American Cinematic Myths of Landscape and City:
Film Noir, the Western and the Horror Film
MA Module
Course Tutor: Dr Alex Beaumont
“American Cinematic Myths” analyses three American film genres—film noir, the
Western and the Horror film—in order to prompt reflection on:
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Cinematic landscape and myth-making
Iconographies of individual and societal identity and aspiration
The role of anxiety in shaping American mythology
The shifting and revealing relationships between stories and histories
The meanings of stylistic containment and excess
Evolving reception histories
The processes and effects of literary adaptation
The construction of gendered identities within particular film genres
The workings of genres: adherence, resistance, evolution, expansion, revision,
subversion & pastiche
Each genre spins and interrogates myths about selfhood and society through
explorations of character in relation to iconographic American environments, be it the
the wilderness or the city. What is more, all of these genres have been mobilised over
the last decade in new configurations, and their contemporary manifestations will be
the subject of the last two weeks of the module.
Please acquire (share between two if preferable) a copy of the following critical texts:
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Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman, eds., The Western Reader
Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film
James Naremore, More than Night: Film-Noir in its Contexts
Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism 6th edn
John Caughie, Theories of Authorship
Please also purchase any literary texts that feature as required reading in the list below.
Organisation
The module will be taught by two-hour weekly seminars and two film screenings per
week. The thoughtful completion of all required reading and viewing is assumed for
each seminar. Where listed, incursions into the recommended supplementary viewing
and reading lists provided will always be in the interests of both the individual and the
group.
Assessment
One 4500-word essay for formal assessment by Week 1 of Spring Term 2013.
Part One: Film Noir
Week 2
"Classic" Noir
Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)
Required primary reading:
James M. Cain. Double Indemnity. (Any edition)
Raymond Chandler. The Big Sleep. (Any edition)
Raymond Chandler. “The Simple Act of Murder”. (Available online here: http://aelib.org.ua/texts-c/chandler__the_simple_art_of_murder__en.htm)
Required critical reading:
Frank Krutnik. In a Lonely Street. London: Routledge, 1991. 33-72.
James Naremore. More Than Night: Film-Noir and its Contexts. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2008. 9-39.
Laura Mulvey. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”. Film Theory and Criticism:
Introductory Readings. 6th ed. Ed. Leo Braudy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 837-848.
Supplementary reading:
Joan Copjec. Shades of Noir. London: Verso, 1993. 167-197.
Philippa Gates, Detecting Men: Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective Film. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2006.
William Marling. The American Roman Noir: Hammett, Cain and Chandler. Athens:
Georgia UP, 1995.
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Week 3
The Difficult Issue of Genre: Noir and Melodrama
Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)
Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945)
Required primary reading:
James M. Cain. Mildred Pierce. (Any edition)
Required critical reading:
Daniel Chandler. “An Introduction to Genre Theory”. (Available at:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/intgenre/intgenre1.html.
Chandler’s
wider analysis is of television genres, but I would like everybody to read the section
entitled “The Problem of Definition”. Investigate the links provided for further
reading)
Richard Maltby. Hollywood Cinema. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. 74-110.
Steve Neale. Genre and Hollywood. London: Routledge, 1999. 142-193.
Rick Altman. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre”. Film Theory and Criticism:
Introductory Readings. 6th ed. Ed. Leo Braudy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 680-690.
Thomas Schatz. “Film Genre and the Genre Film”. Film Theory and Criticism:
Introductory Readings. 6th ed. Ed. Leo Braudy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 691-702.
June Sochen, "Mildred Pierce and Women in Film," American Quarterly 30.1 (Jan 1978):
3-20.
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Part Two: The Western
Week 4
The Man of the West
The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)
Required reading:
Robert Warshow. “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner”. Film Theory and Criticism:
Introductory Readings. 6th ed. Ed. Leo Braudy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 703-716.
Owen Wister. “The Evolution of the Cow-Puncher”. (Available online at:
http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/gaslight/evolcowp.htm)
Ed Buscombe. “Inventing Monument Valley”. The Western Reader. Eds. Jim Kitses and
Gregg Rickman. New York: Limelight Editions. 115-130.
Lindsay Anderson. “The Searchers”. Theories of Authorship. Ed. John Caughie. London:
Routldge, 1981. 75-77.
Andrew Sarris. “The Searchers”. Theories of Authorship. Ed. John Caughie. London:
Routldge, 1981. 78-82.
Lee Clark Mitchell. Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1996. 3-8.
Anthony Smith. “Images of the Nation: Cinema, art and national identity”. Cinema and
Nation. Eds. Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie. London: Routledge, 2000. 45-59.
A.M. Eckstein. “Darkening Ethan: John Ford's The Searchers from Novel to Screenplay to
Screen”. Cinema Journal 38.1 (Autumn 1998): 3-24.
