr example Hannibal I,ectcr's spectacular body-compositions in TheSilm(,. orllic IAlllllls), his [ICe grotesquely transfllrmed into the 'terror mask'

of Samara's victims.

Perhaps the most notable difference het \\ een the t\\O films, however,

i11\ohes the ending'. Rill/!.II bdes out on a high-,mgle shot of Reiko's car

speeding; up the moton\ ay: \ve knO\\ she is Liking her son Yoichi to shO\v her

f:nher the curse \ idco, determined to sacrifice the old m,1I1 rather than her

only child. The film thus ends on a ble,lk note: there is no escaping the curse,

merely the ine\itable tLl11smission of the contagion. \\hile TIi,. Rillg repro­

duces the t\vist of the copy, at the of the film Rachel makes no ,I11S\\ er when

Aidan asks her \\'ho she intends to shO\\ the video to: the specific sense of

desperation and cruelty at the end of Rillg/l is considerably mitigated, \\ hill'

also pointing up the different, more atomised, sense of bmily ,md community

in TIi,. Rill/!.'s suburb,m LS mileu.

THE HORROR FILM IHI

NOTES

I, Its 'Itl\\ness' is key to its transgressivity ,as apparent detritus, the subH'rsi\e ch'lI'gc ofhorror so to speak creeps in beneath the radar of ideological censorship.

_ For ,1l1 interesting' reading of the 'yuppie nightmare' film Single I1hile Fell/llle (1992) as

.1 lesbian vampire lilm, see Creed (1<)9:;)·3, For a shot-bv-shot comparison of the t\VO films, see the I:In site ,11 http:! hY\\'\v.mandiapple.

com1sno"bloodl ringcompare. htm.

CHAPTER 8

The Science Fiction Film

Science fiction (SF) is a dominant presence in contemporary Holly\\ood.

SIll r IYII rs (1977) established a commercially potent alliance between SFand a new breed of action blockbusters (see Chapter 10): of the 100 all-timebox office leaders (adjusted for int1ation) eighteen are SF films (or, as some

SF purists might prefer, action films that Jeri\e their narrati\e content andsome or most of their thematic preoccupations from SF's traditional con­cerns), all released since H)77. SF films number thirteen of the t\\Tnty-seYenannual top-grossing films bet\\Ten [977 and 2003, and no fe\\er than t\\enty­se\en of the top 100 (unadjusted) highest grossers in the same period. I Yearin, year out, the principal releases onto the lucrati\'e summer market from themajor US studios - the blockbuster 'tentpole' films around which a year's

schedule is organised, and which can make or break a balance sheet and thecareers of studio executi\es .- are dominated by effects-laden SF spectacu­lars, preferably entries into reliably super-profitable series 'franchises' such

as the /Hillri.\' (1999,2002,20°3), Termillillor (H)8-+, H)9I, 2003), .1Iie/l (1979,1986,1990, 19c)7, 200-+), or pre-eminently Slar IIl1rs (1977,1980, IC)8-+, 1999,2002) series. Classic comic books like SpiderJIlilll (2002, 200-+) and X-. Hen

(2000, 2003), which all centre on classic SF motifs (genetic mutations,radiation poisoning, mind control, etc.) and \\hich from the stllllios' point of\iew are attracti\e1y 'pre-sold' (i,e, ha\e \\idespread 'brand' recognition and

a dedicated audience in their original medium), ha\'e also est,lblished strong

film series.' Intensi\e1y marketed and subject to elaborate publicity strategiesthat build anticipation for months (in the case of SllIr 11 (Irs, years) prior to

release, such films address themsehTs to a global spectatorship as crucialmedia 'eyents' (though still relying hea\'ily on their appeal to the jll\'enile,

principally male audience that has traditionally prO\ided SF's core constitu­

ency)." Hyper-modern almost by definition, SF is \\ell-placed to 'lppropriate

cutting-edge styles not only in \\orld cinema (for example, Japanese mll/lgil

n lIe SCI E'-' CE Fl cn ON Ft L M 183

,l\1d a/lillle film) but in music, Llshion and product design - and in turn toreformat these as 'must-ha\e' elements in co-onlinated global cross-mediaIllarketing and merchandising strategies centred on the film (the Ray-Bansunglasses ,1l1d Nokia mobile phones prominently featured in the first .Hlllrix

,liT a good example).It \\as not al\\a\s thus. SF has risen to industrial pre-eminence both ,IS a

function of and; dri\ing force in the rise of the ':"Je\\ Holly\\ood', thelransf()rmation of the :\merican film industry since the IC)70S, in \\ays thatcould not easily ha\'C been anticipated prior to the mid- [970S, Bef()re SllIr

11 lirs ,Iml Close !:'/I(o/llllers o( lite Tll/rd kill,! (1<)77), whose combined box­

ortice impact transf()rmed pre\'ailing prior assumptions ahout SF's limited,1IIdience ,Ippcal, the genre had generally occupied a dccidedly secondaryposition in Holly\\ood's hierarchy of genres, SF's current ascendancy has~one hand-in-hand with an explosion in the \isual effects industry - grown:ince ."'/lIr /I lirs into a billion-dollar business in its o\\n right (withLucasfilm's o\\n Industrial Light and \lagic subsidiary still pre-eminent) ­but cannot simply be accounted f()r in terms of the capacity to de!i\er eYermore astonishing and seamless \ isions of the future and transf()rmations ofthe present. In Llct, the dC\e!opment of a mass audience with an apparently

innhaustible appetite f()r these technological \\ onders, \\hich con temporal')SF cinema both exploits and carefully nurtures, itself needs to be socially,

historically and culturally contextualised.It \\Olild seem that SF's ,Ihiding concern as a genre \\ith the - usu,llly

threatening - consequences of technological change on human society andidentity is particularly \\ell placed to ,Iddress the concerns ,1I1d anxieties of aculture in \\hich achaneed technolog) is mon' central, in rapidly andendlessly mutating; forms, than e\'Cr before. ,\ny social history of the last fift)\ cars \\ ould stress the multiLIrious \\ays in which - from the unleashing ofthe rc,lrsome destructi\e pO\\Tr of nuclear \\eaponn, to the introduction ofthe umtracepti\T pill in the early 1<)60s \\ith its t~lr-reaching implications f()r

\\omen's sexu,I! independence, to the ongoing digital 1'C\olution sLlrting in

the late 1980s rapid technolog;ical change has accompanied and in manyC\',es intensified the often dizzying pace of social and cultural chang;e. As agenre \\hose speculati\e futuristic orientation has often combined \\ ith a long

tradition of both Lmtasy and soci,I! allegory, SF seems Llr hetter suited than

either nostalgic genres like "esterns or musicals, or intensely topical genreslike the \\ar or the social problem film, to mediate these changes and theirpossible meanings, in narrati\e f()rms that arc illuminating;, challenging,

entertaining, yet in most cases not inescapably didactic or directly impliclted

in ephemeral political debates.SF's public dimension (noted by Sobcl1,lck, [(J8i) adds to this critical

currency. :\ lost clearl y typified by the spectacular sequences of urban panic

1K4 FILM GENRE

and destruction - or indeed of eerie post-apocalyptic abandonment - wherethe surging of terror-stricken mobs and/or the downfall of recognised land­marks like the Washington Monument, Golden Gate Bridge or Statue ofLiberty via alien attack, natural cataclysm or nuclear war (Eartlt ,'.1'. the FI)'ingSaurers, 1956; Tlte Core, 2003; and PlaJlet o!, tlte ~-1pes, 1967, respectively)signify the destruction of human civilisation itself, SF emphasises the trans­personal. Even the isohted scientific crank or obsessin~, wilfully probing'those things man must leave alone', embodies a larger crisis of scientifictrustworthiness and accountability. Whereas horror films circle obsessivelyinwards to a Gothic interior realm of individual dementia and dysfunction­ality, Sf's unguessable abysses of interstellar space or desert wastehnd bycontrast minimise and ironise petty human concerns on a cosmic scale.Numerous SF films - especially those \vith epic pretensions - express thisTa1/itas theme with climactic long or extreme high-angle shots, representingnobody's point of view (unless it be God Himself), which dwarf the figure ofthe human protagonist against a backdrop of implacable nature and/orabsolute devastation: Tltc World, tltc Fleslt, awl the !Jcri! (1959), PlaJlet o!,the4pes, THX 1138 (I970), Thc OJlIi'/!.a ALIII (I<)7I). Sometimes humanity is

et'L!ced altogether, as in the shot sequences that conclude the nuclear ~'\rma­

geddon fantasies 0" t/ic Be((r/i (1959), Or StrilJl.gclm·c (I963) and BCllcath thePlaJlct o!, l/ic "'Jpcs (uno).

SF's pressing currency in film history and cultural studies is equally clear.As we shall see, SF has a good claim to be considered the first distinctivelypost-classical Hollywood genre, and as such occupies an important place inindustry history. MOlTO\Cf, both literary and cinematic SF have becomefocal points fiJI' debates in contempor,lry cultural theory, and a tally of thekinds of characteristics of contemporary SF cited abmc helps nplain why.Institutionally implicated in shifring practices of global film distribution andmarketing; placed at the cutting' edge of changes in representational practicesuch as digitisation that challenge traditiOlul assumptions about the ontologyof the photographic image (notably its indexical, or reality-produced andreproducing nature); porous and hybrid across boundaries of genre and

national cinema alike; centrally fiJeused on questions of technological changeand their impact on human identities; and sceptical about the continuingvalidity of traditional assumptions ahout the stability and fixity of human

nature: these key attributes of SF film also comprise a \irtual checklist of thehallmarks of postmodernism (see Bertens, J()95). SF can thus be reg;arded

both as a quintessentially postmodern g.·enre (if such a concept is not acontradiction in terms) and as an imponan t vehicle fiJI' the dissemination of

ideas in and about poslmodernism to a wide audience.The degree of generalisation in such comnwnts should certainly il1\ite a

healthy degree of scepticism. In particular, givcn the notoriously elusi\'e

TIlE SCIE"iCE FICTION FILM 1KS

location of material history in much postmodcrn criticism and theory, it maybe useful to tesl ,md justify these claims through a historical consideration of

the ~\merican science fiction film.

.\ GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY: SF FILM TO 1977

\mericlI1 SF film befilre Star Hilrs may be divided into three distinct phases:horror themes and jll\enilia mark the genre's indistinct beginnings pre­Second \rorld \\~,u, sensational pulp narratives and Cold War allegories of

interplanetary conf1ict and atomic mutation dominate the 195os, while darkd\Slopic visions predominate in the late 1960s and HnOS. ~'\s broad-brush ass~ch periodisations inevitably are, it is perhaps more important to recognisefrom the outset that these are as en~r not really ey(llutionary stages: eachresponds as much or more to its immediate industrial and cultural context

than to prior stages of generic dn elopment, and clements of all three areclearly \isible in the post-1<)77 SF film, true to postmodern form less syn­thesised into a ne\v and integrated form than jostling in an energetic I,rimla/!.eof periods, styles and ideologies. It is also worth noting, hmve\cr, that if thiseapacit\ to incorporate a wide variety of elements is to be regarded as one ofSF's 'postmodern' attributes, this tendency is marked even in the genre'searliest period. C:omp,lred to 'strong' classical genres like the \Vestern or thegangster film, SF's generic boundaries arc exceptionally porous, particularlyas has been widely noted and discussed at the boundary with the horror film.\s ~ing and ~rzywinsb (200I: 57) point out, SF's lack of a consistenticonograph~ means that definitional eft(lrts need to rely more on syntacticpropositions than on the rebtin:ly concrete semantic dimension. This hasposed notorious difficulties of generic definition, again frequently com­n1l'nted on in the critical literature, but fill' our purposes it may be moreuseful to note that this relati\ely amorphous and heterogeneous aspect haslent the genre the f1cxibility and adaptability that has sel'\ed it so \\ell in

recent decades. SF has been and continues to be a recombinant genre.This mutability means that prior to the Second World War SF film lacks

~l!l\ clear p,lradigmatic expression (this is absolutely not the case with literarySF). In fact, as already suggested, science fiction was barely a classicalIlolly\\ood genre at all. \Iost ,ll'counts agree that what \\llLlld bter crystallise

as SF themes \\cre mostly incorporated into the horror film's Gothic imagin­

.tr\, fill' example radioacti\ity (Thc IIl,'isiMe Raj', 193(l) and miniaturisation

(!he De,'1/ Doll, I<)36; Dr en/ups, I9-4-0)' The theme of technology, by whichthe genre will subsequently be defined (sec belm\), is typically tackled in this

11J30S 'SF Gothic' through the catastrophic C\periments of the 'mad'

(usually, in Lll't, ohsessi\e, monomaniacll, ruthless and wholly unconstrained

186 FILM GE:"J RE

by moral or ethical scruples) doctor or scientist: for example, The Im:isibleA1al/ (1933), Island IIrLllst 5'o/lls (1933), "Had Lm:e (1935) and of course

Fmn/.:enstei/l (193 I) and its sequels. Including the Frankenstein myth, one of

the foundational paradig'ms of the horror genre, in a discussion of SF simply

emphasises once again the particular porosity of this generic boundary.

Howeyer, at least two important differences bet\\"een the 'SF Gothic' 'mad

doctors' and the nuclear and genetic scientists of post\\"ar SF might be noted:

firstly, the H)30S characters are much more often desocialised, conducting

their operations from isolated, distinctly Gothic locations - identifiably

versions of the horror film's 'terrible place' - like medie\,Ji castles, tropical

islands or isolated mansions, rather than military or ci\"ilian research centres

or hospiwls that will later predominate. Secondly, in keeping \yith this

ambience their techniques arc less likely to be rendered as futuristic than as

surgicaI or e\ en alchem ica I. 'This isn't science ... it's more likc Ma C/.: II/agic!'protests a horrified Henry Frankenstein \yhen confronted \\"ith Dr Pretorius's

jarred homunculi in Bride or Fran/.:el/stein (H)35), but the distinction is an

extremely fine one in this period. In contemporaneous large-scale European

SF films such as ~·lc1ita, Q!leen III' .Hal'S (USSR I<)2.j.), .Hetroplilis (Germany

1<)27) and Thi/lgs Til ClillIe (GB HJ3(») this anachronistic cont1uence of

adyanced technologies and pre-modern impulses and rituals, projected onto

imagined future societies, propels an enquiry into the nature and social

implications of industri,11 technolog'y and the 'machine age'; ho\\"e\"er - eyen

though American cities like ~e\\" York and Chiclg-o 'l!H.l inrlO\ati\e ,\merican

labour practices like Fordism and Taylorism \\Tre the explicit inspirations

fiJI' these bntasies and allegories - 1930S Hollywood SF seems largely

uninterested in such spccula ti ye q uesl ions, apart fi'om the much more light­

hearted ]WI 11lIagine! (H)30 )~ (sec Telotte, 2001: 77<)0).

The other principal form takcn by SF in\merican cinema betiJre the

H)50S \\as the hm-budg;et 'spacc opera' serial, the best-remembered of \\hich

are Flash Gllrdlln (HUh, remade in high-camp style in 19XO) and H/ltA, Rllgers(193<)). '\imed firmly at juyenile audiences, the serials dre\y their narrative

form fi'om the popular pre-First World War .-\merican and Europe.m serials

(The Perils IIrpa/llinc, H)I.j., or]/lde.\', France 1<)16) and arg-uably looked back

e\Tn further ro cinema's inEmcy in their reliance on simple model work ,md

photographic effects to \lelies's celebrated 'trick films' during cinema's first

decade. Unlike HJ30S SF Gothic, the serials' tales of interplanetary \\"arEne,

time trayc\ and alien ci\ilis,ltions - \\ hich dre\\" hea\ily on both contemporary

comic strips 'l!H.l the hug-ely int1uential pulp SF magazines- \\ere clearly SF,

and their iconography of rocket ships, robots and de.lth r,lys supplied imagery

for numerous later SF films. Ho\\ e\cr, as Telotte (2001: 73) obsenes, the

serials 'offer little hint of the sort of e:xplorations that the best of the pulps

and the more ambitious science fiction nO\"e!s to follO\\" \\"ould stake out:

, HIE SCIENCE FICTION FILM 187

concerns \\"ith artificial life, the ethics of scientific experimentation, the

1"sio'ninO' of societ\"'. Perhal)S this explains the \\"idespread feeling amongl \... t"l t" •

'serious' SF \\Titers and consumers that despite the SF boom in the \yake of

Stilr II'ilrs, the conscious and int1uential inyocation of the spirit of the serials

1)\ George Lucas ga ye a poor ret1ection of the genre's more significant

c;Jncerns (see Singer and Lastinger, IqqX).SF emerged for the first time as ,1 really significant Hollywood genre at

the start of the 1950S, with a dramatic increase in production of SF films by

the majors as \\"ell as independents and exploitation producers, now including

'\' productions as \\"ell as lo\\er-end films. It is not at all the case that, as the

recei\cd image of Styrofoam bug-eyed monsters and scantily-clad green­

skinned space goddesses \\ould sugg'est, science fiction was exclusi\"ely a '13'

film and exploitation genre throughout the H)50S and H)60s. It is on the

other hand true that the genre had a f~lirly \<)\\ profile at least in the pro­

duction schedules of the major studios. The bmous 'creature feature' (typically

featuring anomalous atomically mutated, or atomically resuscitated, human,

or insect monstrosities) and alien-imasion cycles of this era usually read as

articulating in a \ariety of \yays Cold \Var anxieties and preoccupations ­

\\TlT in purely numerical terms indeed dominated by low- (often micro-)

budget features aimed at the teen exploitation market from independent

production houses such as the incongruously grandly-named American

International Pictures (\1P). The titles and reputations of some of these and

their m,lkers- such ,IS-\1P's Rog-er Corman (It C/II/ill/emi the Ifllr/d, 1<)56,'/~'<'l/ilg<, Cal'ClI/illl, H)5X, amid countless others) and the inimitable Edward

J). \\ oml,.Ir (Pial/ l) From Oilia SpaU', 1<)5X) - ha\e become fondly remem­

bered tokens of a more innocent film-making age, and themsel\es the occa­

sional object of ironic but 100"ing homage/pastiche from New Hollywood fan­

directors like.loe Dante (f:'.rplllrcrs. 1<)X.:;; Hatil/ce, I<)XX) and Tim Burton (h'dIII1I1J, l<j<).j.; .Hal'S "Iffacf,:s!. H)(j6). Yet in their own time, a measure of SF's

distance from the centre of the Il)50S Holly\\ood uni\erse was the absence of

a single top-ten-ranked star - aside from the burlesque duo Abbot and

(ostello - fi'om any science tiction themed film in any year of the decade

until Greg;ory Peck's noble submarine commander confronted nuclear doom

in Ol/ Iltc Bcadl.\!though some SF films of this era enjoyed sizeable budgets, these \\ere

de\ oted primarily to re.I1ising; spectacular futuristic or alien teehnolo~ies - an

enduringly central generic element - on a scale and with a cOI1\iction that

their Po\erty Ro\\ peers could not approach (for example, in the space

pain tings of Chesley Bonestell, featured in Dcstil/a till1/ _HII(III, U)50, and TheII ar IIrthc /I"IIr/ds, 1952, and the desolate landscapes of the planet :\letaluna

in nils Islill/J 1;'arth, 1<)5.:;). \Yith some important exceptions like Tltc Day thcI:arrh Stll/ld Still (1951) and FIir/liJJcl/ Plal/ct (1<)56), the scripts, casts and

188 FILM GENRE

performances of cyen the more expensiye yehicles remained rooted firmly inSF's pulp and comic-book heritage, giying rise to \yhat l\lichelle Pierson(2002: 109) aptly characterises as 'that peculiarly science fictional Hollywoodphenomenon, a B-picture film with a below-the-line budget of \\ell oyer amillion dollars'. Good examples are the pioneering George Pal-producedTechnicolor effects spectaculars of the early H)SOS (Deslillalioll .HoI!ll, WhenWorlds Colliilc, 195 I, and Tile War or lite Worlds, the last two produced atParamount), Vivien Sobchack (198;: 1.+3-S), however, suggests that the often­lamented flatness and lack of directorial signature that afflicts much 19SOS SFmay operate as a means of naturalising (by understating) fantastic narrativecontent. The stolid framing, four-square blocking, even high-key lightingand lockjaw acting in 1950S SF bespeaks a confidence in the ultimate trans­parency and explicability of the physical \vorld mirrored in the technocraticalliance of science and military that typically brings the films of the decade toa satisfactory, if fiery, conclusion,

The launchpad for thc new directions explored by 1970S film SF wasStanley ~ubrick's landmark 2001:1 Spa(£' Od)'sse)' (I 9fJ8), which not onlyset a new benchmark fllr special effects under the supenision of DouglasTrumbull (later to ()\ersee the effeets fllr Closc £I1((1l1l1lers), but in its depic­tion of a dehumanised, banalised human culture dominated by technologyreacquainted American cinema audiences with the idea of SF as a \Thicle forsocial commentary and satire. Many subsequent HnOS SF films focused ondystopic future societies, although ~ubrick's characteristic glacial detach­mcnt- which recei yed a further airing inl Clochl'od' Ora IIge (197 I) ­remained uniquely his own, Rather, it lIas the successful s~nthesis of vaguelyanti-Establishment political satire, fast-paced action and tub-thumpingmoralising in Pia 1Ie1 of IIle ,Ipes (1<)67) that set the tonc fllr numerous 1970SSF films including, as \yell as the "Ipes saga itself (fllllr sequels bel\\cen 1970and 1<)7-+), tales of deep-space alienation such as ,')'il('l/I Rllllllillg (1<)70 and/Jar/..' Slilr (1<n-+) and numerous \crsions of quasi-Ol'\lcllian future t~ rannies.

Pre-Sial' TYars, HnOS SF thus manifests clear continuities \Iith thc criticaltrend in many othcr ;\ie\y I loll~ wood films of that decade..\s \\hat might betermcd a 'subaltern genre', less clearl~ and thoroughly il1\ested in classicllollywood's (which is to say, mainstream ,\merican) idcological imaginarythan major genres such as the \Vestern or thc musical, and \yith a lesscontinuous and clear-cut generic identity, SF's critical charge lIas less proneto find expression through genre reyisionism aimed at exposing andsulwerting generic conventions and assumptions. In keeping \\ ith the temperof the times, ho\yever, early HnOS SF films \\ere firmly dystopian in theiroutlook, and \\ere frequently prepared to carry this through to an appro­priately bleak narrati\c conclusion. The narrati\'e arc spanning the five Plallelofille .lpes films portrayed a millennia I time loop across which inter-species

THE SCIENCE FICTION FILM 189--------------------------------

\y.lrf~llT - transparently allegorising interracial conflict in contemporary\I1lcrica, particularly in COlli/llesl of lite Plallel of lite .ipes (1973) - cyclesinesc1pably bacbyards and flll'\yards to global annihilation. (As Greene (1998)notes, the monolithic presence in the first I\YO films of Charlton Heston, an1.1rtyred exemplar of white male pathos in other films of this period including(he post-apocalyptic Tlte Oil/ega Hall, complicates the ..fpes' films' racialpolitics.) The alien-il1\asion narratiyes of the 1<)50s, with their inescapableCold \Var oyertones, were largely abandoned: the themes of state surveillance,thought control, media manipulation and the struggle to retrieye indiyidual

identity, dCleioped in films such as TIL'<. 11}8, PilIlisil/lIt'f11 Park (1971),SOj'klll Crecil (1973), Rollerill/il (uns), Logan's RUII (Hn6), the remake of11I,'as10II 1I111,c Blld)' SlIalcllers (1978) and Esmpe Frllll/ Nell' Yllrk (1979), drewmuch less on phobic imagining;s of the Communist enemy and more oncurrent rCl elations about the nature of the American national security statein the \\ake of Vietnam, \Vatergate and reyelations of illicit counter­intcllit';ence programmes up to and including assassinations of opponents ofLS policy both domestic and fl)reign.

These films shared a yision of oppressi ye pO\yer as largely depersonalised,L\ en .1l1onymous, its workings confusingly dispersed across a yariety of'lgencies, \\ith the conspiracy-thcmed crime, political and espionage thrillersthat coalesced into a distinct sub-gcnre during the same period in such films.ts PilI/II 8!all/'" (1967), Tlte Paralla,r 1/ell' (1973), Tltc Cllm'ersalioll (197-+) andnIIC,' f)ays III IIle Clllldllr (HnS). As Cler, patterns of generic 'e\,(llution' oncloser inspection proye strongly inter- and intra-generic. (It is notable thatad\ .tnced technology - particularly related to sllncillance and intelligenceprocessmg' plays a key role in conspiracy thrillers.) Together, SF and

conspir'lcy films helped popularise a \ersion of the H)60s Ne\\ Left: critiqueof the corporate state - a critique strongly inf1uenced by H)SOS sociology,\1 hose critique of consumer culture and corporate confllrmity in its tllrninf<)J"J11S some I<)SOS SF films Iikc thc original Bud)' SIIl/IdICrs (H)5S). (Scicncefiction's emergence as .1 LI loured \ ehicle for disseminating Ncw Left~l1titudes into the broader .\merican culture itself doubtless owed somethingto the popularity in 1<)60s countcrcultural circles of classic SF noyels such as

\rthur C. Clarke's cosmic eyol utionary fable CI"lcIlwod ',I L'"d (1<)53) andRobert Heinlein's Simllper ill a SII'lIII,f.;C Ll/lld (1<)61)).

lndoubtedly, the enhanced production yalues and greater sophisticationoj' t(nOS SF payed the \yay fllr the genre's subsequent expansion, broadeningits audience .rnd starting to lift the driye-in/ exploitation stigma. Neycrthe­It,s, in some key regards early [<)70S SF was Yery different hom the SF boom.11 1he decade's end. Its typically sardonic, satiric tone as \yell as a generalpreference for future-Earth rather than outer-space settings signalled clearintent to offer commentary on contemporary society. By olwious contrast,

190 FILM GENRE

1<)XOS SF's actual instantiation in that decade's febrile culture \\ars \\as oftenveiled behind a surface preoccupation with star \oyagers and technologicalhardware. SF in the 1<)SOS, moreover, \vas in certain ways clearly the seedbedfor the genre's modern Holly\yood hegemony: the fond recollection of pUlp

serials and monster movies at Saturday matinees - follO\\ed by the assiduous

recreation of favourite genre films in backyards and local parks, and

ingenious approximations of special effects techniques - are E1111iliar tropes of

the hiographies of key Ne\\ Hollywood players and technophiles like George

Lucas, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. Their successful translation of

adolescent generic tastes into ClT,Hive (and immensely profitable and

powerful) adulthood has enabled them to revisit such ju\'enile pleasures,

albeit on an incomparably more lavish and sophisticated scale. The early

H)l'Ios sa\\ big-budget remakes of se\cr,11 classic Il)SOS SF films including TheTlI}ng (1<)SI, 1<)1'11), hlI'l/ilers Fronl .\lllrs (Il)53, I<)X6) and Till' Blob (1958,1<)I'IX). However - and notwithstamling the heavy symholism of the little boy

fishing' in the hea\ens in the logo for Dream\\orks (the studio Spielberg co­

founded in I <)<)4-) the alchemy that has tranSf()\"\l1ed such simple if geeky

pleasures into solid plutinum global brands m\cs less to f()llo\\ing one's star

than to a complex ,1ml unpredictable synergy of economic, cultural and

ind ustrial factors.

TIlE CULTURAL POLITICS OF SF I:'-J TIlE IqXOS

The general narrative of the !\ie\v llolly\\ood's emerg;encc out of the collapse

of the classical studio system is by no\v an oft-rold talc, as is the consolidation

of a ne\\ly corporatised, \crticall~ integrated and increasingly global media

husiness during' the H)l'Ios after ,1 period of re1arive instability and creative

experimentation during the 1<)7os (see Biskind, H)<)I'I; I(ing, 2002; Prince,

2000). Science fiction prmcd unexpectedly cruci,l1 in this thoroughgoing

industrial tL1l1sf(Jrl11<Hion hecause it \\'as able to pull together key elements in

the emerg-ent corporate strategies of the ne\\ media conglomerates. Out of

the unprecedented success Of]IIII'S in 1<)7S and SllIr Irlln t\VO ~ears later a

new industrial orthodoxy quickly crystallised, centring a radically slimmed­

down ye1rl~ production schedule on a handful of high-, and soon ultra-high­

budg-et ,1erion-oriented summer blockbusters t,lrgeted ahme ,Ill ,It th,lt season's

key market, teens and young adults. The willingness, re\e,l1ed by analysis of

SllIr IVllrs's dumbf()Unding success, of high-school and college-ag;e nules in

particular to vie\v their L1\ourite genre films numerous times mer the course

of a summer season, and their intense, sometimes ferocious loyalty to

favoured movie 'brands', has gi\(~n this audience a crucial say in setting the

cultural and genene profile of contemporary Holly\\ood cinem,l. SF's

THE SCIENCE FICTIO"J FILM 191----------------------------------

enduring ,1ml historic popularity with this demographic (paid cross-gener­Jtional tongue-in-cheek homage in Bllc!.: 10 till' FI/turt' (ItjXS) and Glllllx)'Ollcsl (2001) among others) consolidates its strategic position. (SF f~1l1

~Iitures are analysed in Tulloch and Jenkins, 1995; Penley, Itj<)7; Pierson,'002). SF, moreover, offers an obvious sho\\case for spectacular state-of-the­

~rt technologies of visual, sound and abO\'C all special-effects design, the key

attr,lctions that provide a summer release \\'ith crucial market leverage. TheoT11l"C is \vell-suited to the construction of simplified, action-oriented narra­

0\es \\ith <lCcordingly enhanced \\orldwide audience appeal, potential for the

t~lcilc generation of profit,lble sequels (often, as with the two ]urasslc Pllr!.:sequels (1<)<)7, 1<)<)<)), \irtu,l! reprises), and ready adaptability into profitable

tributary media such as computer games and rides at studio-owned amuse­

ment parks (see I(ing, 2000b). Finally, SF is reliably replete with eye­

cJtching artefacts (monsters, spaceships, light sabres, 'technical manuals',

etc.) ide,l1 for merchandising across the ancillary markets \vhose immensely

lucrari\c potential SllIr 11'lIrs rncaleJ, in a variety of formats from action

figures and comic books to cereal boxes and duvet co\'Crs, These industrial

conditions g;merning SF's ITne\ved visibility and prestige have plaYed asignilicant role in determining the particular sub-generic strains f~lvoured b~

contemporary Hollywood - in the initial afternuth of SllIr flllrs at least

promoting ,1 rcturn to deep-space fantasies modelled after the I<).\os 'space

operas' .This rnival of an C<Hlier eLI \vhen ,\merican SF film abjured AIL'1{'opolls­

st\ Ie soci,J! speculation caught the political tide, \vith Ronald Reag'an's

eleerion to the \\hite House in H)I'IO on a platform of consenati\e populism

and homely patriotic platitudes encouraging ,1 \\ilful diseng,lg;ement from theLlte-f()jos 'malaise' of social and political compln:ities in [,IVOur of the

appeding simplicities of a bntasy lUSt. For l11am commentators, trends in

earh I<)I'IOS SF confirmed this regressi\e tendency: not only the hard\Yare­

hel\ y, PG-rated space sagas that aimed to capitalise on the SllIr Irllrs boom

including the second and third Sial' Iral's instalments themsehcs and The11/<1 iI.' Hole ([()7<)), BIt/tic Bq'olld Ille Slars (1<)1'10) and Balliesiar Galacllia(1<)1'10) " but a ne\y \ya\c of alien yisitation films, many featuring- beneficent

C\tra-terrestrials in clear rejoinder to the pitiless city-razing im,lders of the

I<).;OS (the \cry un-benevolent alien horror in the remake of lite Tll/lIg

))]'I)\nl unpopular \\ith ,1udiences, ,1S did Olliialld (1<)1'12), an SF remake of

!Il~h SIIIIII \\ith cleu' affinities to the [()70S dystopic/conspiraey mode).

\ t first glance, the reconception of alien yisi tors in posi ti \e terms in films

such as CllIse };IIUilllllcrs IIrlhe Third A.illd ,1l1d F T. (I<)1'I2) seemed to imply

,1 more liberal, less \Lll1ichean yie\\ of the uniyerse than Reagan's simplistic

perception of thc SO\iet Lnion ,1S (in terms dra\yn directly from Slar Irars,life mimicking art) 'an c\il empire', Yet, just as the '\e\y Right's f()reign

192 FILM GENRE

policy ~)~sturing was argunbly directed primnrih at a domestic constituency,Ihe polItIcs of the 19kos ET films gestured less to the geopoliticnl realities ofthe renewed Cold \Var (directly engaged as they \yere in the decade's newaction films: sec Chapter 10) and more to the fierce Kl/llllfk{lIl/p/\yaged On

the home front. Aliens were often depicted as galactic innocents abroad, alltoo human in their vulnerability to the yiolence and corruption of humanciyilisation. Thus these ostensibly optimistic alien encounters \yere under_

pinned by a desire fl)r other-\\orldly redemption from the disenchantedpresent. In bct, the dose alliances fl)rged againsl established (adult) authority

between childlike aliens and human children (or childlike adults) in CloseI:'I/COlll1lcrs, E. T., ,)'lilnJliIll ([<)k.j.) and Fh:v,hl orlhe Swcigillor (H)k6) seemed to

proposc the wholesale rejection of the intractable difficulties of contemporary

t:lmilial and professional life in Ll\our of a numinous enchantment stronglyidentified with pre-adult perspccti\es. (COCOOII (I<)k:,) and *Ihilleries notil/clue/ee/ (l<)k7) used c:xtra-terrcstrials 10 \,dorisc 'innocence' at the opposite

end of the agc spectrum, allying the literalh uO\\orldly attributes of the ETs

with those of sentimentally imagined senior citizens.) In the era of Reagan,

the pursuit of enchantment in these 'regressi\ e te,\ts' \\as anything butapolitical; on the contrary, it \\as consistent \yith the anti-rational appeal long

associ,lted \\ith react ionary political tendencies (sec Benjamin, [H!3() I 1(170).

Their distinct iye contribution \\ as to stake out a terrain of (/fill/rill politics for

I<)kos SF· the politics of pri\ate Iill:, of bmily, gender and sc:xualit\ thatmarked a de;lr break \\ith Ihe public polic~ preoccupations of their· imme­

di;lte precursors in the late I<)6os ;l11d I<nos (sec also Ryan and 1'.e1lner, IOXS:

2SX hS; Sobch,lck, l<)k7b). \lore relTntly, the cosmic t:lmily romance ofCoulll(1 (1<)<17) c:xplores some of the same thematic territory.

In considering the enormous success of/hcu, \\hich in m,ll1~ \\a~ s seems

to contradict Reag;an-era trends, this cultuLd-politieal dimension is crucial.

.1Iim's \or,lCious and repulsi\c predator is dearl~ the di,lmetrical opposite of

cuddly FT, \\hile the film's nameless but nidently mendacious ;l11d c:xploit­

ati\e 'Company' c:xtends the anti-corpor;lte critique of earlier I<nos films likeSo)'leul Greell. Il00ycyer, the aspect ofllieu that has been most pO\\erfully

addressed in the C\tensi\e critical discussion of Ihe film indudin<r two"theoretical intenentions of major imporLl11ce tllr both SF (and horror) criti-

cism and gcnder theon (Creed, 19Xfl, 1<)<)3; Springer, 1<)9h) .. is its phobic

\ ision of f('m,1Ie se\.lulity and rcproduction.\s discussed in the prnious

chapter, Creed adapts I'.riste\a's theon of abjection to argue that .1Iim (;lI1d

other 'body-horror' films of the I<nos and early H)kos such as The /:'\or(isf,H)73) creates a \ision of the 'monstrous-feminine' (citing as \\ell as the film's

manifold pennse imag;es of parturition most inLlmoush the embno alien

that g;rotesL]ueh 'bin hs' t hroug;h John Hurt's chest .. and th'e ramified hostility

to the materl1<l1 C\pressed, for C\ample, through '\lother', the duplicitous

,

II

II

I

II

I

I

,I'y{ l

THE SCIENCE FICT!O;\l FILM 1<)3

onboard computer that secretly docs the bidding of the net~lrious Company).\s Bukatman (199.): z(J2) obsenes, '.·lI/el/ presents the return of the repressed. the body·· to the space of the science fiction film'. At a time \yhen the riseof Ihe :\e\\ Right put \\omen's reproductive rights back into political play,

\\ hile also stigmatising autonomous female sc:xuality amI (a seeminglyeconomic issue powerfully roped into the cultllre \\ars through the image ofthe unruh female body of colour) mythical 'welfare mothers', Aliel/'srepulsi\e images of the tCma1e body seemed geared to endorsc a powerful

disciplin,ln response.; 1ie/coe/roll/c (I <jX.j.) and The FI)' (I<)X6) used similarly

\isccLIl 'body-horror' imagery in SF contests to explore ansieties aroundsexuality, identity and infection - thc latter making \cry clear allegorical

refl:rence 10 ."-IDS, stigmatisI'd in the mid-I<jkos as a 'gay plague'.In Llct, \yhile Sial" 11 ilrs is historically of huge significance in cstablishing

SF ;IS a nujor production category in Holly\Y()od, ~Jliel/ is in many \\ays the

more generically significant film. While like olher SF films of the period it

IransL!tes the public and political concerns of the I<nos into the new cultural

terrain of the !<)Xos, it is nonetheless pluf!,"ged into the historical mainstream

of SF film in \yays that the child-alicn films of the 1<Jkos arc not, in particularthrough the clear implication that the alien, \\hose body combines organic

and machine-like elements, is effectiyely if unknowingly allied \\ith the

equ;dh inhuman and lethal pO\\er of the Company, whose representatives in

the film, significantly, ,Ire cybernetic: .\lother, the ship's computer, and the

,1Ildroid science officer .\sh. For the unfolding, but usually anxious if not

outright hostile, relationship to technology has been SF's closest approxi­

mation of a consistent semantic core. It is this relationship to \\hich we "ill

no\\ lurn.

SF, TECIINOLOGY At\;D (POST),\10DERNITY

In so Llr as its preoccupations reflect \\idel~ shared nperiences of modernity

it'dL the concerns of science fiction arc unlike, say, the high degree of

cultural specificity in the \\estern - potenlially uni\ersal ones. Indeed, the

,1Lldience to \\hom SF's concerns speak directly has only hroadened as the

1()rlllS and pr,lctices of industrial and post-industri,1I society, formerly con­

celltLlled in the First \\orld, h,lye extended themsehes inC'\orably to the rest

of the world. Thus, although this chapter has so far considered SF lilm

principally in light of the unfolding institutional context of post-classical

Ilolh \\oOlI, it is eqLully helpful to situate those s,lme shifts in the LS film

industr~, and SF's prominent place in that process, in the context of the

much larger indeed, global - experience fl)r \\hich SF has also been regarded

,IS a kcy expressive form: the Hydra-headed concept of 'postmodernism'.

194 FILM GENRE

On the one hand, SF both directly depicts and thematises the economicand cultural transformations held to typifY the onset of postmodernity, inparticular the ever-expanding reach and exploding economic importance ofnew electronic and digital information technologies and the concomitantfragmentation and decline of traditional industries and the communitiesorganised around them. Typically these are rendered in SF in lurid comic­book and video-game images of urban entropy, for example Jlldge Dredd(1995) or RolJocop (19H7)· (The landscapes Sobchack (IgH7a) identifies ascharacteristic of SF in the I950S - deserts, beaches, \\astelands - have beenlargely displaced by these decaying cityscapes.) On the other hand, SF's

move in from the cultural margins and its appropriation of the industrialprestige traditionally resened for more 'respectable' forms (the social problem

film, the biopic) itself encapsulates the collapse of long-standing oppositionsbetween 'high' and 'low' cultural forms. The contemporary blockbuster SFfilm, conceived as merely the leading edge of a cross-media promotional blitzacross a wide range of ancillary markets sp;mning several months from pre­release promotions to subsequent cable and terrestrial TY 'premieres' and))VD release (with 'added features'), exemplifies the commodification that

has (according to Fredric Jameson (1991) and many others) entirely colonisedthe cultural space hitherto presened, ho\\eHT insecurely, for the aesthetic.The growing reliance on 'pre-sold' properties - themsehcs mainly drawnfrom the same junk-culture universe of old TY sho\\s and comic books ­

captures the sense of a constant cannibalistic recycling of an exhausted set oftropes and paradigms to an ever-Io\\cr common denominator. .\nd a pro­fusion of knO\vingly reflexive gestures - a to~ Godzilla, representing that

summer's rival SF blockbuster, crushed b~ an asteroid sho\\er at the start of.'lrmagedr/li/l (I99H); a pan across racks of merchandise at the Jurassic Parkgift shop, identical dO\\l1 to the log;o on the coffee mugs ;md T-shirts to the

promotional materials for the film in \\ hich thev feature' a brief cuta\\av of.' .a panicked Jap;mese businessman fleeing the T-Rn terrorising' dO\\l1townSanta Cruz in Tlte I,os/ "'orld: Jllrassic Par/' II, a reference back to thefleeing hordes in numberless Toho atomic monster mO\ies of the I9(lOS - also

support Jameson's C!mous contention that the critical edge of modernistparody h;ls been blunted into the blankly imitative pastiche of the post­

modern text Uameson, 1990: 1()-I9).

At the formallC\el, the increasing generic hybridity of SF films (;dongside

most other major genres) produces the same bewildering !Jricolage of periods,places and styles C!mously experienced by Deckard, the hero of Bladc Rllnner(19H2), .1 film that a number of pO\verful readings, especially Giuliana

Bruno's influential essay (I9H7), have rendered something of a touchstone forpostmodernism in SF and film generally. Deckard \\alks dO\\l1 (or rather,

hovers above) the mean streets of 2019 Los .\ngeles, a t\\enty-first-century

THE SCIE.'JCE FICTION FILM 195

city steeped in the rain-soaked neon tones of I9..f.0S lIoir, an Americanconurbation vvhose streets are a cross betvveen \Veimar Berlin andcontemporary Osaka or Tokyo, an Earth city whose most affectingly 'human'denizens are the android Replicants, fugitives from the off-\\orld mining

colonies they have been constructed to sen'ice.Drawing on theorists such as Jean Baudrillard, Telotte (1995: 233)

identifies the 'ncar fixation on the artificial, technologized body - the robot,evborg, android' in Blade RIII/IIC1' and other SF films of the I9Hos and earlyI;)<)OS (including the first two Temlllla/ors, Ro!Jocop and lHOA,iJlg /Hr R/j!)Jl,I<)SS) as a negotiation of the extreme anxieties induced by human-created

technologies that increasingly threaten not only to exceed humanunderstanding or control, but somehow to dilute or even supersede humanidentity itself. That Deckard in Blade RIIJlJlCI' may himself be, it is stronglysuggested, a replicant \\hose laconic, Philip ~larlowe-esque doggedness andintegrity have therefore all been pl'ligraJill//ed into him confirms the point.Flsc\\here, Telotte argues that SF since the mid-I<)Hos has decisivelyreoriented itself around issues of technology- specifically, machine intelli­gTnce, androids and their like, and virtual/ computer-g;enerated realities

and relates this to the embracing chronotype of postmodernism (Tclotte,200I: IoH-20). The ongoing exploration of these themes in .1.!.: .1r///iciol1///clltgL'l/ce (2002) \\<wld seem to bear out his claim.

.\ndroids have certainly provided contemporary SF \\ith a rich vein ofthematic material, as the rather complex progressive nploration of the figure01 the cyborg' in the/lteJl series sug·g;ests. The ruthless and treacherousandroid\sh in the first film is follo\\cd in the first sequcl,JI/ells, by the

trust\\orthy and brave Bishop (who expresses a preference for the term's~ nthetic person' over 'android'). \Yhile .'Uie//} docs not feature a ne\\android char,lcter, the nO\v-terminated Bishop's orig'inal human prog-rammer

a dutiful tool of the murderous Com pany, hence ironically Llr less humanethan his lookalike creation - appears to\\,lrds to the end of the film to try to

C\ploit series heroine Ellen Ripley's h,lrd-\\on trust in his creation. Finally,

1I/i'1I: Rcsllrt'cr/io// (1997) features both ,I young female android \\ho tapsinto Ripley's po\\erful maternal instinct, established in .U/eJis -- and revives

Ripley herself as a cyborg-like clone \\hose blood combines both human and

,dien lX\.\.It is actually rather questionable \\hether, as has been claimed, this ambi­

\ alent technocentrism is really specific to contemporary SF, let alone a

manifestation of 'postmodern' f'(Jfces in Hollywood or the liSA. In f:1ct,C\amples spanning the history of SF film tend to suggest that if anything the

~'enre's elusive semantic core - or the closest thing to it - consists in its

enduring focus through serial visions of possible futures on the transform­

<Hive, sometimes il1\asive, impact of advanced technology. :\s early (in terms

196 FILM GENRE

of genre history) as 1927, Alctrllpolis retlects the ambi\alent Elscinationwidespread in Weimar Germany and indeed e1se\\here in inten\ar Europe

with the technologies of the 'machine age" including the assembly line, theautomobile, the telescreen and most famously the robot. The film's sleeklyDeco-styled female android and the destructi\e energ'ies she/it unleashes

imag'e perfectly the film's anxiety that modern scien tific \\izardry - quite

literally: the robot's animation is depicted as part science, part Kabbalisticritual - has outpaced its imcntors' capacity to manage or e\en comprehend

it, a note repeatedly struck in SF film eyer since. ,MoreO\'er, as a comparison

of Aiclropolis with such celebrated contemporaneous documentary films

about the transformation of the experience of labour in the modern industrial

city like Ail1l1 Wilh II Alonc Ctlllli'ril (USSR, 1(29) or Bcrlill . .s)l/Ipl/IJII)1 rJa

Grcill Gil)' (Germany, 1(27) rC\eals, preoccupations allegedly peculiar to

postmodernism such as the cinema's implication in a circulatory s~'stem of'pure' information, and e\en the notion of the cyborg, e:\tended at this time

into a\ant-garde intellectual circles \\ell beyond the generic matri:\ of SF:according to Brodna:\ (200 I: 90), Bcrlill's director \\'alter Ruttmann 'pro­

posed to merge the body \\ith the cinematic apparatus in order 10 indice thebirth of an adequate, cybernetic person.'

Such examples perhaps confirm that SF can fllCUS and refine in stylisedalleg'orical form concerns \\idely at issue in the culture. HO\\cyer, they also

indicate that SF's rele\ance to theories of postmoderni,sm may consist less in

a specific post modern turn on the genre's part th,lI1 in the increasing

imbrication of its abiding' thematic concerns \\ith those of the larger society

whose present has started to match SF's past images of its possible future.

One might claim that SF's generic boundaries arc necessarily and increas­

in!,dy porous: fllr of all genres, SF is the most dircctly responsi\e to the massi\etransflJrmations that ad \ anced technology has cfli:cted, and continues to

cfkct, upon our world. :\5 the paraphernalia and jarg'on of SF, fi'om space

tra\e1 to \'irtual realit\, li'om Sltlr TrI'A'-style 'communic.Itors' (mobile

phones) to On\ellian 'telesereens' (CCT\ and \\ ebcams) gTO\\ e\er more

inescapably part of our daily life, so SF's thematic preoccup,ltions come to

seem less and less the outlandish ,llld ju\enile L1I1tasies they struck ])J'e\ious

general ion,s: this is, as Sobchack (19SS: 237) puts it, 'the \ cry "science

tietionalisation" of '\merican culture.' Just as .\IOOll hInding's, thc f'urthest

lunge of quasi-scientific Lllltasy in the ell'ly decades of the t\\CI1tieth century

(.1 Trip III Ihl' .Hoo//, [()03; The 1I11//{(1I/ ill Ihe .HOIIII, 1()27), ha\e become

rarely recalled hisloric.l1 LlCt, other SF tropes like artificial intelligence are

the rapidly ath'ancing fi'ontiers of' hoth contempoLlry computer science and,

in response, of philosophy, ethics and e\en theology.

