Mike Ashley
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780853238553
- eISBN:
- 9781781380826
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853238553.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter discusses the growth of science fiction magazines in the 1930s, at which time the popularity of the two leading science fiction magazines, Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories, led to ...
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This chapter discusses the growth of science fiction magazines in the 1930s, at which time the popularity of the two leading science fiction magazines, Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories, led to the rise of new sub-genres of pulp fiction magazines: the heroes and villains, single character, and weird fiction. It notes that when John W. Campbell, Jr. became the editor of Astounding Stories in 1938, he ushered in what was called the ‘golden age’ of science fiction magazines, as he tapped the mature and sophisticated readership – this move was considered well-timed, as the teenage readers of Amazing Stories in the 1920s were now adults in need of a more mature form of reading.Less
This chapter discusses the growth of science fiction magazines in the 1930s, at which time the popularity of the two leading science fiction magazines, Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories, led to the rise of new sub-genres of pulp fiction magazines: the heroes and villains, single character, and weird fiction. It notes that when John W. Campbell, Jr. became the editor of Astounding Stories in 1938, he ushered in what was called the ‘golden age’ of science fiction magazines, as he tapped the mature and sophisticated readership – this move was considered well-timed, as the teenage readers of Amazing Stories in the 1920s were now adults in need of a more mature form of reading.
Gavin Parkinson
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381434
- eISBN:
- 9781781382387
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381434.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
Evidence of the French Surrealists’ interest in Anglo-American pulp fiction can be found as early as 1942 in the essay ‘Explorers of the Pluriverse’ by the journalist Robert Allerton Parker, which ...
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Evidence of the French Surrealists’ interest in Anglo-American pulp fiction can be found as early as 1942 in the essay ‘Explorers of the Pluriverse’ by the journalist Robert Allerton Parker, which acted as the preface to the exhibition ‘First Papers of Surrealism’ organised by exiled Surrealists in New York during the Second World War. Allerton’s expansion on this in his essay ‘Such Pulp as Dreams are Made On’ – concerned with H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and the burgeoning SF pulp scene in America – could be read the following year in the Franco-American Surrealist journal VVV, probably known to the writer Raymond Queneau in Paris during the war in his post-Surrealist phase. Queneau is usually given credit for introducing American SF into France in 1950 in the pages of Georges Bataille’s journal Critique, but the details of postwar Surrealism’s contribution to this reception are less well known. This chapter situates Surrealism, for the first time, in the complex reception of US SF in France by demonstrating the nuanced rejection of its typically interplanetary strains by the Surrealists in the 1950s in favour of an adjacent literature of the fantastic that met its established prewar theory and tastes. Repudiating Isaac Asimov, Frederick Pohl, A.E. van Vogt, and Robert A. Heinlein, the Surrealists favoured ‘voyages in time and histories of parallel worlds,’ in the words of Robert Benayoun, ‘when they break a path onto the fantastic and onto legends,’ prioritised in the writings of Lewis Padgett, Ray Bradbury, John Wyndham, Fredric Brown, Theodore Sturgeon, and William Tenn. This chapter also observes the ways in which Michel Carrouges, an important fringe figure in postwar Surrealism, manoeuvred the writings of André Breton to figure the SF of Bradbury and others as a form of modern myth, in the same ways as Breton had theorised the Gothic novel in the 1930s.Less
Evidence of the French Surrealists’ interest in Anglo-American pulp fiction can be found as early as 1942 in the essay ‘Explorers of the Pluriverse’ by the journalist Robert Allerton Parker, which acted as the preface to the exhibition ‘First Papers of Surrealism’ organised by exiled Surrealists in New York during the Second World War. Allerton’s expansion on this in his essay ‘Such Pulp as Dreams are Made On’ – concerned with H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and the burgeoning SF pulp scene in America – could be read the following year in the Franco-American Surrealist journal VVV, probably known to the writer Raymond Queneau in Paris during the war in his post-Surrealist phase. Queneau is usually given credit for introducing American SF into France in 1950 in the pages of Georges Bataille’s journal Critique, but the details of postwar Surrealism’s contribution to this reception are less well known. This chapter situates Surrealism, for the first time, in the complex reception of US SF in France by demonstrating the nuanced rejection of its typically interplanetary strains by the Surrealists in the 1950s in favour of an adjacent literature of the fantastic that met its established prewar theory and tastes. Repudiating Isaac Asimov, Frederick Pohl, A.E. van Vogt, and Robert A. Heinlein, the Surrealists favoured ‘voyages in time and histories of parallel worlds,’ in the words of Robert Benayoun, ‘when they break a path onto the fantastic and onto legends,’ prioritised in the writings of Lewis Padgett, Ray Bradbury, John Wyndham, Fredric Brown, Theodore Sturgeon, and William Tenn. This chapter also observes the ways in which Michel Carrouges, an important fringe figure in postwar Surrealism, manoeuvred the writings of André Breton to figure the SF of Bradbury and others as a form of modern myth, in the same ways as Breton had theorised the Gothic novel in the 1930s.
