Channing wrote:
"True the man/woman is the killer and in Spillane's world
deserves to be blown away, but Hammer takes extra pleasure in
the act because the man/woman had the gall to try and seduce
him."
This reminds me of a comment made in a documentary about the
depiction of homsexuality in Hollywood, Celluloid Closet. The
screenwiter of Philadelphia (forget his name, don't feel like
looking up) is discussing a film (title at bottom of email
for those who don't mind the spoiler) whose villain was a
transvestite. He points out that the movie audience
(at least the one he saw it with) cheers when a pistol is
emptied into this crossdresser (in a public rest room, no
less). He allows that part of the cheer is for the death of
the villain, but adds that it was particularly vociferous
because the villain was also being punished for flouting
society's standards of gender and sexuality, standards
then
(and to a large degree still) so ingrained that most don't
even think about them, accepting them as nature, not a social
construction.
I'm not trying to start a nature/nurture debate about
sexuality, but trying to point out that there's no reason an
ending can't be doing two things at once. In fact, the most
satisfying endings reassert social norms. Yes, hardboiled and
noir tend to treat the return to the status quo as far more
provisional, temporary and personal than cozies do, but we
still like to see our heroes stick to their codes and those
codes do have ties to social norms, even if the ties are
often to what should be and not what is.
Mark
* SPOILER -- the movie was Freebie and the Bean
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
--------------------~--> Check out the new improvements in
Yahoo! Groups email.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/6pRQfA/fOaOAA/yQLSAA/kqIolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
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 : 06 Jul 2006 EDT