Fe\\ thing's of course date so rapidly as past \'isions of a future which has

no\\ become our o\\n present or indeed past (in a digital age, the rotary

THE SCIENCE FICTION FILM [()7

counters on the shuttle tlightdeck in 2001 ine\itably jar). A fe\\ sciencefiction films ha\e fllregrounded this odd temporal double exposure: Marty\\cFh"s many anachronistic double-LIkes in BllrA' I(} Ihc Plliure include an

~,pos~lre to the \isions of 1950S SF - stumbling out of his time-tr~\ellin.g

I )eLorean upon first arri\ing in 1955, his crash helmet and protectl\e SUIttrJnsform him in the horrified eyes of a hick t:1I11ily into the alien spaceman

of Junior's cOIllic book, .Hilrs .ll/lIrA'S.1 is a Ir)\ingly assembled homage/

),n:mh of [()50S alien-il1\asion that re\e1s in the period futurism of Bakelite

~lnd tl~e thereminh\n isolated spark of' originality in TerJ/IIII(llor 3: Rise orlhe

Ilildlllli's (2003) lilllis John Connor future leader of' the human resistance1110\ Clllent ',lg,linst the cyborg empire trapped not in the e:\pected gleaming

t1\ ent \ -lirst-centun mainframe, but in a mothballed Cold \Var-\'intagecolltn'JI room compicre \\'ith state-of-the-art consoles and transistors straight

Ilut of the original Sllir Tn' A' series or COlllllt/OIl'1I (19(l9), In ,I lilm series

\\ hose entries recycle a single plot \\ith minimal \ariation, this \ignette mig'ht

be seen as ,I confession of the cyclical and circular nature not onh of the

'f,'rJII/II(lllIr franchise but of the g'elHe as a \\hole,In Jn~ case giH'n that it is gener,rlly ~Iccepted that SF's ostensibh

predicti\ e Jspect more oftcn masks soci,rl ,Illeg;ory or critiquc - these Ldlible

future prognostications, \\hieh in t:ICt lend a considerable retrospecti\e charm

to past SF, tend instead to highlight SF's enduring- IlJCUS throug'h such serial

I isjons of possible futures on the transflJrlnati\e, sometimes in\asi\e, impact

or ,Ilh ,mced technolog\, \\'hat lILwlifies as 'ad\anced' ob\ iously chang-es \\ ith

thl' pJssing' of time, but the unfl)lding- rdItionship to lechnolog\' has been ,111

issuc of gro\\ing fascinat ion and concern in de\ eloped societies since at least

the bte nineteenth cent un (usually reg'arded ,IS the birthdate of modern

sciellce fiction in the no\cls ofJulcs \ erne and II. G. \\clls, c\en though the

tl'l'l11 itself \\as not in gencral us,lge betllre the Il)20S (sec James, I()().j.)) and

h~lS supplied the protean genre of SF \\ith its closest appro:\imation to a

consistent semantic core.\Iien \ isiLmts or iIl\ aders, Illr C:\,lmple, b~ definition possess technologies

Illore alh,lI1ced th,m earthlings (and ,Ire often characterised b~ 'machine-like'

1.1t1 of emotion: recently, fllr C:\ample, in 1I/II(/,(I/t/l'I/l( Oil)', [()()Cl). Stories

'lboUl computers (e,g. C(}lo.l.lII.l: The Fllr/Jill Pm/ed, [()II; II ({rG,"lIcs, I<)S.j.;

//'1' 1"III'IIII/IIII'crll(lIl, 1<)<)2; 'flic Illl/n,r) or ,Indroids (Ilelmpoli.l; RO/JOIIi/,;

I/'( 'f,'rll/illillor; L,'e "fO(slmllioll, I<)()O) centre on humanoid machines that

111imic and/or thrcaten human bch~1\iour. \'isions ofhul11anity's future reliabl~

il11,lge societies structured and shaped b~ technolog~ in fundamental \\,I~ s

l'l cn if, as in post-nuclear-holocaust fantasies li'om Fi,'c (1<)5 I) on\\ards, the

crfl:ct uf that technolog~ h,IS been to bomb subsequent human cultures back

to the Stone\ge (literall\, in 'I"clI,I,!!." Cll'CII/IIII). Fol1<ming the lead of

\ldous Hu\le~ 's 1<)32 nO\cl Bm,'(\clI' 1/ 0,./,/, future technologised societies

198 FII.M GENRE

are usually depicted ,IS ha\ing in some \\'ays surrendered important humanfreedoms, even \\hen this subject is tackled satiricall\ (as in Dell/olillOIl ,Han

, ,1(93). More specifically, SF has concerned itself \\ith the increasing mediationof human nperience by technology at all len~ls, from the public andintersubjecti\'e - obvious e:xamples include atomic wart:lre and space travel _to the psychological and emotional (thus imentions that enable the recordingand projection of indi\idual dreams, memories and fantasies figure inQUillamass il/ld 111i" PII, GB 1968, Brcl/lIslorll/, 1983, and Till' Lil/I'II/flowerJHall), and \\ith the thrCiIt this poses to the integrity of the human sensorium.

While not e\ ery single SF film foregrounds technology, at some level mostSF works through technological motifs. [weasioll or 11Ji" Bod)' SlIalclJers, forexample, seems on the Elee of it not to imohe technology at all: the alien'pods' that are taking' O\er the small Califl)rnian community of Santa Mira,\\hate\cr they are, posscss none of the fearsome \\ar-making hard\\are ofother 1<)50S imasion fantasies (lIar orilic Ilil/Ns, [II,.-adi"rs Fro III Hilrs; eventhe 'intellectual carrot' in Thc Thillg , though he spends most of the filmstomping around murderously and \\ithout great obvious forethought, hasarrived by interstellar craft); and the process of pod 'possession' is subtle,seemingly organie and quite mysterious - no cumbersome brain\\ashingapparatus or drugs apparentl~ needed, E\cn so, the leeching of humanemotions and imaginatin: life the pods bring about - 'IO\e, desire, ambition,Elith: without them life is so simple' resonates strongly \\ith popularnotions of the emotionless, implacable machine (and this holds true \\hetherone sees the film as an allegory of 'machine-like' Communism (see Biskind,H)i-\3) or of post\\ar .\merica incn:asingly subject to domination by actuarialcomputation and the ne\v culture of the nascent corporate :\,merican techno­cracy (see JancO\ich, 1<)()6),'

As mam commentators ha\c noted, SF's IHe\ailing mood .- perhapssurprisingly or nen parado:xically, gi\en the historical importance in thegUlre of technical advances in \isual effects, \\ hich since the early I()i-\OS haverelied in ncr gre,lter measure on computer technologies- has most oftenbeen technosceptic if not outright technophobic. Perhaps the ultimatesymbol in SF film of the btal III/Ims of technological \\izardry is the literallyto\\ering achie\cment of the extinct Krell in Forbidd"11 Plalli"l: circuits andgenerators banked miles deep, tools of an ung'uessable intelligence..-\s usual,the Krell's story reveals the necessary limits on technical mastery, given thefi'ailty of the flesh: their dri\c to liberate themsehcs altogether from relianceon crudely physical instrumentality unleashed 'monsters from the id', anunreconciled primiti\e psychic residue that, once tapped into the boundlessPO\\ ers of Krell tcchnology, acquired annihilating; po\\ers the Krell \\crepO\verless to defeat. HO\vner parado:xically, SF frequently appeals to pre- ortrans-technological means as a solution to narrati\ e crisis.

THE SCI E"lCE FICTI ()"l FILM 199

'\[ost Elmously, in Slar TVal'S Luke Sky\\alker must learn to 'trust theForce': only by turning off his sophisticated targeting mechanism and channel­ling the mystical animistic po\\er that in the film's mythology binds togetherthe li\ing fabric of the universe can Luke destroy the Death Star, an artificialplanet that symbolises the death-dealing nature of technology allied to pure\\ill-ro-po\\er, unconfined by morality or compassion. The entire code of theJedi Knights is founded on this cOl1\iction of the fundamental inadequacy of'mere technological masten (echoing similar oppositions in Arthurian legend,one of the many sources of J.ucas's syncretic mythology): the Jetli's chosen\\ Clpon, the light sabre, is itself (as an e:xcited Thermian Obs<:T\'eS of the mattertrJnsporter in the delightful Slar Tri"k parody Galax)' Q/li"st) 'more art thanscience' (see Ryan and Kellner, 1()i-\i-\: 2.+5-5+; also in Kuhn, 1()90: 58-(5).

In general, this surprising technophobia is placed in the sen ice of a largerhumanistic ideology, \\here the unchecked grO\\th and/or misuse of adetiniti\ely inhuman, or nen anti-human, technology becomes the inspira­tion fl)!' a rerurn to 'real' human qualities - if, that is, it isn't already too late,'1 'he f:1t110US 1950S cycle of atomically mutated monstrous insects - as Jancovich(I<)<)C>: 27) points out, carefully selected b'om those parts of the animalkingdom least susceptible to the sort of anthropomorphisations that hadrendered earlier monsters like ki/lg A.o/lg (I ()33) and his descendants so oddlys\ mpathetic - compels us to reflect back upon the human qualities they lackyet th,lt arc so urgently needed to combat them, Sometimes the screenfunction seems \ery O\crt indeed, as in the amorphous Bloli, \\hose \ery lackof any distinguishing features makes it an irresistible symbol of half-shapedfears. Technology is a conte:xtual rather th,m an explicit fl)rce in the creaturefeatures; hut the Ti"ml/llillor ,md ,Hillrix films, centred on the struggle againstgenocidal machine tyrannies, ha \ e similar stark messag"Cs on the need to placereliance in basic and indelibly human qualities like Imc, community, valourand self-belief. The persistence of this humanistic, and if anything pre­modern, ideologeme' suggests that, just as the hard\\are that in past SF,ignified an unguessably teclmic futurity no\\ seems quaintly antiquated,,i11lilarl~ somc at least of the more enthusiastic and uncritical prognosticationsof SF film's postmodern prospects in the early I <)<)os, such as the final chapterof Lmdon's Tlie/esilielies or,llllhi,'alellCi' (H)<)2), have dated as quaintly asthe Futurist and Constructi\ist machinist manit<:stos of the H) I os and 1920S.

It seems clear enough, in any C,lSC, that SF's recombinant aspect endO\ysthe genre \\it h continuing \itality and \alidity entering the t\\enty-firstcentury and taking on b(l<\rd ne\\ de\elopments in technology, such as genetic

engineering; (e:xplored in Gilililm, l()97, and Code I.;.(J, 200+). One mark ofthis continuing energy may bc the \\ay in \\hich traditional SF dnices hayerecently started to be incorporated as narratiye premises fill' films \\hoseprincipal concerns arc quite distant ti'Ol11 SF: for e:xample, suneillance and

200 FILM GENRE

artificial societies (Tlie Tmlllal/ 5'1/1111', 199i\), rejU\enation (T "allliia Sk)', Z002,

pre"iously addressed in Secol/ds, HjM), and memory alteration (ElcrnalSI/I/shine 0( the Spoiless JIII/d, 2003).

BEYOND I-IOLLYWOOD

Science fiction has not been an equally popular genre in all national cinemas,

largely it would seem for practical relsons. A.s de\oted as literary SF has

frequently been to e:xploring the philosophical implications of the Lmtastic,

narrati\l' cinema is better suited to realising its potentially spectacular

material dimensions. \Vith some conspicuous but isolated auteurist European

nceptions - Alain Tanner's .lol/as TThll Trill Be 2.) III Ihe }ca I' 2000 (S\"itzer­

land t<)j(l) and I,/~~hl Yi'arSlm/l ' (GB/France «ji'lt), Godard's J/phm:ille(France I<)()S) and TTeekellt! (France I<j()7), and '\icolas Roeg's The HIIII WhoFe/I 10 h'ar/Ii (GB H)j(l) SF cinema has subordinated ideas to images. Thus

filmic SF tends to lay a he~1\ \ emphasis on the \"isualis,llion of futuristic

technologies -- computers, spaceships, future ci"ilisations and so lilrth. This

in turn ine\itahly Ll\ours llolly\\ood as hy Ln' the hest-resourced and

technically prolicient global cinema, particularly after 2001: ,1 Space Odl'sseyset new st~lI1dards lilr special effects: it is surely no accident that IargT-scale

SF lilms with a soci,llly specuhtti\l: dimension such ,IS Fritz Lang's \[elropolis~111l1 nli' Hilll/all ill Ih,' ,11011/1 \\cre produced \\hen Germany's LF\studios

\\cre (\\ith significant LS il1\cstmcnt) the largest and best-capitalised in the

\\orld after Holly\\oOlI. (\luch more recently, the multinational Luropean

production n", Fljih h'Ii'lI/elll (I<)<n), sugg'ests that the integr.Ited EL economy

may in time again support a lilm industry cap,lhle of challenging Holly­

\\ ood's near-monopol y on Iarge-hudget gen re prod uct ion. )

This is not to S,I~ that SF films h,l\c not been produccd outside the US,

sometimes \en sllccessfull~. 1. Q, Ilunter (I I)l)lj) arg'lIes lill' the distincti\"e­ness and specificity of British SF lilm: hO\\C\er, his O\\n IT\ ie\\ ,Idmits that

r,nher than setting' nn\ trends in its O\\n right British SF tends to lilllO\\ the

\merican IeMI, filr nample in the alien-il1\,lsion c~ cle of the HI,:;OS and the

post-111m 'body-horror' lilms of the I<)i'los (British n,lmples of the LItter

include Insel/I/llolil, (iB I<ji'lo, and I,IF/llrce, GB II)i'lS), ,md int1ecting these in

distinct directions - t(lr instance, lilcusing in the «jSOS less on the thrcn of

Communism than disturh,ll1ces in posl\\ar consensus (see also Land~, 1<)91:

3<),:;ff). \loreO\er, the dominant (and cheaper) Gothic tradition mcms that

Ihitish SF is aka\s likeh to Edl back on horror motifs and modes.. .

Despite the ahundance of science liction ,tnd utopian literature in both

pre- and post-re\olutionar~ Russia, Telorte (1<)tIT 3+) linds th,n 'as in the

Clse of the more thorough hind ustri,llised lutions, SO\iet science liction

tTHE SCIENCE FtCTION FILM 20r

linds only a \yeak retlection' in lilm. The fascination with an eagerly antici­p,lted (proletarian) technologised future that coursed through early SO\'ietsociety lilUnd npression in t\\"O films. Ley k..ulesho\'s The Dcatli Ray(L SSR 1<)2S) condensed the popular alh'enture serials of the time (rather ashis HI' TTesl, LSSR I<)23, had aped the style of the silent comedy), and Adila,Ql/e<'i/o(Uars (LSSR [()2+) \"as notahle as much li)r its Constructi\ist decor

,IS its propagandistic narrati\e (see Tdone, 1999: 37-+6). The state-runSO\ ict lilm industry was ob\iously sufficiently resourceu to compete with

I Ioll~ \\00l1, and some epic prouuctions included Road 10 Iiii' Slill's (uSSR

]()~+), PilI/it, I or Slorll/s (CSSR 1962), \\hose manned Venus expeditioncoincided \\ ith the real SO\iet (unmanned) Venus landing mission,') anu Thi'Illdrol/it'da\chllia (L SSR I<)6i'l); but the Cold \Var ensured that few main­

StITJI11 Russian SF lilms secured a \\cstern release. (Sneral Russian SFlilms, hO\\c\cr, purchased cheaply by Roger Corman in the mid-I Cj()OS, were

'iuhsequently cannibalised to prO\iue material fi)r ,\IP productions including

I o]'ogi' III llie Prell/sllmc Plallel (HilS), and Qllei'll or Blood (I<)()()).) Two that

did \\ere _\ndrei TarkO\sky\ Solans (USSR 1(172) anu Sli/iker (LSSR 1979),

hut these arc in essence SF \ariations on Tarko"sky's preoccupations c1se­\\ here _\s Gillespie (ZOOT 173) ohsencs of Solans, '(O)uter space is simply

the b,lckdrop to a philosophical ret1cction on man's relationship with the

e~lrth, his home anu his Elmily ... although ostensibly a sci-fi rumination on

the impact of'icientilic discO\cn on human life, Solal'ls is, in bct, an anti­

,eience film, assert ing the suplTiorit ~ of art and poetry.' The troubled

scientist Snout decbres in the lilm that 'we don't need other worlds, we neeu

a mirror, man needs man'.

Japanese cinema of course made a major contribution to the genre \\ith

C'II/mil Gorl::.illa (Japan /l1~S) and his inIlLlmeLlhle monstrous ri\als, hut nen

here the lilm-makers at Toho Studios \\cre in brge measure elaborating (and

enlarging) a concept prniously ul1\eiled in the LS in Tlii' lJeaslji'IJ/fi 20,000

/',,11/1111I.1' (1<)':;3). The impact ofJap,mese ,lI1imJted lilms or il/l/llIi' ' from the

III id-l iji'los ma ~ be more profound: in p,lrticular, the phantasmagoric en­

l'<)untlTS \\ith trans!ilrmati\e technologies in _1kim (J,lpan tiji'li'l) ,lI1d Gllllsi illlilt' Sliell (Japan 199,:;), \\hile themsehcs clearly int1uenced by fJladi' RlIlll/a,ha \ e manife'ith" int1uenceu both the naIT,lti\ es and the II/i'dla 'look' of the

1/,,11'1.\ lilms, among- others (see Telone, 2001: 1\2 I(l; :'-Je\\itz, 1<j<jS).

In 1i'l7i'l Lld\\eard \luybridge (iii; Ed\\ard \luggeridge), an Englishman \\ork­

ing' in San Francisco, arranged ,I series of still clIneras along- a track to record

the mo\ ement of a cll1tering horse, p,lrt Or.1 set of motion-stud ~ experiments

202 FILM GENRE

funded in part by the ex-gO\ernor of California, Leland Stanford. Heprojected the results by slotting photographic plates into large re\ohing discsin a device called (typically of the elaborate nomenclature of the late Victor­ian period) the Zoopraxiscope: the result, in which images \vere projected ina rapid sequence, ga\'e an illusion of movement to the spectator for thedisplay's brief duration. Muybridge's work is among the most famous contri­butions to the prehistory of cinema: his eerily evocative side-on images ofhorses, other animals, men and women, shot against neutral backgrounds, arewidely reproduced in histories of film and have been il1\oked by film-makersas different as Peter Greena\vay, George Lucas - and :\ndy and LarryWachowski, writer-directors of The 1\:11/Iri.r.

In 199R American visual effects company \lanex organised an array of 120still cameras in a looping pattern around l'.emu Ree\Ts and other performersfor blockbuster action producer Joel Siher's latest project, The 'Wi/lrix.Developing; a technique known as 'time-slice' originated by British film­maker Tim McMillan in the early Il)Hos, \1anex prod uced a stunning effectlabelled (typically of the canny marketing of turn-of-the-millennium Holly­wood) 'bullet time'. As Ricketts (zooo: I f\ 5-6) explains, each shot had beenpre-visualised in a computer model to determine the precise positions,aiming and shutter intenals of the cameras in the array. J.aser positioningensured that the computer model \\ as filllO\ved to the most minute degree. Acircular green-screen around the cameras \vould enable the imag;es of the

actors subsequenth to be isolated and composited into ne\v backgrounds. AsReeves per!ilrmed, e.lCh camera took its single photograph, all I zo camerasshooting in sequencc in one second or less. \\'hen the resulting IZO frames

were projected at the standard cinematic speed of 2{ frames per second, theresulting sequence 'stretched' one second of action into a fi\l~-second shotwith the camera app.lrently circling around a 'frozen' central image. Further

computer manipulation enabled the duration of the sequence to be extendedto 10 seconds by interpolating one ne\v digitally generated frame filr each'actual' frame, and the finalised filOtage \vas then composited into ne\v, again

cot11puter-g;enerated, cityscape backgrounds. The resulting sequences \vereamong the most \videly-discussed and n:lebrated cffects of the decade, seem­ing; perfectly to illustrate the film's lTvpto-philosophical insights on the

phantasmic and manipulable nat ure of \\ hat \ve (mis )take fill' 'reality'.

There is an odd symmetry bet\vecn the t\\O eflillts to capture, isolate,dissect and finally to restore motion, both applying sLile-of-the-art, indeed

cutting-edge (a phrase that didn't exist in I H7f\) technolog~ to the solution of

problems \vithin the field of mO\cment. \\'idely enough spaced in time, theyare an aeon apart in not only their levels of technical sophistication but their

objectives and their moti\es. One is part of cinema's prehistory, motiLlted in

the first instance by disinterested scientific curiosity (though see \\'illiams,

Y.

THE SCIE'JCE FICTION FILM 203

I<)<)<f 37-{3); the other is a function of the contemporary commercial cinema's1110st elaborate and technically ambitious \'entures and the imperative todeliver a commercial smash. Whereas ;\luybridge was an individual artisanfunded by a scientifically-minded philanthropist, :Manex is a well-capitalisedspecialist business in a billion-dollar sector of'1 multi-billion-dollar industry,working for one of its most comnH.Tcially-minded and successful producers.\Iore fundamentally perhaps, \vhereas \luybridge used photographictechnology to penetrate the mysteries of natural motion, 'bullet time' distortsand recreates motion in a digiLl1 el1\ironment in physically impossible ways.

Finally, .\luybridge \vas limited to an inexact and time-limited reproductionof motion by the absence of adequate means filr recording and projecting;

il11.lges (notably of a flexible celluloid photographic emulsion which couldp.1SS rapidly enough and filr long enough through an intermittent mech'lI1ismto record more than mere snatches of mO\ement) . .\:lanex of course are ableto npand, change and radically alter mO\Tments that are not recorded on aphysical surLlce at all but rather digitally.

The echoes of .\luybridge make The J/1i/lri.r a film \vhose reflections onreality .1I1d perception extend beyond the basic and immedi'1te questions ofsensory and cogniti\l~ experience with which Neo is traumaticallyconfronted, to take in our medialted constructions of the real. Thus Thelii/lri.\ highlights, although in an unusual \vay, the reflexivity that shadows

much SF film. \\'ith its ubiquitous screens, monitors and A/\' presentations

(like the guides to the Death Star presented in slideshO\v bshion in Slilr11 iiI'S and in imprO\Td holographic fiml1 in Reillm orlhe .ledi (I <)I\{), or thepioneering CGI (computer-g;enerated imagery) Genesis sequence in Slilrhe/.: II: The 11mlh or A)/ill/ (I l)Hz)), SF maintains a running implicit com­

ment'1r~ on its O\vn mC<lI1S ofrepresenL1tion. In Rrill/lslom/ (1l)1\3), the inten­sdied sensorium accessed in the film through a breakthrough technology thatrecords the mind's unconscious .11ld LlnL1sy im'1ges \\as cOI1\Tyed in premiere

cngag'Cll1ents by s\vapping the standard 35 mm-gauge fi'ame fill" an enlargedhigher-definition 70 mm \\idescreen image filr the 'point ohie\\' shots in the

L1I1LIS\ sequences. Se\Tral films, fi"om TrOll (I<)I\Z) to The !d1l1'1I/1I01l'('/" .HillI

(]()<)z), made pioneering' use of CGI to cOl1\ey the simulacral el1\ironment of\irtual-reality realms. Such reflexive touches make SF in a sense the flipsideto the music11, \\hich according to [<'euer is ch'1racterised by its repeated

il1~cription of its 0\\11 textual processes rendered not as artifice but as spon­

taneity (see Chapter {): by contrast SF film, .111<.1 contemporary ('postmodern')SI: film in particuLIr, often il1\ ites its spectator to register the role techno­

I()g~ plays in our possible future, and also in hO\\ those futures ,liT rendered.

The \Ta In.\ actually lacks many images of audio-visual technology: theIcbcls' experiences and 'mO\ements' \\hile j'lcked into the :\latrix arel11onitored through their somatic tLlces - hC<lI"t r.ite, brain \\aves and so on -

204 FILM GENRE

and the computer world itself cannot be 'seen' except as the hallucinatoryendless streaming of code. This tics in to the film's counterposing of tangibleflesh-and-blood 'reality' to mediated 'unreality': \\ith the additional t\yist, ofcourse, that the 'unreal' world of the 7<l1atrix is largely undifferentiable fromour, the audience's, own reality (though somewhat richer in lIolr-ish spaces ­alleyways, photogenically derelict buildings and the S/~l thrash club whereNeo first follows the white rabbit to meet Trinity - and shot uniyersallythrough green filters to lend the whole a tell-tale green-screen ambience).

In its ambivalent technophobia, The ;\IIlIlrl.\' seems to be quite thoroughly

in what we haw prcviously identified as the generic mainstream of SF film.The film's narratiye premise - the rise of a machine tyranny - is of course

yery similar to that of the Ter/lllllllior series, and The AllilrlX also similarlyblurs a distinction between inert hig'h technology (such as spaceships andguns), which can be put to cffectiYe and spectacular usc in the film's mainaction sequences, and the self-conscious and hence proactiye technologies of

artificial intelligence. The film's apparent complexities mask a basically simpleopposition between a 'real' that once established remains unquestioned andontologically unproblematic, and an 'unreality' \yhose principal confusion isthat it resembles the yiewer's O\yn extra-textual reality, that is late twentieth­

century Earth (for no \Try good reason established in the text: \\ouldn't themachines have been better adyised to [Ishion a pre-industrial or at least pre­digital imaginary where human subjects \yould lack the necessary knowledgeto challenge or eyen conceive the ~1atrix?). !\s Layery (2001) has noted, thisis a considerably less labyrinthine structure than that of Dayid Cronenberg'scXIslmX (1<)<)<)), a contemporaneous film \\ hose \ in ual reality computer game

reyeals at least four narratiYe 'frames' nesting', Chinese box Elshion, insideone another, \\ ith no g'uarantee that the final and presumably outermostfi"ame is in LIct 'the real', rather than the film's mIn abitrary foreclosure ofwhat is in effect an unguessable /IIIse m II/i/I/lc.\rguably, Thc Allllrl.r is also

less challenging than Tolli/ Rcm// (1<)<)0), \\here the audience is left uncertainwhether ,'\.rnold Sch\\-arzeneg-ger's \\orld-sa\ ing heroics arc simply the

unfolding of a VR scenario he has paid to experience. '\eo's heroics in TheAIIlIn.r arc neyer ambiguous in this \\ ay (although in the incomprehensible

first sequel Thc :HIII n".\· Re/ollded (2003), it is suggested that '\eo, like theOracle, is simply a recurring- 'bug-' in the .\latrix b.lse code that loops end­

lessly in a series of failed rebellions against its progTammers). Thus TheiVllllrl.r appears to bear out Scott Bukatman's (1<)<).): 17; quoted in \Vood200+: I I <)) claim that eyen in postmodern SF, 'the utopi.m promise of the

science fiction film the superiority of the human - may be battercd and

beleaguered, but it is still there, fighting for Yalidation.'HOWe\Tr, the relationship may not be quite as straightfonl-ard as it first

appears. In her discussion of the film, \Yood (200+: 120) cites Samuel

THE SCIENCE FICTION FILM 205

I)e1aney's notion of 'paraspaces' - juxtaposed aIternatiye \Hlrlds \yhich supply.In ongoing commentary on one another. The concept of 'paraspace' allowsthe film's t\m 'realities' - our O\yn late-t\yentieth-century location that isderealised by the narratiye, and the diegetic reality that is \\-holly manu­t:lCt ured - each to call into question the claims and assumptions of the other.That '\eo takcs a pill - associated through the .\Iice in Wonderland imagery\\ ith LSD, LImously hymned in The Jefferson :\.irplane's 'White Rabbit' - to<\Ccess the 'rell \yorld' identifies his journe~ both with I<)60s-style spiritual

all'lkening through hallucinogens, and \yith a pharmacological flight fromsocial reality into a hermetic interior realm. Furthermore, the powerful [mtasyconstruction that '\eo's reyealed messi.mic identit~ buys into- the proYcrbialordinary man rendered superhero may act reflexiyely upon the audience'sII ish-fulfilment fantasy constructions. On the one hand, we want the free­dom fighters to smash the .\1atrix and triumph mer alienating technology:gilen the .\latrix's simulacrum of our O\yn \yorld, this jacks into pO\Yerful

an'\ieties and desires about the degree of disempmYerment and estLmgementin the modern Iyorld ..\t the same time, in the film's own terms '\ ictory' fll!"

thc ITbels means dematerialising tlut \\orld (\ isually, our O\yn) into thenuminous streams of base code \\ hich '\ieo percei\ es .IS a digital epiphanyII hen he \ anquishes\.gent Smith. Finally, as \Voml points out, the binarypolarities of Thc IIII I rl.\"s rendering of the aIternati\Ts 'real' slayery /freedom fig"hting yersus 'false' materi.JI comfllrt, \yith no third term permit­tl"d or possible -- themsehes bear the characteristic schematic neatness of .1

LlI1LISI construction (they also link the film back to the typical dualisticconstructions of melodrama).

There is a rather ob\ ious irol1\ in that thc 'real' in The Illlln.\' thc,tv gian subterranean spaces negotiated b~ the\c!i/{(//I/I//le:::..:::'lIr, .IS \\cll as thchiles or coils in IIhich the 'coppertop' humans arc stackcd so thcir massedhrai npoll er can prm ide the machines \\ it h thc encrgy they need to sun i\ e

i, necessarily constructcd on-screen almost entireh through computer­generated imager~, \\ hile the .\ latrix .IS the '[Jlse' \\ orld the 'coppertops' (as

they think) inhabit is shot on location in contempor.lry '\orth\merica. ThedisLlnt echoes of .\lu~ bridge may il1\ ole a time \\ hen film could .Ispire to a

heroically scientific status, an objectiYc tool fll!" thc deeper penetration andundersLmding" of the natural \yorld. but ironicall~ situating that memory

II ithin a contemporary cinem.ltics that is gcncricall~ and institutionally

oriented not tOllards capturing the seerets of nature, but instilling .mdrendering" [musics and illusions.

206 FILM GE:"JRE

NOTES

I. This docs not induoe another selcn entries in the doseh related - and in terms of its

core audience '\no marketing strategies, largel\ indistinguishable - fantasl -.Id Icnture

genre li'om the Indiana Jones, I larn Potter .1llO IAml 1I(llie Rillgs series.

2. Of course, this bn basL' can .i1so pose problems bl loicing dissatisbction at perceiled

E1ilings or transgressions in the screen adaptation. Probabh' the best-knoll n and most

organised of these bn communities arc the Sli/r 'lid,: fans, or 'Trekkers', but I\ith the

massilc boost from the .llhcnt of the \\'orld \\"ide \\cb to Ems' abilitl to 1lL't\lork,

e\:changT I iell s .ll1Ll organise, other such LlCtions hal e eml'lO\ cd the PIT,SUIT unics

pioneered 11\ Trekkers. On SF .1udienees, sec Tulloch and Jenkins (J()t).:;).

J. This audience is, hO\IL'\er, bl no me.ms homogcncous: fiJI' insunec, a, Pcter Kr;imer

(200+) Lkmonstrates, thcre .1rc clear differcnces betllTen the' Sli/r II "rs, .llIraSSl( Pi/r/':

and other series addresscd centralll to childrcn (often induding a child prot'lgonist as a

pOInt or identitication), and R-rated properties like thc .IIi/In! and IIIi'll serics, II'hich

highlight 'adult' content like gTaphic I iolence .md (mudl nl\IIT rareh) se,ualitl ano in

I\hieh a degree of thematic complnitl or intclleL·tu,i1 prL'tension is Itself 'I kel part of

the bLmd identitl.

+- Such speculations, as (:orn ([()S6) and others sh,)\\, eert.linh formed part of the

discoursL' of both .\merican modl'rni,m and literan \mcric'lll SF in this period. On

11clroplllIs, see also belO\I.

,'i . . J/iells relics less on I iseeral birth imagen hut if al1\ thing centre's elen morL' elearh on

Illotherhood, bifurclting the maternal into the 'good' Riplel and the 'bad' \hen queen.

6. Il1\ented bl Leon There'min in 1<)1<)20, the theremin used radio freljuenClL's Ilhleh

Ilhen interrupted bl the h'lnd, of the 'pLIler' transmitted ton.t1itie' tb'lt L'Ould be

moduLtted from melodic nlusiL' (ThLTemin's O\ln intention fill' hi, instrument) to

unearthh Ilaiis the LlttL'!' fi:atured prominenth in the soundtracks L'Omp'N'd till' Till'

!Ji/Y illt' fi/r/II Stlilid .'lilli, Iii,' l'IlIlIg and II CIIIlt' Frolll (Jilier SPi/(C ([().:;3) bl Bern'lro

I krrman, Dmitri Tiomkin ,md I knn \LnL'inl, rL")1L'etilch. On the theremln .md

1().10S SF, sec \\"ier/bieki (2002). (Ilannibal LL'L'tLT incident,t1h pLl\s a theremlll In

Tbomas IIaITis's nCJ\L'\ 1Ii/llllih'll (IlJ')I): +.13).)

i. '\ote that the pod, arc disper,L'd natiol1\lide lia the na'LTnt frL'L'I"11 netllork, a

pOll LTful Sl mhol of the 'ltomising fiJrces at Ilork in POq II ar \ merie.l to erode

tr'lditional comnlunittes.

S. The tLTm is (,'redl'lc.lameson's ([I)S,) .ld'lpUtion ofthL' l,L'li-StL111"iannOlion of the

'n1\ theme',

C). Thl' SOl iet I i'/liTi/ programme of unmanned mi"ions to \'enus Lm bUI\L'L'n [cJlli and

IlJS+. I ,'I/{'ri/ IJ tLlnslllitted the first photogr'lphs fl'CJlll the pLmet's surEILT III Ili/.:;'

thirteen H'.lI'S after tbe LS spacenaft \LrinLT 2 tirst orbited the pLtnet.

Part 3post-Classical Genres

The genres discussed in this final section arc all 'post-classical' in one ornlOre senses: they emerge historically once the decline of the studio system isunden\ay (using the Pi/rtlll/OI/I/! decision as a historical marker); they come toindustrial prominence in ne\\ configurations in the post-classical period;,lilli/or they are simply uncl!lonical as genres either in terms of classicllolly\\ood (Holocaust film), in .\merican commercial cinema as a whole(documentary), or in mainstream narratin: cinema generally (pornography).The first t\\O chapters deal \\ith genres,jillll I/o;r and the action blockbuster,that ha\c in different \\ays become central to the critical enterprise of academicfilm studies and to contemporary Holly\\ood economics, respectiYCly. Thetinal chapter addresses - in considerably less detail· genres that in different\"I~ s seem to me to pose challenges to and com plicate (producti\cly) theeJ1tnprise of genre theory and criticism itself. Because the entries in this finalc1uptcr are brief, they are neccssaril~ more general and also more speculativethan the lengthier discussions of imlividual genres elsewhere in this book.The\ arc very much intended as introductory comments for further study

and discussion.

CHAPTER <)

Film noir

H ig-h-school students in the UI( undertaking an 'Y lC\el (diploma)

course in Media Studies frequently undertake a module on film genre.A typical assignment for their linal assessment is to create 'publicity' materials

which, depending- on the school's resources ma~ be conlined to print media(posters, D\'I) corers, etc.) or may extend to lilmed 'trailers' - for a (non­

existent) lilm in an assig'ned g'enlT. The most commonly attempted genres

are the horror film and /illll /llIir, There are ob\'ious reasons \\11' such anexercise would Ll\our genres that rely more on mood than on material re­

sources and are rebti\ely unconstrained by time or place (hence can be shot

in students' houses, local parks, garages, etc.), Clearl\ such Llctors willdiscourage attempts to mimic \\,11' films, science liction films or \\'esterns

(though equally clearly the else might be dilferent in a high school in, say,

Wyoming) Gi\cn such exigencies, student presentations predictably pay

gTeater attention to iconogTaphic and st~ listic conn:ntions than narrati\e, let

alone thematic, elements: thus much eflt)rt is put into m,1l1uElcturing

'moody' lig'hting- and including such g'eneric prerequisites as guns, cigarettes,

rain-drcnched streets (preferably ref1ecting neon sig'mge), ceiling Lms and

seducti\el~ threatening; 'ICmmes Lnales'. Such economic consideLltions con­

tributed significantly to /lilir's memor,thle \ isual style, and students some­

times achie\c a strikingly plausible /lilir pastiche. :'\onetheless, it is striking

that /illll /llItr should be presented quite so routinely as a mainstrclm film

genre- g'i\en that at le,lSt until relati\ely recenth the genre had no existence

,It all liS II gmre beyond film criticism.

This \ ignette indicates the ntent of /llIir's dissemination into contem­

porary popular culture. In fact, /lilir is arguably ,IS instantly recognised and

inf1uential in contemporary media culture as \\as the \\'estern It)]' the post­

Second World \\ar generation, libeLllly quoted, pastiched and parodied

from television ad\crtising to graphic nO\els. Ycr this example also illustrates I

~

FILM ,\O/R 211---------------------------------

the \\,lYS in \\hich /llIir has become reilied - detached from the historical ,mdcultural contexts that originally inspired it into a set of formal mores andst \ listic motifs largely di \Orced of meaningful content. Enquiry of thest~tdents \\'ho are producing these teasing simulacra (textbook examples of!e,ln Baudrillard's notion of the perfect imitation \\ith no original) reveals'th,lt \\hile sometimes they will ha\e seen part or all of DIIIIMe !/ldemnitv(I <).j.-f.), often their knO\\ledge of /lilir is conIined to \'iewings of recent neo­

/lillI'S such as the Coen brothers' Bllllld Silllple (198-1-) or John Dahl's The LaslScdwi io/l (199-1-). These films are kno\\ingly allusi \'e, richly intertextual; yet

inlTclsingly the ficti\e and social uni\erse of the late 19-1-0S and Il)SOS they

in\oke, \\hich charges their o\\'n bbric with meaning, is constructed only

throug;h and out of these ,lllusi\'e g'estures themselves.,\ second, \'ery different example is even more suggesti\e of /llIir's potent,

ramified presence in contemporary culture, Da \'id Thomson's cult H)8-1­nO\ cl S/lSPC(/S is at once a meditation on the place of the mo\ies in the

:\merican im'lgination and a playful genealogy ofjillll /lilir. S/ispeclS comprises

a series of encyclopedia-like entries on a host of characters from key nllirfilms like S\\ede Larsson (fi'OIl1 The Killers, 19-1-6) and Jeff Markham/Bailey

(from (Jill 111'1111' Pasl, I<)-I-7) thM extend their stories beyond- belt)re and

aftn their screen appearances, allO\\ing them to mingle \\ith (frequently to

Erthn, couple \\ith, or murder) their descendants in neo-/Illin such as CIIl/lI/­11111'/1 (I<J7-1-),llIIerili/l1 Glj;1I11I (1<)80) and Bllt/v Helll (1<)81). It comes as a

shock to lind that that at the dark he,lrt of this dense \\eb of narrati\e andte.\tual intrig'ue lies, of ,Ill films, Frank Capra's It '.I' II H '!JIIdl'rjiti I,iji: (1()-I-6),

a film that repe,lted television sho\\ings han~ in the half-century since its

original (coolly rccei\ed) release rendered a Christmas perennial ,Iml one ofthe definiti\c filmic represenLltions of mythic sm,lll-town L\merica.

HO\\l'\n, thc annual celebration of family, community and the little man to

\\ hich Capra's film has become consecrated ignores the distincti \eIy Iwirshadings ofambi\alence ifnot outright desp,lir that actually colour its pictureof George Bailey's '\\ ()l1derful life' in BedltJrLl Falls.

\s Robert Ray (I<)k.=;: 179-21'=;) points out, It's II H!Jllllerjiti !,iji:'s exem­

plan tale of George's ingenuously pi\()tal inten'ention in the Ii\es around

him can be seen as less an al1irmation of core ~\merican \alues than a salutary

reminder of hem slender and fortuitous is the thread \\ hich separates that

'\orman Rock\\TII \'ision of soda parlour and friendly beat cop from its I/oir

Other, the infernal Potters\ille - a quintessential Dark City - of the night­

1l1<1IT vision George recein's at the hands of his guardian angel Clarence,

\ loreO\cr, the fil~1's nelr-hysterical insistence OI~ the indi \i:lual citizen's

Illtegrity as the pin)t of historical change and progress, and the allied

depiction of George's allxltross, the Baile~ Building; and Loan (an emblem of

1l1iddle-class financial probity since ironised In the spectacular collapse of the

212 FILM GENRE

US savings and loan industry in the late 19~os) as the crucial bukarkbetween the depredations of unbridled capitalism personified by the nefari­ous banker Potter and the proletarianising urban jungle of George's vision,places 11 '.I' a WOllilalid Lt/i' firmly in the 1I0ir tradition. :\Ithough his storydocs not turn, like most classic 1I0ir, on the melodramatic cliche of a criminalact and/or illicit sexual desire, the fi'agility and desperation of George Bailey'sbalancing act - an ordinary, decent man trying to make sense of a nightmarefrom which he is struggling to awaken - is mirrored in numerous noirprotagonists of the postwar era such as Professor Warmley and Chris Cross(both played by Edward G. Robinson) in Tlte WOl/lil/l i/l lite Tlil/do77' (1944)and Smr!1'1 ,)'Ireel (1<)4S), Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien) in D.o..i. (19So)or Jim Vanning (Aldo Ray) in Niglillidl (I<)S7)· Equally, the /loll' elements inGeorge Bailey's nightmare - urban blight and alienation, anonymity and the

omnipresent threat of violence - also creep into the edges of other btl' 1940Sfilms that are clearly not themsehes 111111' but which, like Capra's film, are alsopreoccupied with male identity in a changing and unsLlble world, such as the

social problem film Tlte ilesl }eilrs or Our l,i7:es (H)46).In a transgressive and poign,lI1t postscript to .'·;/lspals, Thomson rewTites

George and !\!lary Bailey's family romance as the core of 1I0ir's palsied visionof American life, and simultaneously locates /loir at the centre of the postwar

American experience: 0111 o(ille PilSI'S tragic Jeff Bailey is re\caled as HarryBailey, last seen ,IS George's Second World War fighter ace brother; theBaileys arc in bct the parents of two key avatars of post-\Vatergate, post­

Vietnam neo-Iloir, Harry "'loseby and Travis Bickle (protagonists of NightA107:l's, 1()7S, and Taxi f)m'cr, 1<)76, respectively); in a final BorgesianIcversal, Thomson indicates th,1t the \vhole Lmtastic landscape of S/lspe(/s isbshioned by the disappointed, disorientated imagination of Georg.e Baileyhimself as he travels the backroads and the bte-night motel television screensof a twilit i\merica, seeking fi'om the fragmcnts of a disappointed life ,md abrokcn mythology the missing pieccs of a jigs,lw that, likc Susan :\lexander

KalH.: in another near-lilliI', eil i::ce/l ;':llIle (I ()40), he is doomcd ne\cr to finish.Thus Gcorg;c Bailey prO\cs doubly exemplary of the larger Iloir imaginary,

not only enacting a tragic IlIIir sag,] in his (mn stor~ and that of his extended

L1I11ily, but also an imeterate watcher of old films who constructs from thosefilms a meaning - howcver bleak - for an atomised and disoriented life.S/lspals seems to work through an insight about lill/l l/oir shared not only byits many critical commenLltors but more recently by two generations of cine­

literate film-makers: that this group of mostly low- to-medium-budget crime

melodramas, the majority produced between the end of the Second \VorldWar and Eisenhow'er's inauguration as President in 1()S3, ,md comprisingonly a small proportion of Holly\\ood\ total output in that period, nonethe- ,

Ie" pw,;o" " k" to unluckin~ the "l'l'''t"enth monolithic edilice ofl

rnll .\ 0111 213

Hollywood's confident :\merican imaginary. Xolr is the buried scam ofdoubt, neurosis and transgressive desire along \vhich that monument can besplit open. ~like Da\is (1991: 38) characterises IlIlir as 'a transformational!.!:r,lmn1ar' working to imert the - in any case false- categories of late~.,1pit,dism, :\merican-style. For Paula Rabinowitz (2003), IlIIir is 'America'spulp modernism'. For such !arg'e, e\Tn grandiose elaims to be sustainable,lilli/ /loir would perhaps need to be considered in the first instance a mood orncn an attitude rather than a genre, a paranoid and hostile sensibility thatextends out from its historic core to pollute the superficially brighter visionsof \1lore mainstream films, before it finallv emerg;ed as a durable and dearlv

~ '-- _.

ddined generic presence in the disenchanted 1970s.Lnlike the \\estern or other prominent g'enres like the musical, the genre's

thri\ ing existence as a contemporary genre owes much less to industrial thanit docs to critical practice. Originally a term applied by French critics to a(conlested) group of wartime and post\\ar Hollywood thrillers ,lIld melo­dramas, 1I0ir illustrates the actiye role that academic film criticism cmsometimes play within the industry's own relay, gi\Tn the now-establishedp~lssag.·c into professional film-making yia uni\ersity film programmes with a

thcoretical and historical component. Its central place in contemporary filmstudies clearly owcs Illuch to 1I0ir's particubr concerns and content: the senseoj" a gUlre (or mode, or style, or mood, or tone, or tendenc\, or e\Tn world­,iew all oj" these terms and more ha\e been used to chara~terise noir often,to signal its historicl1 and institutional differences from more elassical genres)o]Jl'Llting in some sense hom the margins of Hollywood (and America), withthe potential for critique and e\cn subyersion of norms such a positionimplics, continues to intrigue aCHJcmic critics who ,Ire themselyes both t:Iscin­atl'll [)\ Jnd deeply ambiyalent about the ideological positions promulgated[1\ mainstream Hollywood cinema (on this 'bscination" sec lL1rris, 2003).

CI.\SSIC\O! R: OR IGI1\'S, INFLUENCES, (I N - )OEFINITIONS

'!'()\\ards the end of the Second \\'orld \\ar and imIllediately thereafter, LS

rl'\ iewers \\ere \\ell aware oj" a tendency in current crime thrillers towardsbklkness and cynicism and an ,lpp,lre~t preoccupation with psychological

dhturh'1I1ee. HO\\e\cr, as is CIirly well known, the term fillli 111111' itself wasnllt a category used by either :\merican film-nukers, rniewers or film-goers

at ,Iny stage during the I940S or early II)SOS.' The crystallisation of the

1l1c!11orahle and durable concept of 11011' was the contribution of Frenchlli/';,I.llc.I and was itself the result of a conf1uence of se\cral bctors. During

thc Occu pation (194°-44), the French market, like e\en other in "'\xis~dO!11inated Europe, was closed to .'\merican film export~. Following- the

214 FILM GENRE

Liberation, the rush of Holly\vood releases onto French screens clusteredalongside ne\\ releases such as DOl/Me iI/JeJlJl/Ill' and Lill/ra (both 1(44)sC\cral older films including The JIilliese FalmJl (1941) and Tills GI/I/ ForHire (1942), accentuating; what struck French critics as a new 'dark' tendencyin Hollywood, in striking opposition to the traditional optimism of UScinema. The nocturnal settings, Expressionistic lighting schemes and staging,complex, sometimes cynical and anti-heroic characters, and tortuous, oftendownbeat narratives of criminal intrigue, deception and violence featured _

though by no means consistently or uniformly in these films starklydifferentiated them fi'om the standard Hollywood register of high-key opti­mism. First baptised/illll I/olr in H)4(l by Nino Frank - \\ho \\as applying forthe first time to .'\merican films an existing critical designation in prewar

French film cult ure - this 'dark cinema' commended itself to Frenchintellectuals for ot her reasons too. As Naremore (H)9H: I 7ff) shows, thesefilms' preoccupation with the transgressiYe p<mer of sexual desire resonatedwith the concerns of surrealism, still an important force in postwarin tellect ual circles (interestingl y, I/olr's somet imes dreamlike labyrinthinenarratives and anti-realist yisual style appear to have been less striking), whileJlolr protagonists' lonely quest for self-realisation in a hostile and fundamentallymeaningless uni\ erse \\ ere also key ingredients in existentialism, the hotphilosophical trend on the Left Bank in the immediate post \\ ar years ..'\ngst

and pessimism, the hallmarks of this ne\\ tendenc~', struck answering chordsin a France prostrated Gaullist mythology notwithstanding; by the humi­liations of defeat and occupation, and e\ en its pulp origins and distinctiyelyAmerican vernacular, hitherto deprecated by French intellectuals, nowseemed a fresh and authentic ~e\\ "'orld rejoinder to an exhausted andmorally and ideologically bankrupt European cult ure. Finally, French yiewerscould recognise many of Jlolr's character types notably the yulnerable male

and the sexually aware, morally ambig;uous city \\oman fi'om the 'Poetic

Realist' films of the 1930S. Such films as iA' ]ol/r Se i,h."e (H)3H) are moremeditatiYe and btalistic th,111 most .-\merican I/oln, but can be seen asimportant mediators for Jlolr's post\\ ar reception in French film circles. (Le]ol/r Se Lh'e was remade as a Holly\\ ood 1/01,., The i,ol/g .\lglil (1947), whileJean Renoir's Lil ehlel/lle (1931), \\as the original fill' Smrlel ,')'lreel.) (On the

film and cultural contexts of lIol,.'s French reception, sec Yincendeau, 1992 ;

Vernet, H)9j: 4-(1.)The twenty-t\\o Hollywood pictures identified as 1101,. in Borde and Chau­

melOn's infl uential PalIora 1/1a JII FI11/I Sol,. .1111(;riollll, published in 1955 (I ( 83)(rising fi'om just se\cn in the initial post\\ar essays) included more spy and

intrigue films (lol/mel' IlIlo Feilr, 1943; The .HilS!" o( Dilllil,.ios, H)44;lVolor/OIlS, 1(46) and priyate-eye mysteries (The .Hilliese Falmll, .Hunlcr, .\{JISI/'ccl, H)44; The Big Sleep, 1945; i,aJ)' ill the l,ilA'e, 1946; (JI/l o( the Past)

..l..