Todd McGowan
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816669950
- eISBN:
- 9781452947099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816669950.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter discusses Quentin Tarantino’s claims that the history of cinema failed to recognize the potential of cinema’s relationship with time. He attempted to resolve the failure through Pulp ...
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This chapter discusses Quentin Tarantino’s claims that the history of cinema failed to recognize the potential of cinema’s relationship with time. He attempted to resolve the failure through Pulp Fiction (1994), a film which was presented out of chronological sequence. The chapter examines the effects of the disrupted chronological sequence of events, as well as the insertion of clichés and quotations to the film’s overall approach of movie presentation. One of the effects of time disruption was the destruction rather than confirmation of the spectators’ expectations for the film.Less
This chapter discusses Quentin Tarantino’s claims that the history of cinema failed to recognize the potential of cinema’s relationship with time. He attempted to resolve the failure through Pulp Fiction (1994), a film which was presented out of chronological sequence. The chapter examines the effects of the disrupted chronological sequence of events, as well as the insertion of clichés and quotations to the film’s overall approach of movie presentation. One of the effects of time disruption was the destruction rather than confirmation of the spectators’ expectations for the film.
Mike Ashley
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780853238553
- eISBN:
- 9781781380826
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853238553.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter reflects on the fate of the science fiction magazines during the 1950s nuclear age, by which time most science fiction magazines in pulp science fiction formats had disappeared. It notes ...
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This chapter reflects on the fate of the science fiction magazines during the 1950s nuclear age, by which time most science fiction magazines in pulp science fiction formats had disappeared. It notes that with the appearance of new titles such as Galaxy and Magazine of Fantasy in 1950, science fiction had matured to such a point that it expanded to wider audiences. The chapter then discusses the evolution of science fiction magazines from its gadget science fiction phase up to the nuclear science fiction phase.Less
This chapter reflects on the fate of the science fiction magazines during the 1950s nuclear age, by which time most science fiction magazines in pulp science fiction formats had disappeared. It notes that with the appearance of new titles such as Galaxy and Magazine of Fantasy in 1950, science fiction had matured to such a point that it expanded to wider audiences. The chapter then discusses the evolution of science fiction magazines from its gadget science fiction phase up to the nuclear science fiction phase.
J. P. Telotte
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- August 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190949655
- eISBN:
- 9780190949693
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190949655.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This book considers the impact that the new art of film had on the development of the emerging science fiction (SF) genre during the pre- and early post-World War II era, during the time that the ...
