1 popular fiction

Popular Fiction

1. Dashiell H ammett and Noir/Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction Jesús Ángel González

2. Why study popular fiction? What’s popular fiction? Elite Art Folk Art Popular Art Why study it? As a means to something else As something worth studying in itself Umberto Eco : Apocalittici e Integrati (1964)

3. Different ways of looking at popular fiction Roman Jakobson’s Paradigm of Communication

4. The Author Feelings, intuition rather than reason? “What I write comes from the gut, instead of my head, from intuition rather than intellect” (Stephen King) Collective authorship: “the genius of the system” (André Bazin )

5. The Reader Reader Response Theory: what gives the reader pleasure? Implicit Reader Psychoanalysis ( Lacan , Metz): connections with the reader’s unconscious Popular fiction as problem-solving strategies (happy endings) Popular fiction as Myths, archetypes that reflect the collective unconscious (Carl Jung, Lévi-Strauss) Leslie Fiedler: “watering of emotions” (rather than catharsis) Stephen King: “unreal symbols of very real fears”

6. The (Social) Context Apocalittici : popular fiction “gets in the way of genuine feeling and responsible thinking by creating cheap mechanical responses” ( Leavis ); Cultural industry “solves conflicts for readers only in appearance, in a way that can hardly be solved in their real lives” ( Adorno ): . Mechanism to control the masses. Detective novel: Reactionary or Progressive? Thomas Schatz: Hollywood genre films are able “to ‘play it both ways’, to criticize and reinforce the values, beliefs, and ideals of our culture within the same narrative context” Mimesis or escapism?: “literature or expression and literature of escape” (Chandler) Hammett: “took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into the alley”

7. The Text In general, not the most useful approach Hammet’s case: “Hammett's fiction was successful on two levels. On the casual reading typically expected for popular fiction, the novels are absorbing and powerful; on a closer, more careful reading of the sort generally reserved for literature, the novels offer a richness of language that is expected of true art .” (Gregory 15)

8. The (Generic) Codes (1) Genres and Formulas: Structuralist and narratological approaches Stephen Neale: Genres as “systems of orientations, expectations and conventions that circulate between industry, text, and subject” Todorov : Theoretical genres and historical genres Genre System as a means to operate as “sites of meaning and pleasure” ( Krutnik ) Cawelti : Formulas as “ways in which specific cultural themes and stereotypes become embodied in more universal story archetypes”. Moral fantasies underlying each archetype: Adventure (victory over death), Mystery (rational solution to all problems) and Romance (love triumphant). Also, Melodrama (goodness of the social order), and “alien beings or states” (conquering the unknown world) Thomas Schatz: Genres of order vs. genres of integration. Solving a conflict that is used to examine the contradictions of American society R. Warshow : Combination of originality and repetition

9. The (Generic) Codes (2) HARD-BOILED DETECTIVE NOVEL/FILM OR NOIR? Cawelti : Mystery Archetype, 2 formulas: classical and hard-boiled detective stories Cynthia Hamilton: hard-boiled novel as a subgenre of “American adventure” (like Westerns) Black Mask: “action-detection stories”, “realistic mystery fiction” (Chandler) France: Roman Noir and Film Noir. Applied also in the UK Thriller Hard-boiled ?

10. The (Generic) Codes (3) GENRE: CRIME FICTION. Criteria to classify: thematic, structural and crime triangle (criminal, victim, investigator) CLASSICAL DETECTIVE FICTION: conservative, retrospective, emphasis on the investigator (Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie) ROMAN NOIR: Critical (“malaise specifique ”), violent DETECTIVE ROMAN NOIR: prospective/retrospective, emphasis on the investigator: The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep NON-DETECTIVE ROMAN NOIR: prospective (no past mystery), emphasis on the criminal (James M. Cain, penitentiary stories) or the victim (David Goodis , Cornell Woolrich ) THRILLERS: Prospective, no specific unease, emphasis on action and adventure: James Bond

11. The Medium (of contact) Medium (audiovisual)/Channel (TV, Films) More in FILM/LITERATURE