I'll. 1/ \O/I? 215---------------------------------

th.111 the studies of criminal desire that would later become synonymous withthe filrm. (Such 'canonical' I/oirs as DOl/Me II/delllllily, IA/l1ra, The POSlll1i111/ll1'a]'s Ril/gs T/I'i(e (1946), and Sighl illld the Gill' (1950), \vere all relegated

(0 a ~atellite category of 'criminal psychology'.) This perhaps suggests thatIllr French yie\\ers the association of I/oir with the tradition of the 'hard­hoiled' pulp2 thriller - a bleak French yersion of \\hich the series publishedbY Gallimard under the brand of shie Jloire lent Jloi,. its original usage - wass;ronger than the clements of psychological distortion and libidinal energy

that for many later writers would define the style. Certainly, much of lIoir'smost characteristic narratiye material, as well as the distinctive style of lIoirdi,dogue - brusque, cynical and aphoristic - is deriyed fi'om the 'hard-boiled'

\\Titers of the 1920S and H)30S, the best kno\\n of whom arc the pioneering

private-eye nO\elists Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and their~Timmer, more carnal and sometimes hysterical contemporaries James M.C:ain and Cornell Woolrich. NO\c1s and stories by all of these writers were

,Idapted into lIoir films during the H)40S and early H)50S, \\hile Chandleradapted Cain's DOIIMe IJldCIIJlJll) , for Billy Wilder.

HO\yC\ er, the priyate eye, perhaps the best-known 'hard-boiled' type,

rather complicates the effort to locate /Illir firmly in either style or ideology.To many, Humphrey Bogart is the definitiYe screen gumshoe and his tworoles as priYate detectiyes in adaptations of classic 'hard-boiled' thrillers arecanonical, eyen definitiYe /lIIir: The B/g Sleep makes most lists of classic lIoir,\\hile The .Hililese FalroJi is sometimes cited as the prog;enitor of the entirecycle. Yet \\hile both films imohc complex (in the case of The H(~ Sleep,inLlI1lOUsly and bewilderingly so) criminal conspiracies in variously sleazy

,1I1d dcm n-at-hec1 urban settings, The Jlilliese Fa 1m II at least lacks most of thestYlistic disorientations usually associated with Jloi,.: on the contrary, bar atendency to\yards low-angle shots that distort his characters' (notably

Gutman) physiognomy, Huston's compositions arc mostly balanced and hisscenes eYenly lit. The Big Sleep is by contrast replete with shadO\YY interiors

,1I1d sinister night-time settings; but a stillmore notable di\ergence fi'om theprcsumptiye Jloi,. standard is the effect communicated by Bogart's perfilrm­

ances in both films. This effect is oyerwhelming;ly one of mlliro/: althoughSam Spade and Philip \1ar1<me, respectiYcly, are frequently endangered and

sometimes deceived, Bogart's classically hard-boiled, Yirile persona hererarely displays the confusion or yulnerability exhibited by the private-eye

protagonists of, for example, .Hllnlcr, JI)' SI/'ccl or (J111 o(lhe Pasl (or fi))' thatI1latter by Bogart's o\yn performance as the screem\l'iter Dix Steele in the

strongly Jloir IJI.J LOlld)' Place (1950)). Yet such L111ibility and \\eakness ­

particularly in relation to an insecure mascLllinit~ has ag'ain been cited as a

ddining lIoi,. attribute (sec f..:.rutnik, 19(1).

Gangsters feature strongly as antagonists in the priyate-eye films, ,1ml /lIIi,.

216 FILM GENRE

clearly takes over the subject of organised crime and criminal conspiracyfrom the gangster cycle of the early 1930s. Howe\'er, where the classicgangster was a career criminal, typified by his virile individualistic energyand ruthless ambition (see Chapter 5), I/oir prot.lgonists are usually smaller_time, are more likelv to be drawn into crime bv simple greed or sexual desire

~' . ,external pressure or simple error than by ambition, and are typically far morepassive and easily defeated than Tom Powers or Tony Camonte - more likelyto go out with a whimper than a bang,

Alongside these native inf1uences, noir displayed more perhaps plainlythan any previous American cinema the impact of prewar European art film- albeit in a much modified and inevitably Americanised form, While theinf1uence of such trends as German Expressionism can be seen in manystudio films of the 19Z0S and H)30S - for example, John Ford's Tlte In/urmer(1935) - noir seemed to put these influences to work in something like asystematic way. Both Il)ZOS Expressionist film ami, as already noted, FrenchPoetic Realism of the H)30S bear clear aHinities \\ith the later American form.As already discussed in relation to 1930S Universal horror, .\merican directorsand cameramen had a well-established native tradition to draw on in usingnight-time settings, shadow-play and the like to depict sinister or criminalmilieus - ami these elements are in any case much less ubiquitous in classicI/oir than their adoption as a stylistic fetish appropriation by contemporarymusic video and advertising would suggest. (For a sceptical discussion of thethesis of Expressionist inf1uence, see Vernet, 199]: 7 IZ,) Perhaps as inf1u­ential as Expressionism on l/liir was its immediate successor in \Veimarcinema, the Nelle Sacblicid'eil ('New Objectivity') and its preferred genre, thestreet film, also bequeathed I/oir its characteristic milieu: the night-time city.A film like TlIi' Sired (Germany Il)ZZ), stylistically a transitional film betweenExpressionist excess and the more neutral style of the ;\;e\v Objectivity,clearly prefigures such classic I/oirs as SCi/riel SIJal in its tale of a civilservant who impulsively breaks away from stifling bourg'eois domesticity forthe allure of the city by night - only to find himself ensnared in a night­marish \\eb of vice and even murder (see Petro, Il)93). In one strikingvignette early in his prO\d, the civil servant is taken aback by the apparentlyrebuking gaze of a giant pair of eyes (an optician's sign) at one levelobviously a literalisation of his guilty conscience, but also f1agging the themeof surveillance that would become so prominent in I/oir. Ginerre \'incendeau(199Z: 53-4) meanwhile suggests that the portrayals of Paris in French PoetiCrealist films of the 1930S bridge the abstract, studio-created Expressionistcity with the still stylised but - especially \\ith Holly\vood's return to urbanlocation filming; in the late 1940S (see Saunders, zoo I: zz6ff.) " increasinglyconcrete city of I/oir, E(hard Dimendberg (1997, Z004) has identified theincreasingJy decrepit, even entropic depictions of the city as I/oir mO\es from

1"11. \1 ,\ Of R ZI7----------------------------------

the J()40S into the H)50S \vith the phenomenon of postwar suburban flightli'onl the teeming, densely populated traditional inner cities. This finds anobjecti\e cinematic correlative in the shift from New York to Los Angeles~lnd !i'0I11 the vertical skyscraper city - \vhose soaring structures had inspiredthe titanic dreams ofpre\\'ar gangsters like Tony Camonte in Scar/c/(c (193 2 )

to the dispersed extra-urban sprawl of tract homes and freeways across\\hich the drifters and chancel'S of films like Dc/ullr (I (45) and A.·iss A1cf)eadl]' (1955) lind, or lose, their \vay. L\'s association \vith the Hollywood'dream LICtory' also allO\\'s ample scope for sardonic ref1ections on the

promise and the reality of the .\merican .Dream. . .The image of the nocturnal metropolis as a labynnth with the sexually

avaihlble and aggressi\e \vomen at its centre is key to many American lIoirlilms. Prototypicll femmes fatales had first appeared on-screen in Europebcl()\T the First World War, impersonated by such '\'amps' as Asta Nielsen,but ag:gressi\Tly, e\Tn destructively sexual women were another notableftature of \Veimar cinema, most bmously I,ulu (Louise Brooks) in Pi/I/t/ora'sBox (Germany I l)2X). Lulu's voracious sexuality is instinctual rather thanmnlli\ing, but in his first .\merican film, Sill/rise (H)Z7), F. \V. Murnaupresented not only a phantasmagoric nocturnal city, bur in the character of'The \Voman from the City', a high-heeled seductress who entices a simplecountryman \vith lurid Lll1tasies of urban high living and almost manag'es to

persuade him to murder his innocent \\'ife, a clear precursor to the celebrated'spider \\'(lmen' played by, amid others, Barbara Stanwyck (DoIIMc Jllt/ell/I/ily,lhe Siral/ge IArce of.Harlllil has, 1(46), Claire TrC\or (Farel/lell JJl' IAn'e/l',1()44; Deadlier Tltal/ Ihe .Hale, H)47), Rita Hayworth (Gl/da, 1946; Thc I,ad)'From Sltal/g/lili, 194X) and f ,izabeth Scott (Deat/ Red'ollil/g, H)47; Tllc Pil/ci/I,1()4S).

1ft his brief summary indicates some of the \\idely ranging references andsources on \\hich Iloir drew in Llbricating its distincti\e style, it still lenesthe question of \\hat the factors \\ere that crystallised these di\erse elementsinto the 11(111' style in late-1940s Holly\\ood. A common answer is that /loirrelk-cts the penasi\e anxieties besetting .\merican culture in the immediatepo'>t\\ ~lr period. This interpretation typically imokes such Llctors as the\:collomic uphea\als ine\itably imol\ed in the eon\ersion fi'om a \\ar to apeacetime economy, including: labour unrest (as workers agitated for pa~

rises postponed for se\eral ye~lrS in the interests of the war effort) and joblosses. One particularly \'exed issue relates to gender conf1ict in the workplace.The ne\\-found (though limited) economic fi'eedom enjoyed by \\omenl1lohilised into the industri~ll \\orkforce during the \\ar pro\oked some~ln \iety if not outright hostility in their return\:d boyfioiends and husbands ­

ill-feeling returned in kind \\hen \\omen \\ere laid off, as fi-cquently occurred,to make room for returning male \\orkers. It has been argued that the

ZI8 FILM GENRE

manifold negati\'e portrayals of predatory \\omen who aspire to or actuallyachie\'e (usually though illicit means and at the expense of men) a degree offinancial and sexual independence can be seen as a phobic projection of male

fear of and hostility towards female autonomy..Hlldret! Pierre (19-1-S), thestory of a wife who lea\'es her indolent husband and becomes a successful

businesswoman, only for her mismanagement of her domestic life to lead totragedy, has been read as a cautionary allegory of women in the wartime

workplace (althoug'h the war is never mentioned in the film, adapted from a

19-1-1 James ,\1. Cain nowl): the final shot, in which a chastened Mildred,reunited with her husb.md, passes by a pair of chan\"Omen on their knees

scrubbing the floors of the forbidding, gloomy police headquarters, may be

seen as a symbolic relegation of \vomen back to their socially 'appropriate'

roles (see Cook, J()78: 79-80).'Howner, Thomas (I <)<)z) has suggested that \\'hat is at centrally stake in

I/lilr is less women's place than men's: in particular, the conflicting masculine

identities at play in the immediate post\\ar era, \\'hen the martial male

subjecthood offered hy the \\ar which promoted a \'iolent, homosocial

masculinity underpinned hy the ubiquitous threat of sudden death - faced

accommodation to the conflicting; demands of peacetime domesticity,

docility and social confilrmity. In such a reading, not only the f:lmous femmes

CHales but the 'good' \\omen with \\hom they are often doubled (Phyllis

Dietrichson's daughter Lob in Dlil/Me Jllllelllll/l)', fill' example, or A.nn :Miller

in Gill lir Ihe Pi/S!) are projections of deep-seated male ambi\alences and

anxieties. This account can be usefully extended by reference to dcbates inpostwar media ahout the 'maLldjusted' male -- desocialised and rendered

incapahle of adjusting to domcsticity and producti\'e work by the traumatic

\'iolence hc had both suffered and inflicted during thc \\ar. \Iurderous\'eterans fe,ltured in 7lte 811/(, Di/lt/lil (H)-I-6) and Crossfire (H)-I-7) (though

softened in the fi1rl11er under prcssure from the armed sen ices and the Breen

Office: see 1'\,aremore, I ()<)8: 107-q),

:\s the immedi,Ite post\\',l1' period segued into the confiJrlnist I<)SOS, the

flipside to the unstable, h\ pertrophically masculine \'eteran emerged in the

shape of p,lrallel anxieties about emasculation generated by the rise of the

corporate cult ure and the salaried office \\ orker as the pre-eminent fi)rces in

the post\\ar economy, Widely-read popular sociological \\orks suggested that

traditional (male) :\merican imli\'idualism and entrepreneurship were being

transfi)rmed into confilrmism and passi\'ity by the ne\\' conditions of \\'hite­

collar work. Impersonal crime 'syndicates' - also a feature of g,lngster films

in the I<)SOS threatening the freedoms of the indi\'idlwl figure prominently

in numerous I/lilrs: Flirli' lir F,'II and The Big !Jelll feature particularly \i\'id

depictions of corrupt quasi-corporate criminal enterprises, in the filrmer

explicitly counterposed to a more humane, 'small business'-style LlCket.

F/LH NO/R ZI9

----------------------------------"ernet suggests that the prototypical I/lilr protagonist can be identified

\\ith the petty-bourgeois small businessman, anxious at the percei\'ed threats

hl's (im,lo'ined) self-sufficiency and class status in the increasingl\'to· t'., •

'orporatised world. This interpretation tallies well \\'i th not only such venal~nd/or desperate middleman protagonists as Walter Neff in DlillMe Indemnitv

(,111 insurance salesma~1) or ,~rank Bigelo~\' in D.GA. (a cert.ified ac~ountant)

but also Jl's i/ H Iil/der/111 LI/e s George Bailey. It IS also pOSSible to situate the

private eye- for many \'ie\\'ers, an archetyp~llllilr protagonist -- in t.his cla:,>swrspecti\'e, as a self-made man whose role IS to expose the corruptIOns of a

~lcc,dent ruling elite (such as the Sternwood family in The B/~f{ Sleep), toreign in thc excesses of o\'ermighty 'combines' and in so doing to reassert the

"deuc of a suitahly humanised capitalism. (This self-conception and its

delusions seems explicitly to inform Roman Polanski's revisionist portrayal of

the pri\ate eye in CIIII/i/llirT''', H)7-1-: see below.) HO\\'e\'er, it runs somewhatcoUllter to the perception of IlIIlr as a genre that pays unusual attention to

\\orking-class experience, often with conscious political moti\'ations. Brian

'\e\e (Il)()z: QS -70) notes the in\'olvement in IlIIlr production of numerous

memhers of the H)-I-0S Hollywood Left:- including such later \'ictims of the

blacklist as directors Edward Dmytryk, ,'\braham Polonsky (Flirce lir Fe'i!)and Jules Dassin (The Si/ked Cily, 1l)-l-8), writer-director Rohert Rossen (Blld)'lIIIj :';11/11, 1l)-I-7) and producer ,'\drian Scott (FlIr,.ll'ell "H)' Llln,/)', Cross/ire)­and cmphasises the prominence of class, illicit power and authoritarian power

structures in nHny II IIirs (see ~dso .'\ndersen, 1<)8S).Thc critical emphasis on pathologies of masculinity helps illuminate IIlIlr's

llluch-commented oneiric (dream-like) ,lspects, exemplified not only by its

sOl1lctimes surreal \isual distortions and spatial disorientations hut its

looping;, oftcn confused narrati\es, its g;rotesque apparitions of \iolence and

desirc, and the pre\alence of uncanny doubling. If these arc dreams,

ho\\c\er, thn ,Ire elclrly dre~lmed by men, as a piHHal scene early in SrI/ril'lSlre(/ illustrates. The nondescript h,mk clerk Chris Cross is making his way

home from a dinncr \\here he has been honoured filr his years of selfless

scnicc to the bank \\ith the time-honoured gold \\atch.\fter el1\ciously

\v:ltching; their employer J. J. Hogarth lene \\ith his young mistress, Chris

and his colleague Charlie share an umbrella to the bus stop, exchanging\\i,tt"lll banalities about youthful 'dreams' th,lt 'ne\er pan out'. Left alone,

Chris \\,mders through the deserted night-time streets of Greenwich Villag'e,

C\cntu,dly seeking directions from a policeman as 'these streets get all tlIrned

,1rOllnd dO\\I1 here'. The Village's established associations \\ith soci,d and

Sl'\U,l! de\iance, emblematically figured in the \Ianhattan street plan's abdica­

tiun of the gridlines abO\e qth Street, set it apart spatially and experientially

from Chris's drab \\orkaday reality (a motif rni\ed by \LJrtin Scorsese's

'~uppie nightmare' neO-IIIIII' c-1lia Hllllrs, H)8S): it is a labyrinth of desire.\s

220 FILM tiENRE--------------------------------

the older part of the city, the Village may also be associated with a wishfulregression on Chris's part to a time when he could still realise the 'dreams'of his youth. What happens next seems, for Chris, literally to fulfil thosedreams. Happening upon \yhat he takes to be a robbery or sexual assault - ayoung girl in a transparent plastic mac being beaten by a young man - Chrisruns heroically to her 'rescue', brandishing his umbrella - the symbol of hismiddle-class, middle-aged propriety transformed into a phallic w·eapon.Although Chris barely touches him, the girl's assailant miraculously fallsunconscious to the ground. Chris uncoils fi'om his protecti\e crouch to findhimself the 'saviour' of a beautiful young \\oman.

This entire scene is strikingly staged by Fritz Lang with an eeriedistanciation: throughout the 'fight', the only sound on the soundtrack is thenoise of a passing subway train, \\hich crests to a deafening roar as Chrisyanquishes his opponent. Framed initially against the surrounding cityscapein extreme long-shot, the girl (Kitty) and her attacker (Johnny) strugglesoundlessly and as if in sl(m motion. Chris's absurdly easy yictory seems toreflect what hc /I'i/IlIS to happen more than any imaginable reality (hissubsequent wilful and self-destructiye refusal to recognise either the 'beautifulyoung girl' Kitty's real nature - she is a prostitute- or her utter contempt forhim confirms this bntasy clement).

The diagnosis of CS society in the late I()-l.os as anxious and angst-riddenalso cites deyelopments in foreign and national security policy: theuncertainties attendant upon :\merica's unprecedented and clearly ongoinginvol\"t~ment in European and \\orld afl;lirs at the war's end, a decisi\"e shiftaway from traditional US exceptional ism and isolationism; the reyelation ofthe dreadful pO\\cr of the atomic bomb, used against the Japanese at Hiro­shima and Nagasaki; the swift transformation of the USSR from wartime allyto Cold \Var antag:onist, armed after 1()49 with its O\\n Bomb; and in 1949the renewal of large-scale US combat operations abroad in the Korean \Var.Domestic politics were dominated by the hysterical pursuit of (largelyimaginary) Communist sul1\ersion, \\ith public paranoia skilfully exploitedand intensified by demagogues such as Joseph \lcCarthy and the youngRichard Nixon, leading to signific1l1t curbs on ciyil liberties, a hugeexpansion of the internal security apparatus and hundreds if not thousands ofpeople dri\en from their liyelihoods, imprisoned and eyen, in the case of thealleg'ed atomic spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, executed. In the early195os, /loirs began to engag'e \\ith the panic about infiltration ,1l1d sub\crsion,either through metaphor and allegory (Pi/lilt" III llie ,')'1r('(' IS, 1950) or directly

(The WOl/li/1l Oil Pier 13,1949; PId..'lIp Oil SOIlIIi Slreel, 1(52). The apocalyptiClate Ilolr Kiss Me Dei/dl)' (1955) perhaps conjoins the \arious gender andpolitical paranoias of the period better than any other film.

These critical approaches often throw a great deal of light on the textual

FI J.. \1 .v () I R 221---------------------------------

Jolitics of both indiyidual nolrs and the cycle as a whole. However, industrial:',\Ctors as ahyays played a crucial role too. The reduced production schedulesof the majors in the \Iake of the 1947 Paramollill decision (that declared the\errical integration of production, distribution and exhibition an illegalmonopoly practice and compelled the studios' parent corporations to sell offtheir theatre chains), with a shift to\yards fewer, prestige productions, openedup greater opportunities for both independent producers and existing minorstudios to produce cost-effectiye g'enre films to meet the gaps in the market.The generally small-scale atmospheric noll' thriller was well suited to tightbudgets, \\hile some independents at least sa\\" the competitiye adyantage in"Idling riskier (more topical or yiolent) material than the majors. Althoughhoth \\ere short-liyed enterprises, the independent Diana Productions ­\\hich brought together \eteran independent producer Walter Wanger, his\\ ifc actress Joan Bennett and director Fritz Lang - and the left-liberal yentureEnterprise Productions made major contributions to the noll' cycle withLang's Smriel Slreel and The Serrel Be)'ond Ihe Door (I (48) for Diana, andEnterprise's Bod)' i111i1 SOIlI and Force orEl"l1 (sec Spicer, 2002: 34-5).

\\hat none of this energetic critical acti\ity has deli\cred is any consensuson the definition or extent of 11011' production in postwar Hollywood. Therearc certainly a number of films that yirtually e\"eryone agrees belong in anyputati\c IlIlIr canon, among them (in chronological order) 1t11mler, 1t1)' Sl7'eel,f)oll/JIe 1IldeIf1l111)', The Trol/li/II III llie Irlndoll', Smrlel Slreel, Tlie Poslmallili/'(1)'s RlIIgs TIl'Ice, Gilda, Tlie Killers, Cross/ire, Force or En!, 0111 or lliePilsl, nelollr, S/~l!,hl i1l1d Ihe CIly, and t\H) late, highly self-conscious entries:kiSS \Ie Deildl)' and TOllrll or E,'iI (1958). -+ Set against these, howe\cr, arc amuch larger number of films \\hose 11011' status is subject to debate: costumefilms like Re/Jerra (1940), Gasligll! (I (44) and e\en Dr ]eli),11 alld AII' H)'de([(HI) all included by Borde and Chaumeton ([ If)5SJ 1983) but moreIlb\iously in the Gothic tradition, as is another problematic candidate, TI,e.",'plml.)'lalrcilse (194S)- or gangster and police films like IVIIl/(> Heal (1949),Ind The Big Heill (1952).

!-Ilme\er the canon is dLl\\n up, there could be no pretence that suchfilms comprised anything like a plurality, let alone ,1 majority of Hollywoodprod uction e\"Cn in the immediate postwar years \\"hen the 11011' tendency was~aid 10 be at its strongest (a point made at the time by Leslie Asheim in theCOurse of an exchange with producer John Houseman in the Holl)'IPoodQ/{arlerl)' about the merits of the post\\ar wa\c of 'tough' thrillers').I kpl'l1ding on whose reckoning one prefers· and both the timeline of 11011'

pn)duction and the criteria for inclusion \ary enormously from one critic toanolher - the total number of 11011'.1' could be .IS fey\" as twent\-t\\O or as many. -~h 300. E\en the higher figure, howe\er, as Ste\c ~eale (2000: 156) pointsOUt, represents under 5 per cent of total Hollywood production during this

222 FILM GENRE

period. On the other hand, Andrew Spicer's (2002: 27-R) cumparativetabulatiun of Iwir figures suggests that in its peak year (1950), 1/oirs cumprisedat least 8 per cent and pussibly as much as 15 per cent of Hullywuud releases.But 1/olr's perceived significance has never been estimated in crudelyquantitative terms. In fact, viewed as a 'tell-tale' genre - a furm, that is, thatwas able to speak unpalatable truths abuut and to .'\merican suciety uf a kindtypically excluded from Hullywood pruduct - or in other \\ords as a kind ofreturn of the sucio-cultural repressed, lIolr \\uuld of necessity be a minorityg·enre. After all, oppositiunism and subversion - both impulses \\ith which/loir has sometimes been credited - are virtually by definition minority, evenmarg;inal, concerns. (One might add that throug'hout its critical history, theFisson of marginality and deviance has been vicariously enjoyed by 1/oir'sdefenders and commentators.)

As lIoir has mO\cd from a (illcaslc preoccupation to wider critical acceptanceand popular \isibility, the critical debates around the dimensions and eventhe existence of 110lr ha \e only intensified. Neale (uN<r I RR) maintains that'lioir is as a critical category and as a canon of films both logically and chrono­logically incoherent' (see also Neale, 2000: 173). HO\\ever, \\hile most writersaccept the difficulties of codifying' or containing ,wlr m,my perhaps regardthis unfixable quality as an integral part of lIoir's nature and forming a centralclement in its transgressive charge. SO/{''s textual and generic instabilities, likethose of horror, commend it to the attentions of postmodern cultural theory.

The concept of.lillll lIoir \\lJUld in due course be translated back, first toAmerican critics, subsequl'ntly to film-makers,(' and e\cntually popularisedf()r a mass audience. Son entered the film-criticallC\:icon as part of the widerupsurg'e in film culture through 'sl'rious' criticism in small journals, filmsocieties and college film appreciation courses that provided the seedbed forthe emergence of the New Hollywood 'film generation ' (or '-" 100ie Brats').Classics of the I/oir canon \\ere staples both of late-night television and of theurban repertory houses that in a pre-home video age supplied young cine­philes with a grasp of film history and e\olution..\nd French film culture,perceived as significantly more sophisticated and advanced than thehomegrown \arid\, offered both influential critical models such as auteurisrnand, in the critics-turned-film-makers of the ;Yolln'lle 1'ai!,lh', ,I model of howa critically informed practice could appropriate, rewurk and ITvitalise theossified conventions of American commercial mO\ie-making. It is note\\orthythat one of the most influCl1tial, and still much anthologised, early American

essays on .Iillll I/oir \\as written by Paul Schrader ((1972) 1(95), then afreelance film critic but soon to become a sig:nilicmt .'\e\v Holly\\()()d playerand subsequently \\Titer and/or director of a loose 'trilogy' of strongl~ lIo;r­influenced urban dramas (Ta,r; Dn,'cr; . 1IIICri(a 1/ G/~~olll, 19Ro; Llglil 5'II'cper,1<)9 I).

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rn,l/ VOIR 223

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:,EO-\O/R: PARODY AND PASTICHE-\olr's rediscovery coincided \vith the professional emergence of a generation. f \merican directors and \\Titers \\ho came to prominence in the wake of~1()l1~\\ood's crisis of confidence and direction in the late 1960s. These writers~]\1d directors \vere armed with a highly developed sense both of Hollywoodfilm history and, particularly in the light of the 1960s European New Waves'

experiments \vith nan~ati~e film form, .a. sense of ~o\~' nati~nal cin.ematr;lditions could be rentalIsed through cntIcal appropnatlOn. 1'vll/r pro\'ldedan apt model for such experiments. As constrained as the formal, let alonepoliticil radicalism of the 'HoIlY\YOOlI Renaissance' \\as by the ca~tion andconscnatism of an emphatically commercial industry, numerous films pro­duced at major studios bet\\een 1<)67 and 1<)77 abandoned the well-lit highroad of classic Hollywood for the seductive, subversivc shadow-world of IIl1ir.

\\ hile some I<J7os 'neo-lIo;rs', ,IS the cycle became known, like Tilt' kil1g III'IIi/r,1/1 Ganlms (1<)72) echoed the defeatist strain of classic l10lr represented

11\ 0111 1{I!le Pasl, /11 a Llllld)' Plact' or He Rail .--111 I!le Wa,)' (I<)5I) and~1;'l!:lIabh the f()rm's most characteristic mode - a much Iarg;cr numbcrad'optni the priLlte-eye variant, ,1S this seemed to allow more room fexIT\isionist manoell\Ting. The implicit intertc:xts felr such films as T!lc LongGlilid/J)'c (1<!73), Cl1/1I011l/l'1I and\I~~!l1 .\;/I)('CS were Bogart's star \ chicles ThcI"Jlh'se Falolll and Tilt' Rig Skep. Sometimes this intertextu,dity was notonl~ l'\ ident but explicit: CIUIIOIII/l'II's monochrome opening credits mimicthose or T!lc .Ha!tne Falcoll; in .Yi~!l1 .lIon's, cuckolded pri\ate eye Harr~

\losehy is tauntingly ill\ited hy his \\ile's 100er to 'take ,I s\\ing, just like SamSpade \\ ould'; confronted \\ ith hostile cops in '1lie IAlllg Goodll)'c, Elliot(iollld's \larlo\\e cracks relexi\ely wise: 'Isn't this \\here I say "what's thisall ahout?" and you say "\\'e'll ask the questions"" (One should be carefulthollt:'h not to O\crstate the novelty of such rdle\.i\e touches: bcing downgangster Eddie -" !<Irs at the clim,lx or T!le RI:~ Slap, Bot:art's .\ larlowedelll~ll1ds: '\\'had,ha \\ant me to do, Eddie? Count to three like they do in the1ll0\ ies' ')

The sulncrsive purpose of this festival of generic allusion might be\llllllllarised as exposing the pri\ ate eye, often as we ha\e noted the exceptionto IIlIlr's rule of masculine crisis, to the rigours or that t:'Cl1eric paradigm.(jll"a/oll'", as has been often pointed out, ruthlessl~ C\.poses the limitations1)1 its \\ould-be street-smart private eye hero, Jake (iittes (Jack .'\icholson),hI repeatedly placing him at a disa,hantage in sit uations \vhere Bogart's\ Llrlo\\ e would ha\c smartly triumphed: a rib;lld joke cmbarrasses him inIrollt of a client; his nose is sliced open b~ ;1 diminuti\e ps~ chopath (contrastBogart's effortless disarming of the hapless gunsel \\ilmer in T!lc .I'a!tcscl'ill,IIII), forcing him to wear an enormous bandage f(H' much of the film (,I

224 FILM ut.NKE

joke too at the expense of Gittes's carefully-modelled Holly\\ood-style 'star'persona); in the course of his imcstigations a crippled farmer heats him

~enseks~ with his crutch; and so on. ,\hO\e all, Gittes mistakes the intrigueIOta whIch he st umbles for a conyentional, if far-reaching, story of civiccorruption, and his employer/lmcr belyn Cross (Faye Duna\\ay) for aclassic femme fatale: \\hen in LlCt she is the \ictim of her own penerse and

u,ns~r~pul.ous.f~1the~', \yhose incestuous Elthering of a daughter upon EYelynslgmfIes tItamc deSIres that arc transgressiye far beyond CJittes's horizons _

asked what he \\ants, Cross simply replies 'the future, \ lr Gittes. The future.'

\Vhile the tortuous narrati\e of Ylg!J! .\loc'es - i1l\olying .1 promiscuous

tcenage run.may, the fringes of the moyie industry, sexual C'\ploitation and a

complex antiques-snlllg'gling ring - is c10sn to traditional I/oi,. territory,

I larry i\:Iosehy (Gem: Hackman) is equally rudderless - a metaphor dnasta­

tingly literalised in the film's final high-ang-Ic inuge of the \\ounded Harry

helplessl~ circling around in a boat ironically named Poill! or I iell'. HarrY ispassiye-ag;gressi\c, e.lsily manipulated, and tile dead ends of'his il1\cstiga;ion

in the film parallel the frustrations and disappointments of his pnsonallife,

i\S an adapution of Raymond Ch,lI1dler's final (and most self-consciously

Iitnan) non:l, Rohert\ltman's Th,. IAil1!!. (;ood/J)'e is of all the llJ70S priyate­

eye films thc most securel\ locltnl in I/oi,.'s traditional narrati\ c territorv,

Ho\\c\cr, :\Itman's Philip .\L1r1mn: (\\hom he conu:i\(:d ,IS 'a loscr', also the

judgement passed on .\ larlo\\ e h~ his treacherous fi'iend Terr~ Lenno\:) is eyen

less the classical model th<ln Gilles or \losehy, In LICI, \lar1<me is firmly

located <IS a man \\ holl~ out of touch \\ith the' \\orld around him - <I patsy

ncn to his cat.\ltman suhstitutcs f(lI' \larl(l\\e's \\orld-\\C<II'\ ~ct sayvy

narr<lti\ e \ oice in the nmel ,I ramhling,' running commenLln mumhled by

Gould throughout the film in ,I so//o ,'0/1' monotonc, typicall~ concluding

\\ith the careless coda 'S'ob~ \\ith me ... ' \\orlds apart from \larlowe's

fierce moral and ethical implication in the sleaz~ \\orld he nplores \\ ithout

inhahiting (hut directly ,1l1ticipating 'II ])on't \\orl'\ \le', the kno\\-nothing

,1l1them of ,\ltman's most celehrated film, ,\11.1 !J ,-,IIc, IIJ7h).

The timeliness or lIoi,.'s re\iyal \\as underlined hy the renm <ltion of the

'maladjusted \ eln<ln, theme from the post-Second \"orld \\ar cycle to take

in the yet more dangerously desocialised clsu,llties of the' far more

cont rmcrsial <lnd hrutal \\ <lr in \ ·ietnam.\s well as Ill'rol's (I <)7 ~) <lnd Taxi/),.iu'r, a late and criminally unden <llued ent ry in the 1<)70S nco-lion cycle,

CI///cr's /I II)' (llJSO), de\ eloped tr<lditionall/ol,. themes of the ahuse of pm\er

in an emotional moonsc<lpe sh<ldm\ cd hy the \ietn<lm \\ar, of which Cutter

is a mutilated, cmhittered \ctnan.

Spicer (2002: Lt-S) arg'ues that 1<)70S Iloi,. ,,<IS mostly uninterested in

IT\ ie\\ ing the classic ICmme LiLlie in light of the \\ omen's l11mel11ent.

Certainly, l11<11e subjccti\ ity renuins the central f(JCUS of l110st of these films,

------------------------------------

\\ith the strong strain of \\hite male pathos preyiously noted in somecontemporaneous SF films (sec Chapter S) finding; expression in a flurry ofCJstration imagery - Gittes's slashed nose, the bullet in Harry ",,1oseby'sthigh (and the cane used by his \\ife's crippled loyer), Cutter's amputatedIilllhs. 'dorcoyer, in general these films steer clear of the compulsiye sexuality

portrayed in the 1940S James \1. Cain adaptations. Yet they do reyisit thefi~'ure of the manipulatiye, sexually desirable \\oman, and sub\'ert this generict\'pe to the same deconstructi\e logic as her male partners. As already noted,

I~\ehn \luhway in CII/IIII!O)}'1/ all haute couture and razor-slash rubied

I1louth - appears an archetypal scheming woman, and for much of the film

both Gilles and \\c expect that she \\ill turn out to be implicated in the1l1urder of her husband, The reyelation that E\e1yn is a yictim, not a \'illain,

comes too bte to Sa\T either her or, probably, her teenage daughter from the

log'ic of a \\ orld in \yhich corrupt pO\\Tr holds absolute sway: 'Forget it, Jake,

it's ... Cll/l/a!oll'I/', as the film's famous last line has it. The adulterous and

de\ ious Eileen \\'ade in Thc [Alllg Good/J)'c matches the traditional model

more closely, but the film's most indelible image is of another brutalised

in1locent, the teenage girlfriend of brutal mobster ,'\larty Augustine (played

\1\ director \lark Rydell) \\hom he smashes in the bce \\ith a bottle simply

to prme to \larlO\\T that he is ruthless enough to get what he \\ants, The

tcen 11\mphet Deily in Sigh! ,\lou's again initially appears a modern \crsion

of the drug-addicted nymphomaniac Carmen Stern\\ood in The B/~I!. ,)'Iap

(" ho at the end of the film is destined f()r puniti\c institutionalisation:

\larlo\\e muses that 'maybe they can cure her') but she too dies tragicall~

and futilely. In the same film, Paula Ucnnifcr Warren), \\ith \\hom Harry

\ losehy hriefly shares a bed ,1l1d (it seems) some moments of mutual tender­

nl'SS in a film \\ here such thing;s are at a premium, turns out another LIke in

" lilm full of fakery (she makes Imc to Harry simply to distract him \\ hile herS11ll,!:!,'gling ring' retrie\es a sunken consignment), hut her duplicity is treated

h\ the film simply as another indC\: of Harry's impotence: her death at the

end or the film is horrific, not remotely g;ratifying,\ strong emphasis on sC\:uality is one of the main Llctors disting'uishing

the second \\a\e of neo-I/oirs inaugurated in It)SI by Bod)' Ileil! and theI'l'I11,lhe of Thc PO(!l/lll/llI)}'iI)'( Ril/gs TJl'irc, accompanied b~ a shiti a\\,ly fi'om

thl' rnisionist pri\ate-eye/conspiracy model back tll\\ ards crime-of-p'lssion

11 alTa ti\es. ,\ number of these films usc the Lll' greater sexu.11 explicit ness of

till' post-Code era to emphasise the helplessness of their male protagonists

L1L'ed \\ith the sC\:ual allure of their \,lsth more intelligent fCmmes L1tales.

Films such as Th,. Las! S{'{/I/(!iol/, Thr Ifo! Spot (1990), Basil' Il/s!I1/(! (IlNI)

,md Bod)' or L'idCl/lC (I C)c)3) keep their gender politics carefull\ ambiguous,

\l,lLll1cing the incipient misog'yny of the 'phallic \\oman' EIntasy against

l1,lrratiyes that asserted \\omen's po\\er and satirised the culpable gullibility

226 FILM GENRE

of the hapless and often self-regarding and unlikeable men \\'ho get in\"olvedwith them. (For a discussion of Tile Last Seductioll as a narrati\"e constructedaround a 'female subject', see Bruzzi, 19c)7: IZ7-,P; see also Stables, 1999).BI({(k Wldoll' (1987) sidelined men almost entirely, reframing' the nairdoppelganger narrati\"e as a story of desire and pursuit between two womena female murderer and a federal agent. This exploration of the allure offorbidden sexuality has been extended in the flourishing genre of the 'eroticthriller', usually made f(Jr cable or released straight-to-\'ideo, \\hose uniqueindustrial position both relocates l/Ii/r tropes to the borders of soft porno­graphy and prO\ides a rare context in contemporary Holly\\ood (or possibly'off-Hollywood') film-making that most closely resembles the lo\\-budget'prog-rammcr' production of the late classical period (on the erotic thriller,see Williams, 1993, zo05; Eberwein, 199:-\).

One genuinely nO\'e1 de\'elopment in the 1990S has been the exploration of1111/1' territory by black film-makers like Carl Franklin (Olh' Fa Is,' JJIIU, 1992;Der/I/II a BIlle Dress, 1995) and Bill Duke Ci Rage /11 lIar/elll, 1991; Deep

Cllur, 199z) - a genuinely transgressi\'e mo\'e not only inasmuch as BlackAmericans \\'ere as largely il1\isible in classic 1111/1' as in all other Hollywoodg-enres, but because 1/11/1' itself traded both explicitly - in the descriptions inChandler and other 111111' \\Titers of their heroes' 'dark passage' into the'Neg-ro' quarters of L:\ and other cities - and implicitly - in the dominantassociati\'e trope of III1/r/'blackness' itself - in a racialised discourse,

If the 1970S neO-l/Iilrs in g'eneral, to apply Fredric Jameson's (H)<) I: 1h~19)f.lntoUs distinction, inclined to modernist parody - the pointed satirical re\isionand il1\ crsion of g'Cnre cOl1\entions such as the heroic and capable pri\ate eye- the H)80s and H)<)OS \'ersions tended to\\ards pastiche - defined by Jamesonas 'blank parody', the painstaking renO\ation of tropes ',l11d styles \\ithout anycritical perspeeti\c. 7 A,n extreme n:ample of this is \Vim \\enders' f(Jrmalist

rehearsal of 1111/1' tropes in the h~per-rellexi\'e ilallllllell (1983) . .'\arrativestructures of spir,llling complexity, recalling but significantl~ intensif~ingclassic1111/1' patterns - in the most extreme examples, such as Tllc [,wal SIISPCc!S

(1995) and "\[clII<'II11I (ZOOI), to the point of radicalnarrati\e indeterminacy­repbced the allegorical conspiratorial ramitiCitions of ](!70S modernist 1111/1'.

:\s Leighton Grist (19C)z: z8.:;) obsen'Cs, '\\hat is \ital is not so much thecontinuation of ./illll 1/11/1', as the perspecti\'C of its reworking: \\'hether its

COl1\entions present and analyse social tensions, or just exists as a l'OlIectionof generic signifiers', Certainly, no one can doubt that 111111' has become an

essential fi'ame of stylistic and thematic reference for contemporar~ \isual

(not just film) culture. The impact of Blade Rllllller (198z) ,111d 'tech 1111/1" (seeChapter 8) ha\e ensured that IIII/r's distincti\e \ision of urban entropy and

({1I1111//C has become the debult setting for depictions of the dystopic ncar

future in SF films as different ,IS Tile ,\1alnx (1998) and SI,,,' 11;"',1 Ljllslltle

'.I..

1'11.\1 VOIR 227

J/: . Jtllick IIrlllc CIIIIICS (Z002). It is perhaps appropriate that as contested andnon-identitarian a form as 1111;1' should ha\'C been adopted as one ofpoh 11l0rphous postmodern culture's preferred self-representations.

BEYOND HOLLYWOOD

FIIIII I1I1;r's poly\'alence, 'phantom' g-eneric identity and international influencesJ1l,lke it unsurprising that other nation,ll cinemas ha\e adopted 1111/1' modes,md l1lotifs, although its LItalism and penersity may appear less radical in

cinemas less geared to high-key optimism than classic Holly\\'Ood. In additionto the pre\\ar proto-l1l1;r European trends - Expressionism, New Objecti\'ity,1Ild Poetic Realism - noted abO\e, 1111;1' traditions ha\e been especially strong'

in France ,lOd in Britain, while Jordan and ~lorg-an-Tamosounas (1998: 86­105) discuss the importance of Spanish C;I1C IICP,'I'O from the 19S0S to thepresent day, \\here its influence can be seen in such films as i,l"c Flesh

(I99S), They argue that C;IIC IICgTIl found a particular purchase during' the

tr,lJ1sition to democracy after Franco's death in 1975, a period \\hose re\e­btions ,Ibout the Sp,lOish state apparatus meant that 'the corruption andC\ llicism ,l! the centre of classic American IlIIlr mo\'ies f(lUnd a resounding

echo in contempcmlry Spain' (p, :-\9),Spicer (zooz: 175-z03) explores the tradition of British 111111', arguing

strong'ly for a tradition of crime melodram,ls that, like their American

counterparts (and, although in different ways, like Hammer horror) stronglyclullenge the middle-class \crities ,lnd complacencies of mainstream British

cinema. \\'hile Spicer's 1111/1' ClOon is some\\hat diffuse, taking' in alongsideL'Ontemporary thrillers \\ith e\'ident IIl1ir attrihutes like Odd .Hall (Jill (]()·n),l!i,yl1l1dc .Hc.I Fl/g;I;,'c (Ilj.n), Til<' TIi;rdHIII1 (]()-1-9), lie/lis 11 Cill' (1960)and (;cl Carler (Icnl) - but strangely not Br;g/illllI Rllck (]()-1-:-\) - ,I large

numher of period films. GlIsliglil (19-1-0), P;III" ,')'Irillg 1I11t! SCIII;lIg Wa.\' (H)+5)and e\en Ol;,'er TII';sl (]()-1-:-\) seem to belong, but Grcill f:'.rpallll;III1S (1l)+6),md A.'1IIt! HCllrls 11/111 COI'IJl/cIS (19-1-8) seem in both stylistic and narrati\'e

terms remote from 1111;1'. :\ problem here may he the importance of theLn~dish Gothic tradition combined \\ ith (bef(Jre Hammer's breakthrough in

Ihe mid-19S0s) the LIck of a clearly eSl<lblished cinematic Gothic. Hcme\'Cr,Spicer is able to tLlCe ,lO important lineage tiJr such contempoLlry British

nco-III1;I'S ,IS /)III1CC "';Ih 11 SlrIIl1gcr (]():-\5) and \[111/11 1,lsa (19:-\6) and more

recently S11II111I1I' Gm,'c (1995) and CI'IJI/P;cr (199Cj), Of these, one might notethat the 1980s films seem to partake of the Tlutcher years' intense politi­

cisation and .Iddress themsehes clearly to British class, racial and gender

pathologies, \\hl'reas thl' 1990S films ,Ire in properly postmodern Llshion

L\ther more sociall \ decontC\tualiscd.

228 FILM GENRE

Austin (1996: 109-1 I) discusses POIIsslhe d '_lllge (1987) as a contemporaryFrench lilm 1I0lr; Buss (19l)..l.) meal1\\hile identifies 101 French lIoirspf(:pond~rantly from the post-lVolI,''';le Vaglle period, but like Spicer some orhis inclusions arc curious: alongside such ob\'ious 1I0lr candidates as Rififi,130/1 Ie Flamli('//r (both Il)5S), Llll 10 llie S({J(liJld (I<)'=;7) and the later LaEal,IIl({' and the flashy Dim (both I<)8 I) are listed Godard's Jl'ec/.:clld (I967)

and Robert Bresson's L'_-lrgelll (1983), Another of Buss's selections, Robert

Bresson's Pic/.:pod:cl (HjS9), prO\'ided the model fl)r Paul Schrader's nco-nairAmerlcall G/j;olo (there arc also strong echoes of Bresson in Taxi Dril'cr).Examples such as this and the adaptations of Patricia Highsmith's Ripleynoyels produced in the US (Tilt' Tlllelllcd _VIr Rlple)', 2000; Rlple)' 's Clime,2003), France (Pleill 5'0Iell, Il)S9) and West Germany (Tlic _-ll/lcrJcall Friend,Iln7) are strong testimony to 1I01r's international appeal ,IS a mode forexploring themes of exploitation, \'iolence and transgressi\'e desire.

CASE STUDY: Ol 'I OF '1fff:' P 1,)''1 (JACQUES

TOURNEUR, 194-7)

Robert Ottoson (I l)X [: 132) speaks for man y in declaring (Jill 0(1 lie Pasl (UK

title: Blllld iVIy Galloll's IIlgII) 'quite simplY the Ii(' pillS IIllr,1 of forties film1I0ir', The film's cOl1\oluted plot of criminal intrigue, murder, fatal attraction

and betrayal; its dense Yisuals, periodic narrati\c confusion, flashbacks andyoiceoyer narration; its iconographically apt pri\ate-eye protag;onist Jeff

Markham/Bailey (Robert \litchum) complete \\ith belted trench coat, soft­hrimmed hat and permanently lit cigarette (Grist, IlJl)2: 20()) - anLl quint­

essential femme [!talc I-.:.athie 'tofCIt (Jane Greer) - cool, sn:ually confident,

manipulatiye, untrust\\orthy and murderous; its melanchol~, Cltalistic tone

of doomed nostal~:da and dO\lnbeat, amhiguous ending - all comprise, as

Tom Flinn (lInT 38) puts it, 'a \critable motherlode of 1I0ir themes andstylisations'. (Jill 0(1111' PoSI's institutional and production contexts arc also

archetypal 11011'. The film adapts a number of the economical but clll:cti\'estylistic elements (particularly a structured alternation of high-key and lo\y­

key lighting; to reinforce character and thematic relations) pre\ iously refined

by director Jacques Tourneur in the \\ell-regarded horror films he made for

RI-.:.O's 'B' production unit headed by \ ,Ii Le\\10n earlier in the l()..I.0s (CatPcoplc, 1l).f2; Till' 5'1'('('//111 Iidi/ll, I()..I.3). Tourneur also inherited cinemato­

gr,lpher '\icholas \lusuraca hom the LC\\tol1 features: a specialist in 'mood

lighting' (Spicer, 2002: 17), \lusuracl m,ltlc a major contribution to the IlIIircycle, his other 1I0in including 7iJc SpJral SllIinasl' ([lJ+'=;), Tlie Lockcl (1<)+6),

TIll' Hi)/J/{/II011 Pier 13 (1<)5°), Clash /J)' _\1/;11/ (1<)52) ,1Ild Tlte Bille Cardmia([ (53). The screenplay \\,IS adapted hom his 0\\11 nO\cl b~ Daniel .\ bil1\\ aring I

il

1"11.,\1 N01R 229

IIOIlI (Jill ,,111,< J>"sll HII/IJ \/)' (;"II"ws //l~/I (11)+,). Reprodlll'l'llcourll'" of R"-O/TheI,(,h,il (:olkcIIOIl,

(\\liting as Geofhe~ Homes), bter to \\Tite the IIlilr-ish gangster films TlteIJI~ ,,,'Icill (1<)+lJ) and Thc fJltclllt CIl)' Sllir]' (II)SS), \\ith contributions fi'om,

,\lll()J1~ others, fames.\1. Clin.' Of the film's principal cast members, .\Iitchum

(/lic l,oc'l.'CI, C:rl/ss/irc, Pllrsllcd, J()+7 - a Freudian IIl/lr \,"estern - and .\lcli'lII,11j'i2) is particulari\ strough identified \\ith H)..I.0S IIl/lr\s .\ laltb\ (i H)X+ I 1l)1)2:

; 21 slims lip, '\\h.lle\ er /illll 1I1i/1' is, {Jill o(llte Pilsi is undoubtedly /illll /llilr'.

