Referring to at least TWO films screened from weeks 1 to 7 on this module, discuss the
relationship between crime and sexuality in American cinema.
Through the late 1960s the French New Wave became a pronounced and significant
factor in the creation and development of Hollywood films. Such movements had gained
popularity through an ability to engage with a younger audience by means of a more
youthful focus; taking advantage of a counterculture brought about by the disillusionment
with hierarchy exemplified by protests against the Vietnam War, political assassinations,
experimentation with drugs, gay liberation and a rise in sexual freedom. Partly in an
attempt to take advantage of this, but also encouraged by favourable taxation on
filmmaking prior to 1976, the studios funded young, college educated filmmakers to create
youth orientated pictures. These brought modernist techniques, a novel narrative structure,
and storylines which, in previous eras, would have been restricted by the production code
or not risked to a conservative audience. Films of this period also placed the relationship
between crime and sexuality into a new context; a change in accordance with the growing
apathy toward the former and the liberal embracing of the latter. Characterising the
American film renaissance and the merging of Hollywood with a European style of
filmmaking was Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde(1967). Here, sexuality was used as a tool
to express the sense of escapism achieved through crime, and as a means in itself to
perforate the mundane. In contrast, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown(1974) serves solving
crime as a means of finding answers in an overwhelming world, and sexuality, or rather
sex, as a tool of oppression and corruption. This is most obvious in Noah Cross fathering
his daughter’s child, but also in Jake Gettes’ Oedipal journey. Both Penn and Polanski also
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pale crime in comparison to individual evil. A conspiracy to divert a water supply, even
one supplemented by murder, doesn’t make much of a moral dent once Catherine’s true
identity is revealed, while the murders and robberies of Bonnie and Clyde are swamped by
the romanticism and brutality of their own deaths. Consequently, Chinatown and Bonnie
and Clyde, both quintessentially tragedies, challenge perceptions of what comprises
criminality, especially in relation to individual evil, and construct sexuality and crime as
tools of escapism, corruption and oppression.
In Bonnie and Clyde, crime and sex are methods of achieving escape. Bonnie, from
her nude introduction, to her suggestive drinking of the bottle of coke and delicate grasping
of Clyde’s obviously phallic gun, presents herself as a deeply sexualised character;
attracted to the criminality of Clyde and the adventurous implications of running from the
law. Here, therefore, crime provides an exoticism, a means by which to escape the
mundane and seek stimulation. Penn saw Bonnie as “a woman with an enormous appetite
that was going ungratified - an appetite for identity, for sex, for contact with someone who
brings with him an air of the exotic, something outside her tiny little town and tiny little
job as a waitress.”(Macnab, 58-9). Bonnie turns to crime because she finds her attempts to
fill this appetite for the exotic by way of sex unsuccessful, through previous, implied
encounters, but also with Clyde. Despite the excitement provided by crime “The only
reaction to this excitement that is available to Bonnie is sexual, the means by which her
ego expresses itself.”(Blum, 29). Consequently, even in the thrill of being pursued, Bonnie
seeks sex and an emotional connection with Clyde. This relationship between sexuality
and crime and their overlapping usage are also evident in Chinatown. In contrast to
Bonnie, Evelyn’s sexuality serves to entrap her and foreshadow her death. Stephen Cooper
argues that “the detective in fact does align himself implicitly with the very forces of
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repressive power against which he struggles (to struggle), and in so doing ultimately
victimizes the women he investigates/works for/loves.”(24). Here, Cooper is articulating
that in the moment Gettes has sex with Evelyn, he aligns her journey with that of the last
women he failed to protect in Chinatown and the generic romantic interests of the
protagonist in detective movies. Furthermore, he notices the flaw in her iris- the ominous
birthmark which is ultimately pierced by a bullet- immediately before they have sex.
Therefore Evelyn’s sexual association with Gettes, and his professional association with
crime, condemns her. If the sexuality of Bonnie initially prevents her engaging fully with
the rebellious freedom usually provided by criminality and present in a road movie,
Evelyn’s sexuality, and her relations with Gettes, confirms her entrapment in ‘Chinatown’:
the corrupt, criminal world of the Film Noir detective.
