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A Cultural Interpretation of Double Indemnity (1944) ISSN 1712-8056[Print] Canadian Social Science ISSN 1923-6697[Online] Vol. 15, No. 4, 2019, pp. 77-82 www.cscanada.net DOI:10.3968/10990 www.cscanada.org Gender Roles and the Institution of Family: A Cultural Interpretation of Double Indemnity (1944) DANG Qun[a],* [a]School of English Language, Literature and Culture, Beijing CMR is transmitted to the audience to form perceived International Studies University, Beijiing, China. mediated reality (PMR) which is in turn applied to real life. *Corresponding author. In the case of film, the theory means that filmmakers make Received 22 December 2018; accepted 28 March 2019 a film based on real life so that it reflects the contemporary Published online 26 April 2019 society and culture. The audience see this film, interpret it, and apply their perception to real life, thus in a way allow Abstract film to influence culture and society. Double Indemnity (1944) is a classic American noir film. As “PMR is a highly selective process” (Whetmore, This thesis analyzes this film as a representative of the 1987, p.11), we choose what we wish to perceive and film noir genre, interprets the main character Phyllis retain. We pay attention to what we regard as meaningful. Dietrichson from a cultural perspective, discusses the So the process of perceiving is determined by the social background of the American society between the individual’s knowledge, life experience, perceptiveness, first and second waves of women’s rights movement, and most of all, cultural background. People of different and finally comes to the conclusion that the society’s cultures may form different PMRs. Therefore, in order to oppressive attitude toward women during this low ebb fully and correctly understand the message of a film, we prepared women and the whole society for the next need an understanding of its cultural context. wave of fighting for more social, cultural, and economic This essay puts the Hollywood film Double Indemnity equality. (1944) in its cultural context and tries to culturally interpret it from the aspects of social mediating structure Double Indemnity; Noir; Cultural Key words: theory and film studies. interpretation; Women’s rights movement Double Indemnity is regarded by most as a classic film noir masterpiece. The story was written by representative Dang, Q. (2019). Gender Roles and the Institution of Family: hard-boiled detective novelist James M. Cain based on A Cultural Interpretation of Double Indemnity (1944). Canadian Social Science, 15(4), 77-82. Available from: http:// a 1927 crime perpetrated by a married Queens woman www.cscanada.net/index.php/css/article/view/10990 and her lover. The film was directed by the outstanding DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/10990 Hollywood director Billy Wilder. It received no Academy Awards, but it was nominated in seven categories: Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best B/W Cinematography, Best Sound Recording, and Best INTRODUCTION Scoring of a Dramatic Picture. Culture and film are inextricably intertwined. If we apply The term “double indemnity” refers to a clause in the famous question “which was first – the chicken or the certain life insurance policies where the insuring company egg?” to the relationship between culture and film, the agrees to pay twice the standard amount in cases of answer is definite: culture was first. accidental death. Film is of course the product of culture. According The story happens in Los Angeles in 1930s or 1940s. to Edward Jay Whetmore (1987)’s “cone effect” model, Walter Neff is a successful insurance salesman for Pacific certain aspects of real-life experience are used by a All-Risk. He returns to his office building late one night. communicator to form constructed mediated reality (CMR). Neff, shot and bleeding, sits down at his desk and tells the 77 Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture Gender Roles and the Institution of Family: A Cultural Interpretation of Double Indemnity (1944) whole story into a Dictaphone for his colleague and friend THE CULTURAL CONTEXT OF DOUBLE Barton Keyes, a claims adjuster. He first meets this seductve woman Phyllis Dietrichson INDEMNITY during a routine visit to renew an automobile insurance The film noir genre is an American cultural phenomenon. policy for her husband. They flirt with each other. Phyllis This genre originated in Hollywood and became popular asks how she could take out a policy on her husband’s life in the US. Although other countries also made some noir without him knowing it. Neff realizes that she intends to films later, the first noir films and a majority of noir films murder her husband and refuses her. were American. Phyllis comes to Neff’s home and persuades him that Film noir was inspired by previous literary and artistic the two