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This book considers the impact that the new art of film had on the development of the emerging science fiction (SF) genre during the pre- and early post-World War II era, during the time that the genre was trying to locate an identity, develop its key themes, and even settle on a name. Focusing on the primary venue for early SF literature, the popular pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, and Astounding Stories, it traces this early film/literature relationship by examining four common features of the pulps: stories that involve film or the film industry; film-related advertising; editors’ commentaries and readers’ remarks on film; and cover and story illustrations. All these features demonstrate an interest and even a fascination with the movies, which, as many of SF’s readers, writers, and editors recognized, demonstrated a modernist agenda similar to that which characterized the literature. By surveying these haunting traces of another medium in early SF discourse, this book shows how that cinematic influence penetrated and, both consciously and unconsciously, helped shape the experience of SF, as well as the cultural idea of SF during this formative period.Less
This book considers the impact that the new art of film had on the development of the emerging science fiction (SF) genre during the pre- and early post-World War II era, during the time that the genre was trying to locate an identity, develop its key themes, and even settle on a name. Focusing on the primary venue for early SF literature, the popular pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories, and Astounding Stories, it traces this early film/literature relationship by examining four common features of the pulps: stories that involve film or the film industry; film-related advertising; editors’ commentaries and readers’ remarks on film; and cover and story illustrations. All these features demonstrate an interest and even a fascination with the movies, which, as many of SF’s readers, writers, and editors recognized, demonstrated a modernist agenda similar to that which characterized the literature. By surveying these haunting traces of another medium in early SF discourse, this book shows how that cinematic influence penetrated and, both consciously and unconsciously, helped shape the experience of SF, as well as the cultural idea of SF during this formative period.
Jad Smith
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040634
- eISBN:
- 9780252099076
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040634.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author Alfred Bester started his career as a pulp writer and finished it as a Grand Master, but he followed a far more curious path to the ...
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Like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author Alfred Bester started his career as a pulp writer and finished it as a Grand Master, but he followed a far more curious path to the field’s highest honor than either of his big-name contemporaries. He focused on SF only intermittently yet, as a result, developed a distinctive, outsider approach that opened up avenues for cutting-edge vanguards such as New Wave and cyberpunk. Making extensive use of Bester’s unpublished correspondence, this book carefully examines Bester’s entire career, giving particular attention to how his work across mediums, combined with his love of modernist and decadent authors, shaped his groundbreaking approach to science fiction. During the 1950s, Bester crossbred pulp aesthetics and high style to explosive effect, producing landmark novels and stories that crackled with excess and challenged the assumptions of Golden Age science fiction. His focus on language as a plot device and a tool for world-building, and his use of modernist style in the service of science-fictional extrapolation left the field changed forever. The book argues that what Bester brought to SF was not a radically new template but an idiosyncratic self-reflexivity about the writing and reading protocols of the genre that put the field into a highly productive and transformative dialogue with itself.Less
Like Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction author Alfred Bester started his career as a pulp writer and finished it as a Grand Master, but he followed a far more curious path to the field’s highest honor than either of his big-name contemporaries. He focused on SF only intermittently yet, as a result, developed a distinctive, outsider approach that opened up avenues for cutting-edge vanguards such as New Wave and cyberpunk. Making extensive use of Bester’s unpublished correspondence, this book carefully examines Bester’s entire career, giving particular attention to how his work across mediums, combined with his love of modernist and decadent authors, shaped his groundbreaking approach to science fiction. During the 1950s, Bester crossbred pulp aesthetics and high style to explosive effect, producing landmark novels and stories that crackled with excess and challenged the assumptions of Golden Age science fiction. His focus on language as a plot device and a tool for world-building, and his use of modernist style in the service of science-fictional extrapolation left the field changed forever. The book argues that what Bester brought to SF was not a radically new template but an idiosyncratic self-reflexivity about the writing and reading protocols of the genre that put the field into a highly productive and transformative dialogue with itself.
Estella Tincknell
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748623440
- eISBN:
- 9780748651115
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748623440.003.0010
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores the relationship between musical performance and popular culture, where nostalgia can be central to the construction of meaning. It considers some of the cultural implications ...