Andrew Higson. “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema”. Cinema and Nation.
Eds. Mette Hjort and Scott Mackenzie. London: Routledge, 2000. 63-74,
Supplementary reading:
Rita Parks, The Western Hero in Film and Television: Mass Media Mythology. Michigan:
UMI Research Press, 1982.
Jeanine Basinger. Anthony Mann Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 2007. 118-129.
Armando Jose Prats. Invisible Natives: Myth and Identity in the American Western. Ithaca:
Cornell UP, 2002. 23-30, 278-287.
Andre Bazin. “The Western: or the American Film Par Excellence.” What is Cinema? Vol.
2. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Ed Buscombe. “The Idea of Genre in the American Cinema”. Film Genre Reader II. Ed.
Barry Keith Grant, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984.
M Budd. “A Home in the Wilderness: Visual Imagery in John Ford's Westerns”, The
Western Reader. Eds. Jim Kitses and Gregg Rickman. New York: Limelight Editions.
133-147.
Susan Courtney. Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2005.
193-249.
Scott Simmon. “A Note on Acting”. The Invention of the Western Film. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2003. 171-7.
Ed Buscombe. “The 1940s: Resurgence of the A-Western”. The BFI Companion to the
Western. Ed. Edward Buscombe. London: BFI, 1988.43-54.
P. Lehman. “An absence which becomes a legendary presence: John Ford’s structured
use of off-screen space”. Wide Angle 2.4 (1978): 36-42.
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Week 5
Nostalgia, Cultural Anxiety and the End of the West
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
Required reading:
Robin Wood. “Shall we gather at the river? The Late Films of John Ford”. Theories of
Authorship. Ed. John Caughie. London: Routledge, 1981. 83-93.
Lee Clark Mitchell. Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1996. 151-187.
Christopher Sharrett. “Peckinpah the Radical: The Politics of The Wild Bunch.” Sam
Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Ed. Stephen Prince. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
79-104.
Wheeler W. Dixon. “Re-Visioning the Western: Code, Myth and Genre in Peckinpah’s The
Wild Bunch. Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Ed. Stephen Prince. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1999. 155-74.
Robert Torry. “Therapeutic Narrative: The Wild Bunch, Jaws, and Vietnam.” The Velvet
Light Trap 31 (Spring 1993): 27-38.
Supplementary reading:
Stephen Prince, ed. Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
Stephen Prince. Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies.
London: Athlone Press, 1998.
Susan Fellman. “From ‘Blood Auteurism to the Violence of Pornography: Sam Peckinpah
and Oliver Stone.” New Hollywood Violence. Ed. Steven J. Schneider. Manchester:
Manchester UP, 2004.
Jim Kitses. Horizons West: Anthony Mann, Budd Boetticher, Sam Peckinpah: Studies of
Authorship within the Western. London: Thames and Hudson, 1969.
Michael Bliss. “Martyred Slaves of Time: Age, Regret, and Transcendence in The Wild
Bunch.” Peckinpah Today: New Essays on the Films of Sam Peckinpah. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois UP, 2012. 36-44.
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NO SEMINAR OR SCREENINGS IN WEEK 6
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Part Three: The Horror Film
Week 7
Abjection and Consumerism in Romero’s Zombie Films
Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)
Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero, 1978)
Required reading:
Julia Kristeva. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New
York: Columbia UP, 1982. 1-31. (Chapter 1, “Approaching Abjection”)
Guy Debord. Society of the Spectacle. (any edition)
Robin Wood. “An Introduction to the American Horror Film”. Movies and Methods Vol 2.
Ed. Bill Nichols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. 195-220. (Available on
Google Books)
Steve Beard. “No Particular Place to Go”. Sight and Sound 3.4 (1993): 30-31.
Meaghan Morris. “Things to do with Shopping Centres”. The Cultural Studies Reader. 2nd
ed. Ed. Simon During. London: Routledge, 1999. (Available as an online resource from
the York library catalogue)
Supplementary reading:
Tony Williams. The Cinema of George A. Romero: Knight of Living Dead. London:
Wallflower, 2003.
Jane Caputi. “Films of the Nuclear Age”. Journal of Popular Film and Television 16
(1988): 100-107.
Matt Becker. “A Point of Little Hope: Hippie Horror Films and the Politics of
Ambivalence”. The Velvet Light Trap 57 (Spring 2006): 42-59.
Kevin Hefferman. “Inner-City Exhibition and the Genre Film: Distributing Night of the
Living Dead”. Cinema Journal 41.3 (Spring 2002): 59-77.
Kendall R. Phillips. Projected Fears: Horror Films and American Culture. Westport:
Praeger, 2005.
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Week 8
The Rise of the Slasher
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
The seminar will assume that students have seen Pyshco (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Required reading:
Barbara Creed. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London:
Routledge, 1993. 139-50.
