Theodore Dreiser and James Cain
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804775359
- eISBN:
- 9780804778459
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804775359.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In the early twentieth century, insurance crime emerged as a social phenomenon that signals not only a sociological shift in criminality but also indicates a radical change in thinking about the ...
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In the early twentieth century, insurance crime emerged as a social phenomenon that signals not only a sociological shift in criminality but also indicates a radical change in thinking about the nature of accidents. This chapter focuses on two novels that reveal how literature is involved in the production of chance: Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) and James Cain's Double Indemnity (1936). Dreiser and Cain literalize the production of chance with their depictions of criminal accident fraud. For Dreiser, this signaled the end of his own realist project. For Cain, however, it raised the possibility that accident production might function as a valuable mode of public performance art in America's emergent welfare state. Cain's Double Indemnity is a classic example of a related subgenre of crime fiction, the falsified accident novel, in which crime masquerades as a matter of chance. Dreiser's An American Tragedy represents the accident as a criminal plot. In different ways, the two novels spell the end of an earlier phase of realism.Less
In the early twentieth century, insurance crime emerged as a social phenomenon that signals not only a sociological shift in criminality but also indicates a radical change in thinking about the nature of accidents. This chapter focuses on two novels that reveal how literature is involved in the production of chance: Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925) and James Cain's Double Indemnity (1936). Dreiser and Cain literalize the production of chance with their depictions of criminal accident fraud. For Dreiser, this signaled the end of his own realist project. For Cain, however, it raised the possibility that accident production might function as a valuable mode of public performance art in America's emergent welfare state. Cain's Double Indemnity is a classic example of a related subgenre of crime fiction, the falsified accident novel, in which crime masquerades as a matter of chance. Dreiser's An American Tragedy represents the accident as a criminal plot. In different ways, the two novels spell the end of an earlier phase of realism.
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846312120
- eISBN:
- 9781846315190
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846315190.009
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter begins with a discussion of Theodore Dreiser's interest in cinema, and then considers Sergei Eisenstein's film adaptation of An American Tragedy, which was praised by Dreiser but ...
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This chapter begins with a discussion of Theodore Dreiser's interest in cinema, and then considers Sergei Eisenstein's film adaptation of An American Tragedy, which was praised by Dreiser but rejected by Paramount. It also describes Eisenstein's project with Upton Sinclair to make the film Que Viva Mexico!, which resulted in a shorter film released under the title Thunder Over Mexico in 1933.Less
This chapter begins with a discussion of Theodore Dreiser's interest in cinema, and then considers Sergei Eisenstein's film adaptation of An American Tragedy, which was praised by Dreiser but rejected by Paramount. It also describes Eisenstein's project with Upton Sinclair to make the film Que Viva Mexico!, which resulted in a shorter film released under the title Thunder Over Mexico in 1933.
P. C. Kemeny
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190844394
- eISBN:
- 9780190844424
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190844394.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society, History of Christianity
In the 1920s the Watch and Ward Society suddenly and dramatically lost its role as custodian of morally acceptable literature. In the early 1920s the organization enjoyed a string of victories, ...
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In the 1920s the Watch and Ward Society suddenly and dramatically lost its role as custodian of morally acceptable literature. In the early 1920s the organization enjoyed a string of victories, including the disbarment of the Suffolk Country (Boston) district attorney. A series of controversies in the second half of the decade, however, led to its demise. These controversies began with the Watch and Ward Society’s arrest of H. L. Mencken in the spring of 1926 for selling a banned issue of the American Mercury and continued with the suppression of such popular works as Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry and Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy and the conviction of a well-respected Cambridge bookdealer and his assistant for selling D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. These controversies helped galvanize a coalition of avant-garde writers, their publishers, and civil libertarians who succeeded in discrediting the Watch and Ward Society and revising Massachusetts’s obscenity law.Less
In the 1920s the Watch and Ward Society suddenly and dramatically lost its role as custodian of morally acceptable literature. In the early 1920s the organization enjoyed a string of victories, including the disbarment of the Suffolk Country (Boston) district attorney. A series of controversies in the second half of the decade, however, led to its demise. These controversies began with the Watch and Ward Society’s arrest of H. L. Mencken in the spring of 1926 for selling a banned issue of the American Mercury and continued with the suppression of such popular works as Sinclair Lewis’s Elmer Gantry and Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy and the conviction of a well-respected Cambridge bookdealer and his assistant for selling D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. These controversies helped galvanize a coalition of avant-garde writers, their publishers, and civil libertarians who succeeded in discrediting the Watch and Ward Society and revising Massachusetts’s obscenity law.
Joseph McBride
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604738384
- eISBN:
- 9781604738391
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604738384.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Moviegoers often assume Frank Capra’s life resembled his beloved films (such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life). A man of the people faces tremendous odds and, by doing the ...
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Moviegoers often assume Frank Capra’s life resembled his beloved films (such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life). A man of the people faces tremendous odds and, by doing the right thing, triumphs! But as the author reveals in this biography, the reality was far more complex, a true American tragedy. Using newly declassified U.S. government documents about Capra’s response to being considered a possible “subversive” during the post-World War II Red Scare, the author adds a final chapter to his portrait of the man who gave us It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe.Less
Moviegoers often assume Frank Capra’s life resembled his beloved films (such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It’s a Wonderful Life). A man of the people faces tremendous odds and, by doing the right thing, triumphs! But as the author reveals in this biography, the reality was far more complex, a true American tragedy. Using newly declassified U.S. government documents about Capra’s response to being considered a possible “subversive” during the post-World War II Red Scare, the author adds a final chapter to his portrait of the man who gave us It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Meet John Doe.
James Phillips
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190915247
- eISBN:
- 9780190915278
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190915247.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Sternberg’s films are famous for their close-ups of the female face. This Introduction discusses the way in which Dietrich’s face functions in his early sound films. Whereas silent cinema charged the ...
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Sternberg’s films are famous for their close-ups of the female face. This Introduction discusses the way in which Dietrich’s face functions in his early sound films. Whereas silent cinema charged the human face with carrying the plot or at least with taking up the narrative slack between intertitles, sound film with its additional resources for expounding the narrative opens a space for a face that is inscrutable. Sternberg’s films release the face for spectacle without thereby surrendering it to the gaze of the moviegoer: in its independence of the enclosed world of a narrative, Dietrich’s face is in a position to look out and back at the spectator. Contrasting Morocco with An American Tragedy (in which Dietrich does not appear), the Introduction argues that there is thus an image of autonomy that Sternberg and Dietrich construct and that contributes an (often overlooked) ethical dimension to their cinema of spectacle.Less
Sternberg’s films are famous for their close-ups of the female face. This Introduction discusses the way in which Dietrich’s face functions in his early sound films. Whereas silent cinema charged the human face with carrying the plot or at least with taking up the narrative slack between intertitles, sound film with its additional resources for expounding the narrative opens a space for a face that is inscrutable. Sternberg’s films release the face for spectacle without thereby surrendering it to the gaze of the moviegoer: in its independence of the enclosed world of a narrative, Dietrich’s face is in a position to look out and back at the spectator. Contrasting Morocco with An American Tragedy (in which Dietrich does not appear), the Introduction argues that there is thus an image of autonomy that Sternberg and Dietrich construct and that contributes an (often overlooked) ethical dimension to their cinema of spectacle.