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This chapter explores the relationship between musical performance and popular culture, where nostalgia can be central to the construction of meaning. It considers some of the cultural implications of the emergence of the soundtrack as a vital element in contemporary popular cinema. With specific reference to three films from the 1990s, Forrest Gump (1994), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Boogie Nights (1998), it examines the ways in which such films mobilise their soundtrack to produce particular cultural associations and a preferred history of the late twentieth century. The chapter points out that the soundtrack film has been part of a wider process whereby the canon of ‘classic’ pop has been raided and repackaged. Finally, it argues that borrowed music can create meanings that exceed the initial level of the narrative.Less
This chapter explores the relationship between musical performance and popular culture, where nostalgia can be central to the construction of meaning. It considers some of the cultural implications of the emergence of the soundtrack as a vital element in contemporary popular cinema. With specific reference to three films from the 1990s, Forrest Gump (1994), Pulp Fiction (1994) and Boogie Nights (1998), it examines the ways in which such films mobilise their soundtrack to produce particular cultural associations and a preferred history of the late twentieth century. The chapter points out that the soundtrack film has been part of a wider process whereby the canon of ‘classic’ pop has been raided and repackaged. Finally, it argues that borrowed music can create meanings that exceed the initial level of the narrative.
Katy Price
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226680736
- eISBN:
- 9780226680750
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226680750.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter examines Albert Einstein-themed stories in pulp fiction magazines. The analysis reveals that the stories used relativity themes in a half-formed protest against the incursion of ...
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This chapter examines Albert Einstein-themed stories in pulp fiction magazines. The analysis reveals that the stories used relativity themes in a half-formed protest against the incursion of intellectual advancement and mass media into everyday life. The findings also indicate that relativity themes were used to highlight the popular concern about the impact of communication technology on domestic life and social relations.Less
This chapter examines Albert Einstein-themed stories in pulp fiction magazines. The analysis reveals that the stories used relativity themes in a half-formed protest against the incursion of intellectual advancement and mass media into everyday life. The findings also indicate that relativity themes were used to highlight the popular concern about the impact of communication technology on domestic life and social relations.
Robert D. Schulzinger
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195365924
- eISBN:
- 9780199851966
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195365924.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
The vast literature of the Vietnam War reflects the many conflicting and unresolved emotions of the era. Memories of the brutality of combat and the furious disagreements at home over the wisdom of ...
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The vast literature of the Vietnam War reflects the many conflicting and unresolved emotions of the era. Memories of the brutality of combat and the furious disagreements at home over the wisdom of American involvement ran deep, but so did the urge to forget and move beyond a painful and traumatic epoch. Over one thousand novels with Vietnam themes have appeared, and they continue to be published. These war novels ranged from the complex Graham Greene classic, The Quiet American (1955), to contemplative veterans' tales to simple popular literature. Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato (1978) and Larry Heinemann's Paco's Story (1986) both won National Book Awards for their meditations on memory. Realistic accounts of battles, pulp fiction, and outright pornography acquired a larger readership. Many of these more popular stories drew upon waves of regret about the way the war had turned into a national trauma for the United States. They expressed longing for victory or vengeance, sometimes over the Communist Vietnamese and sometimes over treacherous or incompetent American officials.Less
The vast literature of the Vietnam War reflects the many conflicting and unresolved emotions of the era. Memories of the brutality of combat and the furious disagreements at home over the wisdom of American involvement ran deep, but so did the urge to forget and move beyond a painful and traumatic epoch. Over one thousand novels with Vietnam themes have appeared, and they continue to be published. These war novels ranged from the complex Graham Greene classic, The Quiet American (1955), to contemplative veterans' tales to simple popular literature. Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato (1978) and Larry Heinemann's Paco's Story (1986) both won National Book Awards for their meditations on memory. Realistic accounts of battles, pulp fiction, and outright pornography acquired a larger readership. Many of these more popular stories drew upon waves of regret about the way the war had turned into a national trauma for the United States. They expressed longing for victory or vengeance, sometimes over the Communist Vietnamese and sometimes over treacherous or incompetent American officials.
Felix Harcourt
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780226376158
- eISBN:
- 9780226376295
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226376295.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter notes that the Ku Klux Klan was also a staple of popular fiction in the 1920s, particularly as a thrilling backdrop in the pulp fiction published in magazines like Black Mask. Novelists ...