The dark, dishonest world of Chinatown reflects a popular contemporary view of
the establishment as an insular body operating above personal and liberal freedoms. The
emerging Watergate scandal in 1972, the ongoing Vietnam War and the associated
atrocities, corruption and democratic anomalies distanced the public, especially the
booming youth population, from their elected representatives. Gittes asking Cross “What
can you buy that you can’t already afford?”(Chinatown) underlines the sense of
pointlessness that surrounded political transgressions in this period. Arthur Penn recalls
that “a similar resistance was expressed in another form by middle-class people in the 60s”
to the “young, bucolic bumpkins who took on the banks, which were perceived as the
social enemy”. Therefore the title characters, ordained as mythically embodying this
“cause of the dispossessed”(Bernstein, 24) through Bonnie’s poem, reflect the society they
predated by thirty years due to their desire to reclaim personal freedom and be more than
the situation they were born into. Bonnie is allowed to find crime adventurous and Clyde
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sexually attractive- yet remain engaged with the audience- because the idea of crime was
belittled by the weariness the public felt with the law, after all, “Society murdered St. Joan,
too.”(Blum, 30). Chinatown reflects this weariness as its protagonist is unable to win,
despite solving the case. Gettes knows Cross killed Mulwray, he works out the conspiracy
and yet it all means nothing as Cross “owns the police”(Chinatown) and is able to escape
justice and recover Catherine. Such a situation draws comparisons to Richard Nixon during
the Watergate Scandal, and his pardoning by Gerald Ford afterwards, in so much as a
solved case doesn’t necessarily instigate justice. In the final sequence, the frustration of a
scene dripping with political and moral corruption is contrasted with the almost sickening
sight of Cross, with no reaction from the police or Gettes, leading the screaming Catherine
away from her dead mother; the reminder that his use of sexuality transcended the crime of
the film through an individual act of evil.
American cinema in this era acted to question the perception and definition of
crime and criminality. Michel Foucault theorised that human consciousness was shaped
and defined by historical and social context; that the codification and classification of
behaviour varied through time. The concept of crime, like all concepts to Foucault,
becomes changeable. As a result, the morality of stealing, murder, corruption and violence
is relevant only to the culture in which it is taking place. Similarities between the social
problems of the late 1960s and the economics of the Depression era, allows robbing banks
to be interpreted as an attack on the capitalist forces of social oppression. Corruption,
however, is more relatable to contemporary crimes against the wider population and
innocent individuals. If power is perceived to have been derived from discourse, then an
act of rebellion draws sympathy rather than criticism. If the audience interprets Clyde and
Bonnie’s ‘criminality’ as a rejection of this discourse and an attempt to embrace the liberal
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freedoms from which they have been deprived, then their actions become a form of
expression; an exotic, adventurous release to which the audience can aspire and relate.
Moreover, this sympathy, along with Penn’s romanticised direction, pushes criminality
away from the title characters, and on to those by whom they are brutally killed.
Even without a Foucauldian perception of crime seated in the context of 1960s
political apathy, Penn’s direction creates an inescapable sympathy for the bullet-ridden
duo. The overt quantity of ammunition, piercing already lifeless bodies, coupled with the
morality of trapping people who weren’t warned, armed or subject to trial, gives the
audience a sense of pity and almost guilt- Bonnie and Clyde are relatable, but the law is
part of a society that the audience actively engages in. The brutality of the scene, enhanced
by the slow motion and the knowing, loving final look they give one another, leaves the
audience not only querying crime, but struggling to understand their own system of justice.
Bank robbers being ambushed on roadsides may have been all but consigned to history by
1967, but death by force without trial certainly was not. Much like the swamp of
corruption and revelation of sickening sexual crimes in which Chinatown ends, the killing
of Bonnie and Clyde reinforces a sense of apathy toward the power which attempts to
reinforce the discourse of what is criminal. William Blum argues that “The violence of
society's retribution characterizes its response to the exceptional as frightened, hysterical,
stupid, and uncomprehending.”(30). Such an interpretation of social justice allows an
attraction to Bonnie and Clyde’s raw simplicity and moral innocence, enhanced by their
sexuality. Warren Beatty also carries an automatic sexualisation and sympathy to the
character of Clyde due to his star persona, as interpreting a murderous criminal out of such
a well known and respected figure becomes unlikely. Instead the title characters draw
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compassion and understanding at the expense of a brutal, corrupt and conspiring justice
system.