Fronl QIII or Ihe Pasl/ lJlIlld ,1'I1' Calloll's lfigll (1l)~7)· Reproduced courtc y of ItKO/TheKohal Cllliccrioll.

230 FILM GE"'RE

As a private-eye film, 0111 III' lite Pasl is firmly located in one of thenarrative paradigms most closely identified vvith the nllir world. However0111 (~rlhe Pasl g'oes some way to reconfigure the private-eye narrative awa;from its classically 'haru-boiled' versions (such as Tlte Big Sleep) towardsI1l1ir's more typically disoriented, self-destructive vision of masculinitv, ForKrutnik (H)<) I: I 12), 0111 111'1 he Pasl undertakes 'a remarkable problematisingof the Spaue-type priv'ate-eye hero' anu the narrative never finally or fullyresecures Jeffs masculine identity in the patriarchal oruer he destabilisesthrough his illicit relationship with Kathie. Whereas Bogart's impersonationof Spade and !vbrlow'e enacts alpha-male dominance, ,\litchum's JeffMarkham is characterised by a wilful passivity: having tracked Kathie downto Acapulco in his assignment to retrieve Whit's purloined S+o,ooo, Jeffsurrcnders both his professional responsibilities and his individual will in amood that Grist (1992: 207) aptly characterises as 'ardent abandonment' (ofscruples and of self), silencing Kathie's protestations of innocence with thememorable line 'Baby, 1 don't care'. :\fter the couple flee to San Francisco,Jeffs \oiceO\er of his debased condition obsessin:ly insists on his carelessabjection: 'I opened an of1ice , .. Cheap little rathole which suited the workI did, Shabby jobs for whatever hire. It was the bottom of the barrel, and 1scrapeu it. But 1 didn't care, I had her.'

Despite the emphatic last sentence, hO\vevcr, Kathie, is an elusiye signifierwho will not be 'had', or possessed (unlike Jeff, vvho will be 'had' in the othersense of the term - duped, conned); her narrative function, like so many noirwomen, is to illustrate the fugitive, LlI1tasy nature of desire itself. \loreover,and characteristically for male Jlllir protag'onists, Jeffs own morality, thoughshaky, is more resilient than he professes: \yhen he finally discO\ers thatKathie has actually stolen Whit's money, he is disenchanted and repelled.Jeff suffers the !III/I' nule's repcated double bind: affecting a cynicd, vvorld­weary L1I11iliarity with the \vays of the vvorld, he nonctheless remains prey toinsistent romantic LlI1tasy constructions vvhose inevitable disenchantmentleaves him disempO\\ ered anu directionless. The narrational and snual dis­empowerment of the masculine ideal represented by the 'hard-boiled' privateeye in (Jill IIrlhe Pasl confirms that the variously inept, inadequate and/orimpotent 'private dicks' of [(nOS Jlllir arc less namples of ag;gressi\e genrerevisionism in thc f:lshion of contemporaneous \\esterns, musicals and warfilms than intensifications of Jlllir's nisting tendencics to pJranoia and malepathos. As \bltby (I )()~+J H)l)2: (l7) obsenes, post\\ar JlOir is distinctive in itsrcfusal of a place for 'the separate heroic figure, the embodiment of the.\mericlll individualist heroic tradition', either reintegrating its 'maladjusted'proLIgonists into normal society (Tlte Big CIII d.', I(H~) or, ,IS in (Jill IIrlhePasl, compelling a LIlal e.\piJtion of past guilt.

Tn the later San Francisco scenes as Jeff undertakes his second assignment

1'11.11 ,VOIR 231.-----------------------------------

f<lr Whit (he accepts the job as an act of restitution only to find that Whitintends to frame him for a murder), the fantasy aspect of the narrative isOl,lde clear as the film slips into the characteristic !lOir oneiricism discussed'Ibo\e. This sequence, involving a fairly impenetrable intrigue and intro­ducing important characters quite late in the film, unfolds in an elliptical,disloC1ted and fragmentary vvay, posing difficulties of basic legibility - of space,of !11oti\,ltion and of identity - th,lt centre on the striking visual confusion ofJ'"llhie \\ith \leta Carson (Rhonda Fleming), the film's secondary and super­nUIllary femme f:ltale. The blurring of identities, sudden melodramaticrC\crs,rls and spatial dislocltion of this sequence can be read as textualstresses ansv\cring to Jeffs o\\n intensifying inner conflicts and confusions at

this point in the narrative.\leta prO\ides a 'negative' uouble of Kathie mirrored by her 'positive'

fe11l,lk counterpart in the film, Jeffs Bridgeport girlfriend Ann (VirginiaHuston), emphasising' the film's tendency to\vards a symbolic schematism inits narrativc ,1ITangements:\nn is identified \\ith the small-town mounLlincommunity of Bridg'eport, initially at least a daylight/'high-key' vvorld oftradi­tional relationships and soliu, if mundane, decency (tracked dov\l1 by Whit'sunderling Joe Stef:lI1os, Jeff lectures him on the values of traditiOlul Americanentrepreneurship: '\\'e call it nuking '11i\ing. You may have heard of it some­\\here') contrasted to the v,lrious lo\\-key, urban or f(lreign milieus associated\\ith Kathie and \\'hit and \\ith dishonest or at least undeseneu wealth.

Such schematism seems to reinf()rce simplistic oppositions of city andcountn, sc.\ and marriage, the 'good' self (in Bridgeport, Jeff renameshimsclfJcff Bailey) and the 'bad'; hO\\c\cr, it can ,I!so can be read as drawing'attention to the LlI1tasy, or mythic, n,llurc of such dichotomies ,Iml thccultural logics that subtend them. The more effort the narrative puts intoholding apart the valorised and the vitiated discursi\c anu actantiYe realms,the more they insist on collapsing back into one another. The narrationalstress of the San Francisco scenes confesses this ideolo~ieal tension in one\\<l~; the gTadual but gnming penetration of Jeff -'!arkham's Itm-key !IOIr

urh,1I1 \\orld into the hi~h-key sl1l,dl-to\\'n one of 'Jeff Bailey' is another (asin the ni~ht-tiI1le dialog'ue bet\\een Jeff and\nn to\\ards the end of thefilm). \\e should note, moreO\cr, as Oliver and Tri~o (200,): 22+f.) suggest,that\nn is not quite the one-dimensional homebody that in many vvays thefilm's narrative schem,1 secks to render her: her readiness not only to ~o

against her Elmih's \\ishes and ditch her long-time homl'to\\ n suitor for Jeffhut to abandon j~ridgeport altog'cther ,1I1d go off \\ith .lefT indicate that theilkJlised small-tO\\ n \\mld is perlups no Illore satisf:Ictory for the 'good girl'than f(JI' the 'femme LILlie'. Earl, in the film, Jeff confesses to .\nn that heh'h been 'a lot of places': '\\hieh" one did you like the best?' she asks him, to\I hich Jeff replies, 'This one ri~ht here'. 'Bl't \OU say that to all the places',

, i, ,

I II, ,

! '

, !II,. ,

II::

I, :

!i II,I I,'I ,

,

i,' ,1, I

Ann responds. Ann's playful fusion of the places and the \\omen in Jeffs lifenot only re\'eals her to be more knowing than her homespun image wouldimply, but points up the ways in which fantasy relations and oppositionsstructure Jeffs experience of the social and the scxual alike: the O\crdeter_mined opposition of the small-tO\\n ideal and the urban jungle mirrors thatof l(athie and Ann as good and bad objects in Jeffs psychic economy.

This exchange makes the end of the film all the more poig,·nant. \\'ith Jeffand Kathie dead, !\nn faces an implicit choice bet\\een staying - which

means, in effect, quashing the curiosity and desire f(lr change that her

attraction 10 Jeff bespoke - or lea\ing Bridgeport altogether, this time alone.

Jeffs mute assistant confirms to her that Jeff \\as Ic.l\ing to\\n \\ith l(athie- a 'good lie' that frecs her from Jeff's memory and cnables hcr to return to

her 1<mg'-time suitor Jim, Thus the film ends \\ith Jeffs posthumously suc­cessful recontainment of energies of female autonomy: haying \olunteered to

enter Jeffs 110ir \\orld, ,\nn is restored to a stable location the daylight

'good girl' within the dichotomous masculine Cll1tasy structures her self­awareness had briefly threatened to puncture, Indeed, in a sense Jeff goes

knowingly 10 his death precisc1~ to sccure this outcome. It is interestingtherc!(lre to considcr \1 hether in a sense it is -\nn, rather than Kathie, \\ho is

Ihe film's femme E1Iale: her 'thre,lt' consisting precisely in hcr /1111 consenting

(unlike Kalhie or \leta) to be constructcd purel\ on and in the terms of lIlli,ElIllas~ unlil, that is, Jeffs 1in,11 reassert ion of patriarchal authority, far

more successful in death than he had been in life (the bst imag'e of the film

is Jeff Baile\'s name atop his garage),

0JOTES

I, SlT thc l'''lltCl11p''LlrI rCliclI' ;md C"JIS c"llectcd ill SiilLT .md L r,illi (1(I,jI,),

, S" l,;tlled hCCJu,c thc 111;I:';Jzilll" 1!1;1I 'I'cci.tli'l'll ill 11ilrd-h"i1l'l1 l11.lILTiJI 11Ot.lhil IUiI(/:\/"'/ IILTC IHlhli,hcd "Il ChCIlP IIIHlll-l'lilp pl!JllT,

J, l.illlLJ \\ i1IUI11' (II)~'~), hOlIl'ILT, l'.IUtl"Il' J:';IllIht (()" 1.llilc ;m idclllilie.ltI<m "I \li1drcd

Jl1d thc l'!CJI1LT', '1rl'"ill:'; thill Ilwir dilTLTCll1 l'l.l" 1',,,iti"Il,' CIlLlilcLJlI.tliI dilkrcill

l"rIll, "I' piltri,trehJI 'llhjlTli"ll,

-t' ,,,tc, h"IICILT, t11i1l Il"1'l1e ilild ChilUl11ct"l1\ (II).:;:;) li,t c\l'!udc' S,,/lI(1 SII'«I th"ugh

Il"t, "ddil, it, e"l11l';lI1l"l1 111111 '/I", /I III!I,/Il /II III( II II/dll II , /'''1'« "I f,t! .md /)(111111'.

) Thl' C'ehilll:';l' i, LJu"lcd ;md di'l'l",cd III \l.tltlll (I J()'~-tl I,!,!~: :;11 ~)

(l. \llh"ll:,;h SillLT ,md L r,illi (Iql)h) l,ilc ;1 ph"t":';L!J,h "I' J{"hert \Idrieh "Il the 'C'I "I

1\1« \1,- /)'-Ildh h"ldill~' il mI'l "I' Il"llle Jl1d ChiIUll1ct"ll\ (i Iq:;.:;I, II)~.;) PillIll/'ill/liI ,III1'1111/ \ IIII' III/,n,,,ill,

/' ,,,tc, h"lll'IlT, Ihllt J;ll11l'"m eill" C/IIIII!/ll II 'II. Ilhich hc cLI",ilic, II' II '1l("l;i1~lil lill11'. ilS

ill1 c\.1ll1pk "I' p'I,tiehc,x. ,·'01' I1HllT dl'Llil~ of the tilln'..., production hi~r()r~, ~l'l' (iri .... r (1t)<)2: 203) ~llHl SLh\\.l~l·r

(11)1)1),

(ttAPTER 10

The Action Blockbuster

Of all the genres discussed in this book, the action filmlaction

blockbuster is at once the most contemporary, the most \isibly rele\ant

to presenH.la~ Holly\\ood film-making, and also the least discussed and least

\\ell-dc1ined. Lntil the publication of a recent anthology (Tasker, 200+),

reL1ti\ eh little has been \Hitten about action film as a genre: the notable

C\cept ions, the st ud ies by Tasker (J()03) and Jeff(lHls (I <)0+), f(lCUS speci­l1calh on construct ions of masculini t~ in the hig;h-octane male act ion films of

the I qXos and early H)<)OS, The contemporar~ blockbuster has become a

"c1lOlarl~ f(lcUS e\en more recently, notably in \\\,Itt (1<)<)+), King (2000a),I lall (2002) and Stringer (2003). \\hereas 'LiskeI' and Jeffords focus on the

ultra-I iolent, usually R-rated \ehicles f(lI' pumped-up stars such as Arnold

Scll\\arzeneg'g'er, Syhester Stallone, Jean-Claude \<111 1),1I11111e and their like,

the emphasis in the blockbuster studies is much more on institutional context

and thc aesthetics of spectacle in special eflects-dri\en, large-scale SI.' and

L1I1LIS~ films from Sial' 1101'S to T!le lAird IIrl!le RI/lgs.

It ma~ seem therc1(lI'C that there is a basic incohcrence in the idea of the',lliion blockbuster'. It is certainh the case th,1I neither of the t\\O terms

i1ll {)h ed is as straightf(ll'\\<IHl ,IS other genre concepts used in this book. One

diliintlty in defining' the blockbuster is that \\hile most critics identif~

l'\Cl:"si\ e scale (including cost and length) as a generic marker, others include

colbumption - that is, runa\\ay success ,11 the box oftice- as itself ,I sufficient

caU'ie f(lr blockbuster sLitus, In some \\ays, a f()\,\ll like the action blockbuster

PU'ihe'i genre study to its limits, requiring it to integTate se\eral di\erse

critical approaches (film-historical, economiclinstitutional and aesthetic/

ideological) in the \ er~ process of constituting, defining ,lnd historicising a

~l'ncric field. This already daunting task is made yet more difficult by the

rampant gcneric hybridity of contempoLlry IIolly\\ood in general and the

action blockbustlT, as the p,lr,ldigmatic contemporary Holly\\ood genre, 111

234 FILM GENRE

particular. Slarsizip Troopers (199X), for example, combines the teen film, thewar/combat film, elements of the \Vestern and the SF monster moyie, whilesatirising all three.

Nonetheless, in simple iconographic terms the action blockbuster doeshave some reliable constants, most of which relate to the spectacular actionsequences that are an immutable feature of the genre. Sky-high orange fire­balls; vehicles and bodies pitching, often in slow motion, through plate-glasswindows; characters diving and rolling across "Tecked interiors, either underthe impact of rapidly fired bullets or to escape from them; automatic pistolsand large-calibre pOl·table weaponry like grenade launchers; death-def~'ing

stunts: these arc all immediately recognisable attributes of the action block­buster.

The structure of the action blockbuster punctuates intensc linear momen­tum -' plot eyents driyc the picture fonYanl, usually excluding the narrativespace available for nplorations of character psychology or relationships orreducing these elements to a series of terse exchanges - with spectacularpassages of action, often prominently featuring special effects and/or stuntwork that radically nceed the needs of the narratiye situation that giYes riseto them. Car chases - ,yhich in strict narratiye terms often deliH:r yery little- typif~ this structure. I Thus rather than the 'wcll-made' complex plot of thetraditional thriller, the central narratiYe premise of an action film may cometo seem lirrle more than a thin spine from "hich dangle essentially dis­connected large-scale action episodes. '\ lack of interest in genuine complexitymay hardly be nmel in Hollywood action and thriller cinema, but whereas,for example, Hitchcock used his famous '\1acGuffins' as a means to not onlytrademark 'Hitchcockian' set-piece sequences, but the exploration of emotionaland psychological relationships of dependency ,ll1d manipuLition, the contem­porary action blockbuster seems largely uninterested in any plot clementexcept as a narrative ruse through which to deliyer nplosions, chases andgunfights, the bigg'er the better. The blockbuster typically opens with a large­scale action sel]uCllce of the type that mig;ht hay e climaxed ,1 cbssic Holly,yoodfilm: thus whereas FOI"l'/~~1I Correspolld'>/Il (19+°) concludes "ith ,I pLine crash,Fate/ O!l"( I<)97) opens Ilit h a high-intensity ch,lse seq uence im 011 ing a jet,numerou" police cars and a helicopter, at the end of IIhich the jet ploughsthrough the usual pLite-glass curtain wall into a hang;cr.

Identifying the g'eneric "ynL1x of the action blockbuster is more difficult.Geoff I-.:.ing (2000a) has argued that frontier motifs are a submerged presencein action films; 1l)l)OS action films ofien centred on confusion" of idenrity andthe self, which featured in face/Oil; Tolal Retail (1991), 1;raser (H)96) andTil,> LOllg Kiss Good/llglll (H)97) among others. But the bottom line of mostaction blockbusters is the decisi, e (usually yiolent) action taken against oyer­whelming odds by a 'malcrick' indilidual, most often unsupported b~ 01'

J

THE ACTION BLOCKBUSTER 235

cycn in connict with establishment authority, to restore order threatened by,I \;Irge-scale threat. The action hero, who may be paired with a more law­,Ibiding or comention-respecting 'buddy' - the Lelltal Weapon series (fromIl)XX) is the obyious example - is thus a ycrsion of the classic 'ourlaw hero',IS discussed by Robert Ray (1985: 59-(6). Opposition to authority, whether,Irising out of principle (COli, -1/1', 1(97), wTongful conyiction (AIlnorlt)lReporl, 2002), betrayal (Ral/l!Jo: Flrsl Blood Pari 11, 1985; Gladlalor, 2000) orsimply personal style (flldepelldt'l/te Day, I<)96; ,-1rll/ageddoll, 199X) ensuresthat the action hero is denied recourse to the (dramatically uninteresting)proced ures of the justice system and must Llll back on inner resources:II huc,ls these are often - as with John Rambo and John "lcCLine (in the Dieliard series, I<)XX, H)<)O, 1(95) - simply a giyen, at other times the hero'sdiscOlcry of these capacities for yiolent action constitutes his narrati,-e 'arc':I()r example the initially desk-bound characters played by :'\icolas Cage andJohn Cu"ack in Tlte Rod,. ,md COil . iiI'.

Some commentators haye discerned a degree of estrangement in the hyper­bolic lisual style of contemporary action cinema and particularly in actionsequences' distortion of normative tempor,llity and spatiality -' through the useof "lOll motion and multiple camera angles (effects that owe a great deal 10

the pioneering; action sequences of S,lm Peckinpah in Tlte Wild BUlld/) - andthe fetishistic arrention both to the kinds of hanll'are that comentionall,signify wealth and (male) status (pmyerboats, sports cars, etc.) and to theirliteral dem,lterialisation (being spectacularly torched or blm,n apart). TheknOll ing humour and wilful excessiyeness, ,yhether in deploying' ulrra­I iolcncc or in prodig;ality of consumption, that typif~' rill: work of suchLhhionable action din:ctors as Paul \'eerhoeven, Quentin Tarantino and John\\ 00, lIould tend to support such claims. Howe,er, it is equally clear thatmost action films seem less intercstcd in activating their spectators in l]u'lsi­Brcchtian fashion than in nploiting the unparalleled technical resources ofeontempor,uy Hollywood simply to overwhelm any capacity for discngagementhI thc yiolent sensory assault of kinetic ,i"uals and multitLlCkcd sounddreus ;lnd music.

Thc emergencc of the contemporary ,lctiol1 blockbuster as (in financiallerms ,11 least) Holly"ood's dominant gcnre since the mid-I()Xos is account­,thle in terms of the '\n\ Holly"ood's o\yn transformation into a g;lobalcel1tre of conglomerate media actiyity. In fact, one could argue that themillennial (I()()OS and 2000S) action film is g;enerically characterised by its1)\1 n repeated enactment at n'Cry leYel, hom n;lrrative to distrihution andm;lrkcting, of the same imperati' es of relentless market domination th,1£ typif\modern corporate HollI,yood. Contemporary action spectacuL1rs ruthless"collmise traditional genrcs such as thc historical epic (Bnll'cltcarl, 1995;C/"dlillllr; TI"II)', 200+) and most often science fiction, and c1sually subordinate

2J6 FILM GENRE

such classically crucial elements as narrative and character to literally show­stopping' special-cffects- and stunt-dri\en action sequences. These actionsequcnces comprise the ,1ction film's principal selling-point and feature

centrally in the saturation marketing campaigns that attend these films'release, and they typically employ a 'high-g.·loss' \isual style, drawing heavily

on advertising and music video, invohing a markedly accelerated cutting rate

(compared to Hollywood films of the I<!70S and before: see Bord\\ell, 2002)

that intensifies the already kinetic experience of the action-laden story.

Traditionally secondary (or in any case hack-room) areas of film production

such as star 'branding', the dominance of the 'high concept' and the

aggressive marketing of aspects of tilm-making technology (e.g. CGI) are

given a ne\\' prominence. These comhine \vith a heightened puhlic a\\areness

of production costs and box-office returns to create a genre \vhose film/

spectator interLJce is no longer contined to the textual len~l hut enters the

public realm - carefully husbanded through the multiple arms of \crtically

integrated media conglomerates as cross-media 'e\ents'.

Dominating' and integrating all of these is the central 'high concept', in

ddining which term reference is usually made to the producer partnership of

Don Simpson (d. I()l).j.) and Jerry Bruckheimer, \\hose series of enormously

successful action vehicles from the mid-Il)Ros oll\vards (En'crl)' Hills Cop,IyR.j.; TilP Goo, I yR6; The R lid.', )()l)6;1nlwgeddllll, l()yR; etc.) consolidated

the elements listed above in a glossy package topped by a high-protile male

star (Tom Cruise, Eddie ~lurph~, Bruce Willis) in an easily summarised plotformula ('1\ street wise black Detroit cop in Holly\\ood', 'a hotshot tig'hter ace

learning lessons in !<)\c allli in combat') (sec \\yatt, I<)(!-1-). (Robert :\ltman's

I1olly\\ood-on-Holly\\ ood .s,ltire The Pla)'cr (I<)I)R) guys the high concept

\\ith increasingly haroque and ahsurd pitches: 'Prell)! '1"111//11/1 meets Ollt oj·lfl"l((/'. )

Yet as ultra-modern - e\cn post modern . as in so man v \\,1\S the action

hlockhuster o\niously is, it also manifests abiding' continuities \\ith ,md

through the history of Holly\\ood genre. In its combination of \isual spectacle,

sensational episodic storylines, performati\c ,1I1d presentational excess, and

starkl~ simplified, personalised narrati\ es, the action blockbuster is umhilically

linked to the tiHllldationalmelodramatic tradition of Holh\\ood tilm..\It hough

this chapter \\ ill focus on the institutional contexts, textual politics and issues

of spectatorship informing critical reception of the ,lCtion film and the

hlockhuster, in many \\JYs the genre em best he understood as the emphatic

restoration to industrial pre-eminence of the orig'ilury mode of the :\merican

cinema- it is in bet most protitable to regard it as 'action melodrama', a

form that synthesises hoth the blood-and-t h under Jnd the domest ic/ pathetic

melodramatic traditions.

TilE ACTIO'J BLOCKBUSTER 2J7

I'J YOUR FACE: THE RISE OF A POST-CLASSICAL

GENRE

\lost ,1ceoulltS of the ;\'e\\ Holly\\ood identi(\ the period 1975-77 as a~\,Itershed in the transition from the Ne\\ \Vave-ish 'Hollywood Renaissance'

period to the popcorn era of the Il)Ros an~ since (see, for instance, Sch,~tz,

1)1) " 1."in" 200~) But neither the actIOn hIm nor the blockhuster matenal-I ,~.l'\.- t'" - •

ise<\ out of]!Il!'s' deep blue sea in I<!75 or Sial' 1/a/'s' intergalactic space in1<)7/. In bct, the term "Iction blockbuster' pulls together a \\ell-estahlished

\lenre the action-alhcnture tilm \\ith deep roots in classic Hollywoodl),lck to the silent era, \\ith ,1 mode of production - the hlockhuster - most

strongh associ,!ted \\ith the changing economics of the post-classical period.

\ third terlll that often triangulates this pairing, 'spectacle', relates simul­

t,lIleously to the action hlockhuster's properties of visual display, ho\\ thes<:

,dYeet ,1lIdienc<:s' consumption of th<: moving' imag<: (,1 subject of consid<:rable

contrmcrsy, particuLIrh in relation to narrative and characterisation), and

Illdh th<: cultural construction of the blockbuster film as a 'sp<:ctacular', or

in industry parlanc<: an '<:\cnt', through marketing and medi,\. This s<:ction \vill

tLlce hm\ these separate .str,mds h,1\<: com<: together into the contcmporary

action blockbust<:r.

\ction and action-adv<:ntuf<:

In one sense, of course, C\er~ motion pictUIT is an 'action' tilm. \lor<: to th<:

point, a great many cLIssic Holh \\00l1 gTl1lTS notahly the \\ar film, Ih<:

!.!.·'lllg·~t<:r film and the \\estern includ<: and ar<: in some llleasure defined by

SITnes of \iolent 'Ietion. Thu.s the cont<:mporan US,IgT of the term 'action

film' 10 deserihe tilms such a.s SiI"1I1~ PrI,'ille Rj'(/II (1I)1!7), Fald 0l! andSlilr.,I/lp Tl"IJlipas, all of \\hich could he and ,liT equ,Ill~ \\<:11 locat<:d \\ ilhin

thl"~l" mor<: traditional g'<:nnic traditions, confirms the Glt<:gor~ is an C\pansin:

Olll". This <:x\xlIlsi\cness in turn might refket the increasingly mlltable natur<:

of ~enre idelltities in contemporar~ I lol1~ \\oOl!.\ loosdy definl'll categ'or~ oj"action-a<henture' has nisted inlloll~\\oOll

~ince the silent era. ","elle (zooo: :;:;) notes that the tnm \\as appli<:d by

umtempor;Iry revi<:\\ers to a H)Z; I )oug'las Fairbanks \ehick, The Gill/dill, and

l'.lirhanks's sur person,I - coura~Tous, earnest, light-hearted and supITmdy

athletic eSLlhlish<:d ,1 romantic heroic style tak<:n up by latn action stars

~lIch ,1S Errol Flynn and Burt I.,mcaster. During' till: classical period, th<:

actioll-a<hTnture g'elllT incorpoLlted s\\;Ishhucklers, sCI-g'oing and luhberh

(F,lirbanb' The Blad: P,mle, I(P;; The lthm/!/res lij" Rli/lill Hlilid, lin:;;Iloralili flonlb/iI!I'cr. R.\., 11):;1), jung'lc-qu<:st ,llld s,Iflri a<hTntures (kill~

sololl/lill\'\Iilles, II):;'; lIiIIii ri l , II)()Z), For<:ign Legion ~arns and other

238 FILM GENRE

examples of what John Eisele (2002) has recently called 'the HolhwoodEastern' (The Lost Patrol, 193-1-; Bca 1/ Ccste, H)39), ;nd Hitchcockian thrillersof espionage and international intrigue (Foreigll Corrcspondmt, 19-1-0: Sorth byNorthl7'est, 1(59). The popularity of long-running characters like Edgar Ri~e

Burroughs's jungle aristocrat Tarzan (impersonated by se\eral actors in atleast -1-0 features and serials from I9IH to the late I960s) indicates the genre'sstrong appeal to a ju\enile male audience. As such examples indicate, action­adventure often imohed a significant displacement from contemporaryAmerican life, into exotic, far-flung locales like colonial :UricI or th~

'mysterious Orient' and/or the historical past (the picturesque Re\olutionaryand Napoleonic eras \\ere especially fa\oured), \\ith a strong scenic emphasis.Taves (1993) points out that this touristic quality necessarily implicates thegenre in recognisably imperialist tropes, albeit in some \\ays qualified by theemphasis on freedom-fighting amI the restitution of injustices (fi)r examplein the numerous \ersions of the Zorn) story). A.ction-ad\cnture films tendedto flaunt high production \alues, \\cre likely candidates in due course forcolour and widescreen treatment, and usually featured attracti\e, robust starsin relati\ely Iighl-hearted romantic and/ or quest narrati\-es. 2 Slar J1ars' debtto classic swashbucklers (as \\hen Luke \~lllits across the tlthomless core unitin the Death Star clasping' Princess I _eia in his arms) is ob\ious. Emphaticallya Llmily genre, the action-ad\entlllT film has really neler g;one out of Llshion,although along;side other traditional large-scale genres it suffered fromHollywood's temporary shift: of attention in the early [(nOS to\\anls smaller­scale, more characler-centred contempoLlry dramas. Bet\\een 1970 and 1975only The Three .Hl/sA'I'let'l's (H)7J) could be clearly identified as an action­.ld\enture in the traditional sense. Hm\e\er, the same season, Hn:;-76 ­perhaps sig;nificantly the year after the end of the \ittrum \\ar - that sawthe emergencc of the ne\\" slyle of action blockbuster \\ith .lall's also sawsomething of a IC\ i\al in thl' traditional exotic/historical ad\ l'ntulT film \\ithsuch large-scale productions as The Hall 11/11! l1"ollld Be A.illg and 'lite l1"ind(/1/(1 Ihe I_ilill (both Hn:;).

Blockbusters

The blockbustcr - massi \ely spl'CLlcular prod uctions concei \ cd and marketedon the grandest possibk scale - has fCltured importantly in _\merican, andworld, film history for elen longer than thl' action-.ldn:nture film. D. \Y.Griffith's epochal Ci\il War melodrama Hirlh oj" a _\alilill (Il)I:;), \Ihoserelease .rccording to stand.lrd histories of film marks both the culmin.rtingmoment Df cinema's formatiH decades .lml the crystallisation of \1 hat \\ouldbecome the classical HoIlY\IOOll st\ 1e, \Ias not only the lDngcst, largest andmost npensi\e _-\mericlIl film to d.ltl'; it I\as alsD the dl,<lrtst to see (\Iith

THE ACTlO"i BLOCKBUSTER 239

ticket prices for its premiere engagement fixed at the unheard-of sum of $1).IIld the most profitable, \\ith domestic box-office re\enues estimated at $3million. Subsequently, physical scale, stars, cost and length would all markout the blockbuster. Griffith himself \\as responding to the enormous successon t he liS market of recent antiquarian Italian epics such as Cahir/a (19 I3).llld QIIO l-adis? (19 q) and effecti\e1y 'American ising' the mode after his ownpI"C\ious film in the Italian style,]/h/ilh oj"Belhlllio (I9q) (see Bowser, H)90).\\ith his nest production, IllllileulI/u' (1917), Griffith aimed even higher,recreating Biblical Babylon on a scale of stupe(\ing Ia\ishness; however,llIlli/cralice's ambitious attempt to esplore an abstract concept in a set ofintcrlinked scenarios sp.mning centuries pro\ed Ell' less popular with audiencesth.ln Birlh oj" a Salllill's simple (and relctionary) family saga. A nascentHolly\\ood deri\ed t\\in lessons from Griffith's experiences: that the block­buster's massi\e earnings potential \\"as matched by colossal risks; and that tominimise those risks as tlr as possible simplicity of conception, Llmiliarity ofsubject matter and emphasising action mcr reflection were a more promisingrl'cipe than philosophical speculation to appeal to a di\erse mass public.Thus the Llilure of IlIllilculIlC( confirmed that the preferred mode of sub­sl'Ljul'nt blockbusters \\ould be, and continues to be, melodramatic.

Prior to the Second \YorlLl War, in Llct, ultra-high-budg'et spectacle filmsJ...nm\n as 'superspecials' - featured only intermittently on the major studios'

production schedules, \yhich \\ere mainly geared to offset risk through mass­producing a di\erse slate of releasl's to all market sectors in a steady stream~ ear-round, rather than emphasising one production at the expense of all theothLTs; the best-kl1(mn pre\\ar 'superspecial', the hug'ely successful GUIIC11 lilt Iltc Utlld (19.19), \\as produced independently hy Dayid O. Selznick,and \\ .IS onl' of only three pictures released by Selznick International Picturesthat \ear..1

\s .'\eale (zoo,r -I-S-50) outlines, it \\as the film industry's changing;post \\ ar fortunes that propelled large-scale prod uctions back to the fi)re, asthl' majors radically reshaped their operations in the early H)50S in the [Iceor shrinking' audiences and the loss of their e:xhibition arms. In an era whenocclsional, rather than routine, mO\-ing-going \\as becoming' the norm, high­profile one-of-a-kind 'specials' seemed a good \\ay to dra\\ this increasinglysl'kcti\e public into theatres. :herage budgcts increased markedly during the[l):;OS as blockbusters took on increasing importance, both in defining; astudio's public profile and in its annual .lccounts. This period according;lySa\\ the return of the prmerbial 'cast of thousands' in remakl's of silent-eraBiblical .md Roman epics such .IS Tltc TCII COIIl/lli/lldlllcr/ts (19:;6), QIIO Vi/dis?(1l):;I) and BCI/-HI/r (19:;9) alongside ne\Y!y minted peplum behemoths likenlc Ro!Jc (H):;3) and Cleopalra (1963) and globe-trotting costume capers likeJrlil/I/d tlte 11"IIr/d ill Eigltt) , Days (19:;9), their spectacular aspects further

240 FILM GENRE

enhanced by colour and the new widescreen f(lrmats (see below). True toHollywood traditions, postwar blockbusters relied heavily not merely on scale- crowds of milling extras and enormous sets - but on their deployment indynamic action sequences invohing daring stunt work: among the mostcelebrated were the chariot race at the Circus Maximus in Ben-Hllr and theenormous battle scenes in Spa rtaclis (1960). Blockbusters showcased theleading male action stars of the time, such as Victor Mature (Samson andDelilah, 1949; DcmetrillS ilnd tlie Gladiators, 195-t), Charlton Heston (The TenCommandments, Bt'n-Hllr, EI Cid, 196 I) and kirk Douglas (The VI/.:ings, 1959;Spartacus). Visual and photographic effects also sometimes played a part,notably in the parting of the Red Sea in The Tell COIIl/na ndlllClits. Yet ingeneral these films were stylistically quite unlike today's breathlessly kineticaction spectacles. On the contrary, their gTandiose physical scale tended tolend narrative and staging a ponderous quality while dialogue in search ofclassical gril7'itas too often came out sounding leaden and stilted - qualitiesthat in its own time also c1e~lrly separated the epic blockbuster from thefaster-moving, quicker-witted action-adventure film. Some of these difficultieswere related to the problem of satisfactorily integrating' narrati\c and spectacle,discussed below.

An important bridge to the contemporary action blockbuster was thedisaster cycle of the early 1970s, particularly Invin Allen's big-budget pro­ductions The PoseidoJl "~ihe/ltlire (1971), Eartllljllilke (H)7-t) and The TOIPeringIn/i'rl1o (1975, jointly financed by Warner Bros. and Cniversal, then a highlyunusual move+ that would become more common in the 1990S era of the$100+ million picture, for example Tilallii, J()97). Clearly, aspects of thesefilms - for instance, the emphasis on costly \'isual effects, large-scale actionsequences, simple narrative premises and novel technologies like Sensurround(used for Eartllljllake and Rollerroaslcr, 1976) foreshadow aspects of thecontemporary blockbuster. Ho\vever, their general st~ listic conservatism,including a reliance on all-star casts studded with Old Hollywood faces (AvaGardner, Shelley Winters, Fred .\staire, William Holden) rooted themrecognisably in the old-style blockbuster culture of the J()50S and early 1960s.

Thus the successful alloying of the action-adventure film and the block­buster was by no means predictable. :\nd in Llet, neither.la II'S nor Sia r 11 itrs,the two enormously successful films usually credited with transforming "JewHollywood ~lesthetics and economics, in themsehes typified the actionblockbuster th.u would achieve such unprecedented industrial centrality inHollywood in the 19Ros and since. Rather, the most important elements fromeach - elements themselves artfullv synthesised and refined from currenttrends - \vould subsequently be distilled into the new action blockbuster.

]illI'S, as has often been noted, bears affinities to the dis~lster film as \vellas other mid-H)7os genres such as the conspiracy film (in its portrayal of the

1',

THE ACTION BLOCKBUSTER ..LI.l

~Ittempts of .\mity's petty bourgeois elite to suppress news of the rogue sharkin their own economic interests), \vhile also foreshadowing the later stalk­and-sLIsh horror pictures . .\clore character-centred than most of its successors,7<1l1's built up a relentless momentum in its s.ec~m~ hal.f that \~·.oul.d be much'imitated . .lillI'S' presciencc consisted above all m Its Ic011lcally eftectl\e market­in~ campaign mastlTminded by -'le\ president Le\v Wasserman - thet~l1~lOUS poster image of the gigantic phallic shark nosing its \vay towards then,lked female swimmer; pioneering high-impact TV spot ads; the avalanche(If pre-publicity centring on the film's troubled production and the travails ofits principal special effect, thc mechanical shark 'Bruce'; its 'wide' opening(i.c. simultaneously in several hundred theatres natiol1\vide rather than inselectcd prestige theatres on the East and \Vest coasts) and summer release;its runa\\ ay success - quickly becoming the highest-grossing film of all timeto datc - transforming a traditionally minor season into the fulcrum of

Hollywood's fiscal year (see Gomery, ZOOT 7Z-6).7i1I1'S at least was recognisably a blockbuster production, based on a best­

se!'ling nO\el, its eventual negative cost substantially exceeding its alreadyconsiderable budget. Slar liars, by contrast, although it too overran itsoriginal budget (largely because of R&D costs associated with its innovativespecial effects techniques), \vas not an especially expensive film; it was also aconsiderably darker horse and initiallv regarded with confusion and little

, ' ,optimism by its distributor Twentieth Century-Fox. Compared to]aII'S, Slar11 ,Irs represents a much more decisive stylistic break with mainstream J<)7os110llywood. "ot only did it revive a genre - the action space Lmtasy .. barelyseen since the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers seri.ds of the 1930S; as Peter"Luller (zo0-t) notes, George J,ucas targeted his film firmly at a juvenile(adolescent and younger) audience, at this stage an almost imisible marketsector barely catered to by Disney's low-budget live-action Llmily comcdiesand ignored by the studios, who since the success of Tlte Grad/lale, Bun/lie<I/lJ C1l'tle (both J<)Clj) and Eas)' Rldt'l' (1<)6<)) had assiduously been courtingthe colleg;e-age audience. Both the film's box-office returns and e\'en morethe vast new profit centres caned out by the associated merchandisinghonanza confirmed the logic of Lucas's strategy. FOrI1ully, Slar lIilrs wasalso distinctive ~md hugely influential, departing much more decisi\'e1y than]1111'.1' - from the more relaxed approach to plotting and characterisation thathad typified the 'Holly\\()od Renaissance'. Slar liars is ruthlessly focused ondcli\cring a specific and ne\v kind of mO\ing-going experience that combinesthe visual splendours of the old-style blockbuster (and its imperial themes)II ith the fleet-footed rough-and-tumble of the action-adventure film. Yet ahistorical perspective on genre film l'('veals that the nO\elty of all this canea"ih be o\ersuted. Emphatically simplistic in its .lpproach to character and!11orality (\vhich is by no means to say wholly uninterested in them, especially

242 FILM GENRE

the latter), episodic, thrilling and spectacular, SII/r l~itrs in fact drilled downpast the superficial realism of classic Hollywood's prnailing regimes ofverisimilitude to retrieve something' like a distilled essence of Holly\\ood'sfoundational melodramatic mode.

TRADITIONS OF SPECTACLE

Where SII/r Wars could indeed he credited \\ith an innO\ati\e genericsynthesis was in its inauguration of a ne\\ regime of \isual pleasure in whichaction Is spectacle and vice versa. The nO\-elty of this action-spectacle alliancearises from the ways it conjoins narrative and spectacle. Spectacular elementshave often been understood as lending to narratiye redundancy or eveninterfering with narratiye inlegration, interrupting the flO\\ of the story byencouraging spectators to contemplate the technical achievement of a specta­cular sequence - scenery, production design, special effects and the like - atthe expense of empathetic imolyement in the characters and the unfoldingplot. The clumsiness of 19)OS epics has been cited as an e.xample of the waythat the need to gi\c maximum exposure to spectacular production values isat odds with the creation of a compelling narrative, as longer shot lengthsresulted both from the visual density of the panoramic images amI (at least inthe early years of widescreen processes) uncertainty O\er the correct handlingof the horizon LIlly extended frame. !\loreO\er, whereas the best-known accountsof classicll Hollywood cinema stress the centrality of narrative, .spectacle asa stylistic dominant is associated \\ith the pre-classical cinema.

The post-classicll action/spectacle cinema has been interpreted in somequarters as a return of sorts to the 'cinema of attractions" in Tom Gunning'sinfluential conception the organising principles of what used to be called'primitiye' (nO\\ more usually 'early') cinema. In a series of essays, Gunning(1990, 1(9)) identifies in early (pre-ll)lS) silent cinema an oq;anisationalprinciple radically different fi-om the linear, character-centred narratiyes thatcame to predominate with the ad\cnt of the feature film. Early cinema reliedrather, Gunning argues, on an 'aesthetic of 'lstonishment'. Films of this perioddid not solicit audiences' em pathetic identification \\ith psychologicallymotiyated and developed characters, nor their immersion in a complex plotanimated by the interactions of these ch,Ir<lcters ,IS \vell as enigmas anddramatic plot rC\ersals. Instead, early films engaged ,ludiences by imitingthem to manel at yisual spectacle. Initially, the miLlcle of tilmic moyementitself dre\\ large audiences: l11,my early films consist 'merely' of documentaryscenes of modern (especi,dly urban) life that allowed spectators to reviewtheir own emironments in unprecedented \Yays. The ways cinema addressedits spect,ltors at this stage could be compared to carniyal 'attLlctions' or

,

I

J

THE ACTION BLOCKBUSTER 243

\audeyille 'turns" and prior to the development of purpose-huilt cinemas infixed locations films were often yiewed as touring exhibitions in portahle,luditoriums, sometimes eyen actually as lurt of travelling fairs; short filmsthemselY-es might comprise merely one element, or 'turn', in a variety bill,llternating with stage acts and musical numbers. Although the silent cinemanl0\cd to\\ards more extended and complex narratives to retain its audienceonce the ne\\ medium's nO\clty faded, the principle of the marvellousrenuined central, and early narratives remained highly reliant on spectacle,\I hether understood as scenic effects, exciting action sequences or increas­inglY elahorate special effects sequences like the eruption of Mount Etna atthe opening of Cablrla.

The hugely inf1uential account hy Bord\\e1I, Staiger and Thompson(J()S~) asserts that the spectacular effects of early cinema, with their tendencyto o\crwhclm or stall the unfolding story, and the ensuing distanciation ofthe audience, \\ere suppressed in the classical style in Enour of linearn,lIT,lti\cs centred on psychologically motiyated, goal-oriented characters. As\\c ha\c seen, hO\\ever, the dominance of narrative \yas hound up with filmindustry structures and economics, and the postwar need to recaptureshrinking audiences and - not least - to challenge the impact of tcleyision ledto a hc<n~ inyestment in technologies that could promise the cinema spectatora scnsor~ experience distinct hom, and in aesthetic terms at least enormouslysuperior to, monochrome low-definition early T\. The large-scale conyers ionto colour, the introduction of \\idesereen processes ,md stereophonic sound, as\\ell as shorter-lived Elds like stereoscopic 3-D, all sencd to emphasise the visualspectacle of cinema-going. The ultra-\\idescreen process Cinerama, whosenon-narratiYe spectacle film Tltls Is ell/cmll/il! ran fill' t\\O years in a speciallyCOll\ (Tted theatre in Times Square, in particular seemed in many ways athnl\\hack to earl~ cinema's 'aesthetic of astonishment' (sec Belton, 1(92).

In Llct, narratiye and spectacle ha\c alY\ays existed in a two-way relation­ship __ \s much as classical Hollywood narratiyes fiJeus on compelling centralcharacters through whom n,lrrati\e incident is focalised, ample space stillnists fill' the narrati\(O to pause and take in, for instance, large-scale tableauxthat aim to impress the spectator by adyertising the opulence and scale of theproduction ..\ good example is the hurning of .\tlanta sequence in Gill/C Hi/Itlite Jlll/d, which on the one hand excites because of the perilous situation ofthe central characters, hut on the other amazes the spectator with the sheer"cale of thc destruction in rich (and in 19-+0 still no\el) Technicolor. Theelabor,lte preparation fiJI' the sequencc \\as publicised by the film's producer]),)\ id Selznick ,md heavily cO\ered in the press, with the result that theburning of .\tlanu beclme one of the film's principal 'attractions' (featuringprominently in the poster art), ,mticipating today's media attention to

1111l(J\ati\e special effects techniques like CGI (TCrJll/l/alilr 2: ]/Ii/glf/ml Day,

244 FII.M (jENRE

1991; ]/I/'(/ssic Pilrl.:, 1(93) or Thc /vlillrix's (1999) 'bullet time', Comerselyeven very early cinema \vas not devoid of narrative interest; it simpi;presented very basic (by comparison \vith classical narratives) narrativematerial in uncomplicated \\ays, Cinerama certainly departed radically fromclassical practices, but the 1950S historical epics - although we h~l\e alreadynoted their difficulties in successfully integrating narrative and spectacle _deployed spectacle in more conventional ways, The question of spectacle iscloscly related to that of visual pleasure and stylistic 'e:-.:cess' generally, and aswe have seen such 'excessive' elements form an important part of the appealof genres such as the musical ,- \vhose alternation of 'straig'ht' dramaticpassages with spectacular 'numbers' offers one paradigm for the blockbuster'salternation of scenes of f:1Il1ilial or romantic intimacy \\ith large-scale actionsequences - and of course melodrama, the action film's domin~l11t mode.

Perhaps all the same Slilr Wars (1977) docs mark an evolutionary turning_point for the Holly\\ood film, away from the more reflective mood of theearlier I (J7os (which in any event by the end of the decade \\as giving way tolarge-scale, ultra-high-budget 'auteur blockbusters' like .\'1'11' } '111'1.:, New

Yllrle (H)77), ,lpllm/J'psc NIIII' (HJ79), j(J.!-/ (1979), and llcl/'i'clI'S Gilli' (1980),all with a notably spectacular Jimension) to\\ards action-driven 'popcornmovies'. However, the e:-.:tent to \\hich this shift imolved a transformation ofclassical narrative style, e\en a rnersion to a kind of 'cinema of attractions',is much more contentious..\ f~l\ourite retCrence point in this debate is StarJ;Vars' f~lIllOUS opening shot the vast, seemingly endless bulk of the massiveImperial cruiser gTinding overhead into the starfield, its oppressive \\eightbearing on the audience, Jiminishing' us and crushing' us back into our seats.In narrative terms, this shot quite eftCcti\"Cly emblematises the brutal,authoritarian tyranny of the Galactic Empire. Yet audiences in the mainappear not to have responded to the cruiser's oppressi\ e occupation of theframe with fear or horror; rather, the sheer scale of the imag:e appears to haveelicited a widespread sense of exhihlrated ~l\\e the first .'\e\\ Hollywoodexample of the 'WO\\ f:lCtor' that would become such an important andfi'equently mobilised aspect of the dnelopmtnt of the blockbuster (morerecently a central element of such meg'a-hits as Ti/il/llc (Il)(n) and Tltc Lord0(11/1' Rillgs (2001 3)).

This 'WO\\' response - often setn as a 'dumbed-down' vtrsion of theJiminution and liminality of the self expressed in Romantic theories of theSublime - has led to charges that the blockbuster tllcourages the sptctator to

relinquish the adult capacity for critical discrimination in Ll\ our of anundiscriminating: rapture. The director most strongly associ~lted with thisrapturous regression is Steven Spielberg, some of whose films - not~lbly CloseJ:'/lili/l/lll'rs IIrll/t' Tltirtf A'illt! (an7) v~dorise a pre-adolescent fixation on'\nmderment' at the expense of such inessenti~d and umvclcome complications

I

I

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THE ACTlO"J BLOCKBUSTER 245.-----------------------------------

of ~Idult life as parenthood, sexual Im'e, professional work, etc. A much­discussed sequence early in ]urilssic Pill'/'" (1993) when the dinosaurs are forthe first time rnealed in all their CGI wonder to both characters and~luJicnct seems to offer the viewer a virtual primer on the 'correct' way tolook at such man cis. The dinosaurs' initial appearance is bracketed by amontage of close-ups of the various characters gawping' in astonishment, butquite clearly not all looks are equally validated by the film: the unaffectedre~lctions of .\lan Grant and Ellie Sattler, the central couple, in which initialshock is transformed into amazed delight, is contrasted to the frankly.1\ ~Iricious gaze of the shady lawyer Gennaro ('we are going to make so muchmoney!'), The cynical yet likeable theoretical mathematician Ian Malcolm isa more complex proposition, yet the transformation of his initial hostility('the crazy fools.,. they actually did it!') into pleasure, as a reluctant grincrceps across his bce, can be seen as a redemptive triumph of innocent aweO\er \\orld-\\eary over-sophistication: unlike the greedy lawyer, who will inshort order become the dysfunctional theme park's first btality, Malcolm\\ ill sunivt the forthcoming ordeal. Finally there is John Hammond, thegenially cntreprenturi~d sire of the \\hole n~nture, whose ringing delivery ofthe line '\\elcome .,. to ]urilssic Parle" - addressed ostensibly to the othercharacters, but Jehered frontally, direct to camera and thus effectively to the~ludience segues into the film's first 'money shot', a large-scale extreme long­shot scenic tableau of herds of dinosaurs teeming' across the island, held forseveral seconds to all(l\\ the spectator's eyes to scan the image (this shot drewspontaneous applause from ~llIdiences at the film's premiere engag·ements).