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This chapter notes that the Ku Klux Klan was also a staple of popular fiction in the 1920s, particularly as a thrilling backdrop in the pulp fiction published in magazines like Black Mask. Novelists like Thomas Dixon, in books like The Clansman, had laid the seeds of the Klan revival. Much as in these earlier works, fictional treatments of the Klan in the postwar period spoke to a cultural identity that equated white supremacy with Americanism and placed this identity squarely at the center of American popular culture.Less
This chapter notes that the Ku Klux Klan was also a staple of popular fiction in the 1920s, particularly as a thrilling backdrop in the pulp fiction published in magazines like Black Mask. Novelists like Thomas Dixon, in books like The Clansman, had laid the seeds of the Klan revival. Much as in these earlier works, fictional treatments of the Klan in the postwar period spoke to a cultural identity that equated white supremacy with Americanism and placed this identity squarely at the center of American popular culture.
Helen Cooper
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199248865
- eISBN:
- 9780191719394
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199248865.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book is a study of romance motifs and conventions, or ‘memes’: ideas that behave like genes or organisms in their ability to replicate, adapt, and survive in different forms and cultures. First ...
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This book is a study of romance motifs and conventions, or ‘memes’: ideas that behave like genes or organisms in their ability to replicate, adapt, and survive in different forms and cultures. First developed in French and Anglo-Norman romances of the 12th century, they were transmitted into English in the 13th-15th centuries, acquired a new and vibrant popularity when prints of medieval romances became the pulp fiction of the Tudor age, and underwent remarkable metamorphoses in the works of the great Elizabethan writers. Although the motifs themselves remain the same, sometimes even down to verbal detail, the usage and understanding of them changes over time, rather as a word may change meaning: the book offers in effect a historical semantics of the language of romance conventions. Differences in cultural usage and interpretation emerge not just in the reuse of traditional elements in new stories but even in successive recopyings of a single text. These differences become more marked as stories and motifs move across authors, periods, readership groups, and changing linguistic and historical circumstances. The book concludes in the early 17th century, since the generation into which Spenser and Shakespeare were born was the last to be brought up on these stories in their original forms, and which therefore had access to the full range of meanings they could encode.Less
This book is a study of romance motifs and conventions, or ‘memes’: ideas that behave like genes or organisms in their ability to replicate, adapt, and survive in different forms and cultures. First developed in French and Anglo-Norman romances of the 12th century, they were transmitted into English in the 13th-15th centuries, acquired a new and vibrant popularity when prints of medieval romances became the pulp fiction of the Tudor age, and underwent remarkable metamorphoses in the works of the great Elizabethan writers. Although the motifs themselves remain the same, sometimes even down to verbal detail, the usage and understanding of them changes over time, rather as a word may change meaning: the book offers in effect a historical semantics of the language of romance conventions. Differences in cultural usage and interpretation emerge not just in the reuse of traditional elements in new stories but even in successive recopyings of a single text. These differences become more marked as stories and motifs move across authors, periods, readership groups, and changing linguistic and historical circumstances. The book concludes in the early 17th century, since the generation into which Spenser and Shakespeare were born was the last to be brought up on these stories in their original forms, and which therefore had access to the full range of meanings they could encode.
Jonathan R. Eller
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036293
- eISBN:
- 9780252093357
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036293.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter focuses on Ray Bradbury's early disappointments in getting his science fiction stories published. Publication of Bradbury's new short stories, written in collaboration with Henry Hasse, ...
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This chapter focuses on Ray Bradbury's early disappointments in getting his science fiction stories published. Publication of Bradbury's new short stories, written in collaboration with Henry Hasse, in science fiction pulps proved to be a far more difficult proposition than it had been with “Pendulum.” In October 1941, for example, Julius Schwartz was able to place “Gabriel's Horn” in Captain Future, but it reached print only in the spring 1943 issue. This chapter considers Bradbury's limited success with any of his science fiction stories after ending his collaboration with Hasse, including “Eat, Drink, and Be Wary,” which he sold to John Campbell for the “Probability Zero” contest in the July issue of Astounding; only “The Candle” appeared in print during the rest of the year—in the November 1942 issue of Weird Tales.Less
This chapter focuses on Ray Bradbury's early disappointments in getting his science fiction stories published. Publication of Bradbury's new short stories, written in collaboration with Henry Hasse, in science fiction pulps proved to be a far more difficult proposition than it had been with “Pendulum.” In October 1941, for example, Julius Schwartz was able to place “Gabriel's Horn” in Captain Future, but it reached print only in the spring 1943 issue. This chapter considers Bradbury's limited success with any of his science fiction stories after ending his collaboration with Hasse, including “Eat, Drink, and Be Wary,” which he sold to John Campbell for the “Probability Zero” contest in the July issue of Astounding; only “The Candle” appeared in print during the rest of the year—in the November 1942 issue of Weird Tales.