of them, together, should kill her husband. Neff traditions along with the socio-history of the period it knows all the tricks of the insurance business and comes grew out of. up with a plan in which Phyllis’s husband will fall from a The major artistic origin was German expressionism moving train so that Pacific All-Risk will, by the “double of the 1920s. As a movement, German expressionism indemnity” clause in the insurance policy, have to pay the spanned many media, including theatre, architecture, widow twice the normal amount. music, painting, printmaking and sculpture. Encyclopædia They carry out the plan successfully. Keyes, a Britannica (2019) defines it as an “artistic style in which tenacious investigator, at first thinks Mr. Dietrichson the artist seeks to depict not objective reality but rather dies of an accident, but eventually concludes that Mrs. the subjective emotions and responses that objects and Dietrichson and an unknown partner must be behind events arouse within a person. The artist accomplishes the husband’s death. He has no reason to suspect Neff, this aim through distortion, exaggeration, primitivism, and someone he has worked with for a long time and views fantasy and through the vivid, jarring, violent, or dynamic with great affection. application of formal elements.” It was mainly a European Neff is not only worried about Keyes. Mr. artistic movement but greatly influenced Hollywood films, Dietrichson’s daughter, Lola, comes to him convinced that especially when many European filmmakers immigrated her stepmother Phyllis murdered her father because Lola’s to America in 1920s and 1930s. mother also died under suspicious circumstances when However, when we consider film noir as a reflection Phyllis was her nurse. Then he learns Phyllis is seeing of American society and culture, we need to pay more Lola’s boyfriend behind her back. Trying to save himself attention to its literary origin, namely hard-boiled and no longer caring about the money, Neff decides to detective novels, as it is purely American. make the police believe Phyllis and Lola’s boyfriend did Hard-boiled novels, also called pulp fiction, were the murder, which is what Keyes now believes. very popular in America in 1930s. The hero was often When Neff and Phyllis meet, she explains that she has a proletarian tough guy detective who walks the mean been seeing Lola’s boyfriend only to provoke him into streets, and often finds himself on the edge of law and killing the suspicious Lola in a jealous rage. Neff is about crime. There is usually a femme fatale, a sexually attractive to kill Phyllis when she shoots him first. Neff is badly woman, especially one who leads men into danger or wounded but still standing and walks towards her. He destruction. The contemporary America is described as coldly says “Goodbye, baby”, then shoots twice and kills an urban and industrialized place where people are in the her. hands of naturalistic drives. The language was cut short Neff drives to his office where he dictates his full and it was often marked by verbal wit. Many of these confession to Keyes, who arrives and hears enough of the works were adapted to the screen, such as the works of confession to understand everything. Neff tells Keyes he Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler is going to Mexico rather than face a death sentence but and Horace McCoy to mention some, and many of the collapses before he can reach the elevator. authors were hired by Hollywood as screenwriters. When considered independently, although the plot When we try to have a cultural interpretation of the is rather complicated, the story is far from unusual. gender issue portrayed in the film Double Indemnity, we The murder of the husband by the unfaithful wife and need to consider the period in which the original story her lover is nothing new in all societies. But Double was written, the film was made and shown, and the socio- Indemnity is a representative film during Hollywood’s cultural context at that time. classic film noir period. The prevalent themes of many Written by James M. Cain, the story first appeared in noir films are the wife murdering the husband and the 1935 in an 8-part serial form in Liberty Magazine and femme fatale seducing and manipulating man. There must was adapted into a novella Three of a Kind in 1943. The have been a reason for such a film genre to appear and film Double Indemnity, one of the first noir films by become popular. Therefore, Double Indemnity should not Hollywood, was made and shown in 1944 and the film be regarded as a usual murder story but an archetype. We noir genre reached its heyday in the late 1940s and 1950s. need to interpret it in its cultural context. What was the American women’s situation like from 1930s to 1950s? Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture 78 DANG Qun (2019).
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