.\ scene such as this \\ould seem to support the charge that the contem­pOLlry blockbuster privileges spectacle over narrative, Quite clearly, the self­consciolls 'presentational' mode ('\Velcome to Jurassic Park!'), the length ofthe sequence in general ~md the prolongation of the climactic special-effectsshot in particular, and the redunJant emphasis on the gaping amazement ofall the characters, one by one, is excessive to simple narrative purpose;indeed, it effectively suspends narrative progTess, albeit only briefly, in orderto emphasise the spectacular visual eftCcts (in the no\el, the \,isitors'realisation of the nature of HammonJ's project is triggered in a much moreunderstated \vay). Clearly, too, the sequence is constructed this \vay as so tospeak a textual acknowledgement that a large part of]/ll'iIssic Parle's 'dra\\" isprecisely the grounJ-breaking combination of aninutronics and then-novelC(; I technology to create cOl1\incingl~ photorealistic (or, in Pierson's (2002)

l1lore precise usage, photosimubti\c) Jinosaurs. Permitting or actuallyt:ncourag'ing' spectatorial scrutiny of these visual effects - f()r instance, by~etting them 'on Jisplay' in a prolongeJ unbroken shot, as here -- asserts theJill11-m~lkers' confidence in the illusionistic viability of their creations (thusnlarking a significant development in CGI's mimetic utility). Something'

246 FILM GENRE

much more complex than the usual 'suspension of disbelief is going on here:rather, a consciously disbelic('i/lg spectator is in rited to assess, dispassionately,the technical achierement and measure it against both their expectations andagainst criteria of 'Iifelikeness'. Jllrassi£' Pilrl: asks us, in short, if \\e can seethe join and if we cannot asks us to celebrate the artistry inrohed. Ha\ing

Hammond 'present' Jurassic Park/Jlll"iIssil ParI: does not elide the difference

betwcen the diegetic and the computerised and pro-filmic recreation of

dinosaurs (through recombinant DNA and the combined efforts of Industrial

Light and Magic and Stan Winston, respectirely), it adrertises it.

However, it does not 1'0110\\ from the presence of such sequences centredon spectacular display - and other examples are not hard to find - that

narratire has been simply displaced by spectacle in contemporary block­

busters. On the contrary, as Geoff King (2000a, 2000b) has argued, narrative

remains not merely a 'carrier' for spectacle but integral to its signification.

]lImssll Pild· has been frequently cited as a film with only a nugatory interest

in narratire and characterisation; and certainly, fe\\ audience members were

drawn to theatres by the compelling dramatic interest of :\lan Grant's

cOlwersion to liking kids. Yet follo\ring the scene discussed abore, the

remaining major effects scenes an: ~dl fully integrated into a thrilling and

suspenseful narratire. Eren if the human characters are stereotypical and

one-dimensional and it is the CGI dinosaurs \\'e 'really' \r~lIlt to see, the

dinosaurs themselres - especially, of course, the \illainous relociraptors- are

narratirised and rendered dynamic by their riolent interaction \rith the

humans. Indeed, it mig'ht be argued that the inhumanity of the film's

antagonists partly compensates for, C\cn if it doesn't excuse, the thinness of

the characterisations gi\cn a straight choice bet\\'een humans and reptiles

we hare no difliculty deciding who to root for (\rith the exception of the

sleazy computer h~lCker Nedry). In a sense, this starkest possible - species­

based - oppositional structun: mig'ht be seen as a kind ofrcdlluill ild illlsllrdum

of melodrama's habitually polar narrati\e and moral schemas. There is in fact

no such thing as 'pure' spectacle outside of the world of L\I:\.\. films at

museums and amusement parks (and possibly not nen there: see King,

2000b). Claims that contemporary action blockbusters hare 'dispensed \rith'

narratire usually re\cal themsehes as judg;ements on the I:illds and !Jllillil)! of

narrati\c sophistication and satisfaction offered b~ such films - that IS, on

their perceired inadequacy.

ACTION MELODRAMA

In the wake OfJIIll'S and Slilr Wllrs, the 19kos ~lction film di\erg'CLI into two

distinct strains, each clearly stamped in the melodramatic mode. The first

,

1

TIlE ACTIO" BLOCKHL'STER 247

looked to the blood-and-thunder tradition of the 'ten-twenty-thirty' centthe~ltre, the nickelodeon and the silent serials: Slilr frllrs and the Lucas/Spielberg collaboration Rllidas III' l lic LlIsl . ·}rl: (19k I) established an alliancebd\\cen action-achenture and the fantastic that persisted into the 1990S andbe\(lIld (Slllrglllc! I 99.j.; Thc .HIIIII/li)!, [9(9). Rlliders and its sequels (19k.j.,I()S!)) self-consciously rC\i\cd perhaps the action-adrenture film's most

paradigmatic form, the exotic quest narratire, and this traditionalist genreI1lodel \ras adopted by rarious imitators including ROII/II/Ii'illg 11((' SlllllC ([9k.j.),

!Ji" hllllMc ill Lillic CII/IIII (J()kl» and Islall r ( [9k7). The reappearance of the"

~Irch-imperialist Yictorian ~Ichcnturer :\Ilan Q.uatermain in two I<l\\'er-budget

a<l\enture films (1985, J()k7) confirmed that, as Robert Stam and Ella Shohat

(Il)!).j.) among others han: noted, Rlliders also reaffirmed the genre's Oriental­

ist perspecti\ e (in a particularly unreconstructed fashion in the first sequel,

IlIdiilllil ]11111'.1' illid lhc Tell/pie II(DIIIIII/).

.\ leall\\hilc, a second strain translated melodramatic traditions of

orcrwrought emotion and pathos into a nord, parodically masculine action

\ crn~lcular through a distinct sub-genre of 'hard' action films th,1I emergnl

into prominence during the 19kos \rith the success of Tllc TCl'lllllllllllr (19k.j.)and J)I( III/rd (198k). Taking their cue fi'om [(nOS urban rigilante ,1ml 'rogue

cop' films like Th( Frclldl Cllllllerl ill II and J)irl)! HilOT (J(n I), J)uilh Wish

(1(17.j.), Th( 1:\l(I'III1I1I1/lIr (19ko) and their sequels, these films translated the

lonc m~de ~Ichenturer of the action-adrenture film into contemporary urban

and \\arzone settings, courting an R rating; \\ ith extreme amI gT~lphic rioknce.

\\hereas the action-bnLlsy cycle solicited a pre-Oedipal \ronder, the 'hard'

action films expanded ]illl'S' emphasis on a re,lsserted masculinity and male

bonding (in the film's staging of the confront<ltion \\ith the shark as a rite of

p~lssage for the three principal male chaLlCters, and its explicit marginal­isation of the domestic - coded 'fem~lle' - sphere). ]iI 11'.\" climactic personal

confi'ontation bet\reen Brodr and the sh~lrk also established a trend that

\\ ould be fol1<mcd more closely b~ the nule ,ICtion films than by the Lmtasy­

,1<\\ entures that emerged in the \\ake of S/lir Wilrs, \rhich often - as in Rlliders

or ]Ill'llssi( Porl: -- rendered the proLlgonists \irtllal bystanders to a climactic

\ iSlIal effects sequence. The protagonists of the 'hard' action films \\ere most

ohm police officers (CII/lI'II, 19k6; Die Hord; Red /lea l, Il)kk; l:\/n'lIIe Prc/Ildi(c,

IljS7; Tallgll IIlId Cash, 19k!); Lell/lll Weapoll), soldiers (ROIIIIIII: Firs/ Blolld

POri 1I, .lIissillg ill.J.t'lioll, [9k.j.) or paramilitaries (CIIIII/I/lI//lIII, 19k.j.; RIIII'

f)eol, IC)k5; Preda/llr, 19kk), but they m\ed little to the police procedural or

combat genres. Rather, the ne\\ male action heroes of the 19kos seemed to

l11an~ commentators to embody in lurcly coded form some of the pre\ailing

Political orthodoxies of the Reagan era, such as rampant imli\idualism,

hostility to 'Big GO\ernment' and the \alorisation of 't1'<lditional \,dues' (i.e.

the restoration of \\hite patri~lrch~11 PO\\'Cl' after the challenges of the 191>0s)

248 FILM liEN RE

(sec Ryan and Kellner, 1988: 217-.1-3; Britton, [()86; Traube, 1992: 28-66).The 1980s action hero mostly sun'i\ed in beleaguered isolation - perhapsaided by a sidekick, often a \\'Oman or a person of colom - intensified bothby the seemingly impossible odds he faced and the endemic 11.1"S in .\mericansocial and political structures that critically impeded his heroic efforts. In an

era when it became the established political wisdom that electoral success Was

best achieved by running as an 'outsider', it is un surprising that Federal

government agencies are often excoriated as incffecti\T or outright corrupt.

Rambo's betrayal and abandonment by the craven C1.-\ man Crocker in

Ralflho: Firsl Blood ParI I I (transparently intended as a re-enactment of the

film's fantasy 'stab-in-the-back' account of the Yietnam War) is a paradigm_

atic example. Smugness and incompetence rather than treachery characterise

the LAPD and the FBI in Die Hard, \\ hile political infighting and sclerotic

hureaucracy imperil heroic US special forces in Clellr 1I11t! Preselll Danger

(1994)·External enemies, however, remained the male action hero's principal

antagonists. Reaganite action films like Ralllho: Flrsl Blood ParI I I and RamboI II ([()89) as \\ell as the imasion Emtasies Red Da 11'11 (ll)84) and ltmlsioll USA(1985) vigorously exploited the rcne\\ed Cold War tensions and reim'ented

the diabolical yet EHally unimaginative (compared with the improvisatory

genius of his US adversary) SO\'iet enemy. With the transformation of the

Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era and the rapid final collapse of

Communism from 1989 to 1991, new villains emerged in the form of'inter­national terrorists', usually associated \\ith the ne\\ly designated 'rogue states'

that challeng:ed American heg:emony in the l\liddle East: Liby.m terrorists

feature in Bile/.: 10 Ihe F/llllre (1985) and the Top G/l1I derivative IrOIl Eagle(1986); in Top G/l1I (1986) itself the na tionality of the enemy fighters is

unstated bUI they arc clearly identified as Arabs. Generic Arab terrorists,

first featured in Black S/llIday (1977), \\ere the antagonists in n'lIe Lies (1994)

and The Siege (1998), hut Palriol Gallles (1992) and BlolI'lI .lll'a)' (1994)feature Irish Republican extremists (carefully dis.lssociated from the IRA in

order not to offend sentimental Irish-American identification \\ith the

Nationalist cause). The collapse of the SO\iet Lnion allowed for the imention

of revanchist Stalinist diehards seeking: to restore Communism in ThePackage (1989),lir Force (Jlle (1997) and Tile SII/II or. ill Fears (2002). A

Bosnian extremist maddened by the timorousness of CS policy during the

Yug'oslay \\ar attempts to set off a portable nuclear device in l'\ew York in

The Pmll'lIIaker (1997). Globetrotting hired assassins, their paymasters

obscure, turned up in The Jacf.:al (1997) and Farc/O/F Extreme rightistgroups also occasionally featured, either as home-grO\\n bscists (Die I larderor henchmen of the apartheid regime in South .\fricI (Lelilit! 11('apoll II).Karl Gruber, the Armani-dad master criminal of Die Hard, masquerades as

TIlE ACTION BLOCKBUSTER 249---------------------------------

I terrorist and demands the release of obscure political criminals whose;l,lll1eS he has read in Tillie magazine as a cover for his straightforward heist

operation. ,. .The 1980s 'hard' action picture was dommated by such Immobile,

Illuscubr action stars as Syh'ester Stallone and .'\rnold Sch\\'arzenegger, and

the rather less prestigious Jean-Claude van Damme, Chuck Norris, StephenSeJgJl and I)olph J.undgren, of \\hom a number began their careers as

1l1'1rtial arts practitioners (or of course bod~builders). That three of these

sLlrs (Sch\\arzenegger, y.m Damme and Lundgren) were European-born and

deli\ ered their lines in hea\ily accented English, tended to support thear\.(uJ11ent that nuances of characterisation and motiyation were being largely

si:lclined in fa\'()lIr of muscular action in \\hich the male bodies on disphly

sccmcd as machine-tooled and gleamingly technological as the \\capomy and

other hard\\are they deployed. Susan ]eff()rds (1994) argues that the 1980s

S;lW the rise of a 'hard body' aesthetic as part of a conscious effort to rectify

the perceived (literal, figurative and political) 'soft bodies' of the Carter

\ears, a period \\hen (according' to :'\e\\ Right mythology) an emasculated

'\l1lerica ElCed collapsing morale at home and eroding prestige abroad. IIer

argumCl1t is apparently strikingly borne out by a no\e1ty in 1980s 'hard'

<lCtioll films, the male hero's repeated subjection to extraordinarily graphic

ph ~ sical privations and torture. Rambo is crucified by sadistic Russians and

\iel11,lmese; John McClane in Die Hartf is f()rced to run barefoot across an

office floor stre\\ll \\ith broken glass (a suhsequent scene shlms him

c\tLlCting shards of glass from the soles of his feet); ",lurphy and Rig'gs in

I.,.///(t! Jreaplill II arc subjected to prolonged electric-shock torture; even

Rllck\' Balboa suffers ritual pOllndings at the hands of mouthy ghetto trash

(Rlld')' III, Il)82) and SO\iet supermen (Rod-:r II', 1(85). The punishment

mctcd out to these male bodies masochistically pO\\erfully mobilises melo­

dramatic tropes of pathos and \'ictimhood to render an inchoate yet IXT\'asive

sense of inj my on the part of patriarchal \\hite males. Their protagonists'

ahility to take enormous punishment and come out not just standing but

li~hting asserts the reaction against the passi\it~ and '\\eakness' of the 1960salld [(Jlos.

BRI.'\JGING IT ALL BACK HOl\IE

Jeft()rds sees the representation of the masculine body in popular culture as

~l pi \'otal articulation of n~ltional self-identity and goes on to argue that

jIJllo\\in()' the reactively yiolent but successful reassert ion of male po\\er in~ .

the earh [980s, the later 1l)8os and [990S sa\\ a further modification of the

ill1,lgc of the male action hero, undertaken from a resecured patriarchal

250 FILM GENRE

hegemony. During this period, 'hard bodies' like Sylwster Stallone saw theircareers decline dramatic.tlly £i'om their mid-I<)80s peak, LKed \\ith the rise ofless one-dimensional male stars like Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, :\lichaelDouglas, Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson and :'\icolas Cage (more recent additionsto this list might include John Cusack, the rejmenated John Tnn'olta, andthe boyish Leonardo DiCaprio). The more f1exible personae of the new starsallowed them to dramatise the successful negotiation of male crisis ratherthan simple displays of military prowess. Marriage, the family and/orparenthood emerged as central preoccupations of the action theme duringthis period, in films as \aried as Die HI/rd, Temlli/{/lor 2: ]//dg/l/mt DI/Y, TrueLies and FI/ce! Ofl"( 1<)<)7). The action stars of the I<)<)OS were also likely toalternate out-and-out action \ehicles \\ith domestically-centred melodramas

like FI/II/I·Jllratiio// (1<)87), Regl/rdi//g J!mrJ' (1<)<)1) and t'j'es Tlide Shut(1<)<)9) that permitted a more extensi\ e elaboration of their stressed andembattled masculinitics. In a large number of films, 'female' melodramatictropes of helplessness, sacrifice and emotion.d crisis transferred themselveswholesale onto their male protagonists. HowC\er, whereas in the domesticami Llmily melodramas of the J()50S the stylistic excess through \\hich suchpathologies f(Hmd symptomatic expression had of generic necessity beenconfined to /l/ise-m-S((://e and perf(lrmanCe, in the ne\\ action melodrama the

massi\e o\'Crkill of the action se4uences themsel\es - as so often noted, oftenbarely advancing the narrati\e but simply prO\iding opportunities for therepeated statement, on an e\er-Iarger scale, of the same antagonistic situation

expresses the desire f(lr a transf()rmation and resolution of the intractableconflicts gcner.lted in the personal and bmilial contexts. (This complex, itsmelodramatic roots .1I1d its acting-out through the action genre, arc allsubjected to excoriating satirical treatment in Fighl CIII/I, 1<)<)<).)

The changcs in the action film during the I <)<)os may 'llso relate to itsincreasing industrial centrality. With the exception of Stallone, none of the'hard bod\' 1<)80s male action stars - not e\en Sch\\arzeneg'ger until the \eryeml of the decade commanded the blockbuster budgets and associatedmarketing and release strategies associated \\ith the decade's SF-fantasyad\entures. They did, ho\\(\cr, perform particularly strongly both in home\ideo and f(lreig'n markets. By the late J{)80s, these markets \\ere becoming

increasingly important to Holly\\ood's profitability and action st.lrs accordinglybecame incre'lsingly central to studio production strategies. ,\t the sametime, hO\\e\'Cr, the enlarged scale of productions featuring these action stars

entailed some softening of the often brutal tenor of their earlier \ehicles, inpursuit of the \\ider audience enabled by a PG-13 rating. ,\s agents of this

process, action \ehicles increasingly relied on humour, cartoon \iolcnce andthe combat of depersonalised threats arising: from elemental natural forces

rather than the macho LIce-off against criminal conspirators.

J

THE ACTIO:\[ BLOCKBUSTER 251----------------------

Thus, supported by the new digital technologies, the late 1990S saw a cycleof natund disaster mo\ies, including tornadoes in lIFistcr (1<)<)6), volcanoes in!JiI//IC's Pel/k and foltl///o (both H)97), asteroid or comet collisions inJrll/l/gL'lidll/l and Deep I/l/pl/(1 (both 1(98), geophysical damage in The Core

(2003) and catastrophic climate c~ange in The !JI/Y .~/icr TO/l/orro11J (200{).'rhe same technologies made possible the creation of the fantasy-ad\entureJ.indscapcs of the three-part The Lord 4thI' Ri//gs (2001-3), the rein\entionof the J()50s-style SF monster picture in hulepe//d('//(e DI/Y (1996) and God:::.illl/(1<)<)8), the reimagining of classical ci\ilisations in GII/dialor and Troy, ande\en the rC\i\al of the naval s\\ashbucklcr and the pirate film in IViaster al/dCOl/I/I/lllliia and Pira Ies IIrtltl' CilnbbciI /I (both 2003). \Vhile male heroics arecentral to these films, sexual romance is mostly subordinated to the ongoingconcern \\ith parenting. In the g,-reat majority of the SF-fantasy vehides, the\ Ianichean melodramatic model integral to Hollywood narrative from itsc.lrliest period is some\\h.lt modified by either the impersonal or the inhumannature of the threat, prou ucing in some cases a novel and almost abstract moralLllldscape in \\hich moral qualities are not establisheu and tested relationally,as in historic melodramatic anu Hollywood practice, but simply prO\ided\\ itll a scries of blue-screen emironments in which to act themselves out.

BEYO:\'I) HOLLYWOOD

\s already noteu in this chapter, brge-scale productions, particularly thoseproduced in Italy, pbyed an important part in the consolidation of thefeal ure film \\orldwiue as the uominant form of narrati \'e cinema bd(lre andduring the First \\orld War. In the LIte silent periou, well-capitalised Euro­pean studios like LF.\ in Germany and Studios Rcunis in France periodicallysuppor!cd spectacuLIr productions such as ,\Idl'lipo!ls (Germany 1(27), resIII.,crl/bles ([<)25-26) and La\Ien'cillc/lsc l'ie dc .JCII/IIIC d'. Irc (France I<)27).\lier the Second World \Var, hO\\C\er, the massi\ely reduced uimensions ofLuropean film production as a "hole (and the virtual obliteration of thelargest national film industry, Germany's) combined with soaring production

costs in these henilv unionised industries to ensure that blockbusterproductions \\ere a rare luxury. During the Cold \Var, only the state-runSO\ iet cinem,l consistently produced films that could be dasseu as block­hU<.,ters on the post\\ar Holly\\ood model (colour, widescreen, epic sweep

'li1d scale, etc.) \\ith enormous productions such as Trilr illlil Pel/((, (I<)6S-67)and major historical recreations of subjects from the Great Patriotic War (sccCh,lpter 5). Recently, EL tax regimes ha\e createu a more [nourable climate

lilr European co-production; ho\\ever, problems of lang'uage translation tendto mean that large-scale pan-European \entures are filmed either in English

252 FILM GENRE

(HllelllY ill Ihe Gilles, 2001) or in dual-language \ersions ('lOilll o("-1rc, 1999).The much laf[;cr domestic markets and burgeoning economies of East Asiaand the Pacific Rim make supporting indigenous blockbusters more \iable,and Berry (2003) and Willis (2003) explore the economics and culturalmeanings of the contemporarY blockbuster in Korea and China and in India. ,respecti\e1y,

CASE STUDY: f) 10'1,' P IH PI C 1 (MIMI LEDER, I 99 8) /I R M , I (; F f) f) OY (MICHAEL BAY, I 9 9 8 )

The release within two months of each other of two films \\ith all butidentical narrati\e premises - the threat of global .mnihilation by collisionwith a comet (Deep Ill/pilei) or asteroid Clf111i1geddoll) - pro\Oked \\idespreadand derisi\e comment about Holly\\ood's imaginati\T bankruptcy. In fact,the coincidence \\as not all that surprising, The subject itself \\as not new,haying been depicted in pre\'ious special-effects eras in 11l1Cl/ Worlds Collide(I<)5I) and Meleor (I<)Ho), and according to Bart (1999: qO-3) two otherasteroid pictures concurrently in the planning stages had to be cancelledwhen news broke of Da \id Bn)\\ n's and Jerry Bruckheimer's ri\al produc­tions. A principal moti\ation for all of these projects \\as the prmen marketfor cinematic de\astation on [he largTst possible scale follo\\ing the success ofVolca/lo and Dallie 's Peal: (both I<)(J7) the pn.'\ious summer season and aboveall illdepClldl'llcc Day (I<)()(l) the year before that, These films might be seen

as extending, with the aid of the nc\\ generation of CGI effects, the reach ofthe disaster films of the I(J7os, \\'hich bar Fill'/h1lllill..,C typically confinedthemseln.'s to local catastrophes in skyscrapers, mTrturned liners and so on.

Literal end-of-the-\\ orld cinema (in J(im '"e\\man's ( I<)<)9) phrase) renderedcatastrophe global, not local (albeit the affecti\e dimension of \\orldwideapoGJlypse was, as \\T shall sec in both cases, to be realised C\:clusi\e1y throughnormati\e American subject positions), Thus asteroid collisions \\ere merely

one olwious narrati\T carrier for the pro\Tn audience-getter of spectacularannihilation; I<)<)Ws other major summer release, (;od:::.illa (jokily alluded to in

-1nllageddoll's opening sequence), pn)\'ided a different route to the same end.In hlCt, I<J9H sa\\ a third end-of-the-\\orld film, the Im\-budget Canadian

independent film Lasl Nl:~/1! (not released in the CS until I<)<)(»), \\hose

localised appruach to global e"tinction, alternating sardonic and poignant\ignettes ,lCross a small group of characters from different social and ethnic

backgrounds as the clock remorselessly ticks dO\m to doomsday -- unspecifiedand indirectly represented but utterly unaHlidable - contrasts tellingly \\'ith

the shO\\'-and-tell aesthetic, as \\'ell as the classic melodramatic tropes of self-

sacrifice and last-minute rescue, that organise both HoIlY\\(JOd blockbusters. I

II

THE ACTIO:-J BLOCKBUSTER 253.---_------------------------------

From /rJll'l~('ddlill (1<)<)1-\), Rl'produl'l'd l'ounl'S\ of Touchstone/The k.obal Collel'tion,

-\s J(ing: (2000a: 16-1--70) notes, althoug'h the t\\O films arc bound tog'ether1)\ their common promise - clearly stated in trailers and poster art- to deli\era\\c-inspiring spectacular \isions of disaster, they are significantly differentin some important narrati\e and affccti\T respects. Produced by Dreamworks

SJ((i, the studio set up in [9<)-1- by Ste\cn Spielberg', Jeffi'ey Katzenberg andDa\'id Geffen on the prospectus of making more 'thoughtful' and 'film­maker-oriented' blockbusters than the existing majors, Deep ill/PilCI is mildlyuncol1\Tntional in narrati\c slmclllrc - f(lllm\ing' an opening thirty minutesf()cusing: primarily on T\' reporter Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) \\ith a secondhalf-hour centred on a ne\\' group of characters, the team of astronauts tasked\\irh destroying the comet, and then shifting ag'ain to a multi-strand narrati\e

dealing \\ith separate (and mutually unil1\ol\ed) gTOUpS of characters,including President Beck (.\lorgan Freeman) in the days bcf()re the comet

impacts. I-IO\\e\er, its narrati\e iI[1'erl is noticeably more 'traditional' than itsri \ ai, building: suspense fi'om the asteroid's first sighting by an amateur,Istronomer throug:h the lhl\\'ning public a\\'areness of the threat, and in the

,econd half relying strongly on \arious sources of pathos (a motif of family'eparation, hO\\'e\'er, is common to all strands bar the President's) to

personalise and intensif\ the literally global dimensions of the peril. There

arc t \\ 0 main action/spectacle sequences in the film, strategically di \'idedhet\\ een the half\\'ay point - \\hen the astronauts make their initial, unsuccess­

ful ,lttempt to blm\' up the comet and the climactic sequence when a smallerPOrtion of the comet strikes the East Coast of the CS_\ \\hile the larger,

annihilating: impact is a\oided by the astronauts' sacrificial heroism.

From .'lmlllgeddllll (1998), Reproduced courles~ of Touchstone/The Kobal Colkction.

THE ACTION BLOCKBUSTER 255

blockbuster as a mode of melourama. Deep IlIIpacl recalls Griffith in its useof children to generate both pathos and hope: jenny Lerner sacrifices her

pl,ICe Oil the net.work helicopter to safety to a colleague a_nd her daug'~ter

\\ hile she herself seeks out her estranged father to make a fmal peace before

lhe tsunami obliterates them hoth; in a separate narrati\ e strand, parentsh,Illd o\er their newborn child to their teenag-c daughter Sarah and her

bo\friend Leo, who hy \irtue of Leo's ,11l-terrain motorbike can take the

child to (symbolic;) higher ground and form part of the saving remnant that

in the film's COd,I promises to build anew. (\lichael Tolkin, the film's co­

screeIl\\Titer, l)J'e\iousl~ \\Tote ,md directed the unsettling Christian apoea­

\I ptic parable Tile Rapil//'(' (J()94),) Though superficially similar,lrlllageddo/l'stilCUS is different and less mcrtly moralistic: the principal conflict that is

reso!\ ed in the film's climax is Harry's acceptance of Grace's relationship

\\ it h .\J - but since there seems to have been no reason beyond generalised

rncrse-Oulipal resentment for Harry to disapprmc their afhir in the first

place, this is hardly a major issue (a subordinate plot strand detailing thereunion of a member of Harry's team \vith his estr,lng'cd \vife is simiLIrl~

irrelc\ ant). Yet the pat hos surrounding f LIrry 's final martyrdom (he remains

lin the ,IstlToid alone to detonate the nuclear charges manually) is considerably

more hysterical than anything in [)ee/! IlIIpal!, with ,\j - filr \vhom H,I1Ty has

s,lerifici,llly substituted himself - bello\\iIlg his Ime fill' his friend \vhile(Trace \\ eeps in \ lission Con trol.

1)iflerenn:s in the degTee and na ture of the spectacle of disaster arc also

telling. Both films emplm essentially the same n,I1T,Itive device to deliver to

their audience both the promised thrill of ultra-Iarge-sede catastrophe and

till' reassurance of a reLIti\ely upbeat ending: since global extinctionlthe

destruction of the pLInet might be felt to he something of a d(l\Yner, each film

SLltles till' impressi\e but fin,IlIy superficial obliteration of discrete portions

lIrlhe pbnet's surface by meteorite fragments, \\hile successfully ,l\crting' the

main threat. Deep IlIIpacl's climactic tsun,I111i is impressive yet restrained:

het\\l'Cn the de,lth of Lerner p(;re 1'1 jille on "irg'inia 13each and Leo and

Sarah's eseIpe up the mountainside, the destruction of the US Eastern

seaboard is rendered in a sequence of eig'ht shots, nOlle less th,II1 t\\O seconds

1()1lg', depicting the destruction of "\e\\ York cit her in panoramic long-shot or

in g'round-Inel mcdium shots. The tenor of the sequellce is ,IS restrained as

it muld be, g'i'en the subject m,ltrer, \\hile the absencc of allY namcd or e\ en

indi\ idu,llised characters lends the sequcncc a summary, slightly impersonalILI\ our.

\s ,dready noted,'lrlllagnido/l gcts its terrestrial dcstruction in early, thus

Irl'cing up the rcmaining n,HTati\e fill' thc imli\iuuJlistic heroics of Harry

Stampcr's team. (.l""I{/.~<,Jllol/ is ,I significantly less 'official' narrati\ ethan

/)(.,,/! III/p{/c/: ,dthough military and '\.\5.\ personnel are nominally in charg'eI

J

254 FILM GENRE ,

Armageddo/l, by contrast, although more it has a more conyentionally·.,unified narrative centring exclusiyely on 'mayerick' oilman Harry Stamper(Bruce Willis), his team of 100eably asocial roughnecks and his daughterGrace (Liv Tyler) - indeed, despite the imminence of global apocalypse the'world' is represented only by fleeting cutaways to anxious, and finally

joyous, crowds of extras in various picturesque and readily placeable

locations - in every other regard typifies the relentlessly assaultive, full-on

mode of thc contemporary action blockbuster. The film opens with a ten­minute effects sequence in which Manhattan is deyastated by multiple

impacts from what we later learn are outriding fragments flung off the

approaching asteroid (subsequent impacts allO\y the film to offer its other key

markets the odd compliment of seeing their own urban ccntres - Paris,

Shanghai - bombarded). Although a few stereotypical 'types' (street hustlers,

jiving cab drivers) are sketched into the "'Ianhattan segment to lend it a

minimal human dimension (the 'merseas' locations arc experienced almost

wholly through architectural landmarks), nonc of them are chaL1cters in the

narrative; the sequence, delivered in the high-intensity, kinetic style that

typifies the entire film, clearly aims to impress or e\cn O\cnvhelm the

spectator. The film then introduces its main characters, establishing the

broadest of possible character notes (when first seen, l-Lury is terrorising a

shipload of Greenpeace protestors - who can't spell 'polluter' - \vith golf

drives off his rig; upon finding Grace in bed \vith his protege .\j (Ben

Affleck), Harry stalks him around the rig \vith a loaded shotgun). Compared

to Deep Impacl, which unfillds over a tot,ll of t\\O years (\vith the principal

action taking place mcr eleyen months), both the pace and the time-frame of

.irlf/ap,eddlill arc franticall~ compressed: the ,1pproaching asteroid is spotted

just a scant fiJrtnight before it is scheduled to hit the earth.

Much more than Deep [Illpacl, .imillgeddoll appears to typif~ the action

blockbuster's subordination of character dnelopment and coherent plot to

massive visual overkill. As h.ing (2000a: r(6) obsenes, non-stop spectacle is

the rule for the entire last seventy-five minutes (the film's blockbuster

dimensions include a running time of q4 minutes), \\ith incident and crisis

piled upon one another, less accelerating than accumulating' in serial fashion

(literally: the succession of cliffhanging ncar-disasters nokes the silent melo­

dramatic serials discussed by Singer (200r): see Chapter 2). Eyen relatiyeJy

routine narrative material aims at maximum impact: the gathering of Harry's

team (who haye mysteriously managed, \\ith no ad\ance word or ,lpparent

transportation, to disperse themsehcs across the continental Lnited States in

the 24 hours or less since Harry's departure to '\.\SA) is staged ,lS a series of

high-velocity chases and round-ups.

Both films, howeyer, strikingly fi'ame the experience of g,-Iobal annihiLItion

in terms of familial cont1icts and their resolution, thus confirming the action

FILM GENRE

of the rescue mission, the important drilling and demolition \\ork is

s~lb~o~tra~ted to Harry's team - \\ho predictably chafe at the uptight militarydisCipline Imposed on them during the mission prep, and by contrast with"'lorgan Freeman's dignified President Beck in Deep Impllo the President isa noticeably less central and more ineffectual figure, \\ho comes undercriticism for slashing the 'object collision' budget.)

By placing tlie meteorite impacts earlier in the film, Harry's climactic self­

sacrificc for the greater good (,I sentimental paternal sacrifice shared \\ith not

only Deep IlI/plI(l but ~dso Illdi'pClldcll(e DIIY) is more central to the film's

climax than the parallel (collecti\e) sacrifice of the astronaut team in DeepImpll(l indeed, Harry's death arguably supersedes the destruction of the

asteroid and the sahation of the pLmet as the major affectiYe element at the

climax of the film. The enormous CGl firestorm and shock\\a\c Harry sets

off is accompanied by a mon tage of images of Grace, tracking both bacbyards

to her childhood and f(Jr\\ards to the \\edding Harry \\ ill ne\cr sec, that

renders Harry's death a cosmic epiphan~ transcending the limits of thenarrati\c or eyen of human comprehension. Thus the ostensibly super-social

- the sacrifice of the one f()r the many is reoriented to the supremely

personal: it is as if ./m/II/!.eddoll, hay ing thro\yn e\cry effect bar the kitchen

sink at the audience mcr the course of its 2 hr. 2+ min. running time, can

concciYe of no more spectacular effect - no phenolllenon of more global or

eyen cosmic sig'nificancc - than the death of its o\\n star.

NOTES

I. \ comparison of Ihl' cl'kbrarcd Ch'l'" ill 'Ih,' (-'(1'111 II CIIIIII<'(//1l1I (I In I) (II hlch ulldlTlines

I'0Pl'\l' I)",k\ m.lllic obsl'ssion lIilh '~l'lIlng his n1;IIl', a compuisioll Ihlll lIill

l'\l'nlualh ha\l' sl'll~dl'S1rucli\l' l'l)nSl'LJul'IlCl'S) Imd thl' c.lr chllsl' Ihrough San I:Lml'isco

that fealUrl'S l'arh ill /II" Nlld (I I)I)!») .md has \ l'n lillie- lwarlllg o!' .Ill\ killd on thl'

maill slol'\ linl' hut l'rO\ idl's thl' film II ilh thl' rl'LJuisill' up-frollt .Iction Sl'LJUl'ncl', helps

cLlril\ Ihl' nO\c1 strlIl'lllrc or thl' Conll'mpOran blockbllstlT

2, Oil thl' historic.Ii IIl],,'IlIUrl' tilm, Sl'l' 'LI\l's (")IU).

.1, Thl' olhns IIlTl'IIII'!(' I;,( 1:'11,11 Olhl'l' and 11111'1'111<':.:11,

+, \loli"ltl'd in Ihis casl' b\ cOlltractual rathlT 1111111 siricth fillllIlcilIi l'onsidl'LlIio!lS,

ll'lI11l'h thl' alm()st simult.llll'OllS pllhlic.ltiOIl or .llld Silk of lihll rights to III() 1l00cls, Thelil/I'(,), and 'Ih" CI""" 1111<"1'1111, both pmlr,l\ lllg cllastrophic lirl's in st.Itl'-ol~lhl'-al't

sk\ Sl'LlPlTS,

CIl\PTER I I

Genre: Breaking the Frame

T his final chapter b.rieflY c~msiders 'no,n-canonicar genres, ques,tion:lblegenres, or categorIes of fIlm not typIcally concel\cd as generIc. Lach

'genre' is discussed briefly. The intention in each case is less to argue fill' its

illcorpOr,ltion into or exclusion from the 'canon' of genres, but to explore the

ne\\ insig'hts or problems thnmn out by a speculatiye identification of these

1\ pes of film as genre films ,md ref1cct them hack onto more traditional classi­

fications and approaches, These genres arc comnlOnly, though in different

\\,I\S, 'scandalous' - that is, proposing them as genres to be discussed critic­

,III~ or in ,Icademic contexts alongside \,"esterns, gangstcr films and thc like

poses difficulties arising from COll\ entional understandings or, or assump­

lil)!lS ,Ibout, theirlthe genre tnt's subjcct matter, style and social contnt(s).

Such 'sclt1dalous' genres can hopefully hclp us to further our critical intern)­

~ation not only of st,mdard ~e111T categories - \\ hich ma\ prO\c to ha\cun~uspectL'(l affinities \\ith these uncoll\cntional neo- or crypto-genrcs- bu[

also of the practices and structures that underpin the system of film genre as

a \\ hole. To reiterate the statement in the introduction to this section of the

hook, these brief ,Ind in some \\ays specuLIti\e discussions arc intended to

'IHtr further resC<lrch and enquiry rathcr than in an~ scnse to produce defini­

li\ e ,Iccounts of the 'gcnres' in question,

I: DOClT\lE]\;TARY

The tr,lditional, literary, concept of genre clearl~ h,IS a place for documentar~

.lnt! non-fiction film - as distinct from fiction film (similar, and O\crlapping,

Ltr!,!:e-scale generic L',ltegories \\(lllld includc hn'-aetioll and animated film).

HUI as \\e kno\\, film genre theory has usually traded in llarrO\\er generic

Cllegories and has sought to it!entif~ specific thematic and narrati\e

258 FILM GENRE

consistencies within indi \idual genres as part of the definitiona1 project. Thisbook has followed this practice, while resening a larger category for 'modes',like melodrama, whose reach seems to encompass se\'eral indi\idual filmgenres, as historically and traditionally concei\ed.

It is in this sense that documentary-as-genre becomes a scandalous concept.For inasmuch as (fiction) genres entail degTces and styles of 7:a/s//IIiI//ude _that is, com'entionaIised, pro\isional and pragmatically partial l'as/llns ofrealit\ with limited (or, as with some musicals, horror and fantasY films, , ,almost no) pretensions directly to transcribe real-world e:xperience - docu-mentary is on the ElCe of it definiti\e1y anti-generic. .\s a discourse of thereal, documentary abO\'e all relics on, and is judged by, an e:xplicit professionof encountering reality and being led by it, rather than shaping; reality intogenerically harmonious forms, as "lichael RenO\' summarises:

(T)he documentary is the cinematic idiom that most acti\ely promotesthe illusion of immediacy insobr as it foreswears 'realism' in faY<lUr of

a direct, ontological claim to the 'real'. E\ery documentary issues a'truth claim' of a sort, positing a relationship to history which c:xceeds

the analogical status of its fictional counterpart. (RenO\, I()<n: 3--1-)

Kilborn and hod (I 99T 28) associate this chlim on the re~11 with what CharlesPeirce has characteriscd as the 'indnical' ,lspect of the photographic image ­

the promise \ ouchsafed the spectator that what has been captured on thefilmic emulsion was iii/Iii/II)' prcsCII/ at the moment of filming (indeed, needed

to bc present for the image to be produced at all). The technical processesimol\ed in making' photographs and cinematography guarantee that the filmimage is a record of something rCI/I. Of course, in this sense e\ery fiction filmis a documentary: it 'documents' the presence in the pro-filmic space ofactors, sets, props and so on. :\loreO\cr, the ac!\ent of dig'ital technologiessuch as CG) has al1<l\\ed filr an intensified degree of seamless manipulationof images such that the traditional indnical bond lwtween object-world and

imag'C-world is no longer (if it C\er was) assured. Brian \\inston (1<)<)3) andothers ha\e suggested th~lt the erosion of this indnical contract ha\e funda­mentally challenged traditional understanding's of the nature ~lI1d function ofdocumentary as a fi)rm of 'scientific inscription'. Document,lry is thus once

ag'ain characterised as not, in Reno\'s terms, 'analogical' - IiJ:c life - but

closer to or in ElCt 'real.' Thus unless re~llity itself h~lrbours g'Cneric fi1rl11s,'true' documentary must aspire to ~I status 'beyond genre'.

Yet the historY of documentar~, fi'om Robert Flaherty and John Griersonto Nick Broomfield and Erroll \lorris, refutes such pretensions to a docu­

mentary paradigm 'beyond genre'. In Elct, e\en (or especially) at those

moments in documentary history \\hen claims filr impersonality ~md non-

J

GENRE: BREAKI~(i TIlE FRAME 259

lliediation are most pO\\erfully ac"~mced, there can be clearly seen a con­flicting dri\e towards con\entionalised narrati\'e, perfi)rnutiY<:' and e\eniconographic structures that can only be regarded as generic. This is in anyc,lse to say nothing of the \isual and discursi\e styles associated with differ­ent documentary models that also constitute readily recognisable genericeltegories (direct-to-camera address by the film-maker, hand-held single­ell1ler,1 set-ups, usc of ,1\'ailab1c light ,md Ii\e sound, to-camera interviews,

thc inclusion of archi\c footage, etc.).In his most recent update of what has become a starting-point for much

teaching of documentary history ~md theory, Nichols (199-1-: 95) posits aclassical e\olutionary model of generic de\e!opment throug'h fi\e distinct andsuccessi\c modal stages, with each stage seeking to remedy the shortcomings

of its predecessor. Thc model starts with the E:xpository mode in the 1<)30SamI 1ll00CS through the ObserYational (1960s direct cinema and l/nClllil l·,T/It;);thc Interacti\e (which relics hCJ\ily on participant interviews and in which

the spectator may also be compelled to interact with the tnt by acti\e1yengaging in the process of meaning construction, as in the purl' ,Irchi\e mon­Llge documentary Till' .i/OI/1I1 CI/P, Ilj83); the Refle:xi\e (where a self­conscious directorial style enables the act of representation itself to becomealthe object of documentary and spectatorial reflection, by fi)regrounding'either the film-maker's O\\n presence, and their encounters w'ith their subjects

,1S in \Iichacl .\loore's Roger IIIIdHc (1988) - or the process of meaning

construction itself, fill' e:xample Errol \lorris' Till' TlIIII BII/I' LI/II', 1<)87); to themost recent, the Perfi)rmati\c (in which the subjecti\e dimension ofdocumentar~'s 'classically objecti\e discourse' arc brought to the fi)re'). As

\\ ith all such e\olutionan accounts (see Ch~lpter I), :'-Jichols's is open to thestandanl criticisms of teleology, rigidity and ahistoricism: Bruzzi (2000: 2)points out that E:xpository documenLu'y's putatiye supersession accounls filrneither the ubiL)uity of 1urr~ltion-led documentary today nor, cOl1\ersely, thehi~hly reflni\e films of Dziga ,"erto\ ~111d Jean \'igo in the Il)20S.

The principal concern of documentary theorists- Bruzzi points out that

liI11l-1ll~1kers, e\en theoretically infilrmed ones, ha\e been much less nercisedahout it (and documentary-m~lkersare more likely to be criticall~ aware thanmany fiction film-makers) is the ine\iLlble gap between document,lry's

.1pparent aspiLltions to capture rerlity in ~1l1 absolutely unl1lediated fim11, andthe manifest mcdi,ltions introduced into the documentary arteElCt by, at ~1

hare minimum, shot selection and post-production, to say nothing of authorial\ ie\\ point ~111d the 'uncertainty principle' of the film-maker's necessar~

presence in the reality s/he proposes merely to record ..\ number of well­known documentary theorists (for e:xamplc, Renoy, :\ichols) ,liT animated by

poststrucruralist scepticism about such concepts as 'reality' and 'truth', or atleast a comiction th,lt the only 'truths' to be fillll1d in the world arc plural

1

1.. 11,

"I

2{)O FILM GENRE

rather than singular; hy contrast, they tenu to characterise documentary_makers as naive realists on an endless and chimerical quest for the unattain_ahle goals of ahsolute immeuiacy anu umarnished truth. Digital technologies'expanding capacity to produce photo-simulativ'e fictions inuistinguishablefi'om 'the real thing' has only intensifieu such theorists' sense of the

collapsing houndaries of truth and fiction and of the unsustainability of

documentary's 'truth-claims'. Yet such theories often seem uneasily caught

between the logical concl usion of their sceptical premises - that documentary

ought simply to be considered as another form ofnarrative film, its ostensible

facticity of no greater or lesser relev'aoce than the historici ty of the Western

or SF film - and the recognition that documentar~' remains importantly

committed - not least in the perceptions of its audience - to acting in and

even upon the real in ways that fiction does not.

In f~lct, very few documentarians - not just touay, but historically -- have

in reality subscribed to the kinus of realist fundamentalism often ascrihed to

them. (For that matter, neither diu such theorists of filmic realism as :\ndre

Bazin and Sieg-fred kraelUer, sometimes charged vvith prO\iding the

intellectual rationale for the 'nal\e realism' of documentary film. Their ­

different positions relateu much more to the ethical anu political implica­

tions of the camera's encounter v\ith physical and social re~tlit~ as lrol/srribed- 1/01 simply transmitted by film.) Such accounts seem to identif\ the

generic project of uocumentary as a vv hole vv ith the most unguarded claims

made by the :\merican 'direct cinema' film-makers of the e.lrly I<)(ws such as

Robert ))revv and Richaru Leacock (Pnll/uIT, I<)(lO; Cnsis, I<)(l3), D. A.

Pennebaker (/)01/ 'I !,ool..' Hud', l<)(l.:;) anu ,\lbert and ))av id \la~ sles CHeet'\;Jarlol/ Brol/do, J()(lS; Sa lesll/a 1/, )()()(); Gill/II/e Slidla, [(no). Sometimes,

certainly, inf1ameu by the nevvly available portable cameras and sound gear,

direct cinema did seem to declare itself to ~ldopt Roland Barthes' phrase ­

a 'degree zero' cinema, a medium of .Ibsolute transparency and communionv\ith the real.

Yet the v\ork of the ;vlaysles Brothers, for cxample, instantly reveals direct

cinema's huge debt to popular narrative forms. Sulesll/a1/, an observational

documentar~ about four Bible salesmen in Florid.I, seems to imoke the

pO\verful dramatic par,ldigm of the salesman as contemporar~ ,\mericao

tragedy - the 'tragedy of the common man', in ,\rthur \Iiller's bmous

ueseription of his celebrated pla~ /Jcalli o(a Sale.ll/lrlll (1<)+7) vvhile Gill/meSllelia adopts horror film iconographies to render its depiction of the

catastrophic I<)()() Rolling Stones concert at _\ltamont even more infernal. (Io

fact, direct cinema's focus on specific kinds of subjects and personalities ­

typically, puhlic figures like politicians (kennedy) or celebrities (Brando, the

Beltles) v\hose o\v n 'performances' of realit~ structure the viev\ing cxperience

- gencrically identifies .\merielI1 ,'cnlt; vvith recording;s of the public realm.) I

J

GE"JRE: BREAKING THE FRAME 261...-------------------------

,"or does the vv'ork of earlier film-makers VvllO quite clearly mix documentary'Ind fictional elements - for example, Robert Flaherty in Alall o(.lnlll (1934). necessarilv' ref1cct either lack of sophistication or a Llilure to achiev'e

notional goais of pure objectivity. (It is vvorth noting that Paul Rotha's (1<)36)e~1r1v taxonomy of documentary used the terms 'naturalist' and 'romantic'

illterch~lllgeably.)It mav just he that a more gener~11 acknowledgement of documentary as a

"'CllIT c;n help square the intractahly circular arguments in documentary

01eory around realism and representation. Film genre theory, as we have

scen, acknO\vledges that representational and narrative eom'entions supply

important framev\'(lrks for meaning construction..\t the same time, the

meanings to be derived from an indiv'idual text are never exhausted hy the

cOl1\entions vvithin, or against, vvhich it v\orks. For documentary theory, this

could point a vv'ay out of the ultimately sterile dehate that presupposes that

the objective of documentar~ is hy some means to access reality - and then

preoccupies itself vv ith the vv'ays in v\hich that g'oal remains forever frustra­

tillo'lv out of reach.\;1V generic definition of documentary certainly needs to start by

ac!"n()\v ledging the f(lrm's fundamental orientation towards the real and

that this aspect neither cxcludes a rhetorical dimension, yet nor is it purel~

rcd ucible to rhetorieil oper~ltions. Documentary, in other vvords, certainlY

II'UI/Is its spectator to believe that thc multibrious topics with which it

en~'al!;es share a common purchase in historical reality; but this sometimesoV~T~eag;cr insistence on direct acccss to a reality we know to be necessarily

.1I1d incscapably mediated oug;ht not obscure our recognition that there is~lltcr all a historical realit~, mediation notvvithstanding. Given the obvious

problcms in establishing a clear semantic basis for the documentary g;enre (an

e"enliallv limitless v~lrietv' of subject matter and a proliferating set of modes,each vvitll its distinctive' visual style), it might be helpful to conceive of

documentary as cohering generically in syntactic rather than semantic terms.