The inevitability, regularity and normality of private evil acts as a point of
comparison with the legal interpretation of crime. Crime may be based upon the influence
of power provided by discourse, but acts of individual evil are able to transcend the
impacts on individual reasoning resulting from indifference toward social hierarchy,
though still relying on a level of historically specific morality. An audience will be
impacted by evil in a different manner to legal criminality, as the motivation is often
unclear and regularly opaque. Wayne D. McGinnis believes Chinatown shows a “potential
for evil in all human aspiration”(249), mirroring Cross’ claim “that at the right time and the
right place” one is “capable of anything”(Chinatown), but it is the unexplained nature of
this evil which creates an unsurpassable negative reaction toward the character. The
employing of sexuality as the vehicle for Cross’ evil creates a sense of the inevitable, but
also the natural. Combined with his vague justification, it implies an animalistic tendency
to commit sexual evil. Foucault’s argument, though, theoretically questions even the idea
of sexual evil, as sexuality “was taken charge of... by a discourse that aimed to allow it no
obscurity”(1504), meaning an audience is unable to ascertain true sexual evil due to the
discourse which surrounds and restricts the deconstruction of sexuality. Nevertheless, the
authorial intention and the common audience and critical reception is one of horror and
disgust. McGinnis, seeking an Oedipal reading of Chinatown, claims Polanski “split the
Oedipus figure”(250) between Gettes and Cross. Tragedy, without sympathy,
misadventure, doomed aspirations and naivety, becomes evil, in the form of Cross. Gettes
provides the intuitive, smooth detective, seemingly capable and determined in rescuing his
people from a plague, only to discover a sexual evil which he is unable to wholly
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comprehend. While Oedipus blinds himself in punishment of his failure to ‘see’, Gettes’
penalty is Evelyn’s death, not coincidently shot through the eye. Moreover, it is the
sexualisation of Gettes’ relationship with Evelyn which condemns her, much like Oedipus’
fathering of his siblings forcing his mother’s suicide. As in Oedipus the King, the
protagonist is punished for failing to wholly comprehend the evil of the world to such an
extent that he contributes to the downfall of the very thing he attempted to protect and
causes the events he initially set out to prevent unfolding. Gettes aims to help Evelyn and
Catherine escape Cross, only to literally drive him to them.
In American cinema, especially from the 1960s into the early 1970s, crime and
sexuality were used to express a desire to rebel, to escape the economic and social
insecurities and to press for independence. Liberal freedoms, which were becoming lost in
a tide of political scandals and ineptitude, could be forcefully reclaimed through crime and
sexuality. Bonnie and Clyde, in a 1930s setting, challenge a system seemingly taking from
its people; an apt reflection of what was lost to 1960s Americans. Such a failure to adhere
to the democratic foundations of the nation questioned American normality. Looking
through Foucault, aided by the sympathetic style of Bonnie and Clyde, crime becomes not
immoral in this era, but a sexualised, exotic rebellion. Lined up next to this legal, socially
constructed transgression was an idea of evil, that which the contemporary audience truly
viewed as morally wrong. Chinatown presents a world filled with this most unsympathetic
form of crime. Noah Cross and Frank Hamer commit very different immoral acts, but both
are brutal, violent and rooted in a “kind of collusion” suggesting “Complication is the
genuine evil”(Blum, 30), punishing fundamentally innocent and innocuous characters
unable or unwilling to accept the world as it is. Instead they use sex and crime, or sex and
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solving crime, to find an answer, a definitive solution to evil. However the ultimate,
overwhelming and tragic truth is that they simply cannot.
Word Count: 2002
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Works Cited and Referenced
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