Robert Miklitsch (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038594
- eISBN:
- 9780252096518
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038594.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Consider the usual view of film noir: endless rainy nights populated by down-at-the-heel boxers, writers, and private eyes stumbling toward inescapable doom while stalked by crooked cops and cheating ...
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Consider the usual view of film noir: endless rainy nights populated by down-at-the-heel boxers, writers, and private eyes stumbling toward inescapable doom while stalked by crooked cops and cheating wives in a neon-lit urban jungle. But a new generation of writers is pushing aside the fog of cigarette smoke surrounding classic noir scholarship. This book is a bold collection of essays that reassesses the genre's iconic style, history, and themes. Chapters analyze the oft-overlooked female detective and little-examined aspects of filmmaking like love songs and radio aesthetics, discuss the significance of the producer and women's pulp fiction, as well as investigate Disney noir and the Fifties heist film, B-movie back projection and blacklisted British directors. At the same time the writers' collective reconsideration unwinds the impact of hot-button topics like race and gender, history and sexuality, technology and transnationality.Less
Consider the usual view of film noir: endless rainy nights populated by down-at-the-heel boxers, writers, and private eyes stumbling toward inescapable doom while stalked by crooked cops and cheating wives in a neon-lit urban jungle. But a new generation of writers is pushing aside the fog of cigarette smoke surrounding classic noir scholarship. This book is a bold collection of essays that reassesses the genre's iconic style, history, and themes. Chapters analyze the oft-overlooked female detective and little-examined aspects of filmmaking like love songs and radio aesthetics, discuss the significance of the producer and women's pulp fiction, as well as investigate Disney noir and the Fifties heist film, B-movie back projection and blacklisted British directors. At the same time the writers' collective reconsideration unwinds the impact of hot-button topics like race and gender, history and sexuality, technology and transnationality.
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780853239468
- eISBN:
- 9781846312991
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853239468.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines Lovecraft's life and work between 1930 and 1931. It describes his resolution of many of the philosophical issues that had concerned him in prior years; his writing of At the ...
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This chapter examines Lovecraft's life and work between 1930 and 1931. It describes his resolution of many of the philosophical issues that had concerned him in prior years; his writing of At the Mountains of Madness and ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’; and his correspondence with pulp fiction writers Robert Ervin Howard and Henry St Clair Whitehead.Less
This chapter examines Lovecraft's life and work between 1930 and 1931. It describes his resolution of many of the philosophical issues that had concerned him in prior years; his writing of At the Mountains of Madness and ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’; and his correspondence with pulp fiction writers Robert Ervin Howard and Henry St Clair Whitehead.
Kathleen Battles
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816649136
- eISBN:
- 9781452945996
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816649136.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Radio
This chapter deals with the different challenges faced by the pro-police philosophy of radio crime docudramas. These programs sometimes counteract the model they are constructing; for instance, ...
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This chapter deals with the different challenges faced by the pro-police philosophy of radio crime docudramas. These programs sometimes counteract the model they are constructing; for instance, questioning a police procedure, or generating sympathy and moral ambiguity for the criminal. Another issue is the emergence of a loyal following of pulp fiction-inspired dramas, such as The Green Hornet and The Shadow. These issues have raised doubts about the police and their role as professional authorities in crime and policing. However, as the increasing police power was met with opposition, so did the discourse of the radio crime dramas, which inadvertently helped strengthen the position of the police as professional experts.Less
This chapter deals with the different challenges faced by the pro-police philosophy of radio crime docudramas. These programs sometimes counteract the model they are constructing; for instance, questioning a police procedure, or generating sympathy and moral ambiguity for the criminal. Another issue is the emergence of a loyal following of pulp fiction-inspired dramas, such as The Green Hornet and The Shadow. These issues have raised doubts about the police and their role as professional authorities in crime and policing. However, as the increasing police power was met with opposition, so did the discourse of the radio crime dramas, which inadvertently helped strengthen the position of the police as professional experts.