\'ichols (I<)<)T <)+) speaks of documcntar~'s 'developmcnt of strategies f(lr

pcrsu,lsive argumentation about the historical world'. This search f()]'

.ldeq uate vv a~ s vv ith vvhich to eng;ag;e vvit h Ii vcd reality then cons! it utes

documentary's basic s~ ntactic axis: the various st~ Ies, from cxpository to

pcrl(lrmative, across v\hich this search is conducted, together supply an

l'V olving and obv iously related and overlapping series of semantic

registers throug;h v\hich 'the real' can be satisLlCtorily sig·nified.

\ gcnre-based approach to documentar~ vvill necessarily reg'ard the reality

th,1I is made available to the spectator through documentary practice -- like

the 'historv' of the \\estern - as ultimately a function of g-cneric convention

r.tlher tha~ th~lt vv hich stands somehO\\ outsidc the film-te,"t altogether (after

aiL as Jlcqlles Uerrida ([()I(l: I .')H) once Limollsly ohsen-cd, 'there is nothing

262 FILM liLNRE

outside of the text'). Thus the formal signifiers of immediacy in obsenationaldocumentary, the semantic comentions of this mode of documentary, marknot only the 'presence' of reality in the text - a 'presence' ,n.' recognise as ageneric prerequisite - but also the specific \\ays in \\hich 'reality' is

concei\t:d that make such semantic cOIwentions possible and appropriate (inthis case, for example, the gO\crning: assumption that the object world doesexist 'outside' of the text \\hose job is then Llithfully to record it). On the

other hand, identifying' the syntax of documentary, as suggested abme, as the

interrogation of reality ought to ensure that documentary criticism does not

Llll back into hermetic formalism (because realit~ remains a structuring

presence in documentary eYen if it can neYer be fully apprehended in the

text). Understanding: documentary syntax in this way also offers gTounds for

defending' the elaborately rel1ni\e, suhjective and often artifice-laden work

of contemporary 'performative' documen tarists from Isaac Julien (LoohllgforI,ll IIgsloll, I <jXX) to Lrrol ~lorris (7'1t1' Fo/!, or Hil r, 20°3) ag,linst '\ ichols's

chargc of stdistic excess and a retreat into the charmed circles of the avant­garde.

II: HOLOCAUST FIL!\l

Ahout halfway through Steven Spielberg''s J()<j3 film of Thomas ~eneally's

nmel Sri/illd/a '.I' I,isl, \\ar profiteer Oskar Schindler confronts a fi'ustrating

and incipiently intolerahle cog'niti\ e and moral crisis: \\ hen reminded by

ltzhak Stern, Schindler's business manager at the enamelware plant he

operates in occupied Poland and the diffident \oice of his increasingly restive

conscience, that the proliferating administratin.' euphemisms of his '\azi

business partners - 'resettlement,' 'special tre,ltment' and so f(lrth are in

reality l11erel~ the thinnest of 'eils mer the reality of industrialised mass

murder, Schindler ,ents on his partner his anger and perplexity at this

representational duplicity. 'Dam mit, Stern,' he shouts, 'do \\C need a \\hole

ne" languag"t'?' 'Yes,' replies Stern quietly, 'I think \\e do.'

I I(me\ er, Sell/lid/a's I,isl and other especially, but hy no me,\I1S exclu­

sin.'ly, fictional - films about the Holocaust ha \ e heen "idely LlUlted for,

precisely, their/i/i/llre (or refusal) to spe,lk 'a "hole ne\\ languag:e'. Sell//Ii//a'sLisl is indeed is discursively characterised by the comiction that both the key

operati \ e catq!;ories of bourg:eois fiction and drama in general - individ ual

moral choice, a linear g'oal-oriented narrative dyn'lmised by dramatic conflict,

and so on- and in p,lrticular the simplified \ersions thereof employed by

Holly"ood g:enre film, remain adequate to the task of representing e\ ents in

human history reg'arded hv some as in a sense beyond representation

altogether. In Llel, the fundamental project of Sri/illd/a 's 1",,1 is to bring- the

GE:-IRE: BREAKING THE FRAME

11'11111 S,liilldla's ris/ (1l)l)3l. Rcproduccd courtcS\ of Lni\Trsal/Thc hohal <:olkction.

1loloClLlst "ithin this century's most normative, unin.'rsally available and

~dobally comprehended representation,tl parameters, those of the cbssic

Iiolly\\ood film, and it is by the leg:itimacy or other\\ise of that project, and

its success in carning: it throug:h, that the film has to be measured.

Sri/illd/a '.I' Lisl is by some measure the most emphatically and kno\\ingly

g,'/lel'l( of all serious treatments of the Holocaust. That is, Spielberg's film

quite consciously sets out to recreate the 'Final Solution' from ,vithin the

instantlY recog'nisable and comprehensible forms of popular Holly\\ood

genres. For instance, the first thing: lIe notice about Sell/lIi//er's Lisl is that it

is in black and \\hite. This is often t,lken as a documentary affectation: the

rendering: of the story in monochrome is intended to reinf(lrce the truth

eLlims of the film by imoking' the look of contemporary documentary f()()tag-e

olthe Second \\orld \\ar. But for the film's anticipated audience, black-and­

II hite f()()tag:e quite simply prmides the correct ji/III/( reg:ister f()\' a 'Second

\\ orld \rar mo\ ie': in other \\ords, a set of represent,ltional comentions and

,!ssociations is being- quite precisel~ deployed, \\herein black ,md \\hite con­

notes 'old mO\ies' at least ,1S much ,IS 'old times'. The opening scenes of the

Ii1m, \\hich depict, first, the ,Irrival t'II /I/ilsse of Je\\'ish deportees from the

Polish countryside in ~rako\\, f(ll1<med by the introduction of Schindler

himself in the setting of a German-frequented nig:htclub in the city, confirm

the directive sigl1<l1 of monochrome by their Llintly studied classicism (the

E'rom Schindler's I,isl (1993), Reproduced courtesy of ni"ersal/The 'obal Collection,

264 FILM (jE.'\IRE

slightly fetishistic accumulation of period detail, the wreaths of .film nairshadows, thc withheld 'ren~al' that keeps the Elee of rjam Neeson as Schindlerconcealed from thc audience until well into the second sequence) that collec­tiyely announces the calculated deployment of a classical Holly\\ood style

and moreover of the classic Hollywood's preferred dramatic engine, thegenre tilm. "'/lore specific allusions here include, most notahly, Ci/si//J!i/nca(I (43), whose postponement of the introduction of the central characterScltilldler's I,isl consciously imitates: Ci/Si//J!i/IIUI of course being another

wartime parahle of the transformation of an individual from protiteering and

cynical detachment into passionate commitment to a cause. :\s the tilm pro­

gresses, the progressive darkening of tone as e;leh ne\\ stage in the Holocaust

is reached (from ghettoisation, to deportation, fin~llly to mass e.\termination)

is textually marked by another shift in gCllcric register. The tilm abandons the

assured classical st~ Ie of the earlier scenes - \yhich retlect Schindler's own

brash early confidence for the non-cbssicd modes of doculllentary (inclu­

ding hand-held clmeLl\york that appears to be follO\ying the action anxiously

rather than framed to recei\c it) and - notoriously, in the ,-\usch\yitz 'shower

scene of the post-Psl'dill slasher/stalker horror film.

The critical problem poscd b~ this evident gencric ch,lracter relates to

critical ;ll1d thcoretical positions that insist on the inescapable singularity of

the Holocaust ,Iml accordingly if indeed it is not asserted that the Holocaust

is simply 'beyond' depiction, speech aIII1 understanding altogether - demand

of Holocaust represellLitions that they manifest that singubrity through

formal disruption of narrative, etc., cOll\entions and ,lbO\c all - through

the abjuration of mainstream representational strategies such as those of

genre tilm. What Holocaust historians call the 'radical incomprehensihility

thesis' (the claim th,1t the ,Itlempt to understand the IIolocaust defeats the

procedurcs of COll\ entional historiograpl1\ or political econom\) finds its

echo in ,I 'radical unreprcscntabilit~ thesis' \\ hich similarh condemns

normati\ e represenLltional practices to inC\irable Llilure.

Thus thc problematic notion of 'the IIoloclUst tilm' as a genre raises

ethical questions along'sidc critical ones. Since thc rclclse of Sdlllldlcr's Listin 1<)<)3 if Ilot \\ell bdi)re, the Holocaust h,ls become an established if ahYays

contrO\crsial subject tiH' historical drama. Indeed, the opening sequCIlL'e of

S-HCII (2000) \yhich depicts the future '\lagneto' as a child deportee,

using his destrueti\e telepathic PO\\ ers fiH' the tirst time as he is separated

!i'om his parents at the gates of :\usch\\ itz suggests strongh that the

I Iolocaust h,ls becollle increasingly a\ailable ,IS a point of reference fiH' genre

tilms \\ell outside the categories of 'serious' historical drama. \\ith pre­

existing genres (such as the \\ar!combat tilm) offering no \i,lble parameters

tiH' the representation of industri.l1ised mass murder, Holocaust films have

geneLlted their O\\n recognisable representatiOl1<l1 COll\ entions and narrative

t(jL~RF: llREAKI.'\I(j TilE FRAME 265

templates. Yet there remains a marked critical reluct,mce to countenance theide,1 of 'the Holocaust film' - primarily because incorporating; the Holocaustinto the routinised structurcs of genre appears to diminish its unique horrorl)\ normalising it at the narrati \e and textl!,11 Inel.

. Thc difficulties entailed hy the proposition of a genre, '1111' Holocaust

film,' pn.::sumpti\cly to be set alongside the detecti\c tilm, the Western, the

i1lusical and so on, relatc to thc nature of the g'cneric text itself, which by

definition entails narrMi\e, iconographic, charactcrological and concei\ably

idcological 10111.'1'1111011.1'; \\hich is further to say normati\e and - simply by

\ irt ue of such normati\it~ in some measure perhaps affirmative apprehen­

sions of h(l\\ the \\orld gi\en through the genre artefact to a generic audience

is organised. Genre can he seen as ,1 means of ordering the \\orld which hy

Ihc \en bct of that ordering offers its audiencc thc rcassuring' if circular

consolation that the \\orld is, indeed, orderable. In the context of tilm, this

gl'neric orderliness, or orderly g'enericity, has of course on occasions trans­

Ialell into a more-or-less explicit opposition het\\een (parricuarly HolI~ \\ootl)

genre tilm - construed as commodity, the Eltally facile pablum of Adorno's

'culture industry' and the originary apprehension of the authentic, authored

,lrtcLlct, especially in the tradition of the European art film. HO\\C\u'

exhausted and discredited this opposition has become in critical theor~

g"l'nerally, the dichotomy of the g'eneric/normati\e and the autonomous/

l'\cl'ptionall'Cm,lins .1 sig'niticant presence in critical discussions of narratiYe

,lnt! in p,lrticular tilmic treatments of the IIolocaust.

In f,Kt, ho\\l'\cr, since until quite recently the Holocaust remained largcl~

IIlf-limits to Holly\yood cineIl1,I, hence as subject matter contined, preciscl~,

to the Furopean ,Irt tilm, the implicltions of a full~ generic approach to the

IloloclUst ha\e not needed to be fully explored. 2 The fury of many of the

responses to the :'\BC: mini-series IIolomllsl (I (J7X) \yas itself in large me,lsure

atlributable to th,1t series' historical priority- JIolomllsl \yas, after all, the

IiI'S' time that 'Holly\\()ml' had attempted to ,lccommodate this subject

Ill,iller to its existing generic styles. The ofknce here ,lrguably arose abO\e all

from the perception that the Holocaust \yas indeed being' illeg'itimatehL L •

al'Commmlated III I Ioll~ \\ootl norms, rather than \yhat SCUllS to haye been a

kit imperati\c that it explode them. It is only in thl' latter part of the nearly

III 0 decades since JIololllIlsl \\as tirst bro,ldcast that, as one highly \isible

clement in a broad cultural front of creati\e, commemorati\e, schol;lrl~ and

critic" concern \"ith the Shoah in Europe and\merica, the destruction of

).urope's Je\\s has gradu,lll~ come to tCature more regularly if still inti'C­

quently in major Holl~ \\oml studio productions. Films like Slllil/lller's I,isl,SliplllL''.I' C!iIIil(, (I<)X2), Tnlllllpit orllti' Spin! (I<)HX) and]akolllltL' Liar (1991'1)arc unashamedly and indeed doubly generic: they both tr,lde in existing

~enlTic templates like .lillll lilliI', the \\ar mO\ ie and soap oper,1 ti)r their initial

266 FILM GENRE

appeal, and in themselYl~s help trace out the parameters of a still-nugatorynew genre.

Against that, it em be argued that rendering the unthinkable conventional

allows it to be confronted and acknowledged rather than e\:c1uded as

untouchable. The Holocaust's emerging 'genericisation' may be seen as

insisting, via the j(iI"IlIa! element of generic orthodo\:y and cOl1\ention, on the

necessary (ollllnllily between the quotidian realities of the world \\c think of

as 'ours' and that of the camps. Primo Lni (Il)KH) has insisted that the

lInirefS (ol1cel1lmllolll1alre \vas not a closed universe: if it \\cre, on \\hat basis

does one insist on the continuing relevance of the categories of moral

responsibility, at least for the perpetrators' HO\\ could one, by the same

token, even recognise the penerse il1\'ersion or c\acuation of those categories

inflicted on camp inmates - a phenomenon widely remarked in survivor

literature? Did the camps not possess to at least some degree, as Trevor

Griffiths writes in his play COlllell/lllls, 'the logic of our \\orld - e\:tended'?

(Grittiths, I()?5: (3). To the ntent that the Holocaust is increasingly seen in

historical terms as a potential IIlllhlll modernity rather than (as a more

reassuring prior interpretati\c orthodo\:~ \\ould h,l\c it) modernity's Other,

the project of adequately reintegrating Holocaust representations within the

normative te\:ture of representational cOl1\cntion becomes both more urgent

and more problematic: problematic, since at its most e\:treme (for instance, in

some pronouncements of the later i\dorno) the regimented assembly-line

commodity cuhure that produces the IIolly\\ood genre film is seen as not

only complicit but continuous \\ith the instrumental rationalised modernity

that spawned/enabled the Holocaust; yet urgent, since thc possibility

remains that the Holocaust may he 'refunctioned' through representation to

articulate an immanent critique of modernity's 0\\ n e\:termiluti\ e tendency.]

This does not mean, ho\\ner, th,1t genre forms can be applied unref1ec­

tively and in an undiscriminating \\ay to the HoIOClllsl. On the contr,lry, even

the most conn'ntionally generic (\\hich is to S,I~, in terms of Holocaust recep­

tion, scandalously IIlIcol1\cntioml) Ilolocaust filnts seem to push to\\ards a

point at which the spectator is confronted \\ith the difficulty, if not outright

impossibility, of portraying Ihese scenes in LlIIS (generic) \\ay, a point marked ­

like the confusions and contortions of melodrama, or more locally the oneiric

distortions that mark out masculine Cll1tas~ constructions in (Jill or Llle Pastand other/i/Ills I/(ilrs (sec Chapter <) ,!w e\:treme tntual stress and narrative

dislocation. For n,lmple, two late I<)<)os namples of 'I Iolocaust comedy' ­

itselfofcourse a m,lssively transgressi\'e category, the most (in-)L1l110us being

LII;' Is Bel/lIlI/iil (Italy I<)<)K) - Ttlllll or LI/;' (FLll1cclRomania, 1<)<)9) and

Ja/"'o!J lhe Llr/r (199K) both confi'ont the spectator in their concluding moments

\\it h radica I 11<1 IT,It i\C reversals and reflni ve n,IlTa tive read justments. In

Tnllll orL!I;', this comes about through the re\ elation th,1t the \\hole film has

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been the memory/fantasy of a camp inmate, possibly a lunatic; in Jako/J the],ir/r, throug'h a double ending that substitutes possible redemption for

'lnnihibtion. Both films seem to pose questions about the desire foroptimistic generic resolutions in a narrati\'e conte\:t where optimism is

uIlsust,linable: their eleventh-hour shift into modernist narrative uncertainty

ll1ig,'ht be construed as an ethical gesture that encourages spectators to reflect

on their o\vn moti\,ltions for \\atching Holocaust narratives and their

opect,ltions of those narratives.

,\s an ntension of our shared culture into the realm of the unspeakable,

theIl, the genericisation of the Holocaust is marked not - or not only -. by the

reduction and routinisation of atrocity: it also brings the spectator to that

point \\here cultural signifying practices are splitji-ollll7'llhlll, where an act of

r,ldicII and absolute separation is performed upon us by a sudden ,md as it

SCUllS arbitrary scission, a moment \\hich - \\ithin the confines of genre,

\\ hich are \\hat enable us to encounter such ,Ippalling historical material in

the first place· \\c e\:perience as an act of violence upon ourselves. Such

text ual aggTession - lllr nample, in the stark tonal/ generic shift: bet\veen

sun-drenched, Lliry-Lde romantic comedy to \\ artime melodrama in LI/;' IsB,.r/lll1li,! nploits the deceptive security offered by the establishment of a

generic locale to communicate to the spectator a sense of radical disorienta­

tion \vhen th,1t sccuritv is sudden Iv \\ithheld," "

III: PORl\"OGRAPHY

That pornographic film (\\hich since the mid-I<)Kos has in Elct usually meant

\ ideo) is a genre is hardly debatahle, In L\Ct, if film genre is understood in

IlTl1lS of the m,lss-production o( standardised n,llTatives \\'hose well­

esublished cOIl\entions supply rcli,lble and repeated pleasures fllr a regular

audience, then porn film could stand almost as a template fllr genre in

~'eller'll. In ,Ill its endless variants, pornogTaphy is ,Irguably structured b~

~tronger genre cOIl\entions tlun any mainstream genre, e\en the \\estern.

'\01', unlike the \\estern, docs it ,Ippear in any dang"cr of ntinction, in f\Ct

lJuite the re\erse: pornogTaphic motifs and allusions have since the early

I<)<)OS been rife in I-Iolly\\ood cinema, \\ hether in films about the sn industry

(SltuIl'glrls, IlJ95; Boop,le\lglt/.\, I<)(n) that challenge the grimly negative

depictions in such I (nOS films as IIii rd(ore (1 <)77),+ se\:-centred genre films

\I hose narratives mimic pornogLlphic narrati \ e structures (such as the 'erotic

thrillers' discussed in Chapter <), or simph by incorporating polymorphous

~e"\ual content phone se\: (Girl (), J()<)(J), swing'ing" (Preil(/lllIg /(1 lite!)a,'a/ed, 1<)lJ7; Tlte Rilplllre, [()9-+), under-age sn (kids, 1995), S/:\I (Bod)'IIlf,'ldell(", 1<)<)3) and so on - \\hose e\:ploration had pre\iol\sly been confined

26S I'ILM GENRE

to porn 'proper'. J\leanwhile, an increasing number of independent film­makers haYl~ crossed the line that preyiousl~ delinitiyely separated bothupscale 'eroticl' and mainstream narratiye cinema g-enerally fi'om hardcorepornog;raphy, the direct depiction of unsimulated sex acts (RolI/ill/ce, FranceI<)<)S; Billse-iVloi, France 2001; Inlilllil(]l, GB 2000; 9 SOI/p,S, GB 200-1-). This

'pornographising' trend in contemporary film is of course part of a larger

mainstreaming' of porn imagery and porn itself through 'lad culture' men's

magazines, ralk shows and so on.

Yet as a socially illegitimate (and quite often extra- or para-legal) form,

pornography has more often been the su bjeer of sociological than criticalinterest. Lntil quite recently, the idea that pornography could be an object of

academic study other than in departments of psychology, sociology or

jurisprudence \\ould ha\e heen fj'ankly bizarre. In particubr, the idea of

paying; serious critical atlention to the formal and stylistic attrihutes of the

pornographic lexi \\as all but unthinkable. This changed in I<)St) \\ith the

puhlication of Linda \Villiams's ground-hrelking' study Ililrd Core: Pomer,Plellsllre ilnd Ihe FrL'll-::') I orlhe l'isiMe. \Villiams argued that pornog;raphy had

a distinct g'eneric history that hoth partly reclpitulated, but also in important

ways departed fi'om, the trajectory of mainstream narrati\e film. \\illiams's

relocation of porn \\ ithin the disciplinary contcxt of film st udies \\hich

implied that, fill' nample, the structures of pornographic narratiH~s could be

classified, discussed and assessed like those of \Vesterns or mu.sicals pm\cr­

full~ challengnl the operatiye moral, ethical and legal fj'amc\\orks in \\hichporn had hitherto bcen encountered. These included both l'<ll1SLT\,Iti\e ,Illti­

pornogTaphy campaig'ners \yhose opposition to pornography \\as grounded in

traditional moral and religious ohjections to pnmissiyeness and scxual

licClKe, and feminists \\110 reg'arded pornogTaph~ as simultaneously ,I perni­

cious expression of phalloL'l~ntric patriarchalm\thologies and a direct spur to

further male sexual aggTession against \\ omen (in other \\ords, as Gertrud

Koch (I1<)SI] It)t).r 3<)) notes, finding in porn 'not (like l'<ll1sen,ltiyes) the

erosion of existing norms hut rather their e,,"pression and confirmation').

Pa~ ing particular ,lltention to constructions fill' and of the pornographic

audience, Williams distinguishes different reg;imcs of pornogT,lphic produc­

tion and consumption, first a (length\) 'primiti\c' phase \yhere 'stag' films­

minimally elahor,lIed depictions of sex acts largely dcyoid of n,llTati\ e content

offered a cinema of pornogTaphic attractions to usually all-m,lle audiences

in contnts (such as brothels) \\here the scxual promise the films youchsafed

might he immediatel~ actualised. Porn thus functioned \\holly or in part as

,Ill adjunct to commodilied scxual actiyity rather than as a scxual commodity

in its o\\n right, and \\as ,I para-cincmatic actiyity that temporarily colonised

other spaces ,IS \eIllICS fi)r cxhihition. Porn's 'classical' period in the I<J7os

finds theatrically-released hardcore films, some of them ,lL'hining \\ide

GE'iRE: BREAKING THE FRAME 269

distrihution and crossing o\cr to mainstream exhibition, with higher produc­tion yalues, more elahorate Il<lITatiyes ,1ml careful modulations of tone (forcx,lmple, the extensi\e use of comedy) to court .1 \\ider and more 'respect­able' audience - thus reclpitulating, ,llbeit on a different time-frame, the

dnelopment,Ii trajectory of mainstream cinenu. \Villiams also finds 1<)70Sporn films less concerned to stimulate desire in the spectator that can (must)

be s,ltisfied 'else\\ here' (like the stag films), than themsehes to supply textual

's'ltisf~lction' through spectacular concluding large-scale sC:\llal 'numbers'.

'(T)he price of manifesting public sexual interest in pornography was the

suppn:ssion of mcrt indiyidual sexual responses that \\ere at least possible in

the pri\<lte party atmosphere of the stag film and often solicited by Ihe films

themsehes' (\\'illiams, It)t)<): 2<)<)). By contrast, 'classic' 1t)70S porn filnls like

!J"/lIl1d Ihe Greell f)oor (Un7)

constructed their ,1lTangement of sexual acts into a climactic satisLlction

meant to st,md as a \isual experience alone. It \\as the conceit of these

narLltiyes ... that the films itself \\(lUld he so ahsorbing' and satisfying

,IS not to lead the yiC\yer 'on the rehound' back to his or her myn hody.

Indeed, the gTeater and [(Teater spectacularisations of the multitudinous

money shots of this er,I's pornography seemcd determined to prmc that

the film's yisual clim,lxes \HTe suflicient unto themseh es. (ibid.)

Such films importantly challenge the pnception of pornographic narratiyes

,IS merel~ instrumen tal 'tools' fl)r sC\.u.tl arousal though in the book's

second edition in 19<)<), \\illiams rc;rsscsses 'classic' l(nOS porn as not, as she

first surmised, thc [('enre's most fully-rctlised fl>rIll but something of an

l'\ccption, historically hracketed In the more 'practical' pleasurahle applica­

tiolls and interactiH' sC\.ual/tC\.tual engagements of the stag film and yideo

porn (pp. 2<)<) 300), Thc home yideo rC\olution of the I<)SOS, \\hich argllabl~

tr,l11sfi>rIned the cconomics hut, fllr the most part, not the aesthetics of

mainstIT,\m Holh \\00l1, ended porn film's 'classical' phase, fl)reclosed on the

",enre's aspirations to theatrical 'leg'itim,lcy' (the ohject of flll1d parody in skin­

Ilid. (11I1L'llr Jack Horner's ,Imhitions in Hoogle ,\I.~ltls to make 'real mm ies'),

.md returned the consumption of porn to conte""ts (the pri\ate home) th,It

()nee ,Ig,lin promoted spectatorial regimes \yhne porn-\"'Iching could be

inte~LlIL'l1 into ,Ieriye se""Lul pleasure-taking.

1I~ the preLlce to Hilnl Core, \Villiams descrihes the book's origins in a

pmject ,lluhsing other film genres in greater or lesser part detined hy their

slImatic aflcct - their direct address to and imp,lct upon the embodied

spectator- a categ'ory that also included 'tearjcrking' melodramas and horror

lilms. This is a suggcsti\e association inasmuch as those other genres too

hay e, as \\e ha\e seen, endured criticIi diS<lpprohation as 'debased' forms

270 FILM GENRE

appealing; to the lowest common (social and perceptual) denominator, only tohenefit from a much more Ll\'ourable reception in contemporary theOl'ie~ ofthe g'cndered subject. In Vil'tor Hugo's opinion, whereas tragedy stirred theheart, melodrama re\varded 'the pleasure of the eyes' (q uoted in Carlson,I qH4: 213). Porn's current rehabilitation as an object of cri tical analysis canthus be located \vithin the larger contest of critical theon's generallyexpanded interest in forms that through form and/or narrati\'e conte~t

challenge comentional vie\ving: positions and the critical categories typicallyidentified \\ith them (see Chapter 7). '\ot coincidentally, a number of scholar~

who have \\Titten about porn haye also contributed important studies of the

horror film and/or melodrama, including \\illiams hersc1f(I<)H3, H)H4, 199 1,

1l)<)H), Carol Clover (Hj<)2), S ue-Ellen Case (I(j>ll), I<)<) I), ehuck I\..leinhans(((J7H, 1()9(l) and Claudia Springer (I<)9(l),

,\11 that said, at first glance porn, its transgressi\c (olllmi not\\ ithsLlnding,would seem to be an\lhing but uncomentional in its intense genericity - itsattachmen t to rig'id narrati\ e and iconog:raphic proced ures that vary less fromindiyidual film to film than any mainstream genre. Porn must by definition

(and this of course means legalh too) feature graphic, explicit and repeatedrepresentations of unsimulated sex acts; \\illiams's HI/rd Corc introducedand explained the g-cneric lexicon of 'meat shots' (close-ups of penetration).md 'money shots' (the male ejaculation outside but usually on the bodyof his female partner(s)). In LIct, the multiplicity of porn's proliferatingspecialist sub-genres makes the identification of semantic or iconographicconstants surprisingly difficult. Porn can be tender or ag'gressi\e, comic ornutter-or-hct; its protag'onists nLlY be old or young', cOl1\entionally 'Ittractiveor not; production \alues ma~ be extremely high (as in 1(J70S porn classicslike Hclillld Ilic Crall Door or contemporary UpSGlle \ ideo porn) or Im\-rent(in a variety ohvays, fill' different reasons and \\ith different affective modes,as in amateur, 'gonzo' and much fetish porn); and straight, g;ay, bisexual,lransgender and transyestite men .md \YO\11en of course can (and do) perf(lrrna be\\ildering' yariety of sexu~i1 acts and scenarios from the straightfiln\ard tothe recondite and bizarre, hen nudity is not an absolute gi\cn in all porn(for example, in some fetish contexts).

In most cases cOl1\cntional \\isdom \\ould also assume that narratiYes inporn films are no more than inert (.md in the home \ ideo ag'e, rCldih skippedmcr) 'carriers' for the pri\'ileged sex seq uences, \\ hich in terms both of

perfi)l'mance and consumption arc essentiall~ autonomous of their narratiyecontexts. That is, neither the yie\\er nor the actors maintain an y pretence ofinterest in ostensible characterisations or narratiye deYeiopments during

performances of sex acts th.lt .lI'e to <Ill intents and purposes stand-<llone

textual elements, c<lpable of heing, ,md indeed likely to be, yie\\cd in any orno order \\ith no me<lningful diminution of their interest or imp,ICt.' E\en if,

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,IS in some 1970S porn, an attempt is made to produced a more integTatedn~IlTati\c, the powerful 'reality effect' of hardcore sex (whose specular, ,IS

opposed to purely libidinal, charge is in itself, one might note, sociallyconstructedh) is ah\ays likely to O\cn\hclm its narratiYe contexts, as wouldseem to be borne out by the experience of recent mainstream film-makers\\ ho haye experimented \\ith including hardcore sex in non-pornographicn,lIT,lti\cs (sec aboYe). \Yilliams, hO\yeyer, argues that porn narratiYes reyealthc g;cnre's underlying syntactic coherence and as such are a good deal morethan disposable packaging fi)r sex scenes. For Williams, pornography is 'a

!2:cnrc that is by definition obsessed \\ith Yisiblc proof (p. 230). This accountsfill' the \\ays in \yhich the sex luI act, and specifically female pleasure, arclocated ,IS objects of intense narratiYe curiosity in I<J7os porn films premised

Oil 'scxual problems' like Decp TllFliltl (1lJ72), Tllc DCi.'iI III Miss ]OIl('S (IC)74)and III.illllaMc (H)]H).

This in turn reLItes back to the tantalising' insight allying porn andmelodrama: till' porn, like melodrama, is arguably also as much a 'mode' as agenre, hence despite appeaLII1CeS and assumptions defined more readily ins\nt,Ktic than in semantic terms'! Porn is g'Cnerically unified by its emphasisOIl \\hat \\'illiams calls 'the fi'enzy of the visible', which may be understood

.1" the progLlmnutic imperative to render on-screen the experience of sexualpleasure in unmistakeable, unchalleng'Cable and e\cn \erifiable ways. Themost Eimiliar generic marker of this scopophilia is the 'money shot' of straightporn, HO\\e\er, both the female orgasm and fetishistic pleasure pose a

problem for the pornographic gazc in their LIck of a transparently signif~'ing'

somatic manifestation.

Pornography poses a particuLIr challenge to com en tional not ions of generic,<'usllJ/illltufc in so f~lr as it is predicated on a fundamental disassociation of itsficti\e' storytelling practices \\hich arc in fi)l'mal terms usually perfectlyuJl1\entional and its ultimate promise to deliver representations which arc

not It/dll:c hut in Elct rcal. Porn's specific generic \'erisimilitude centres onthe proposition of a \\ orld \\here libidinal energies arc not repressed or"uhlimated though they may of course be temporarily frustrated, at least interms of their attraction to specific objects (.1 particuhll' partner, orifice ortl·tish object) - hut where, on the contr,lry, human beings arc constantly

primed for sC\ual activity. In this sense, as Williams notes, the porn film'sconstruction of a generic milieu premised on the acting-out and ready grati­fiution of sC\:ual desire in 'production numbers' that define the genrep'lrallels both the structure and utopi,m world of pure expressi\'ity (secChapter 4) in the integrated musical.

Pornography's structural aflinities \\ith not only the musical but that other

episodic, specLlcuLIr genre, the contemporary action blockbuster, could belIsed to support an argument filr narratiYe cinemas as a \d1Ole to be regarded

272 FILM GENRE

as 'essentially' pornographic, an argument that some psychoanalyticallybased theories of spectatorship and cinema's mobilisation of the 'scopic drive'would support. This book has generally ljuestioned the notion of generic'essences' in favour of a more proeessual understanding of genres, and itwould be perverse now to reintroduce such ideas at the macro-Ine!. None­theless, if more modestly \\c pursue the idea of pornography as a modestudying the \\ays in which the pornographic and the melodramatic mode~interact in m,linstream, narrative dramatic cinema - including: within andupon 'canonical' genres - mig;ht well prO\'C a rewarding and instrueti\e areafl)r further study.

NOTES

I, I\otc that Nichols's O\\n ddlnition of thc 'perti,rmatl\c modc' difkrs si~nillcanth li'om

other construclions of 'pcrtiJrmati\c' documcnt'lr! notahh' Bruzzi (20~0) , in li'ght of

theorics of gTmler and subjccti\it\ ach.lIlccd In Judith Butler and others,

2, '\ comprchensi\(' critical O\TI'\ ic\\ of lilmic trcatmcnts of thc Holocaust is prO\idcd b\'Insdorf (2002), '

3, Z\'g'munt Bauman's ()()~()) ,Hoi/oml)' IIlld IIII' lIolo(IIIISI is probahh thc hcst-knO\\n

nposition of thc casc li)r Ihc Iiolocaust as running \\ith rathcr than ag'linst thc grain ofmodernit \ ,

+. Though a 111m such 8\1.\1 (1<)<)<)) indicatcs that thc phohic \ision of porn .IS Illkrno

pcrsists, porn's incorporatioll inlo nuinstrcam popular culturc nO!\lithst'lIldinl';,

), Comparc thc bmous non-diegetie shot of Ihe pistol-packing eO\\ bO\ th,n coul:l eithcr

(or holh) begin or end Till' (;,.<'111 Tn/ill Ro/J/Ja)' (/<)01) (sec Ch'lpter 3)'

h, That is, it is thc social tahoo surrounding graphic imai,(cl'\ that lends lurdcore im'lgcry

its pO\\crful \isual alfect: so \\'ell-cstahlished is thc prinCiple of thc s('\ aet's

UI1\ ie\\'ahilit\, that its inclusion in ,In\ n.lrrati\ c not instituliOlulh placcd as porn is

(presenth, at least) transgressi\c to ,I dl'i,(ITl' that dl,dlengcs thl' possihilit\ of itsnarrati\'(' intq~Tation,

/, On melodrama as g'enrl' ,Ind as mode, SlT Ch'lptcr 2,

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Conclusion: Transgenre?

T O\vards the end of SCll' } 01'/...', ,\CII' Yor!.:, Francine F \ ans fends off theneurotically aggressive needling of her ex-husband Jimmy Doyle, who

h<\s just rebranded her latest hit, lIapp), Elldillgs , 'Sappy Ending's', with aha If-defensive, half-acljuiescent piece of self-deprecation about musicals: 'Seen

one, seen 'em all, huh?'I fopefully, readers of this book will not find themselves agreeing with

Francine, either about musicals or about genre films generally. The enorm­ous \ariety of narrati\'Cs, visual styles, modes of performance, ideologicalpositions, politicJl implicltions and fl)rms of spectatorial address e\'identacross the rang;e of films and genres discussed in these pages should havemade it plain that both across the system of film gcnl'C as a whole, withinIlolh \yood <ltld beyond, as well as bet\veen individual genre films in the same[!:eneric tr,ldition, seeing one is reall~ nothing like seeing them all. NCll' Yor!.:,\('11' LII'/"" itself, as a classic work of [<)7os 'New Hollywood' genre l'Cvision­ism, <Ipparently torn between the desire to presenT the bittersweet memoriesof Ilollywood's gem'C p,lst and the urge to bury them ali\e, ,Imply testifies tothe ways that genres change in COl11ple:x rebtionship to changing times and

institutional conte:xts.let Francine is not \\holly \\Tong either: in so Ell' as each indi\idual g-enre

film acts as a summation of and commentary on the tot,llity of its genericpredecessors, there is a sense in \\hich \\hen \\c \\atch anyone genre film, we.It-e if not 'seeing them all' then at least perhaps sellsillg 'them all'. i\lost g'enrelilms are of course neither as consciously nor as e:xplicitly intertextual ordirectly contestatory of g;enre traditions as ,YCII' LJik, .veil) 'r'or!': or other'revisionist', or critical, genre films of the same period (fl)r ex,lmplc, in thelS CIl/11iI11II1'11 and Pill Garrell alld Bill)' ;//(' A.'id, in Europe FCilr Eals llieSOIlI and Tlie ,-ill/entilll Frimd, <lI1d many others) . .\lost g'enre films inhabittheir generic identities in \\ays that ,Ire both less intensely self-conscious and

CONCLUSION: TRANSGENRE? 27.1

'trenericity' of contemporary Holly\\ood films differs from that of preyious~eriods -" notabh" from either the comfortable (yet flexible) inhabitation of~'on\cntions in the classical period or the intense and in some cases politicisedre\ isionism of the 1970s, It seems for example that the energetic contestationof classical g'enre paradigms as a tool of ideological and generational critiqueth,lt fuelled Holly\\ood cinema into the 19XoS is a less powerful impulse forthe second and third generations of 'moyie brat' directors than it was for thefirst. Indeed, as noted in preceding chapters many of the genres moststrongly identifieu \\ith classical Holly\\()()d ha\e giyen ground to newer and!1lore fle\:ih1c forms like horror, SF and the action film. On the basis of thecritique of 'e\olutionary' theories of genre in Chapter I, I would obyiously,Irgue that these classical genres are not 'deau'. 'Yet it is also clear that manycl.lssical genre parauigms haye a much reduced importance to the contem­porary film industry and in a number of cases haye mutated into othertreneric conte\:ts. For example, as has been \yidely noted, as the \Vestern has~lcclined aspects of the frontier myth luye generically relocated themselyes tothe post-Sial' Uill'S SF anu action film. The periodic 'rniY,lls' (that is,ITne\\ed production cycles) of the Western (in the late 19Xos, miu- 1990S and,Ig,lin in 2003-4) often produce films burdened \yith a somewhat academic,almost heritage tone, carefully eYocatiye of genre traditions and their genrea11lecedents (f()r e\:ample, Keyin Costner's TV)'al! Earp, 1994, and Opell Range,2003). The classical integrated musical, at least, seems nO\\ to be acceptablemost often in animated cartoon rather than liye-action form. The popularityand relC\ance of the combat film, in line \\ith the discussion in Chapter .1,seems to fluctuate in line \\ith the general cultural yisibility of combat andthe military (suggesting' its immediate future, at least, looks rosy), It maysimply be the increasing temporal and cultural - distance bet\\een contem­porary film culture and the heydays of these classical genres that makes theirIT,lJ1imation through critical engagement ,n once more difficult and less

lIr~ent.

\n important aspect of IlJ70S Holly\\()od's critical engag;ement withclassical genres \yas the assumed industrial and cultural centrality of the~enres in question, By imerting or radicalising the generic paradigms of the\\estern or the '\1(;\1 musical, it \\as possible to comment in a coded yetI'airly transparent \\ay both on the irreley,mce or bankruptcy of classicalIiolly\yood narrati\ es and on the y,dues sedimenteJ in those generic forms,The diyersified contemporary entertainment market militates against such aclear sense of public utterance. The disappearance of classic Hollywood's(Ill)tionally at least) relatiycly homogeneous audience, the multiplication ofIlew genres and sub-generic trends, and the \\eakening of generic boundaries,,til make it Ell' harder to identif\, let alone contest, genre-specific hegemonicidel)logies.

II

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274 I'lL!\! GENRE "

less challenging. Yet something like - to adapt Fredric Jameson's famousphrase - a 'generic unconscious' persists \\"ithin, beneath and ,Iround genre ~

texts and sets their horizon of signification \yhether they are fully consciousof it or not. Some genre images - a stagecoach fording a riyer, ~aY - are sospecifically freighted with generic history that it is hard to imagi~e a film­maker shooting such a scene without the conscious intention of tipping hishat to John Ford. Others are so absolutely 'generic', transcending' the needfor a specific textual rd'erentiality- a priyate eye climbing into a taxi andtelling the dri\er to 'follm\ that cab' - that their inclusion is equally e\ocativeof the 'essential' (or ideal) genre text that Tz\etan Todorm (IC)90) sugg'eststheories of g'enre need to imoke as a heuristic fiction.

A remaining question is what part this genre patrimony plays in contem­porary cinema. The first chapter of this book closed with thc suggestion thatwhile 'film genres' - understoou as the systcmatic, routinised production ofgenre films for a regular mass-auuicnce spcetatorship - might be a thing ofthe past, 'genre films' - indi\iuual films working self-consciously \\ith (if notwithin) establisheu generic tradition(s) - had hecome if anything' an e\enmore important instrument guiding' contemporary film-makers anu audiences.A glance at current releases in any \yeek of the \car \\ill certainly confirmthat Hollywoou films touay are as intensely gen'nic as eYer, perhaps eyenmore so. As I write this conclusion in the autumn of 2004, the most recentVariely bo\:-office Top IO includes three horror films, three romanticcomedies, two bmily-audience animateu films, an action film and a musicalbiopic. I This list is maue up of Elirly traditional g'enres, all with long historiesdating back to the classical studio era - althoug'h closer inspection re\ealssome of the characteristic \\"ays in which contemporary Holly\yood modi/iesand reno\ates these older p,lrauigms: two of these films are remakes (of aH)60s British ';\ew \Va\e' romantic comedy and a recent Japanese horrorfilm); two arc sequels, including" predictahly one horror film but also oneromantic comedy, a genre that has traditionally heen less prone to seriale\:ploitation; both of the animated features arc digital rather tlun traditionalcel animations, and hoth clearly aim at the crossmcr jll\enile/adult marketestablished by such breakthrough hits as I'll)' Sill!")' and The LIIJIl Aill" in the1990S; the musical biopic tells the story of a 'rhythm-and-blues musici~n, Ra \"Charles, rather than a figure from Broau\yay (a biopic of Cole Porter, De-Lo('clj:,releaseu e,lrlier in 2004 performed poorly at the bo\: office). Such adapti~"e

features - audience erossm"er, remakes, influence fi'om other national cinemasupdating' of generic comentions (shO\y tunes to R'n'B) in line \yith chano'in~

Q Q

audience preferences - arc \\holly consistent with the ways in \\hich Holly-

woou genres haye historically responded to their changil~g institutional a~dsocial contexts.

Yet this picture should not obscure the important \\a\s in \\hich the

In a more diffuse way, howeHT, a critical impulse is built into some of thegenres and cyclcs that have come to rep LIce and/or supplement classicalgenres in the 'New Hollywood' - understood in its hroadest sense, to take inthe entire period since the transformation of Holly\\ood in the mid-Ig6osand thus covering hoth the Ig60s-HnOS 'Holly\yood Renaissance' and'Corporate Hollywood' since the Igi\OS. Many of these 'new' genres are inLlct hyhrids, at once reno\ating and comhining older generic traditions andalloying them with new concerns, and in some cases the reorientation oftraditional generic coordinates e\:presses a significant ideological shift. Theroad moyie, for instance, which takes its ddiniti\e form in u)6q \\ith EasyRidn (I <)69), incorporates the tradition of the Western as a quite explicitinterrext, \\ith the free\\"ay network replacing the fi'cedom of the open range:one shot in Eos)' Rider pointedly frames Billy tinkering \yith his motorevclealongside a rancher shodding his horse. Yet \yhile the road moyie updates' the

fi"ontier myth to modern America·" deriying ultimately from Jack K.erouac'sbeat rhapsody 0" /ltl' Rllorl it also frequently sharcs in the cultural disen­chantment that inflJrms contemporary 'cnd-of... the-line' \\·esterns . ."<ot only

docs the highway of necessit~ channel absolute freedom of mo\cment intoparticular routes - constraints fl)lcshado\\cd in the barbed \\ire Bill\ runsinto in Pal Garrell 11IId Bill)' /ltl' A.'irl (un3) but m,my road mmies s~ggestthere is in any e\cnt noplace much left to go to. Bill~ and Wyatt in EasyRider journey, counter-canonically, from \Vest to East and from broadeningto inexorably and btally narrm\ing horizons; as expansi \e and cosmic as theiryision of freedom occasionally becomes, it is portLI\cd as fundamentallY atodds with a contemporary :\mcrica that is hostile "to difference or inLieed

indiyidualism of any kind, e\cn patriotically directed (earl~ on in the film,Billy and Wyatt arc jailed fllr 'parading \\ithout a permit'). .\ sense of

shrinking physical, political and personal horizons f(Jrms an important strainof the road moyie, to the point where, as Douglas P~c obsencs of Peckinpah'sWestern heroes (J()<)6: IH), their 'LlI1ge of action (is) finally limited in somecases to a choice of hO\\ to die', as Tite/llla a/lll Llililse (Il)SH) discmer amidthe f:ul1iliar desert buttes of the classic Western. ,\ number of serial killer/

road mo\ie hyhrids films from BI{(IIII/Iris (un3) to Ill'lIr)': Pllr/ral/llril Serialkiller (I<)S6), A.'ali/im//i/ (H)()I) and SII/liral Bllm klll;'rs (1<)<)-1-) parodicallyreduce the 'freedoms' of the road to the freedom of anommous slaug'hter in

" ,a landscape of depersonalised transience, \\hile teen-oriented road mo\ies

like Rllad Trip (zooo) e\acuate the myth of the .\merican journey of anymeaning beyond getting drunk and getting laid. "

The blending of di\'erse genre traditions at work in often complex ways incontemporary film-making indicates that the self-ad\crtised cine-literacy

\\hich was such a notable feature of unos Holly\Yood has if anything inten­sified. Undoubtedly, the transflJrmed modes of film consumption in the last

"'

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CONCLUSION: TRANSCiENRE? z77

(\\enty-fin: years - above all, the irnp,lct of home video '" hare sig'nifieantlyheig'htened le\'els of genre a\yareness among mainstream film audiences.Freed from reliance on the idiosyncracies of TV scheduling; and repertorycinema programmers, students of the \Vestern can nmy easily view, fl)re\,lmp1c, a \\ide range of [()3os series \Vesterns2

. and C\"en some silents ­;lnd 11l,lke their ()\\n estimations of the recei\cd wisdom about their stereo­

I\picality, puerility and so on. E\cn more potentially important for both,!'udicnces and film-makers is the expanded access through home \ideo to'II odd cinema' beyond either the canons of international art film or the

charmed circles of cult fandom - Japanese, K.orean, Italian, Mexican andBr,lzilian horror films, fllr example, or Hong K.ong action films (bothcontemporary and from the I9(lOS and [(nos). The ready a\ailability of genre

(r~lditions has already transfllrmed the flmns of interte\:tllal address typical of~enre film today, as Geoff K.ing (zooz: I IS· zH) notes in his discussion of the~enre-bending gangstcr-\ampire-Western 1-'/111/1 Dusk Till [)iI /1'1/ (I l)(/)).

Rather than the \yholesale generic interrogations of the [(nOS, established

~em'l"ic comcntions are often imoked by indi\idllal films today on a localisedbasis to guide the audience's understanding of a particular dramatic situationor character rather than as an overall narratiye paradigm: as noted in ChapterJ [, .\dlil/riler's Lis/ (Il)()3) imokes the \Varner Bros. wartime 'conversionnarr;lti\c' (such as Cilsil/J!ill/m) and PS)'CItIl (not only in the 'shower scene' butill the ahistorictl depiction of :"azi Commandant Amon Goeth's \ilb as ag,lhled 'Bates \lotd'-style house on a rise) to establish a fr~lme of Llmiliardramatic refCrence fllr gTossly llnLlmiliar narrali\e material. Such referen­cing- tends to lack the scholarly precision embodied by such 'moyie brat'dircctors as \!artin SCOl"sese (\\ho LlI1lOusly insisted that the kerbs of the\ LlIlhattan sidC\yalk in ,Yi'/I' ") "lirA', ~Yi'l1' YllrA' be constructed artificially hig'h(0 l1l,ttch the studio sets of his mO\ing'-g'oing youth), and increasing'ly, thelillll g;enres inloked and mobilised in this Iyay arc themsehcs post-c1assictl

ones. Contemporary gangster films, fll!" C\:ample, arc often intensely inter­In,lual, but the references they make arc much more likely to he post­classictl gangster films - notably the Gild/ii/ita series and Martin Scorsese's",iseg;uy' films, principally GlilidFellils - than the 'classical' early H)30S cycle.~ill Bill, Jiii. I (zoo,)) relics ,r1most exelusi\ ely on serial allusions to not onlyI q60s and ](nOS Hong K.ong kung-fu films and Italian re\'enge Westerns of

Ihe Lite H)60s, but also to such '\e\\ Holly\\ood pastiches as Bri,111 dePalma'sIJri'sscd /11 kill (H)SO), itself a fCtishistictily C\:act reworking of Hitchcockian(ropes and motifs. In this \\ay, proliferat ing ,Iml intensif~ing gencric

rcJi.'I"enti,t1ity docs not necessarily lead to ,111 e\"pansion of historical awareness

parallel to the historical turn in film scholarship. If anything, the frame ofhistorical reference of genre films has become increasingly foreshortened,II hile the sheer intensity ,1I1d density of generic allusion encloses genre films

II.