Carol J. Clover. Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in Modern Horror Film. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1993. 21-64.
Carol J. Clover. “Her Body. Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Screening Violence.
London: Athlone Press, 2000. 125-74.
Linda Williams. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Film Theory and Criticism:
Introductory Readings. 6th ed. Ed. Leo Braudy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 727-741.
Cynthia A Freeland. “Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films”. Film Theory and Criticism:
Introductory Readings. 6th ed. Ed. Leo Braudy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 742-765.
Tania Modelski. “The Terror of Pleasure: The Contemporary Horror Film and
Postmodern Theory”. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 6th ed. Ed. Leo
Braudy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. 764-773.
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Part Four: Revisions and Innovations
Week 9
Blight, Fear and Gender: Noir and Horror in the Millennial City
Se7en (David Fincher, 1995)
In the Cut (Jane Campion, 2003)
Required primary reading:
Susanna Moore. In the Cut. (Any edition)
Charles Perrault. Blue Beard. (Available online at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/290
21/29021-h/29021-h.htm)
Angela Carter. “The Bloody Chamber.” The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. London:
Vintage, 1995.
Required critical reading:
James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. “Broken Windows.” The Atlantic Monthly Mar.
1982. (Available online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/03
/broken-windows/304465/)
Steve Macek. Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, and the Moral Panic Over the City.
Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2005. 199-256. (Chapter 1, “The Origins of the Crisis”)
Steve Macek. “Places of Horror: Fincher’s Seven and Fear of the City in Recent
Hollywood Film.” College Literature 26:1 (Winter 1999): 80-97.
Graham Fuller. “Sex and Self-Danger.” Sight and Sound 13:11 (Nov. 2003): 16-19.
Amy Taubin. “The Allure of Decay.” Sight and Sound 6:1 (Jan. 1996): 23-24.
Supplementary reading:
Mike Davis. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. London: Verso, 1990.
221-264. (Chapter 4, “Fortress LA”)
Deborah Wills. “Mortality Plays: Pain, Penance, and Admonition in Se7en and Saw”.
Journal of Religion and Popular Culture.
Valerie Allen. “Se7en: Medieval Justice, Modern Justice.” The Journal of Popular Culture
43:6 (2010): 1150-1172.
Sue Thornham. “‘Starting to Feel Like a Chick’: Re-visioning Romance in In the Cut.”
Feminist Media Studies 7:1 (2007): 33-46.
Richard Dyer. “Kill and Kill Again.” Sight and Sound 7:9 (Sept. 1997): 14-17.
Chris Darke. “Inside the Light.” Sight and Sound 6:4 (Apr. 1996): 18-20.
Amy Taubin. “Amy Taubin Talks with the Director.” Sight and Sound 6:1 (Jan. 1996): 24.
Angela Carter. The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History. London: Virago,
2006.
Simone de Beauvoir. “Must we Burn de Sade?” The 120 Days of Sodom. Ed. Trans.
Austryn Wainhouse and Richard Seaver. London: Arrow, 1990.
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Week 10
The Western After 9/11: Cultural Exhaustion and the Decline of American Power
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, 2007)
No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Cohen, 2007)
Required primary reading:
Cormac McCarthy. No Country for Old Men. London: Picador, 2008.
Required critical reading:
Immanuel Wallerstein. The Decline of American Power: The US in a Chaotic World. New
York: The New Press, 2003. (Chapter 1, “Decline of the US: The Eagle Has Crash
Landed”)
Susan Faludi. The Terror Dream: Myth and Misogyny in an Insecure America. (Chapters 1,
2 and 3, “We’re at War, Sweetheart”, “The Return of Superman” and “The Cowboys
of Yesterday”)
Jim Kitses. “Twilight of the Idol.” Sight and Sound 17:12 (Dec. 2007): 18-20.
David R. Jarraway. “‘Becoming-Woman’: Masculine ‘Emergency’ After 9/11 in Cormac
McCarthy.” Canadian Review of American Studies 42:1 (2012): 49-64.
Arne De Boever. “The Politics of Retirement: Joel and Ethan Cohen’s No Country for Old
Men After September 11.” Image [&] Narrative 10:2 (2009). 135-149.
Supplementary reading:
Geoffrey O’ Brien. “Gone Tomorrow: The Echoing Spaces of Joel and Ethan Cohen’s No
Country for Old Men.” Film Comment 43:6 (Nov. 2007): 28-31.
Thierry Jutel. “No Country for Old Men, Visual Regime, Mental Image and Narrative
Slowness.” Senses of Cinema 60 (Oct. 2011).
Raymond Malewitz. “‘Anything Can Be an Instrument’: Misuse Value and Rugged
Consumerism in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men.” Contemporary
Literature 50:4 (Winter 2009): 721-41.