Julie Grossman
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038594
- eISBN:
- 9780252096518
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038594.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores the relationship between classic noir and female-authored pulp fiction. Linking noir with its female-authored source material will help reorient gender associations with film ...
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This chapter explores the relationship between classic noir and female-authored pulp fiction. Linking noir with its female-authored source material will help reorient gender associations with film noir so that male experience is not its exclusive focus. Moreover, such linkage renders the shared concerns of film noir and melodrama more evident and interprets the relationship between gender and genre more as a dialogue, less as an opportunity to rank texts in terms of an evaluation-laden hierarchy. The chapter then looks at 1940s novels written by women that were brought to the screens as “film noirs.” These works exemplify the nonschematic presence of gender issues in noir and the continuities between the treatment of gender in the genre and the exploration of gender in the source novels.Less
This chapter explores the relationship between classic noir and female-authored pulp fiction. Linking noir with its female-authored source material will help reorient gender associations with film noir so that male experience is not its exclusive focus. Moreover, such linkage renders the shared concerns of film noir and melodrama more evident and interprets the relationship between gender and genre more as a dialogue, less as an opportunity to rank texts in terms of an evaluation-laden hierarchy. The chapter then looks at 1940s novels written by women that were brought to the screens as “film noirs.” These works exemplify the nonschematic presence of gender issues in noir and the continuities between the treatment of gender in the genre and the exploration of gender in the source novels.
Robert Miklitsch
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040689
- eISBN:
- 9780252099120
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040689.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
In part because of its pulp fiction, Mickey-Spillane provenance, Kiss Me Deadly (1955) has been widely interpreted as a key text of McCarthyism, yet it’s arguably better interpreted, via the film’s ...
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In part because of its pulp fiction, Mickey-Spillane provenance, Kiss Me Deadly (1955) has been widely interpreted as a key text of McCarthyism, yet it’s arguably better interpreted, via the film’s repeated recourse to the X figure, as an apocalyptic one with the proviso that in the 1950s the discourse about the “red menace” is frequently imbricated with the discourse about femininity--about, that is to say, the femme fatale and female sexuality. While censorship in the form of the Production Code Administration (PCA) played a significant part in the production of Kiss Me Deadly, there’s little doubt that Robert Aldrich’s picture is a film noir since it features a private detective who, knee-deep in sex and violence, is ultimately unable to prevent an atomic detonation that can itself be interpreted as both a death and orgasm, cataclysm and resurrection.Less
In part because of its pulp fiction, Mickey-Spillane provenance, Kiss Me Deadly (1955) has been widely interpreted as a key text of McCarthyism, yet it’s arguably better interpreted, via the film’s repeated recourse to the X figure, as an apocalyptic one with the proviso that in the 1950s the discourse about the “red menace” is frequently imbricated with the discourse about femininity--about, that is to say, the femme fatale and female sexuality. While censorship in the form of the Production Code Administration (PCA) played a significant part in the production of Kiss Me Deadly, there’s little doubt that Robert Aldrich’s picture is a film noir since it features a private detective who, knee-deep in sex and violence, is ultimately unable to prevent an atomic detonation that can itself be interpreted as both a death and orgasm, cataclysm and resurrection.
Phil Smith
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781628461015
- eISBN:
- 9781626740587
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461015.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Phil Smith’s essay focuses on one Faulkner novel to offer a version of the writer who, by the end of the 1930s, had come to a reckoning with the popular and commercial art of his era. Smith draws the ...