27K FtLM GENRE

in an increasingly hermetic circle of reference and counter-reference that can- in extreme cases such as Tarantino - proceed largely "ithout reference orobvious releYance to the extra-generic world. This may pose a problem fortraditional genre theory which, as we have seen, has tended to attachconsiderable importance to the "ays in \\hich film g;enres and genre filmsinteract with their social, political and cultural contexts.

From another perspective, ho,vever, the changing g'eneric field of play(and the changing rules of g'eneric production and consumption) return us tothe point where this book began - the realisation that genre, and genres, areinherently processual. As we ha,e seen, a problem that theories of film genreand accounts of individual genres ha,e periodically encountered has beentheir attempt to make genres seem both more internally integ-rated and moreconsistent than they generally are. Even the most atypiedly integrated andconsistent genre, the \Vestern, has under the pressure of recent criticalinterrog'ation revealed itself as an interestingly fissiparous and multi-strandedgenre tradition. In that sense, the increasingly transgeneric tendency intwenty-first-century Holly\\ood film may represent not the breakdown of'classical' genre traditions, but the more visible enactment, in transformedinstitutional contexts, of those 'post-classical' impulses that have ah,ays beenpresent in the system of genres. :\t the ,cry least, such developments confirmthat we still ha"e a number of questions to ask about "hat genres are, whatthey do, why and for "hom, and that genre in turn still has a great deal toteach us about hO\v movies work.

NOTES

[. Respectilell: Si'"d orCII/I,AT, Till' (,'rlldg" and SlllIo; Bnd,~('/ ]IJI/<·.': 1,,1' L(~I' IJI RI'IISOI1,

SI/IIII 1/;, /),II/<"i andlllie; 'I'll" 1II(I,'dl/>/".' and Til,' PollIl" 1:'.1/,1"".'.'; Ifia Iiii' S/lIIS"'; RIIJ'

(source: I III"Id)' \\'eckend !l()'" ()ffice, 12 I+:"()\ ember 200+)'

2. For rxamplc, all of John \\ aync's \lllnog;ram \\'estern.s arc nOli ayailablc on I)\')) in

the LI-.: and LS:\.

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Index

\hdul, Pallia, I)l)Jill/i'(' l S flit' IIr/l'(',\ (I(»);), IIH

Lt's III~/I (IlI;b), 110,lcti"n bl"ekbu,tl'J', i\, :;, If" 3", +1), S+, XS,

I()O, IS2, 1<)0, 20(). 2JJ-:,(I, 271, 21.~

,]CtiOll film .1('(' actillJ1-,Hhcnturc film,1ctioll-alhclltUI"C tilm, )_~, dH), 1<)2,237 S,

2+0, 2+;\dorl1lJ, ThelJdlJr \\., 2!, 'l I 3, 2(,:;, 2(,f,

U't'IIIIIIt" IIrR,,11I1I IIIIII,!, 'Illt' (llJ3X),k/'lll, Qllt't'll Ill' I1111S (I (12+), IXf" 20 I\friGln-.\111l'ric.lll~, 73 +. 1+() ,. 22(j

Ilrer !III II IS (I'lS:;), 21l)1. I,:. [llIli,'1I1 11I1t'lllp"II,t' (2002),1'1.'III Forlt' (I ').U), I qIII F"I,t' Oil( (I'l();), 2+"Ihl'll (llIX,';), 201

11",1,1/11 (I '1')2), l)II1111111", Illt' (200+), ,:;Iii, t' /)"t'w'l I,,,, I la, [1I]'III"rt' (I 'Ii+), +'l111t'1i (I()/(»), 170, 173, 11"2, 1()2 3, [<)::;,200,

2°5 111/1('11' (I()"h), 12.'1, 1(1." 20fl11

111t'1'.; (IlI'IO), Ill:;111('11. N('SIIi"rt'I"!JOII ([ ()l)7), I lJ.;

\Ilcn, \\OlJlh, lo+n1// I /)t''1rt' (1l),,3), 3('

III QUIt'l11I1 lilt' [I ,'S/I/II Fi'IIlI/ (1(13°),10("

I Ol) 10, 13111

III 1ft,1/ 1It'''''''1I /111111'.' (Ill:;:;), 30, -to, +X, -t l )

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\Ilcn, \ lich"ci, +3\lIlJI"", 1,,," rellel', 2i}I/,/I",'';I, (11)1>.;), 200

\Irhu"l'r, I.lJui" ! 'I, .;i· +i.\ltllull, Rick, 10, II, 12, 1(, Ii, 2(', 2i, 2.'1,

.\ltl11all, Rohl'r!, 1>;, 23(,\l11hr"se, Stephell, 121)/11I"IH'"1 FI'/<'Ild, Il,,' (Illli), 22,\ 273J/!/l'rkilll G//.!,u!rI (I ()\~o). 2. I I, 222, 22X

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12,); SCc' a/so 'pro-lnJian' \\'c .... tcrns\111criclil Intl'rnational l'icturL's (.\11'), IX;,

201

\ndcr"lIl, llronclllJ Ililh, Ilo, 1171/1i/mlll<,.111 .\<,11111<1, nl<' (1l)IlX), 201/1I~,'ls 11,/1,/)11'/)' Filii'S (l'nX), 2, r 13, 13 X

.I11lnutl'd n111sicaL 275

111111111', I S3. 201

1/,,,,1,<, (I 'l:;+), :;Il, Ilo11'1I,II/I'/'s<' \11/1' (I '!i')), 12,;, 12X, 2-t+\r~'l'nto, Dario, ,;:;\ri,lolk, Il1rJ1/t{)!,i')t/Olf (I qqS), r ()-t' 23,). 23(J, 2,:; I. 252. ()

\rnold, ,J.'l'k, Ih,11'1I111/,( I!lt' I 1111'/'/ III lc'I,~/II)' /)" I'S (I '!.'(I), 23'1Is, ,'III, Il", (Il!ill), 122\'l.lin', Frell, ,.'I.:;, XIl, Xi, X,}, ql, '13, '1+, 'I:;,

2+01/ rOil,!!, I.as! !.fJ('(' (llJ75). \)h

Illilllll' L'I/], (I l}X I), 1+:;[lUI/II, c"r, Il,,' (Il)X3), 2:;1)lilli' A,l (1l):;Il), 120

.1l1l1iCJlCl" .IudiCl1cc.... , 12. S. II, 12, 1(1, IS It),

2." 2f" ,;+, +:;, "'+, Xi, XS, 'IX, 1of" 1';0,

I('S. 1/("1, d'." H)3. 20+, 237. 2++ h,

2(lj, 2(lS q, 27+, 27)

}II,(I//III/ (2000), I i.'\ustl'l', \Ihert, 12l)

,llltellri .. m. ,llltellt' r!lcor.' .\c'(' author:-.hip

,lllll)()r,hil', l) 10, 2i

\lltr~. Clene. 17. hi

9?l-INDTX II\DEX 299

Blld 10 llie Fllillre (HJX~), 19[, J()7, 2.~S

backstage musical, X+, XIl-7, 102

Blld Girls (J()lJ+), 2+

B,/(II'"11Is (HJ7"), 271'Hadse,', Stephcn, 107

B,"sc-J'loi (2001), 26.'1

Blllilld II/CIII,lc lIogllc, TI", (11J70), 71

Billilid II/ Llllic ]0, Tilt' (IlJ<)~), 70

Blilld fj"l~oll, Tile (1953), 102

Barthes, Roland, 20, 211o

HlIsi" IIISIIII<'! (HJ<) I), 22 ~I)

Ihsinger, Je<1I1ine, 12, 'o(), 11,+, I zS

BIIIII<l1I (19'+,;), II", 11'+, 11<), 1"ln"/Jlllleries 1101 IIltllldol ( J()X7), J()2

/lli//le BC)'lIlId III,' ,",llIrs (J()Xo), I'll

B<llIle RIIYII/c (2000),175

Biilll<'grolilill (I 'H<)), I zo

1I11111csillp I'll ICIII 1-111, Tlie (1<)25), Ih2

1I11111eslllr C'ililltlltll (I<)XO), 1<)1

Iblldrilbrd, Jean, IIJ~, 211

Ba,a, :J.1.Irio, 175

Jbl.in, .\ndrC'1 ix, 11- J 3, 2", SX, 2ho

IIcil,lin (I<)XX), .+lJ

Hellsl Fmlll .!(),OOO FlllliIlIllS, Till' (J();;;), ZOI

lIei/sl IIrll'Th", nil' (H)IS), 10l) ..

Ilei/ll (;,'sie (HJ,N), 2".'1

/1"111(1)' alld IIII' 8,'IISI (J()li[), lili

/I<',~llIlo/, TIt" (J(J70), 7.'1

lIe/lllld /;'11(11)' I,illes (2001),1°7

lIehiJldli/(' (;reell OOllr (J()77), 2IH), 270

Ilelton, John, H1I"lIe,11I1 llie 1'111111'1 1I/lIiI' ,11't's (HJ70), I S.+

!Jel/-IIIII (1Ii~IJ), Z3'), 2.+0

Iknl<unin, \\altcr, S

IkrkelcJ, Ilusb, , .'12, .'13, X5, X(I, .'IS 'I, '13, 100

Herl'de)'s II/limlldll'il)', nit' (I '!-t(i), 21

11<'1'/111: 711<' S)'IIII'IIIIIII' 111'11 (;(<'111 CIi)' (lti27), Itih

Berliner, Todd, .'I

lIeSI \ ,'lIrs II/ (Jllr /'/C'e-" nli' (H!-tll), 212

H,'ller lil/IIIII.,.IIII', I (lljSX), 13.1

H,','ct!), /1111, Lilli (J()S.+), 2"h

11i~ IIrolldlllsl, l'lt, (J()V), S+

Hl~ Cllld, ?he (IlJ.+S), 2,,0

IIlg (,'1111I/111, l'lte (HJ5~), q3

IJig (;IIIII/IIY, nit' (J()~S), r,~

111~ !It'll I, TIt" (Il)S3), q", 21.'1, 22(

IIlg .7<"'e (1')71), 71l, 121

IIlg I'lIrlldc, TI", (H)2~), 107, 10li

IJig Rcd (JJlC, n" (I li'~O), 121

Hlg Slo'p, TIi,' (H).+5), .:: q, .:: I ,5, .:: It), 22", 225,

2,",0

!Ji~ :,'1,'111, l'lt" ( Ilj'+'))' 22<)

Hi~ hllil, l'lte (HnO), ('0

Ih~ !i-III//J/e IJI 1,1111,' Clili/ll (IliSh), 2'+,

Blg,~,'r nlii/ 1.lfl' (H),;;()), ,10

Bill)' H"lh~lIle (Il)l)I), IH

Rill)' llie f..ld (1'1,,0), qh

Bill)' Iiii' A.'id (19'+1), "IlBnds, Ti,,' (1Iil,.+), 11l<)

Blrlli lira ,YoIii! 1/, TIi" (")1 )), .+2 -3, 73, 106,2 3.'1-9

Ihlli'r SII'"el (19.+0), .'15

Blild' 1...'''1, TIt" (1935), I III

HI"d' 11i111'A- f)1I1I'1i (2001), 10" 1211

BIII<I: 111111', nil' (llJ7lj), 1<)1

Blod' I'ml!c, flit' (Ili2,), 23,

mad, SlIlId'l)' (IIJ,,), 2+X

RI,ld If'ulll/l' (Il)S,), 2211

mlld'I'en)' (200'+), 7,;

BI"de Rill/II"!' (1'1.'12), IlJ.+ '~, 201, 22hm,ldt 11 (200Z), I,h

BI,m /I'll, It 1'111 It'<I , Tilt' (I<)'1')), (II+

HI'I.~illg S,uldl,'s (((173), X2

BIIII>, rlt" (1'1,;.'1), 1l)0, 1l)'1

hluckbuster, Z,1S- .+2; SCi' ,tl.w ,lctlUIl

hluL'khuster

mlllldfiir Omdllo (1l17.+), 15')

mlloll ,'-,'11111'1" (I 'iX.+), 211

111111(11)' 11'"11" (1lJ71), qll

/JI1i1/'1/ ,11/'</)' (((i1H), 2.+.'1

!IIII<' OillJlm, Tlte ((().+(l), 21S

!ll1I" (;lIrd<'llill, fli" (((i~,1), 2ZS

Hod)' IIlId ,"'11111 ((().+,), 2((i, ZZI

11,,11)' I/ml (Il)X I), 21 I, 215

11",1)' III' /;,'id""(,, ((()lH), 22~ II, 2('7

hody, the, lSi, I~~( '70, J(J3h()d~ -honDr, I iO 2, 1/5, II)l 3, 200

Hugart, Ilul11phrCl, 2 3, 13'+, 215, 230

Ilog(LIl1O\ idl, I'~ter, 2" ,jI,

Bolh \\o(HI, 100

Honest"lI, ChnllCl, I ,~,

BIIIIIII' '"1'/ U)'de ((()h;), 'Ih, 1'+3, [.+II, qX, 2.+ I

BIIII,~Ii' \/,~hfS (I{)q,). 2(r;, 2()()

/1"111, /ill.' (I l)X I), 122

Hord\\ ell, I Ja, id, 2.+3

B()r~C"i Joq2;c l,uis, +IJllm "" lit,' l'''IiUIt II/}<//)' ([ ,)S'i), [2.+Bor/.lgc, Fr,ll1h, .+.+

11(1)'S III CIIIII!'IIIl) C. nit' (((),S), 123

!i1l)':,:J. 111t'lllllld((()'JO), qh

llrillJls/or", (!l)S3), IllS, 203

IJr,1I1I SI"I','r's /ir<l<ltl'l (((1l)2), 15'J, Ih)

BLll1do, \Llr!O!1, [33, 152

I1r<l,'" :J. <'II' /I orid (Hu,k,), ((), .~

/lr,,,,,./"'<II1 ((()'i,;;), I 0" 2,1~

Bn,I" I~r Fr"}/~'t'lIslt'il1 (19,,5), J(ll. I ().!, IKh

RrIJ~i' <II R"IIIII~ell, 'I'll" (((jill)), 121

IJr/{f~(' Ii!! IiiI' Rl~'('r A"II),l! (I (67), 120

fJr{{(~t' rOfJ Far, I (Il);i), 121

IJrI~IIJ."," (I li5.+), ')0

/li'I~hl"'l Rud' (l'lof7), q" 22,

Brmlnn, \LIn, I,)h

Boil'ell ,-Irroll' ([(i50), 51l, )7, 110, 73

HroA'O/ B/(js.wl!1S (l(jll)), 32

Brooks, '\lel, .'12

Brooks, Peter, 3'-2, 37 S

Broomfield, "iek, 25S

Brown, I)il\'iJ, 25 2

B\l)\\ !ling:, Tod, 1III

Ilruckheilncr, Jern, 236, 25 2

Ilrlll10, Ciilllial1a, "HIlru/zi, Stella, qS, 2,;1), 272n

!in. I, </",/lh" I',.,."dlt'l (1<),1),7.1

IIlId,: 1'1'I,'ol,'s (llJ'p), 10()

1111,'1' Ro,~<'I's (,eri,ll, 1<)3<)), ISII

llliflilio Bill '111,1 rli,. IIIIII,"IS (Il177), ,2

!Jligs)' (1<)<)2),1++

ll11katm<lll, Scott, [(13, 20.+

Burgoyne, Robert, 125

llurtol1,\t1Llrc\\, I 10

Burton, Tim, IS,

Ilu,comhc, Fd\\<lrd, la, 13-q, 55, )7

lllild, 1.'"",'/)' IIII'I 11/1' SIIII'/'I1''''' A.'I'/ (11)lIl)), IIh,

77Ihar" Jacki", 3'i

(:a,1I1, Jall1~', 13,;

(:ill>,II,'1 ( Ilil 2), ~II, .'I,1.,i/lll'lii (Ili 1.+), 10;;, 23<), 2.+3

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1)2

(;,,11111, I 11111''/ SI,II,'s ,\I",.sl/ltll (Ilil,n, ,IIC~liI1, Janll'~ \ 1., 21 S. 21~, 22_~. 22{)

e,il1e, \licl1<leI, (01)(~.lll1CrOIl. J.1I1lC~, 11)0

Cl11011 .I1'{' ~l'nl'nL c.l110!1

C,lpLI, FLlI1k, 21 I 12

L,,,'!Ilfi '" /1 ,I)' (Ill<).;), q2, I+II, I) I

1.',11'I11<'11 (11)(5), ~.+

Cdr,.,,, (I <Ji(l), '70

(:,lrroIL "od, 'i" 1,1

Lil.\itl,f{/f11'(/ (1 tJ+2), S3, l()+. 2/11,'''.'1/10 (((Il))), (.+51,'''1 I"'fi!, I,' (1li-t2), (h;, 22,~

(,'ilh!J-.l.l ([9/0), loll, 121

(,a\\ dti, John, 23

L('I{III.~ /('1'1 1 (19.r7), .)

Ch<lndkr, KI' 1l1O t1Ll , 215

Chal1Cl, ],011, 1("

Ch<lplil1, Ch,rrl"" .+3 .+Lh,lIgI' fif ill:' 1,lglli lIil,~dd" nli' (IlHII), 10"

J [ 3,Cliol'lilis of I'll',' (I liS (), 130

U,d,.I,.) I :lInd (1l)73), 1+5Chillll 's 1~(,nJ (I \)71), .2.::;, jon

Chn<rlicr, :J.LIlIl'ice, X)

CIi,']','IIIii' -I,i/II III 11 (Il)I,.+), ,3C/I<')"'IIII" ,\0<1<11 C/III>, 'I'll' ([(i-a), 1I5

Chibnall, Stne, qS

Olin/go (2002), 99

Cliiclille, L" ([(J3[), 2q

CIJ/l1alolPll (1(>7-+), 2 I I, 2 J(), 223 +, 225, 2J211,

273el"""1t1 (1970), [21Cilllilrrllil ([(130), (,0

Cil111110 , ,:J. lIchad, 5')(lIU' negro, 227

cin~ma of attLlctions, .'1+-5, To.+n, 2'+2-," 2,+,+,2(,X

Cinerama, 2.+.1(,'I/I~,ell A.lille (llJ.+O), 212

(j, il \\ar (CS), (,.::, h" 77 So, [53n, 2,.'1

U<lsli B)' ,:J.I.~iJl (IliS2), 22X

'cb,ssic realism'. 3h--X, I ~7~ scc ({Iso realisl11

classical Holh \\oOLI, 1\, 2 .1, I 1,20, 22, 2h,

2.7, .-P, "~C)-I. 5", ~X. qo. <)," Q(}-7, lor,'57, I X5, ISS, 227, 23X, 2,+2, 2hJ .+, 275

classical Holh\\OOLI stde, .'IS, lJ5, 1'3,2.+3

cbs ...itic~lti()n sl'e 1.!;l'IHl' classificatiol1

Cle<l' <111,1 Pine II Ie OUlIga (ll)lJ+), Izh, 2+.'1

C/"o!,'"1'i! (Ill',,), 2"l)

CierI-.> (ll)lJ'+), 5Uodll'tl/I (Jl'illl,~e, 1 (llJ, I), I XX

C/",,. h'1I'(jllllli'/'S "lilli' Tlllr'/ f.',",! (llil71. IS",

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CIl/JrO (I<JS(,), 2,+,

(:ohUrI1, }lI11eS, 10'i

L'(j'''''" (\l)S~), IIpe,,'/e 1-11, (200+), Ili'i

(:ohan, Stcn.'n, 93, 102, 103, 10+

Cold \\ar,h"lJ,;;, 117, 113, ,.'IS, 1.'17, ISlJ,

191, 220, 24-~

(:(j!dJl ~ SI"r)', Tilt' (((),;;)), I I,

C(jllill,'r,t! (200'+), 133

Collin" Jil11, I" S.+ColoHm: 'I'l,,' Fo r/I III I'r(j!I'(/ i 1'17 I), IlJ7

(:OIU111hi,l, I 1JComl' llJll! .')'1'1' ( I ()<"'+), I oh, 1.!-2

((lined}. 3, Il), 4-7. 53(;(1 !fl ill'!!, f Jonl/' ( IlJlX), 12+

COlllllldll,/(j (1'1.'1.+),2'+7

(;011 Ilr (I 'i'J7), 23SCOlllil,'1 (I l)lJ7), 1lJ2c0l1\cntionalirY,7 S, 14-, IX. 53, )), t(IS, 2<11,

2())\ 27+

(;011;"".'<11'011, nit' (1<J7.+1, ISl)

L'o,,~ulI" /JIIII! (I 'liS), (,.::Coppola, I'L\Ilci" '::7, 'ill, IH, I So, I ~2

C"r,', fiJ, (200,;), [.'1.+, 2;; [

COllin, Stank" 70fCurman, Roger, 1l)3, I()<j, IS7, 201

Co..;tncr, r.;..C\ in, 275

COlilil'/"II'1I (It/Hi), IlJ-

300 INUtiX

(iol Ill', :\lil'kld, S7 SCrils/' f)",<, ( I 'J-tJ), 10(,

CU'illllr.- Frlllll III,' Blild' IAIponll, Til" (I '!.'-+),1(,3

Creed, Barh"LI, '70, 172, '73, I,~,n

Crilll 1/111 I, rlic (ll]l,O), '+7

CnsIs (I l)(,3), 2('0

Cronenherf':, Da\id, I ('a, 20+

Cm/los (11)ln), 17h

Crllss 0/11'011 (1l177), 101), 121

Cmsslire (1'J+7), 2'S, 2Il), 221, 221)

Cmll!'icr (I I)'J'J), 227

Cmcl S<,II, TII<' (Il)S3), I IS

Cukor, lieorg'e, 'Ill

CII II ,'/' ',I' 11 'I)' (Il)SO), 22+

CI des, 2('-7

f)1I111 HIISICrs, r/,c (I l)S+), I IS

f)III11CS (I 'J3S), Sh, SS

I ),111liano, Sergio, 76

f)1I II 0' Ifll/' II Slrallgcr (Il)SS), 227

f)illI(S l1il/' 11 1i!;'t'S (Il)l)O), 7.\

Dante, Joe, I S7

f)ilrA' Sill I' (Il17+), ISS

/),I/A' II iill! (2002), '7S

Da"in, Jules, 21l)l)a,is, \like, 213

f)1I0'/I o/III.- f)mt! (200,), dIS

f), 1/1' II 1'1111'111, Tilt' (ll130), [10

/),1)' '/fier 'Iillilorrllll', nlc (200+), 2S I

f)1I)' I/,C 1"IIr11r SIIIIIt! SIIII, Tilt' (Il)S I), IS7, 20(m

f)<'ilt!I,'1I11 (1113h), '3S, ,+h

f)Cilt! 11,111 (ll)l)S), (qf)mt!I'rt'sItIOlls (ll)'J5), [2+, 1+1>

f)OIt! Rt'd'OIIlIlP (IIH7), 2 [7

f)t'IIt!!ler 111t11l lilt' ,11111<, (IlH7), 2'7

f)mt!II'oot! (I lllO series, 200+1, 7S

f)ml/' II/II (;llIlliplll''/' (I l)(Il)), hI>

f)<'illli 0/11 SIIIt'SIII'1/1 (\liller), 2ho

/)eilill Rill', Tilt' (1l)2S), 201

f).-illir 111,1/1 (Il17+), 2+7

f)mlllll'til.-II (2002), I IS

I )a!' CO;'CI (11)1)2), 22('

I)t'c/, IIII/'ilCI ([<)l)X), 2,'[' 2S2 I>

f)ec/, rlrlwll (1l172), 27'

f)ar lIlli/It'!, 'I'lrc (Il177), 121, '2,\, [2+

I klanel, Samuel, 20S

f)t'IAli'elr (200+), 27+

delToro, Guillermo, 17h

f)ollellllil 1.1 (11)h+), I(Il)

f)<'III(/rIIIS I/ot! III( t,'/,I'/liI/II( (It)S+), 2+0

f)ollo!lllllil ,1/1111 (1t)113), ('7, It)X

Ilcrrid." JICLJUes, 7, 2'J, 101,2("-2

1).-,1'/''-1'11 Ie ]OIIl'lIel' (I 'H2), 3/),'SIIIII/lioll 1/111111 (It)SI), ,X7, [Sx

nt'fuur (llJ-+:;), 221, 2.1~11

f)c;'11 f)1I11, Tilt' (1l)31». I Xs

f)C;'t!III" BIII<, Ih,',(" (1l)'IS). 22h

f),'i't! III 111,1',1' ]011<',1', TII<' (I l)7+), 271

f)<,;'il's f]ild'f,oll", TII<' (2001), 171>

f)<,;,t!'s Dllllnl'iI)' (1l)"I), sh, 73

f)lilf,1I II 'lilt'S , 1.<',1' (I <iSl)), I (Il)I )iana ProL!uetiDI1S, 22 I

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Dimendberl';, hll1,ml, 211> '7

f)irl)' f)o:.1'I1, 'Ihc (ll)h7I, l)(', 120

f)1I'1)' if/liT]' (1l)!1), 2+7

disc"ter films, 2+0 I

I )isnl'\, /)h, l)I), 2+ I

f), (),-I. (Il)SO), 212, 2 It)

DO'lIle. \lan ,\nn, 12, 3 [

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f)r]<'A')'11 ""'/ ,lll,wr 11]''/<, (1l131 I, I(>!,

f)r]t'A:J-I1 ilil'/ Illsler 11r'/( (ltl+l), 221

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dOCU111l'lltar}, :x, 20<), 257-(Ll, 2()3 -tf)o,/~e ell]' (I 'J3')). (q

j)Olwrtl, Th"n)(", I I2, 12<)

j)onen, Stanlel, XS. [aI, 10+

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f)1I1I'1 1.01lA, IJlltA (I l)hs). 2('0

f)ollrs, r/,<, (1t)1) I). SI>

f)oonl'lI I' 10 11<,11, 'Iii,' ( I l)3 0 ), [,\7

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21t), 2.21

l)oUC';LIS, Kirk. 2+0

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f)r,',(s,,<1 III A. III (Il)So), 277

Ihell. Robert, 2110

/)1'/1111,1 /I1111~ 111<' 1/IIIIiIII'A' (Il)Y)), ('2

I)uke, Ilill, 22('

I h LT, Ri,'hard, l)O I, '13

F'lplt' If", l.illI'/,',I, Tilt' (llj71». lOX

(drllr "', IIIi' nl'lIi~ S,III«'rs (Ilj_,(j), I X+

r"rllr'IIIIIA'<, (11)7+), 2+0, 2S2

r"'1 IIf r'/,'II (1I)5SI, 30

1"'hIIlO'''!. Clint, S7, 77 XoI,'"s)' Nid<'/' (I ()(ll)), 22, ()(" 2+ I, 271,

(<I /fllll<! ([l)l)+), 1'7

hhh, "elson, Ss

1,'/11'" 1''/ S, IsslIrll,llIds ( [()I)O), 1(,('

\ 1/1/ ([()l)l)), 27211

\'-1 Ciri/rlll' I/O!,I, (II)Slj), [23

Fisele, .Iohn, 23S

Li'\l'IhtciI1, Scr~l'i, 37, -t3, 5011, If)2

1.1 ("'III (lljl>l), 2+0

I':baesser. Tllomas, .10, .'!, .IS, +S(1I,'IIt)' III Ih" GIII,'s (2000), 12 I. 2S2

Fngelhardt, Tom, 62Entcrprise Production~, 22 I

epics. 23S, 2+0, 2+2, 2++

hllsa (Il)~(,), 3, 2,\+'erotic thriller', 226, 267

(,",',11'" F/'IIIIt .\',,/1' ) '/IrA' (I ~7l)), I XI)

F, T Ih" F(II'II-'!,'rr,'slrrlll (Il)X2), 1l)1

(I<'I'/I,d SlImlllll( II/Ih" S!,IIII"ss ,Ill/III (200+),

200

l'thnicit~-, 1YJ ""0, I +h: SCt' IIlso ral'C

/:';,,, IIf f),'SII'/i(/11I1I (Il)l)O), 1lJ7

(i't'1I1 11111'1 ~IIII (I 91J7 I. 17Sl:i<,l\hll<l)' SIlYs I IA"'<, ) -1111 (1l)1)(')' l)l)

(;'1111 (1I)l)h), SS. 9l)

l'\ olutiOll.lry IlHH.ld St'L' ~l'nn' l'\ O!utiol1

" \'1(1,'11/ (11)l)lj), 20+1\lIIOSI, '!ht' (1l)7,;), IllS, IhS, 170, 172, 1l)2

e,ploiLltlon film, I(,S (', I(H), IX7, lSI)

FI/'IIIIt'rs (Il)SS), Il)7L \.prc""iIJni"nl, (icrIn<ln, I h I 2. I (q, I (Ii, .2 I +,

2 IIl, 227c\.pn.: ........ i\ it~ in 11111Sicd... , S.:;, S+, S:" Xh ;. Sl),

{)O I, 27'(\Iall/lllllillr, Tilt' (19S0). 2+7

1\ Ift'III' /'/"Ill'//(t' ([ 9S7). 2+7h'<" 11'1<1<, SIIIII (Il)l)I)), 2 So

1',1,"; 0l/( 1l)l)7), II" 23+. 237, 2+X, 2,,0

FairbJnk"i, I )()lI!:da~, 23iFilii II/ 13all/l, '!'Ii,. (I lJ+9), '21

F,rlllIl~ nOIl'11 (Il)l)+), 7 Sf.ll11ih, I (l, I -+ I 2. 1-+3, I (IS, I ()2; s('c Illsli

, ""nih' lllelllllr.lllla

Llnlil~ ll1clodr.l!1la, 30. J2, +7 -i)

Filr Frillli 11,,11;','11 (2002), ", +1)

"'1"bindn. Rainer \\ ernLT, +01,/1111 /111'11<,111111 (Il)S7), 2S0

1'111,' IIf" ,1/1111, '!h<, (Il)S9), 121

F.-"r 1,'lIls Ih,' S/lill (Il)7+), +0, 273

FCllcr, J,Inc, 93---+. 101, 102,20.)

II~/II Llllh (I 9l)I)), 2S0FI"hllll~ (,,/', Th( (I'J+O), 10(', III, "3FI'11it nlll)' (pCrIodicd), S' 31l

lilill lilliI', 3. +, '7,20,22, 2Xll, 2l), +2, -til, [+3,. '+:" Ihl, 1<)), 20-t' 20l), .210 32, 2(q,

2h" .:d)()

Fililr Ut'I;It'IlI, nit' (II)lj7), 200

.,., f)iI)" ill /'dIIl,~ (11)1>.,), 107

/-1/1li1Il'S Ri/IIIII(1I1' (lll'7). ljh

Firs I nJOII'/ (ItjS2), 12SFirst \\ orld \\,,1', 10, SS, 107. lOX l), I [I,

J 2 7, [3111, l-t0' I-tX, Ihl, 251, it'I' 1{1s1!

\\\\1 comb,1t Elm

I'iseher, LucI, S~. 93

INDEX 301

Fl..";.'!' (197X), q+, 150

FrSllidll/Dllllars, _~ (1'16+),1.1+

Fli'C (I 9S I), 11)7

Flahertl. Robert, 2S~, 261

FII/slr Gllldli/l (serial, 1(36), IS6

FI"slldal/te ([l)g,), '1'1

FlI~/l/ IIf Ilrc Y""lga[lI,. (19S6), 1<)2

FI)', Til<' (ll)XI», If16, 1l)3

Flrl/lg f)1I1I'1l 10 Rio (1'133), X9n)'il/g FllrlrcssfS (Il)F), 106

FII nil, Errol, .\, S9, 12~. 237

Flig If Hill', Fhe (2003), 2h2

Fonda. Henn-, S6

FIIIII!lgll/ Pal'llr!c (193+), .,. Xl)

FIIIIIIIIO,« (lljX+), <)~

Fi''' ,1/1' 1I1Ir! ,\1.1' Gal (19+2),10.1

For Ihe /Joys (I l)l) I). ~6

1'0rf,lddt'll PlllllcI (Il);;('), IX7, IljX

Font' II/Fi'li (1l1+7). ql, qs. 21S, 2[(), 221.

2.'2tlFord, John, I), 12,27, S7, 61, (q, 1l6, 1>7 -X, 7 1 ,

73, 75, iX, 27-tIlIrt'l,~1I L'lIl'!'cs/'lIlllll'll[ (IlHo), 23+, 23X

Fori '!,,,,lre (19+S), S71'01'1)' (;IIIIS (11)S7), 1>.,

-If' SIIt'<,1 (11133), S(" X7, Xl)

1'-IIUl'llldt, \lichel, +, I S')

Frallkenheimer, John, ljS

IrilnA'<'lIsl<'I1/ (I l) I0), 161

1',." IIA'l'IIslt'IIl (1113 I), 11>2, I(q, I Xh1'1', III A't'I/>/t'IIl II<,cls Ihc 11111/,11,1/1 (11)+!I), 162

Fr'CilA-- (I f),,,,), 162, II>(,

FI''-'/'/)' ;, 7asoll (200,), 11'01'«(Td, \rtiHIr, XS, I~O, 10,; .In' IIlslI Freed

l nit (\IG\I)!'['e(,d Lllil (\l(j\l), S3, X7, 9+, liS, 10[, [02

I'r,'II,11 LOIlI/,'dli'lI, Till' (Ilill), 2+7, 2Shl1

1'1i',lrlllilll, TIit' (11)<)0), 1.13

Freud, Sip"und, 1('7, '7'

l'reul1d, K.n-\, [1>1

1'1'/,1") lilt' I,," ([()So), 160

I'i{,-,j (;It'<'I1 rOIlI"III"S (II)l) I). +')

/'/""'..;1(1<)72), j(H)

I'lil/II f)",'A' '1'111 /),{//'II ([()1)6), 27/

t'rtI11lin mlth, S+, 1>1 -7, 7[2,7+, '35, qo

1',,11 Ildill ],It-A-<'I (19S7), 106

(,'- \1<'11 (1Ii3,'I. 3(j,lhhard, K rin, [.\ In

(",1,/\) OIIt',1 (2001), [()I, II)l)

(i,dl.ll';h:;', T.ll';, 2+, +7. ('a, ~011(;'III~S <If \ <'I}' ) lirA' (2003), I S3 11

(;,IlI~SI,'I', lh,' ([()+f)), q"~·.ll1~"tl'J" fiIIn, 2, 3, -t' (), 12, 13, l-t, 20, 21 )

2." 2-t, 32, 3.;, -t.', .;3, S3, I3z~5J, IS.),

2rh, 21S, 237, 2,;7

J02 INDEXINDEX 30 J

(;allgsHr ,Vo, I (2000), qX

(;asll~~1I1 (Il)H), 22/

(;a//al'l/ (1l)97), ll)f)

(;,/11<1/0, Tht' ((()27), 237

g:ender, 93, 113, I Ih, 160, [h3, 1r,7, I/r" [7l),

[l)2, 2[7-IX, 22+ -5,270; sa alsom'lsculinit\

gcneric canon, SH---()f, XS, IJS-(), 221

~cl1rc classification, 2- 5, '59, IX:;, jNh, 257 Hg:eIlre cl'()]LItion, 23- 5,7+, [X5, IX(), 25l), 27"

g:enre h\briditl, [7, 2Xn, 55, [(J+-5, 233 +

genre n'\-isionisI11, L.t·, 72, 73, 97, 120--1, J27,1+3, 151, [XX, 223,23°,273,275

(;ellrlelllllll's Igrl't'I//<'II1 (((J+7), II/

(ieL[ght.', Christil1e, 1[7

GeFIIllllllo: _111 ,IlIIl'ri,wl I.t'gelld (I ()()J), 73

(;el (,',1/1<'1' (I (17 [)' I+X, 227

Ghosl III Iht' Shdl (I ()(is), 20'

(;I/Osl SIll/' (2003), Ih,

(;ilda (Ili+r,), 217, 221

Gillespie, i)'lIid, I 11>,201

Gilllllle Slidl<'/' (I (170), 2110

Girl (, (lli()I», 21>7

Glad/ii/or (2000), 21~' 2~1

Gledhill, Clmstil1c: 'II, '7, IX, ,0,35, +5

Go ii'llll,,' S/,'II'I<lIIS (I (JlX), I ~ \

G("Llrd, ./eal1-1 .LIC, l)+, 200 .

(;odlillha, nil' (((172),133,13+, '35, 13 11 , 137,

'3'i, I+2, I+3, IH, ,+1>, '50, 277Godlilllla, n"" /'arl l! (((17+), I .13, 131>, qI,

1+2, q+, '50 ,(;od":lll<I ((()55), 20 I

God:ill<I (((i')X), 251, 252

(;0111' Slillill (((17X), 70

(;ol<! /)i~g<'/'s 01 1l;,U (((),n), XC>, SS

(iold" 1n, S'lI1lUel, 115(;lil<'lll, 'I 'he (Il)20), 1111

(;lilll' 11 ilh II,,' /I'II/d (((!3()), 9(>, 2,\(), 2+3

(;lili'/, Ih!' lJa'/, 1/11'/ Ille (,~/I" nle (Iqlll,), 7S

(;lio,/h.l'!'. \11' 1.'111/,1' ((()lHi), qll

(;lili,/Idlas ((()S,)), '+2, I +5, 15.,11, 277

(ioOlI" in,\ndIT", (1+(;1'1/(,' ,,;,111' I/(dl'l (Iql)II), SI,

(;ra,III<II,', nl( ((()I'7), (jll, 2+'

(JLlI11Sci, .\ntonio, 2.2

(;1'1'<1'1' (I (17X), l)()

(,'r(dl iiwII NliM<,/,)', n", (I (iO I), 511, 27211

(,'1"'(1/ 11<,/,('/" nit' (1l)I,X), 122

(irecnc, Lrie, IX()

C'l'icr'iol1, Johll, 2.~~

(;ril'\c~()n, I.ee, ryl, 137

(iriftirh, I) \\', 3 I, 32, +2 +, 1311, 2.,S, 255

(iriftiths, TrclOr, 2hh

Grist, I ,l'i~htOll, 2zh, 230

(;I'I/'/<;e, Fhe (2003), 175

Gllilligltlr'r, n", (1l),,0), 12, 117

Gillig !l".' (1(J+2), I q

Gunning, "fonl, 2+2

GIlYS <llId /)"lls (I ()55), 20

f!,ur (1()79), l)l)

I LllherstaIll, .Iudith, '7+

11,,11,,"'col (I (17X), 1(10

11"lls Ill', \1l1l1le::/I 11I<1 , JI", (I95[), I31n

f1<1I11I'llIgcr fIlii (IqS7), 123

11<llIIlel (ShaJ..espeare), h- 7

I bIll Iller horror, 15'), Ih7, jlHi, 175,227

Ildllllllell (lqX.;), 221J

f laillmert, IJashiell, 2',

f!,lIig 'Fill Ih<;1t ([l)('S): 7S

Il.lnsen, \ liri,IIll, 50n

f1<1rd,lIJ'c (")77), 2h7

f1<1rda JI,,')' ('1111"', Jlle (1(172), '+S

ILmh, Phil, h2, I3h, I h7

f lart, \\'illi'IIll S" ho, I, I, I,h, h7

11<11<11'1,' (,,)h2), 237

1I<1l1l1ll1lg, nlc (")1'+), I .,S

f I.lII'J..il1s, Cl'luhia, Iho

11.1I1J..s, I 1(1\\.lrd, 27, .)7, I.1()

llal\lonh, Rit'l, 217

11<I":<lrds Ill' I Ielm , nlc (scri;i1 ")1+ 17), ++Ill' R'"1 ,1/111,,' II',,)' (,,),,1 J, 22.1

Ile<lr/hre<lA' Rld~c (I ()Sh), 1211

Ile<l1 (,,)(),,), 133

Ileal'en's Cd/C (It)SoL 23, .:;{, .:;q, (Lt, 72 , 75,

7h. lSI, 2++I kdll, !lCll, I"h

IIl'fTl'rnan, hClin, Ih) h

IH'~t'I1l()I1:, 22, -+ I, () I: 9+, 250~ .1('( a/sf!

idt'o!og:IIdl I., rill' Ilel'llcs (")112), 120

lIell" , /),,1/)' (")70), l)h

IIdlr"ISr'r ("iS7), I,S, 17+//,,11'., llill~es (") II»), 11+

IImrl': Pllr/rdl! "1'1 SCI'I,II klll(l' (,,)SI,),2j()

110'11,'" (")75), 22+I lesion, Ch;lI'lton, ISri, 2+0

'high concept', 2. ,()

Ill~/1 \ ""11 (")S2'), "h, SIll, ") I

Ill~/1 1'1<1111,' IJrlilcr (")7.1), 7S

111,~1t SIO'l'lI (")+1), I+S

111/, Jilc (, (i'S+), ,+,S

IlitcheocJ.., ,\/frecl, Ih,S 'lJ

f/obsba\\ Ill, Eric, qll

111I11)'II'lIlId Rc; II,' II; ";"'; (")2l)), S7

IIIIIII,'<IIISI ('1'\ serics), 211,

I lol(lL',IUsl, rhe, 10q, I I I, '122, 12l). 21>+ h

Ilo/OClLIsl tilm, 20l), 21'2' 7

11""1/(1<11/1 (Il)h,), Ih')

fllJlh'j'JIIIJO!l /1/ f c.~dS (1l)()1), 13311"1',1/111 IIIII'I/f,/oll'(r. R. \, (Il)51), 2.\,

horror film, +,1/,31, X3' ',)7,15 8- 81 , IS,-h,200,210,2+1, 2SS, 2(q, 2()() , 27+, 2'"1

11,,1 ,\)/,111, The ([ ()()o), 225

111111/',(. Tltc (2002), +9IIIIIIS' Ill' ['slta (1l)IJO), [hl)11111/' FII\I<lA'e~1I ,~IIICI'I(<l1I QIiIII (1()951, +q

IllId (l()h2), IJIJ

Ilughes, Ho\\'ard, [Jo111111' It/."d Ill' \lIlrc OillllC, Tlte (Il),)h), l)9

IIlIlIg<'/', nil' (I()S+), 173

I funtlT, I. (~, 22+

I1urln, helh, 17 1

IllIsi/a, JIll' (Iqlll), 95

III bnditl sa g:enIT III bridill

I "'111111' 11/1iI1 ) 1111 Old I.<lsi ,1,'1111I11"'1' (")l)7),

1110I 11 ,IIA','d 11 lilt II /lIllIhlC (Il)+3), I h,I'll nil ,III)'i/IIII~ (1l)'I+), ')l)

iC()Il()g:raph~, .1. IJ-I(J, ,1 2 , 5.1, 5.:;, sf), 2J+,

2S(), 2,0

I(Jl'o!og::, I~L 20-2, 2,. 7-+. S3, ()I 3,120, '+0,

1St), I(li, '71, li+ .:::;, IS~, 210, 21.;; S((

(,Iso hcg:cnlOIl~

1111/1111/1111 1I(I.il" (1l)5(i), 30, +0

III II 1.11111'1) PIII«' (lli50), 2 I S, 22,1

11I'1Cdl/l/C ShriIlA'lIl~ ,\Ii/II, il/<' (((i.)7), V111<11'/,1'11<101«' /)IIY (I,)()h), Ilq, "J7, 235, 2.)1.

252, 2S(l

Indian \\',11" .It'<' ,\Illcricln Indi,lIh

IlIdlllllll }II"'S 1111'/ III<' F,'III/,Ic 11/ /)111111I (I qX+),

2+7!II«-l'i/" (I (iSo), 17,'I IIlill'lli <'I , nl( (I (US), 2 I II

11111",,'111', nil' (Il)1>2), I SX

IIISIIII,I/I/,' (Il!7S), 27 I

1",'''"'"1111'/ ( Il)SO), 200illll'gr'ltcd rllll~iLd, S3, X+, Ss X, X(), t)O, <) I,

<)<), lOa, 101 +, 2i l , 27.:::;

inrl'rtl'\tLulit.\, 101, 133,211, 27i1111<'1';"'11' 11 llli llit' 11/11I/,11''' (Il)q+), '73

lu!/milt']' (2000), Z(lS

f"!IJlt'rtfl/((, (1()lj), +J, 2J()

I""'I'/<'I's Frulll ,\IIIrs (lli53), 1l)0, l(iS111"111'/1111 II/III( 1111'/)' SIIIIld,,'!'s (I()55), 1+3,

I Sq, I ()S, 20lln

III;'IISI<IIIIIIIII" 11",/)' ,'iIl"I, lias (I(!7S), IX,)

1";'II,wiI/ (SI (, ,)S 5), 2+.S

11I;'ISIf,/" ,\],11I, il,,' (I(),;';), ISh

11I"ISthlt- R'I)', il,,' (Iln ll ), ,S3

11'1I11 Dlgl(s (I ()SI», 2+S

/rlill IllIrsl', 7'11<' (I ()2+), 71

Islllll!' (Il)'S,), 2+71s1'IiI<III(!.''''1 S,,"!, (19,1.1), lSI,

It ,1I11',I)'S R,IIIIS "" SIII"I,,)', ([(I+S), ,+,It Cellll' I'm III O/lla S/,II,,' (1l)5.,I, 111,1,201>11

ft ('II'''IIIi'I'l'd llic Jrorld (I<)S6), IX7ft's a 1IIIIlIIcrilli I.il<' (19+6), 21 [--[2,219

ft's ,1//1'111'" rllir I1'cllllier (1935), 95

T,~«IiSC (1919), T09

]<1dll I, Tlit' ([997), 2+X

}<IA'lIh llic I.illr (1l)9X), 2('5, 2('7

Juneson, Fredric, Il)+, 20(m, 22h, 212n, 27+

JlIlcOI'ieh, \larJ.., 25, '3l), 1f)9 .

