Synopses & Reviews
No society is without crime, prompting Nathaniel Hawthorne’s narrator to make his famous statement in
The Scarlet Letter that, however high its hopes are, no civilization can fail to allot a portion of its soil as the site of a prison. Crime has also been a prevailing, common theme in films that call us to consider its construction: How do we determine what is lawful and what is criminal? And how, in turn, does this often hypocritical distinction determine society?
Film, argues Carl Freedman, is an especially fruitful medium for considering questions like these. With Versions of Hollywood Crime Cinema, he offers a series of critical readings spanning several genres. From among the mob movies, Freedman focuses on Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy—arguably the foremost work of crime cinema—crafting a convincing argument that the plot’s action is principally driven by the shift from Sicily to America, which marks the shift to a capitalist society. Turning his attention to other genres, Freedman also looks at film noir and Westerns, in addition to films for which crime is significant but not central, from horror movies like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to science fiction and social realist films like The Grapes of Wrath. In recent years, television has welcomed innovative works like Boardwalk Empire, The Wire, and The Sopranos, and Freedman discusses how television’s increasingly congenial creative environment has allowed it to turn out productions whose ability to engage with these larger social questions rivals that of films from the height of cinema’s Golden Age.
Review
"Whether discussing the 'post-heterosexuality' of John Wayne or the role of what Marx called 'primitive accumulation' in the Godfather films, Carl Freedman offers thought-provoking new insights on classic Hollywood films."
Review
"Carl Freedman once more proves himself the most sensitive reader of texts and the most lucid explicator of critical theory. It is a commonplace that mob movies expose the logic of capitalism, but his nuanced analysis of the Godfather trilogy in terms of Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation for once actually makes the case—and makes it stick. Freedman’s inclusion of westerns in crime cinema merely appears idiosyncratic—Edwin S. Porter’s
The Great Train Robbery was seen as a violent crime movie long before anyone called it a western—and his consummate discussion of John Wayne’s post-heterosexual masculinity is worth the price of admission alone."
Synopsis
Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Book of the Year. This innovative cultural critique offers valuable insights into science fiction, thus enlarging our understanding of critical theory. Carl Freedman traces the fundamental and mostly unexamined relationships between the discourses of science fiction and critical theory, arguing that science fiction is (or ought to be) a privileged genre for critical theory. He asserts that it is no accident that the upsurge of academic interest in science fiction since the 1970s coincides with the heyday of literary theory, and that likewise science fiction is one of the most theoretically informed areas of the literary profession. Extended readings of novels by five of the most important modern science fiction authors illustrate the affinity between science fiction and critical theory, in each case concentrating on one major novel that resonates with concerns proper to critical theory.
Freedman's five readings are: Solaris: Stanislaw Lem and the Structure of Cognition; The Dispossessed: Ursula LeGuin and the Ambiguities of Utopia; The Two of Them: Joanna Russ and the Violence of Gender; Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand: Samuel Delany and the Dialectics of Difference; The Man in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick and the Construction of Realities.
Synopsis
Carl Freedman traces the fundamental and mostly unexamined relationships between the discourses of science fiction and critical theory, arguing that science fiction is (or ought to be) a privileged genre for critical theory. He asserts that it is no accident that the upsurge of academic interest in science fiction since the 1970s coincides with the heyday of literary theory, and that likewise science fiction is one of the most theoretically informed areas of the literary profession. Extended readings of novels by five of the most important modern science fiction authors illustrate the affinity between science fiction and critical theory, in each case concentrating on one major novel that resonates with concerns proper to critical theory.
Freedman's five readings are: Solaris: Stanislaw Lem and the Structure of Cognition; The Dispossessed: Ursula LeGuin and the Ambiguities of Utopia; The Two of Them: Joanna Russ and the Violence of Gender; Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand: Samuel Delany and the Dialectics of Difference; The Man in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick and the Construction of Realities.
Synopsis
This innovative cultural critique offers valuable insights into science fiction, thus enlarging our understanding of critical theory.
Carl Freedman traces the fundamental and mostly unexamined relationships between the discourses of science fiction and critical theory, arguing that science fiction is (or ought to be) a privileged genre for critical theory. He asserts that it is no accident that the upsurge of academic interest in science fiction since the 1970s coincides with the heyday of literary theory, and that likewise science fiction is one of the most theoretically informed areas of the literary profession. Extended readings of novels by five of the most important modern science fiction authors illustrate the affinity between science fiction and critical theory, in each case concentrating on one major novel that resonates with concerns proper to critical theory.
Freedman's five readings are: Solaris: Stanislaw Lem and the Structure of Cognition; The Dispossessed: Ursula LeGuin and the Ambiguities of Utopia; The Two of Them: Joanna Russ and the Violence of Gender; Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand: Samuel Delany and the Dialectics of Difference; The Man in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick and the Construction of Realities.
About the Author
Carl Freedman is the James F. Cassidy Professor of English at Louisiana State University. He is the author of many articles and several books, including
The Age of Nixon,
Incomplete Projects: Marxism, Modernity, and the Politics of Culture, and
Critical Theory and Science Fiction.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Section 1: Gangsterism and Capitalism: The Mob Movie and After
The supplement of Coppola: Primitive accumulation and the Godfather trilogy
Hobbes after Marx, Scorsese after Coppola: On Goodfellas
Tony Soprano and the end(s) of the mob movie
Section 2: Noir and its Disconnects
Marxism, cinema, and some dialectics of film noir and science fiction
Noir, neo-noir, and the end of work: From Double Indemnity to Body Heat
Section 3: Empire and Gender in the John Wayne Western
Versions of the American imperium in three westerns by John Ford
Post-heterosexuality: John Wayne and the construction of American masculinity
Notes
Index