--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, DJ-Anonyme@... wrote:
>
> Doug wrote:
>
> "So if the PI's run is really up, I don't think it
has anything to
do
> with him/her not being "realistic" anymore. Never
mind what "real"
PIs
> do: at heart the fictional PI is an incarnation of
the traditional
> American hero -- individualistic to the point of
isolation, deeply
> moralistic, violent, stoic, a Romantic, etc. That
figure will
probably
> stick around as long as there's an
America."
>
> I agree, but I'm having trouble thinking of what
profession is the
> current embodiment of that figure. Perhaps a lawyer?
Or maybe it's
> someone who manages to be a loner within and
institutional setting?
How about the superhero? Not exactly a "profession", I
realize, but still I think it fits.
>
> I once wrote a paper that looked at when new PI
writers came on the
> scene. It seemed that there were upsurges after each
major war the
US
> was involved in. So I'm not sure it's so much
stability that feeds
the
> PI so much as society's attempting to return to a
stability that the
> (often returning vet) PI reminds us was never quite
as pure as is
being
> claimed. Or, as Bruce Cockburn put it, The trouble
with normal is
it
> always gets worse.
I don't think we really disagree all that much here -- just a
question of where you put the emphasis.
>
> "Actually, as I type this, it strikes me that this
is an age for
horror
> (and we do see a lot of horror efforts in pop
culture nowadays) and,
> strangely, the Western."
>
> I see horror, but why western? I would think that
the western
loner had
> so much in common with the PI that their cycles
would be roughly the
> same.
Because the Western is about confronting and "taming" or
reconciling chaos in a direct kind of way. We tend to group
Westerns and PI stories together, and they do have a lot in
common, but there are differences too. A PI is essentially
reactive to the culture around him in this sense; a Western
is essentially proactive.
To make that airy point a bit more concrete, Westerns are
often specifically concerned with intercultural
confrontations and the resulting chaos, a subject that
obviously has resonances with the world today.
Just speculation, mind, and my apologies for roaming a bit
far afield of hardboiled fiction. Yes, THREE BURIALS (pretty
good movie) was in the back of my mind when I wrote about
"reconceiving" the Western.
doug
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 18 Feb 2006 EST