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Phil Smith’s essay focuses on one Faulkner novel to offer a version of the writer who, by the end of the 1930s, had come to a reckoning with the popular and commercial art of his era. Smith draws the figure of the megaphone-wielding “dictator” from examples of political and cultural history: the Hollywood director, dance marathon emcees, and would-be (or real) demagogues. In the face of such widespread evidence of a changed climate for the writer of serious fiction, Faulkner came to recognize the necessity of working with, or even working within standard generic formulas, several of which Smith shows influence“Wild Palms” and that, he demonstrates, Faulkner revised with a particular eye on shifting their gender biases. In doing so, Smith revisits the model of the Great Divide between “high” art literary modernism and the commercial art of the modern period in order to further challenge it.Less
Phil Smith’s essay focuses on one Faulkner novel to offer a version of the writer who, by the end of the 1930s, had come to a reckoning with the popular and commercial art of his era. Smith draws the figure of the megaphone-wielding “dictator” from examples of political and cultural history: the Hollywood director, dance marathon emcees, and would-be (or real) demagogues. In the face of such widespread evidence of a changed climate for the writer of serious fiction, Faulkner came to recognize the necessity of working with, or even working within standard generic formulas, several of which Smith shows influence“Wild Palms” and that, he demonstrates, Faulkner revised with a particular eye on shifting their gender biases. In doing so, Smith revisits the model of the Great Divide between “high” art literary modernism and the commercial art of the modern period in order to further challenge it.
Dave Boothroyd
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719055980
- eISBN:
- 9781781700921
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719055980.003.0008
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter focuses on narcotic modernity and the entry of heroin into motion pictures. It explains that the advent of the cinematic technology provided a new means for the distribution of ...
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This chapter focuses on narcotic modernity and the entry of heroin into motion pictures. It explains that the advent of the cinematic technology provided a new means for the distribution of narco-mythology, and that cinema extended the cultural scope of heroin. The entry of heroin into the world of the moving image began with the 1984 film The Opium Joint. The chapter also analyses generic forms of cinematic heroin, including French Connection, Pulp Fiction and Pandaemonium.Less
This chapter focuses on narcotic modernity and the entry of heroin into motion pictures. It explains that the advent of the cinematic technology provided a new means for the distribution of narco-mythology, and that cinema extended the cultural scope of heroin. The entry of heroin into the world of the moving image began with the 1984 film The Opium Joint. The chapter also analyses generic forms of cinematic heroin, including French Connection, Pulp Fiction and Pandaemonium.
George Cotkin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780190218478
- eISBN:
- 9780190218508
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190218478.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century, Cultural History
Highsmith published two novels in 1955, both celebrating liberation from traditional moral values. In The Talented Mr. Ripley, Highsmith deals with central subjects of the New Sensibility—madness and ...
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Highsmith published two novels in 1955, both celebrating liberation from traditional moral values. In The Talented Mr. Ripley, Highsmith deals with central subjects of the New Sensibility—madness and violence. Most importantly, the criminal, a man without fixed identity, manages not only to kill others and profit from it but to keep his ill-gotten gains. In Strangers on a Train, Highsmith digs into the seductive power of madness and how it can draw innocents into its web. The chapter also examines Highsmith’s personal obsession as captured in a pulp fiction novel, published two years earlier, The Price of Salt (published under the name Claire Morgan). Here Highsmith depicted a lesbian love affair which, contrary to common portrayals of the era, does not end with disgrace. The chapter fits these novels within the context of lesbian and sexual liberation in the period.Less
Highsmith published two novels in 1955, both celebrating liberation from traditional moral values. In The Talented Mr. Ripley, Highsmith deals with central subjects of the New Sensibility—madness and violence. Most importantly, the criminal, a man without fixed identity, manages not only to kill others and profit from it but to keep his ill-gotten gains. In Strangers on a Train, Highsmith digs into the seductive power of madness and how it can draw innocents into its web. The chapter also examines Highsmith’s personal obsession as captured in a pulp fiction novel, published two years earlier, The Price of Salt (published under the name Claire Morgan). Here Highsmith depicted a lesbian love affair which, contrary to common portrayals of the era, does not end with disgrace. The chapter fits these novels within the context of lesbian and sexual liberation in the period.