}<III1ISA'II/,/ /)1'1' (1l)20), [(IT

]<11I'1' ([l)75), [r,I>, IIH), 237, 23X, 2+0-1, 2+5

]IIC": SlIlg<,r, JJIC (Ili27), X+

Jefti>rLls, Suqn, 35, 123, 12+,233, 2+l)-50

]"SSI' ]IIIIICS (lli,N), 31>, 57, Il(i, qll

]1111/1 or,hl (I 99()), 25 2

]111' ",,/,/ (1l172), 7 S

]1I1Ii/1i 11/1<1 Il'lil H,' 2, III II", )'CI/!' 2000

(I (!7Il), 200

]II/ll'i/I')' 111111 F,,"r (1(1+.\),21+

]1I1I1'i/"Y'S (",/ (Ilj.\ I), I I I

]IIII!' S" 1.':;'(, I.,' (IlJ3~), 2 q]/1'/<'1' (Il)l 1», I XI>

]/illg( /)r!'!I'/ (Il)')5), Ill+

]Iilhlli 1I(II1'tlllilIiI (Iljl+), 2.1')

J ulil'n, "a'le, 2h27/1 II IIii' /1,11111<'1' (1(171), (II>, 7 1

'7/1rdS,\!( PllrA' (1l)(U), Il) I, "l+, 201>n, 2++, 2+5-11

jmll,'''I( PllrA' II: nlC 1.111'1 1I'1ir/d ((()(JI), 3, Ili+

]lIsl IlIill~II",1 ([(HO), IXI>

""lllill'lll" (, ql) I), 27 6

h,llll', hatherine, I 10, I I+, I I I>

haplan, 1'., \nll, (J+

h,lrloff, !lori" 11>2

h,lIan, EIi'I, 30, .Phelll'r, ,\Il'\<1ndr,1, 70hclh, (il'lll', S" ()I, q", (1+, (i5, Il', (17, (is, 101

"'<II)' 's Ilall(' (I ()70), 121

k..CllCI, PeTer, I 1:1

""I, nl" ( Il)20), +3"1'/ HIli,' (((173),7 2

",,I, (Il)()5), 21'7

"ili/lill (200, +),27, 133,277

"Iilas, 'III,' (IlJ+II I, 2 I I, 22 I

"'illc!''', 7'11<' (I ql,+), I.U

klll'/aW"'lC1l I.'II/' (llj()O), 3

hillg:, Geoff, I S5, 23+, 2+1>, 25 2 , 25+, 277

""l~ IIlId I.'IIIIII/!Y (I q(q), I 10

""1,~ 111111 I, lJlt' (Il)51», SIl

klll~ kllll,~ (Il) ,13), Il)(i

kllig IIr]II~,: (1<!.10), S7A.., n,~ (~r. \l (/ fl'!!! C'a rdl'l/S, TIJt' (11)7.2), 223

klllg SIIIIIIIIIIII 's 11111t'S (I () 51), 237

k,ss ,\11' /),,"'//)' (Ili55), 220, 221, 2,)211

hirse" JiIll, 51>,1>2,1>5

hleillh'll1', ChucJ.., ,10

304 INDEX

Klin!(er, Barbara, 27, +S-9Koch, Gertrud, 26SKolherg (19+5), I I hKorean \Var, lOS, III, 117, IIS-Il), 121,200Kracauer, Siegti'ied, 260

Krilmer, Peter, 20hn, 2+1

Kristeva, julia, 170-1

Krutnik, Frank, 12, 230

Krzvwinsb, Tal1\'a, ISS

Kubrick, Stanley, ISS

Kulcshov, Lev, 201

Kl}!lIidll!l (1<)6+), 175

I.acan, j'lCques, 1+2-3

Llld)' Froll/ Shllllgh"i. 'lhe (19+S), 217LIII)' IIllhe 1,lIke, 'lhe (I(HI», 21+

Lancaster, Burt, 237

LaIlllv, Marcia, 76, 105, I q, 175

L'ln~. Fritz, 220, 221

1,11.1'1 ,HIIII SllIlIdillg (1l!'J1», I.H

!-lIsl IHol'/e, Th" (1971),72[11.1'1 Xlghl (II)9S), 251

I,IISI S"dllilioll, 'lhe (1l)(H), 2 q, 2Z:; I>1,11111'1I (IlH+), zq, Zl5

I,ll 11'11/11/1 (I IJ7 I), 71'!-IIII'IIIIIIII}!I'I' .,HIIII, 'rhe (19()2), 1'J7, II)S, 203

1,lIll'rl'lll<' of.·lmhill (19h2), 130

I,,,gi'lld of Nigger L'h" ric)', The (Iln2), 7+

I,eone, S<:rgio, .,1', I)(), 7", 75, 77, 133, 15 I, '52

!-"/,/:e (1975), IHI,es Girl.> (1957), 951,<'Ih,,1 nl'II/'OIl (I<)SS), 235, 2+7I,elll'l' F/'Iilll 1111 (i ll kIlOIl'1I /1011/1111 (IIH(»), 32

I ,evi, Primo, 261'Le' i-Slr'lus" Claude, ,S, 2 I, 112Lewton, V"I, 11>2 .1, 22S

LnLb, julia, 1>1, 7+

1,1/;' Is Helllili/id (199S), 21,h7l,i/ij;I/I" (I ()S:;), 200

I,ighl Slce/,<'l' (I ()I) I), 222

L,~hl rellrs .411'11)' (]()SI), zoo

!-ill/"J', Th" (200 I), qS

I,ioll Klllg, 7'h" (1l)9+), l)(), 27+1,/111" Ih~ ,HIIII (H/70), 2:;, :;7, h7, 72, 711, 121I,illll' L'1I"SlIr (1931),13:;, 1.1<), qS

I,IIJ!" Gilllll, The (HJ33), 1.15, qo

I,illlc .Ilemlll/d, n", (I<)S9), 99

I,illft Sho/, of 11111'1'1I1'.1' (I <jSI», ()l)

LiC'(' Flt'sh (H)<jS), 22 7

I,oach, Ken, +

I,od', Slo';':, IIlId TINI SllIof,'III~ Bllrrels (I<)<)S),

I+SIAIc/'<'I, Tht' (J(Hh), 36, 22S, 22<)

l.o,~1I1I 's RIIII (I (n6), I S<jI.ollel)' ire Iht' BI'II;',' (ll)h2), I>h

I,OIl,~ Good Fridlly, the (19So), q7, qS

J,lIlIg Goodhye, Tht' (1<)73), z13, 22+, 22:;JAlllg K'lss GOOdll/~~hl, The (19lJ7), 13+JAlIIg .\'I~~hl, The (19+7), lq[IIOhllgji,,' Lliligsloll (I<)SS), 1(,2

J.l!rd IIflhe RlIIgs (2001-'3),233, ZH, 2:;1

IAISI Pilirol, Th" (1<)3+), 23SLm't' JI" 7illlight (1931), S:;

!Am' Slor)' (1970), +<)

Lucas, G<:orge, IS7, 190, 199,102LUCJsfilm IS3

1,lIck)' Llld)' (J(J76), IH, 1:;0

Lugosi, IklJ, 11>1, ,1'1

Lumet, Sidnev, l):;

Lusted, Dav'id, 60

.1111((/(1 (I <):;2), 211)

\ Ic.-\rthur, Colin, q

\L1cCabe, Colin, ,II'lfeCllhe IIl1d .ITrs .Ildler (H!7I),)7, h7, 71

\1ac])onclld, jeanette, S:;

\Iel )"nald, f..:eiko, I+S.\llIdJlIlt' (;1111 Kell)' (I<):;S), qh

\Iel.aglen, :\lId]'(.'vv \'., 71'IllId I.o;e (1()3:;), lSI>

,HIIglII/icelil Se;'(')I, nl" (H)I>O), 70,\),lgIIO!t11 (H)<)(», 3

\Lrier, Charles, 122

1101'11I.1' . \11' Righi (H)SS), HI:;

\Lrltbv, Richard, 7, 27, 2Sn, 30, +:;, +<), So,

I I X, 22<), 230, 2.~2n

,III/III'SI'I-'I/I,-I/II, 'ih(' ("HI), 2q, 21:;, 223,III/II I 1.0;1', Tbe (HH7), <)7

.111/11 01'.11'1111 (Il)3+), 2hl

.111/11 o(tltl' 111'.'1 (I<).,S), 5711.111111/11 /-'(11 'iii FI/rtlt, Fhl' (IlJ7Il), 200

,III/II If//II Sltol I,I/ltrl)' 1'1/11/11'-1', 'ilie (1')112),

:;7, 1>+, hll, 117 S, 11<), 7()

.llall rf//II 1111111d Be K'lIIg, Tit" (Il)7.')' 23'~

.\lall Il'illt a .\loi'/e Clilltra (H)2l»), H)1l,IIIIIICII/Ioall Lllllllldlll,', The (l(jI12), 11<)

.\llIlIdl/lril/li Calldldlill', FbI' (200+), 1211

1!l{Ulgil, IX2 J: sec also allll!lt'

.\11/111/11/11/11 .IL,llIdmllll/ ("13+), I .IS

.\LUlll, .-\ntho!l\', 57, 7S

.\LlIln, \lichJel, 133

lIllI'S .IIII/d's-' (I<)<)h), IS7, HJ7

.\ll/rt)' (1<)5:;), l):;

.\Lln'in, T.ce, 133

\ Lrrxism, 1+11

\l1/}J' PO!'!'IIIS (11)11+), l)1l

ll1Jsculinitv, 3+11, +:;, +7, :;3, 7+, Sl, ')3, 123­:;, I-tJ, 17),212, 2lS, 2IH-rq, 223,

22-t-j, 2-'0, 2-+7 -:;0

.11*.4~S*f{ (HJ70), 1011, 121

ILI.<I' oflJllllil}/IIS, nl" (J()H), 2q

.\Lhon, FL1I1, q3, qi, 1,0

l11,lSS culture, S, 21, 2S11, 3-t, L)I-3, q-+, 9S

\[(/s!t'J" and C;omouIJtdcr (2003), 2S1

lL/lillt'l' (II)SS), IS7\1,111'1\, Tlte (IlIIIS), IS2, 1S,1, Il)7, Il)9,201-5,

20hn, 22h, 2-+-+

ILII}i\ Relll{(lled, n", (2003), 20+

\ htUIT, \ ictor, 2+0\ \a"ic.. , \Ihert ,md ]);1\ id, 2110

11''<111 ,'ilr,'elS (11)/3), q:;-Il\lccl lil/r/IIII Brlllldli (I<)h:;), 2110

\klic" Georg".. , 1111, ISIl

\Idlen, joall, :;+nlc!odL1I11a, 3, +, :;, S, 10, 17,29-50, :;3, 123,

IJS, 1:;7, 20S, 212, 23h, 2-+-+, 2-+.:; :;1,

252, 255, 2:;S, 2()() , 271, 272

llml,'l1l11 (2001), 2211Iloli/'/lis Belle (1<)<)0),121

111'1111 II ill' (Il»)7), I IS

\10"1'-1' /I ,"()(Iel]' (IlI'j.\), q:;

Ilenldli (2001), 122

111'0)' Ilidoll" Fhe (1<)2:;), S+Ilo,'ellloj(e III' de ]e(lIlIl(' d'.lre, 1.11 (1Ij 27),

2:; I

,\11'11111101/,//0.\1.1 (l-.,If]..a), 1111111(/,'01' (I<)SO), 2.,2\lelrll/,II/ts (11)27), ,SIl, "II, 1(111, I(n, 100, 2:;1\1(;\1, S+, S+, S:;, Sq, lJ.\, 1)+, 1).,,101, 10.\, 1111

\lid"T BI"e rl'eS (I ()<)(»), 133.IIldlllghl (;fedi', ,I (1()()2), 127

II"!.\II/III/II'r ,\'Ighl's 01'1'11111, ,·1 (Ilj.\')' 3

,IIidll'l/l' (1Inl'), III

,\Iddn'd 1'11'1''-1' (1<)+:;), +1', 21S.\ I ilc-.tone, I,cwis, 1.11 n

.\lilltr'( I:I'II'\'(III,~ (11)'iO), q+

IIIIIII( (I ')()7), 1711

.\Iinnelli, l.in, ')7\linnc!li, \ inccnll', 3 I, .\2, s", (ll, IJ7

,\11//(101)' R"/,lIrt (2002), 13:;II,shaM,'(, 1,1'.1 (192,11),2.,1

\lIs/its, nil' (,,)112), 1111.\lISSllIg, lite (200+), 13,7)

IIISSIi}~ 111,111/1111 (Il)S+), .,on, 12:;,2+7

,\1,.\.(/1111: III//,oSSIM,' (ll)llI), 3

,\li,.'OIiO Hr,',d's, nil' (1')7.')' 72

\Iitchcll, Edwcml. qo

\Iitchcll, l.lT CLir\.., .1'\Ii\, Tom, 110, III.\Iodbki, TCll1i,1, 173 +

\101HJG;L1Ill, .:;X. 2/SnIJ,l/Ilc I1'alsh (]()70), Ill)

\loolllighl .IId,' (2002), +')

.\Ioore, Julianne, ,1

.\101Ti~, Errol, 2:;S, 2h2

.II "sl/ullo St/uadroll (I [)iO), '2 I

.\llIlha, The (Il)2Il), I,ll

.lllIulili R"lIge (200'), 21, <)')

INDEX 305

\1'1'\, lj<).\ ludicr, john, Sh

.ILlilil/ll', Thc (19.1.\),1111\l1/llil/l)', n,c (l<)l)I», IflS, 1+7

.\Iullln', jonathan, l.\q, q7\lurdtr, ,\IT Sllyel (I()H), lq, 21:;, 211

\lurdas ll/ Ibe Rill' .IIlJIgue, 'lhl' (Il).\2), 1111

.\Iusic .11,11I, nil' (1<)111), <).'music11 .. , i\, 3, +, 5, lj, q, Ill, 17,20,21-2,

2,1, 53, 82-1°4, '+3, 1 (,0, IS3, ISS, 103,213, 2~K, 2hH, 273; sec also backsrap:

l11usictl; integrated musical; nOI1­

iIltL~ratcd mllsic<ll~ IT\ lie musical

IIII.<I'(/(ITS II/I'ig .1/1<,.1', nil' (il)12), 1.\1)

\ lusuraea, "ichohls, 22S

\ luybridgc, Eadweanl, 20 I 3, lOS

II)' CIIIIS/ll 1'/1(11)' ('992), I.UII)' f)t/rllilg U<'I1/Cilllllt' (I (H(,), )7, (,+, !>:;, 7()

II)' Ft/lr l.lldJ' ('<)1>+), <)S, 'II)T11nh, IS-ll, (,2-.\, (17-S, 7+, 117 IS, 12+,

13 1,1.\+, q(,

"achhclr, jack, 72"aLita, Hideo, 17!>\id,t'd S/'lIr, l'ht' (1l).'.\),)7, SIn

"arcmore, .\<ll11eS, :;, 2 I +\lIsh;'illt' (I (J7(,), 22+',-ai\ l' .\Illl'ricans sec :\l1lcrican Indians

Ylllllrill Bill'll KifllTs (H)()+), 27(,

:\calc, StC\C, \., 5, X, 17,2.1, 2S, .;0, 3-+, .':-"

'\(), +2, H, +<), :;on, (,0, III 2, 73, S+,

120, 12~';' 1_,-+, '73,221,222,237, 23()

"eeso]], Liam, 21>+"",e, Ilri;ln, 21()'\c\\ l-follywood, 20, 23, 2.:; h, 27 H, :iq, 7 2 ,

I)!>, q7, IHI, IS7, ,SS, I(JO 1,222,13:;,

237, 2-t-+, 273, 27(); st'c a/so post­

cl.h,ical I lollv wI)(ld

\CII']lIcA' LII)' (H)()I), q7

,\<'1/' .1111011 (I(Ho), Ss\ <'II' } 'od', \ t'1I' } 'od, (I (J77), 20, '17 S, 10+11,

2H, 273, 177,\ clI',ics (11)'12), <)<)"ichols, Bill, 2:;<), 2III , 21)2, 272n

Y,-~lil lilld llie Cit)' (Il):;o), 2 I:;, 22 I

\/:!.!.h! .\[O"L't'S (J()7.~), \i- \ii, 212, 223, 22-+, 22)

.\i,~lil oflhl' f)Cililill (1l»)7), 17S

,\Ighl IIfllie I,mllg 01'(1) (I(I(,S), I(,S, 11''1-70

\I~lil/iifl (I<)S7), 212\'i~lilllliire oil LIlli SIn'<'1 (I ()S+), 1(,0

() ,)'uIIgS (200-+), 2hX

I '!-II (IIJ1<)), lHnon-intcg:r~lted 1l1usical, S:;-X

Yllo,e, 7'he (HHS), 1+7'\/lrlh 1>.1' .\/lrii/ll'<'si (19:;Q), II)(), 23 S

,\osliTIIIII (1<)22), I:;S-q

306 INDEX

NlllllrillllS ([q-til), 2I-t/V()lP, '·"yilgt'r (19-+2), 2t)

:'-lowell-Smith, Gco['ti-C\, 30, -t7

01'/<'1/11"1', Bllrl/I<I,' (IlJ-t5), 125, [2~, 130OA-!IIIIOII/ll ;:1<1, Tht' (1<).1')), 2, [3-t

Old SllIIlIerillllld (I<)('-t), 75

O/l/egll .\/1111, The ([lnl), [~-t, I~q

Oil II Clfllr f)IIY 11111 CIlII See Fllrn'er (IlnO),

qil

Oil Ihe Bell(h ([q5q), [~-t, [~7

Oil Ihl' Road (hcrouac), 27('

Oil Ihe 7'111'11 (I<)-tq), ~7, 'n, l)~, 1°3OIlCC CPIIII 'I '11/1/1' ill ,'III/erim ([q~-t), qo,

[H, 14~-53

01111' CPIIII II lill/e III Ihe '11'sl (lqil9), 5il , (,q, 73

0111' 1'11/", .\/111'1' ([qq2), 22il

Olli/Ja/Ja ([q('-t), '75

01'1'11 Rallge (200-t), 75, 275OrJi/ll/lY I'eople (Il)~o), -tq

OrientalisIll, 23~, 2-t7

Orphlills II/Ihe SllIrll/ (I ')n), V, -t3Olhel'S, 'I lie (200 [), I5~, Ih;Ottoson, Robert, 22~

0111 o/Ihl' 1'11.1'1 (llH7), 2[ [,212, 2I-t, 215,

2 I X, 221, 223, 2ZX-J2, 2()()

Ollilil, I'll" (Iln3), q5011 1111 lid (1l)~2), 1l)1

011111111' ]11.1'1')' 1/'1111'.1. The (Ilnil), 70, 76-~{)

l'III~'II~e, 'Fhe ([q~q), 2-t~

Pal, (leorf!.e, I~~I'll Ie Rider ( Il)~il), (H)

Pan, IlerIllL's, Xl)

1',1/1<111/'(/ '.I' B",r (1l)2X), 217

I'lIlIil 1/1 Ih,. Slr""ls ([q50), 220

1'111111111\ , '/l'II', The (I q73), I ~q

1',IL1Illount, X-t, I~~

Par(/!J1o/iJI! dcci."jOll, 20(), 221

/'11 rtf 11/0/1111 Ol! fl(f r{{Je (I <) 30), H7PastrollC, (Jio\"anni, 1o.~

1'111 (;111'1,'11 11/111 Blli)' Ihe A.iJ (lln3), 57, 71,

Ko, l-t(l, 273, l7()

1'1111'1111 (;1111/(.\ (lqq2), 12il, 2-t~

1',.11 (1'II1iI ker, Iii" (lql!7), 2-t~

Peat'! I Ltrbor, [12, 1[3, III>

Peckinpah, SaIll, .;7, ('-t, ('(', 71- 2, ~o, 235

I'eeblcs, .\Llrio \<1Il, 73I'eepill,~ 'III/II (Ill,o), Iilo

Peirce, Ch,lrlcs, 25X

Pennebaker, ]), :\., 21>O

I'('I)/!I'IIIII/I(e (, 'nO), I-t~

I'erlls II/Pllllhlle, The (seri,Jl, Iq I-t), -t-t, I~il

I'esei, Joe, In

I'hmlr CII)' SI"r)'. Til<' (lq5.;), '-+3, 22qPII~'IIP 1111 SlIlIlh Slrn'l (1l)52), 220

Picrson, .\lichcllc, [~~, 2-t5I'III~')' (Iq-tq), [17Pml/llli1 ([ 977), 109

Plrllle, The (l<)-tX), l)3, 'l-+1'111111'.1' II/Ih" Carif,f,""11 (20°3),251I'll IIlId Ih" 1'1'11,11111111/. Tile ([ql>[), [ilq

Pill/III, The (19-t~), 217Place, Janey, 2 I

1'11111 l) Froll/ 0111<'1' Spa(e ([q5~), I ~7

PIIIII"t II/SllIrll/S ([qil2), 201

1'111111'1 "llh,' 11'''-' (191)7), IX-t' [~~-q

1'1111111111 (I<)X(,), I oil, 107, 123, [2-t, 12S

Pia]' f)lrly ([qil7), 120

1'111)'<'1', 7'lie ([q~S), 23il

Po,lf(ue, L<:Iand, Iq, Son

1'11<'11(.1 (.\ristotlc), I>

1'111/11 H!ollk(lqh7), q5, 15[, ISq

Poi tier, Sidney, 73Polan, I )ana, I 13

Pod Ch"p iilll ([l)"q), Ill)

pOr!logLlph\, '\, [73, 20q, 2il7 72Porter, Edwin S, .,h

Posodoll .ld"I'lIll1n', Tlil' ([lnl), 2-t0

P"SSl' (1l)7.;), 25

POSSI' (1l)'l.1), 7.\, 7-t

po,sl-cL!ssical 1101" \\ood, I', 2h, 'l5 l), I s-t,

I (n, 20<). 237, L.J.2 J, liS1',,'11111111 .IIII'II)'S RIIIgs 1''''1(1', FIi" ("i-th), 2 [:;,

221

Pos/m({N l!1J'ays Rmgs '1'/1'/((', Tlte (I<)SJ), 22.)

pO"ltnlOl\crnislll, LJ., 101, 1.~7, IS-t 5, )ljJ-j,

203, 222, 22(), 227, 2Jh

Pr{'adlin,1.!, If) ,ItI' P(r,'t'l"lct! (I ()<)7), 2('j

P,.,.,{lIlor (I'lSS), 2-t7

prl'stif!.e [ilm, "S, ho1'1'1111' o/tli( IIII,.,IIC-' (")-t'i), II-t

1'1'111/11/.1' (I'lho), 2ho1'1'111(1' 0/ 'I I,ll's, nil' (I'l'l I), -tt)

'I'ro-lndi,ll1' \\ e,tl'l'lh, 5h, 57, ho, 7;I'r"J,,«'rs, nil' ( l'lhX), sl)

Production (:ode ,\dmini,tration (PC \), .;0,

-+7, -t'l, 13-t- ." 1)<), '-+.1, 21XPI'II!<'SSlOlIlIi" Fhl' (I t)hh), SIn

Prohibition, 137, qS

Pr"plil"y (Il!7'l), [IH)

PSl'dlO (Iqho), .1h, Ih2, I('s 70, '72, 17S' 21>-t,

277Pllf,{/I /;'110111'. n"'(ll!30), 1.1(', l)S' '.)<)

1',,11' FI(I/Ii/l (I'l')-t), '32

PIIIIISII/IIOI/ Pllrk (I [)7')' IS'l

I'lIrpl( R"s,' ,,(e'I/I'II, rli, (I'lS-t), I0-tn

I'll rSII(d ( "H7), 22q

P.'l', I)ougla"i, /.7[, 2/()

QII<I/""'"IISS 1111,1 Iii,' Pil (Ill'S), I(,h, [l)s

1,2/11'1'11 ,,/ HI"oJ ( I ljl>l», 20 I

QII1<A' alld lie De,"I, Til<' (]()9:;), h7, 7h

1,2110 1'lIdls (I9q),2.1'l1,2110 11I11i5 (I9,,[),239

Rabino\\itz, PauL!, 21.1

LIce, ho, 79,91,95, Iq-I5, 117, Ill), q(>-7,Iho, [h7, 17-t, ISq, 227; see alsoethnici(\'; .\fi-ican-.\mericlIls

RlIgl' 11I1JIlrlelll,-1 (I<)9[), 22h

Rlliliers o(llie 1"'.'1 _Irk (['lSI), 2-t7

R"I11!>""" Tlie([<)-t-t), IlhRIIIIII,,,: Flrsl Blood Pllrt II (19~5), 32, 12:;,

235, 2-+7- HRalll!>o iii (lqS~), 13In, 2-tS

Rapillre, Tlie (19tH), 255, 2h7RIIII' f)Ci/1 (Ilj~5), 2-t7

Ra\, "\icholas, 27, 30, VR,ly, Rooert, 25. 2 I I, 235Rea g,ll1 , Ronald, [2-t, ['l[-2, 2-t7

rcalisnl, 33 -t' 3h q, -+), H3, <)0. 100, '57R"tlr (;111111<'1' (IlH3), I q

RI'!>e«a (IlHO), 22 I

Re!>ci II il IUJII I II Call5e (111.;.,),27,3°

RNA-!ess 11"'111'111, nil' (I l)-t'l), .1hRed /)1111'11 (['lS-t), 2-tS

R"d R"'er (")-t~), 2,1, .,7rdlnilit\, 23--t, -t~, 7'l-SO, 'H, 101, l0-t, 1.'.1,

173,203 5,223,22(1

Regllnllllg lI,'IIIT (Il)'l I), 250

Rl'gl'IlCra/lOl1 (J(j15), 'J(l, I-tHRt','!:O!Cftlli()!/ (f()()7), 110, IIH

'reLn',5 h, 17,3° I, H, -t7, 211Renol, \Iichad, 2,S, 2'i'l

Rl'publie, .'SReplllslO11 (I I)h;), Iho

RCSefi.'OIl" J)ogs (1<)<)\), [.12

Relr(ill.lIcil-'([l)52), lIS

Rellll'/l "/Ihe ]etil (J 9S-t), 20;. - . ' ,

rCYlSIOlllSOl S(' ~Cllrc IT\ 1'-l10JlISlll

rc\ LIC OlllSiclls. X-t -:;Ric'h,lrds, Jeffre\, 117

Ricketts, Richard, 20 I

Rille 1,,1/I<'SlIlIle (I1)59), 7')

Ritie Ih,' iiigh CIIIIIIII)' (19 h2 ), 1.1 q, hh, 71,77

Ricknsuhl, Leni, SS

R,lIg, The (2003)' 17('-~1

RlIIg 1'11"-', Til" (I1)99), 171,

RlIIgII (1l)9S ), [75, 176-~1

RlllglI 0 (2000), 17 h

Rillgll 2 (199')), 17 h

Ri" Bu/C'" ([1)5 S ), :;(" 57

Ri" (;1'i/lltie (lliS l ), .'7

Ritt, \\artin, 'isritu.ll. IH-20. 23, 53; st'c Ir!.\{) nl~th

KhO, S5, ~l), '(12-.1, 22S

ruad rnoyie~. 26

INDEX

R"ilJ 'I'll Pertiilillll, The (200 I), I-t-tR,,"ti '1'" Ihe Slill'S, The (IlJ5-t), 20 I

R"ilJ TnI' (2000), 270

R"ilril/g 1'11'''1/11(5, Th" (1939),2,1,,5, Q5, qh

R,,/Je, 'Iile (IlJ53), 2.19Robinson, Edward G., I J", 212

R"I}(J(lIp ([<)S7), I<)-t, 1l)5, [q7

rock musietls, Xh

R"d, Tile (19<)0), 2.1h, 25hn

R"d:r ifl ([9~2), 2-t9

R"d]' /I' (19~5), 2-t9

R,,(k.1' H"rr"r P/(Illre Sh"l/" Th" (11175), l)I)

Rodo\\iek, Da lid, 37

Roeg, :s.iicobs, 200

R"ger illlti .\11' ([9XS), 259

R()~L'rs, (yinger, HS. H6. H7, Hc)RogL'r~, Roy, 61R"ller!>illl (1l)75), [S9Roilermilsi/'/' ( IlJ7h), 2-t0

R"IIiI/~ nl/l//ller (I lJ7h), ~o, I2-t

ROll/illlie (I1)9S), 2hS

ROII/'/lli/ll~ Ihe SlolI( (lqS-t), 2-t7Rose, The ([(j71)), Sh

Ro.'e .lfilli" (IlH('), ~5

R"sel/liIl)"S Hilh)' (Iljh~), Ih')

Roso\\, Eugene, I Jh, 1'-'1Rossen, Rohl'rt, 2 19

Rotha, P'HIl, 2("Rubenstein, Lel1nl, loh

Ruth, ])al iLl\, 1,17

Rutlman, \\'altl'l', Il)('

RI,dl, Tom, II

Silhle ]el (, l)S3), I ISSII IOll/illl ([ 9(ll)), 21,0

S,III/\(Ill illlti f)ellI,lh (I l)-t')), 2-t0

SillltiS of Ill'" }lIlIil, 'Iile ("1-+5), 1°7

SlIlIlil Fe FUll! (Il)-t0 ), 73S,lrris, .\n<1rl'\\, 9

S,lun<1l'l", John,s." 57, Ih9Sil;1I1g Pri,'ille R)'III/ (IlJ,)~), loh, 121, 12(,-3 I,

2.;7

S(rllli,le (I1).\2), l.1h, I,S, '.;ll, l-t0' q[, 217S(ilr/el Slre<'l (lli-t5), 212, 21-t, 21(', 2I1)~~20,

221,23 2n

S(il'Y 11",'ie (1l)97), 11,0Sdlrlt.: 1111 Silhersl'l', f)er (1<)(12),75

Scl1.lt/, Thomas, 20, 2.1, 25, (;9-7°, 112, 113,

135 h. 1.,7. 15CJScillllJI<'I"s 1""1 (Il)l)';), 32, I2l), 1';0, 2IJ2--t, 277

Schoenherg, .\rnold, ')1, <)2

SchLldlT, P,Hd, 27, 7X, 222

Sch\\arzcoegger, .-\rnold, 3, 2,-U, 2-t{), 250

Sl'iel1l'C fiction tilm, 5, h, I5- lh , 17,5-+,57,

119, 157, Iho, [h,--t, IS2-200, 235,

2ho

308 INDEX

Scorsese, :\Iartin, 27, 7X, q:;-(" 2")SCOll, .\drian, 2")Snltt, Lizabclb 217

SO'COIII ("Il)f», I f>o, 10:;

S<'II lJol)'A', TlIc (Il).p), 3S<'IIrdlcrs, Till' (Il):;:;), 23, ·n, Sf>, .17, h" 7X,Xo

Sccond \Vorld \\ar, ('a, 72, X..' 107, 10l), III,

LU, 1()3, IX,,,, 210, 213, 217--IX, 2.11,

2f>3; sec olso \V\\' II nJlllbat film

S('(ollds ("ldl), 200S('(rCI BCI'IJ/I,I IIII' /)0"1', nil' (I lHX), 221

SclzniL'h, 1)", id, 23l), 2..3

semantic-slnucric anall'sis (-\Itman), If>, 17,

V' 53, .15, 12 3, 157, 17X, ISS, "13,I<)S, 23+, zh I, 271

Sgl, Rllllcd~c (1l)f>0), 73

Sl'I'g,'11I11 } 'od' (Il)" I), Iof>, "I, I3 III

SCUIIIII 1'1(11111, 'I'llI' ("HS), Ih" 22X

sC\:ualitl, l)3, 1(10, I(q, 1()7, '72 .1, ")2 3,

217,22),23' 2, zh<) 72

Si'.\:J' Bcosl (2000), I"S

Shadoian, jack, 13f>, 1.12

SIIIl 110 11' (;I'IlU (I l)l)5), 227

Silo II<' (illS I), Sf>, (ll) 70, XIII

Sill' J),:/i'llds II/{, ,\Iollll'l'lolld (Il)".')' liS 1(,

SlIc 11'01'1' 0 )1'11011' RiMoII (1l)50), .17SlIillillg, Til" (lljXO), If>S

Slil7'l'I's ("17.1), '70Shohat, ElL!, 2..7

Slioolisl, TI/(, ("17f», 7(, 7

SlIoII',~Irls (1l)l)5), 2f>7

Sicgc, Til<' (")l)S), 2"X

Siq(l'i, I )on, 7f>

:';/gn (~r IJisasfcr ( I <J~(l)\ 122

SdcII"c orllIc /'01111'5, 'Ihc (ll)l)I), Ih" IXO

Si/cIII Rllllllillg ("17 I), I XXSilA, SIO"A-/IIgs (I l)S7), l)S

Siller, jocl, 202

Sinll110n, Scott, ...., f>o

Simpson, I )on, 23()

Sin~LT, Ben, 3S-l), ..2, H, "l), 2.1 ..Slligill'ilI II/{, R'illI (,,),,2), 23, X7, l)1, liS, Ill[-"

Sill,~/c IUilc 1'1'1110;'- ("ll)2), IXln

Sirk, J)ou~L!s, 30, 31, V, ..0, +7, ..S'l)

Sl,uII SCIlSC, Till' (Il)l)l)), I SX, Ihi, '7X, I Xo

Sklar, Robert, 2

Slotkin, Rich,ml, 12, .17, f>1, (,2, (,7, 7.. , I q,12..

SlIol(lI (2000), qS

Sobchack, Vilien, 12, I(q, IS." lXX, Il)", Ill(,

S"Uier BllIc (Il)70), 2.1, 72, 7f>

Sol,lUs (1l)72), 201

.\'Olllt' Camc Rlfl/Ill",!!, (I (59), 32

SOil OrFUIlIA'(//sIOIl (Il),)!)), 1f>7

SOllg 01'.\ Ol'll'il) , (I (170), l)('

Sol' IIII' '5 ClIoi",' (Il)X2), 2f>S

Sof>r,lIiliS, Til<' (HBO serie" 'l)l)X ), I.n .. ' I.NSOil lid "I' \ IlISi", Til,' (Ill1 .1), l)(,SOIlIIi PaoliI' (Il)SX), l)S

"'''.1'/('/11 (;1'1'01 ("1/3), IXl), 1l)2'space opera', IX(I-7, 2.. 1

spa~helti \\ esterl", S.i, .17, (ll), 7.1' (" 133Sf>orroms (1l)(,0), 2..0

spectacle, .lX, .. I, X7, XX, Xlj, 10.., I X7, 200,

23(" 237, 23'), 2..26Spicer. _"\ndrl'\\", 222, 22-.J.- 5, 227

SIIIJI'I'IIIO" (2002), IX2

Spiclbcq(, StelTn, '2(" 12l)--30, IljO, 2H :;, 262

Sf>lIol Slom"s", Til" (1l)"S), 221, 22X

SI"gc /)001' CeIlII""11 (Il)..3), X.., 10(,

SI"gc(o"dl (")3l)), 12 '13, Il), 3(), .17, (q, Son

Stai~'er, janet, 2Xn

SlollIlgmd (ll)l)2), 122

SI,,/A't'!' (llj7l)), 20 I

Stallone, SI'l,Tster, 233, 2"l), 2.10Stam, Robert, 2..7

Stanfield, Peter, 60 1,70,72-3

Stell111 Ick, Barbar'l, 217

SI"r.' (1l)6S), ll)

SI"r Is B"m, I (Il)S"), X7, lj7

SI"r Is nOJli, I ("177), X7

SI"r Sf>"II,~/,'J RII,I'IIIIII (1l)"2), X..SI 0 I' '!"rcA, C1'\ series), Ill', "17, Il)l), 20(,n

SI'II TrcA' 1/: 'Ill<' II rolii of' k//(III (Il)S2), 203

SI"r 11 i,rs (1l177), 7.i, I (IS, IS2, IX3, ISS, I X7,

I XX, ")O, III I, ")2, ")l), 203, 20(,n, 233,

237, 23X, 2.. 1-2, 2H, 2..(" 27.i

Slorp"II' (I ')1).. ), 2 ..7SllImllill (I <iX.. ), 'l)2

stars, 2 3,112--13, IS" LJ.() 50SllIrslllf> huuf><'r.< (lI)ljS), 23 .., 237

Slorlill~ (h'a (Il)7l)), ..I)

Slol,' ur (;1'11(<' (lI)l)O), q,)

Stein, (iertrude, Ii

SI(II" (lI)ljO), "l)

SI,-//II /)1I11"S (11137), 2l), 32, ..(,Stewart, Jll11l'S, .,7

Stone, Oli,LT, 27, 12..

Storr, Ilcnj,lmin, 131 n

Slur)' uf G. I. ]11<', TiI<, (Il!-t.i), '30

SIWIlP" 1.1Ii'" III' \/',rlil" ha(, "I'll" (1l) ..6), 217

Street, S'ILlh, II.i

Slr<'l'l, n,<, (11)22), 21h

Strode, \\'oOlh, 73

,tudio Sl stel11 «( cLhsical I !olh \I oOlI

SIII>III"rill" RIIIJa (IIH2), 113

SIII>III"I"III" I~I) (1') ..3), II()

SIIIII 111'111 1'(01'(, 'Il,,' (2002). 2"S

SU)fnst' ((()2/), .2 '7S"-'f>,',-IS (Thomson), 217

SlIsf>m" (I ')7i1), I7.iSlIllIr" (1I)l)3), lila

SII','<,I SIIIt'11 IIr,"II«(S... (I<jSX), <jSSII'<,<,llwllrl( (I<jJS), S.,

T,Ili~1I "lid C'lIsh (I<jXl)), 2..7'Llllner, -\Iain, 200

Tarantino, Quentin, 27, 132'3, J ..(), 235, 27XT,lsker, ),onnL', 233

1;,,\1 /)1I;'a (1l)7h), 7X, Xo, 2[2, 222, 22 .., 22X

ted1l1ologl, IX3-", IXS-(), lXX, ")3-200, 20..

,/I'O/i/.!!,C C(!7.'C"WIl (H).;X), ,X7, 1<)7t,,11 fllglllild (lI)31), 1,0

1;,11 TiI"1I1 1Ii/11<, BII)' /.1' fia<' (1l)6l)), 73

Tclolte, J. 1'., l)X, IX(,-7, I<jS, 200-1

1;'11 Cllllliliolldlllmls, The (Il)S6), 2.'ll, 1 ..0

I;'l'lilllllllllr, nit' (II)X")' 3, I X2, ").1, Il)l), 20.. ,

2 ..7Iimllllllllll" .2: ]lId~lIIelll /)a)' (1IIljl), 2..3, 2.iO

limlillillor ,;: R,s<, III' Iii" ,111I"hll"'( (2003), Il17

hl'l"-' III' flld"arlllml (Il)X3), "l)

/;'lslw: Til" /rllllllall (ll)l)O), 175

"1,'1(1111 1/: Blld)' 1/011111"'1' (lI)l)I), 175

1;'1'11.1' (;h,IIIISIIII' .\Iossa,re, The (Il17 .. ), '7 ..

I;"I'II( elill Ill..." II' ,1111«"(1'1' 2 (lI)X(,), 17..

"1'11,,111111 "lid !A'IIIS,' (Il)XX), 27(,

rh",I' /)ied IIIIII Thor Bllllls Oil (Ill"'), 3, .il)

IiI".I' .\/0,1<, .\/1' a FlIglliC'l' (1l)"X), q7, 227

ril,,:/ ( II)X I), 133

nll";'« I_lA'" l's (lI17 ..), qil

"1'11111 /JIll" /.111", Th( (IljX7), 2Sl)

nlill .\11111 series, 20

"1'11111 Red 1_111<', "I'I,( (Il)')X), 10(" 121

nlillg, TII<, (lI)S I). I ('-t, 17", lI)O, Il)X, lOiln

"l'llIlIg, The (lI)XI), 173, 1l)0, Il)1

"1'11111,1'.( 'I;, CIIIII<' (1l)3i1), IXh

IiIillgs "lu /)11 III !Jm;'a 111"'11 ) ull '1',' I ),-,lil( lI)l).i), I,n

"l'lIiS (;1111 Fill' llir<, (Il)"2). 2' ..

Tlli... Islalld f"rlll (111.1.'). I X7Tbonus, Deborah, 32, 2 IX

n",roll~;';)' \llIdel'li. IIi/II<' (l,ji'7), l)iI

nll"<' /J1I,l'S IIrllIe Clilldlir (Il17S), IXl)

Thr(e klllgs (1I)1)<i), 107, 12(,

Iilr<,<, .ll,,-,A','I(,'r(, 'IiI<, (11)73), 23X

TllIlIldalImrl (I l)l)2), 73

TlI.\ JI';S ( I(17 0 ), I X.. , IXlj

"I,llIlli( (11197), 2..0, 2H

Ii, fll,h /I,s (JII'II (1I)..iI), 32

"lul>ruA' (lIjiI7), 120

TodorOl, TSITtan, 27 ..'Iillil JJ,,1'li (Il)XO), ()h

'1'111111> "rl,lgt'I" (I!)('S), 16!)

'Iiw /,al<' Ihe //all (11)ilq), 121

IiiI' (;1111 (Il)Xh), 3, 23i1, 2"X

Till' filII (Il13S), Xl), l)I

'lillO,' 'I'llI'd.' 'Iill"ll.' (11170),12'

'1'111,,1 R",-"II (1l)<j0), 20.., 2,)+

INDEX 309

'Iilll(iI III' f;'i/ (Il)SX), 221

Tourncur, jacque, 17X, 22X

Iilll'alllg /II/i'mo, TlIe (1l175), 2..0

'Ii~)' SIIIIT (Il)l)S), 75, 27+

'!IlIds (ll17S), Xo

Trafl;" III SlIlIls (Iljl3), 136

tl'agelh, 32, Jl)

Tralll IIrLI/i- (1I)!)l)), 2M-7

limll RIiMas, rhe (IlJ7,;), 7hTrelor, Claire, 217

1'l'lal Oil Ihe Rllad (1<j71), 122

hif> III ,lIe \111011, ./ (lIi03), 1<i6

Trllllllf>h III' ,ii,' Sf>lI'll (Il)XX), 2i15

7/-1111 (Il)Xl), 20"

Trill' (200.. ), 235, 2.1 I

'1'1''''' 1,1<'-' (lI)ll+), 2"X, 2.10"!i-lle ROlllilil"e (Il)l)"), 1..(,

Truthut, Fran<;ois, l)

"hllllli/ll Shlill', TII<, (Il!'JX), 200

20'" Centun-Fm:, l)iI, 2.. 1

TII'IIIS (I l)XX), .,

Tudor, :\ndrell, S, 12, 1(,7, 1(,9, 17X"/'III11/J!ell,,,,,ds (Il)2X), (,(,

Turner, Frederick Jack"m s,',' Turner thesis

Turner thesis, ('3 h, (,7, Xln, qotll,I(la (1I)l)(»), 2.1 I

1"11'11 .\llI/n For Slsl<'l" SlIra (11170), 7X

TII'fI Rode 'li,g,'llla (,,)(1I), 73

.2001:.1 Sf>a<'l' O'/)'s"<'j' (II)(,X), lXX, "17,200

Llmer, Fd~ar G., 1(1I

I hlllll's Rlllil (11171),25,72

I II (II IIl1l1u II I iIillr ('<jX3), 12.i

l'IIJ(I'li'"rU (IIP7), 13('

IIl/i,rgiC'l'1I (Illl)2), 57, (IS

L nited :\rtists, .ill, lOX

Lnilersal, 1(1I, 162, I('-t, 1(,7,21(,,2..0

I '11l11ll1n"d 11'111111111,111 (IIJ7X), ..I)

I II 11111 (IIII/J!<,(, "I'll<' (II)X7), IH

I silol SiI.'/,<,(I-', TlI<' (Il)l)S), 22(,

1 II IIII' iI'<' I_II;'<'!'(, 'IiII' (Il)70), 173

I illllf>)'r (11)3 .. ), 37, ,(,"

I an I ),ll11me, jean Claude, 233, 2..<j

1"'1 Helsillg (200.. ), I (,xI '"l1lla SAT (2002), 200

1 ,m<'l.1' (periOLlictl), 5, 3h, son, 77, SS, 27+

\ 'eerhoL'\ en, P,nd, 235

luisimilitudc, q-I(" X3, ,%, l)o, l)3, 100, 107,

2+2, 2 "::;H, 27 I

\"ertOl, Dzip, 2Sl)

1 Id<,u'/rolll" (II)S.. ), 173, 11)3

\ ietlum comh,.t film, 3.:;, son, 107, 121, [22­

6, 127, I2{)

\"ietnal11 \\'ar, 22, 2.1, 72, Xo, 107, lOX, III, 120,

121, 122, l.!(l, 170, '72, ISq, 22{, 2JH

COl'(h/ll)"/":/I)II'(ttbI)11111:/

C,'].I,1ljll}['''1,),llll,)/

(ZI',)~~1I,1(['Pool<l'c1uno\.Db,(,'tbI)PIiU"1///'1111Ii/'Illi/Ii{

0<)1'(lI~fll),''''/',I~'I',"II.1'1111,1,'1'/1){

hI'"S''(000,)1"'11"-\Db'(OSfll)"/111111'\

~L,'(tbbl)I/.II1J1/1',(1/

Il<)"'t"'~',I';:;:--1II'0II'SCOl'llllU]eljlllll.1[1.\\\\

t<l'fill'<II'II-(,OI'Lol'lU[~I]l'ljIlIll.11.\\\\st'of''(S~bI)/'11111,11//11111"'1/1.1/1

DC'''I'S~'sI';:I'[[1\\'llP1U\\

I;:''';)Hl[llpn(']lj,~U\\

.II'\\1'[.10\\1"IIl,),)S,)).1'II\1,1..II'\\1'1.10\\

.II'\\1'1-'0\\]S.II:[,1,1,",)U().11'.\\1'1.10\\

tsI

'(b~bl),IIU'I'-"'(f"1///"11''1/-'''1:1,'1//'/'I-Ili/I,',;:'I1,)ll,lll')'lj,)U["0\\

S'I,(~,'fll),IIU',II./II!!''''/,1111/Il'ci'CI)I'01)1'hI'llIljO}['1'00\\

LSI'.11""(1PW\lP:-l'1'00\\

~o,'ljS'lI\'1'00\\

~l,'ll'l'llljof'00\\

<)-t-t-

'zt'Sf'tf'zf.I~''O~''zz·.luI~1\uetuo\\,S','0"'(lltll'),IIU'rl.I,lIdlili1II'1I1IiII

lIZ~'z

'",'<I,'(ttlll).IIU'<11Ii/IlIi/I,1I//1I1111'1I1Ii11

00,'I)bI'(L,(l[),IIU'1IlIfllr,>1//IIIII/illllill

l'ol'101'.1;)];)<1'lJ;)W',\\I)S'(bHll),>lU'~()Ii,/'.III-:-l/l

bb'(SUll)"IU':i./1

S~;:'lleuH'llO[SUI\\

011'(L,bl).';'-'"/1Sl;:'(~U)[),>lU'1101'/,11///'111'/'111/1

SL'L~'(O~bI)rt,.1,1/.,,11/,111/1

ul~I'p"OlUI!'}!'''UI'I[[1\\

IC-S')Z'll,l;:';:LI'zl'Il'I'plll']'SlUl'llil\\

,l''UI'[\'Slll\'IIII\\

<)<)'(c<)bl),(III"'d/fl,/1

L')'s1100[S]Sd\\1'[',\\

I)')'(Icbl)".""WljI'/ll/,'l';:'Lc',-IL'L~'(lH)bl),>lU'11->1111[//'/1/1

,'h'(000,),>lU'S/!.I[){,11".\.I/lil/II

'"'lh'(btbI)II))!!.Illl/11

,~,'ssr'(I,'fll),1/"//":)S/'/.I1i/I'''''//1llll'l'1)01'(IFfll);,LIIi/:),I)i.ld/1111./1

")I'S;)IlII'f';)[1"1.\\,,)'(lUll)/'l-illdl,,-,I./1

all'(lUll)i,lf"/1111.111".1/1

RLz'LLz'()Lz'SLz'Xlj('Lqz'I(jZ'O()Z'LSz'L~'z'tfz'flz"OIZ'fh'

'SSI'~SI'fSI'0<)''b~1',)h'l'tl'~

tfl'OZI'<)b'~(,'fS';:S'IS-t5'~'~'ot

'zt·()t''SF'tf'Zt'•If·~-z"f,'Z---li"'Oi:""

-flI'tIl'l';:I'0I'b'I)',''t'f'-,'\1'Sll.l;)]S,)II

')-~b'ob'(II)bl),Llli/,I,'"/",1,'l".1/l

,)"'llJl.\\'S.I;)P";).\\DO;:'(LI)bI)/,I"',y,),)1/

l)II'~II'hI'(ftl>l)1I,1I1!(fII'.I,Il(f"/IusL;:'s<)c'01)'~~'lIljll(';)UII',\\

l't',f'(o;:bl)!"IIJ1I,1I1I(f'('[)IIhi'(otbl).I'U'/,[),>l1I'(/'/1

bSI',LI'th';)]I'.~.I;)]1'.\\

It;:'II,)']'lll'lU.I,)SSI'\\

,h'bsf'I'II)'S,''l',-"'j.l;)ljO}['1IOlls.II'.\\

U,'at-<'f'S';:"SluH.1,)11.11'.\\

~L,

'~lF'hI''Lf'z'tlz'f'SI'~LI'If-SIll

'lS'l',''~t'zt',T'I)'t'\'llll~l]I'ljIUll.1/.111\,

I~Z'(c~<)fll).I'I!,}d/'1111,111./1l'L'(SSbl),(lllld111//

Sbl'SSI'LSI'(Z~fll),>1/,/.','/,1-111/1,>I/ili,·I11/1U'I'(tsbI),",111111,').111//

'"'.(.)]Ie\\'.I,).~UlJ.\\

,t'l,wlj,lI!\'.I')1[!'\\

I-OC'];)lIel"'.1,)1[1'.\\

llll'l'tlI'1)0I'(,'tbI)I''II[)\,',11//III,y/"IIfII'(,til[)/,"111-'1.I,y"II

~L'.I.)ljl!Il]SI.llI:)',UlJls.;Je\\

,oz'S.I;)lj]OJHI1s.\lolj:J1';\\

I0,'(~I)I)])I,I/w/d.JI.IO/SII/,ud,JI/'01,';ill,(!!,Iz~z'I~z'(Lh()])IIlIlJ.I/"I

I)IZ',)]];)UI~)'nt!;)pU;):JlII.\

st'(I[(II)IIw/!.'1

h~z'IIlJ;)['O:ill,\

\:30:-":[OIr