By Kathleen Murray B.A., George Mason University, 1997 M.A., New
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OVERLOOKING THE EVIDENCE: GENDER, GENRE AND THE WOMAN DETECTIVE IN HOLLYWOOD FILM AND TELEVISION by Kathleen Murray B.A., George Mason University, 1997 M.A., New School University, 2003 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2014 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Kathleen Murray It was defended on April 23, 2014 and approved by Adam Lowenstein, Director of Film Studies, Associate Professor, Film Studies Mark Lynn Anderson, Associate Professor, Film Studies Brent Malin, Associate Professor, Communications Dissertation Advisor: Jane Feuer, Professor, Film Studies and English ii OVERLOOKING THE EVIDENCE: GENDER, GENRE AND THE WOMAN DETECTIVE IN HOLLYWOOD FILM AND TELEVISION Kathleen Murray, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2014 Copyright © by Kathleen Murray 2014 iii OVERLOOKING THE EVIDENCE: GENDER, GENRE AND THE WOMAN DETECTIVE IN HOLLYWOOD FILM AND TELEVISION Kathleen Murray, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2014 The investigating woman, the female detective, or the lady crime solver poses a productive problem throughout the history of Hollywood film and television. Investigating women fundamentally disrupt the scopic and narrative regimes upon which Hollywood genre films depend. I argue that the investigating woman changes the way that the detective genre operates in four distinct modalities: the Adventurer, the Avenger, the Comedic and the Affective. Each mode articulates the figure through sometimes unlikely generic combinations. And in each mode the investigator performs femininity with a different valence. The female investigator thus becomes a space to explore gender’s transformative effect on genre, different kinds of looking, and gender as performance. I examine what happens when films fail to evoke what Barry Langford calls the “generic unconscious.” Genres only work if they are recognized as genres, if they exist with a productive feedback loop between producers, texts and audiences. Films featuring women detectives do not activate the semantic and syntactic markers of the detective film. They are burdened with the adjectival. They are “women” detective films. And the “woman” part moves these films, sometimes forcibly, into other generic terrains: the woman’s picture, melodrama, horror, comedy, romance, adventure. iv Each chapter investigates a mode through close reading several transhistoric texts ranging from Sherlock, Jr. to Zero Dark Thirty that serve to illustrate the possibilities held within the modality. In my conclusion, I test my taxonomy in the laboratory of television where the figure moves through several modes in a single program, sometimes a single episode. From 1957’s Decoy to Veronica Mars (2004-7), this fluidity is both the strength of investigating women in a genre that is powered by novelty, and a sign of the abiding lack of ease a woman who looks creates, manifested on the level of genre. These modes do not solve the problem of the investigating woman in film, but rather make the problem explicit. The modes serve to expose the contours of the problem through the films’ failed attempts to resolve it. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... IX 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 WHO IS THE INVESTIGATING WOMAN?.................................................. 7 1.2 HOW HAS THE FEMALE DETECTIVE BEEN UNDERSTOOD CRITICALLY? ................................................................................................................... 11 1.3 ON GENRE ........................................................................................................ 14 1.4 THE FEMINIST INTERVENTION ................................................................ 18 1.5 THE GENRES ................................................................................................... 27 1.5.1 Detective Film – Mastery, Vision and Action ........................................... 27 1.5.2 Thriller ......................................................................................................... 33 1.5.3 Adventure .................................................................................................... 36 1.5.4 Melodrama................................................................................................... 38 1.5.5 Woman’s Picture: The romance and the weepie ..................................... 41 1.5.6 Comedy ........................................................................................................ 43 1.5.7 Horror .......................................................................................................... 44 1.6 WHAT ARE THE MODES? WHAT DO THE CHAPTERS LOOK LIKE? ..............................................................................................................................45 2.0 THE ADVENTURER—BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO ................................... 49 2.1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 49 2.2 HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE NANCY? .............................. 56 vi 2.3 SISTERS: THEY’RE TWO OF A KIND ........................................................ 67 2.4 FARGO’S BEATING HEART ......................................................................... 78 2.5 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 87 3.0 THE AVENGER—I AM COMPELLED ................................................................ 89 3.1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 89 3.2 THE AVENGER AND THE SERIAL KILLER ............................................ 94 3.3 BLUE STEEL: “I WANTED TO WATCH YOU HANDLE IT.” ............... 100 3.4 TAKING LIVES: “YOU ARE SOME KIND OF WITCH” ......................... 107 3.5 COMPULSION ................................................................................................ 110 3.6 TAKING LIVES AND THE INVESTIGATION OF MASCULINITY ...... 116 3.7 JUSTICE, REVENGE AND TAKING LIVES .............................................. 123 3.8 THE AVENGER AND STAR PERSONA .................................................... 130 3.9 ZERO DARK THIRTY: DEPICTION IS NOT ENDORSEMENT ........... 135 3.10 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 141 4.0 THE COMEDIC—THE UNDECIDEABLE ......................................................... 143 4.1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 143 4.2 THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS ........................................................... 148 4.3 THERE’S ALWAYS A WOMAN: “IT’S THAT DUMB REARDON WOMAN!” ........................................................................................................................ 157 4.4 DON’T CALL ME BITCH: GENDER, RACE AND THE COMEDIC IN FATAL BEAUTY .............................................................................................................. 162 4.5 MISS CONGENIALITY: FEMINISTS. INTELLECTUALS. UGLY WOMEN 175 vii 4.6 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 189 5.0 THE AFFECTIVE—I KNOW BECAUSE I LOVE ............................................... 191 5.1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 191 5.2 BLACK ANGEL ................................................................................................ 198 5.2.1 On the Importance of Mise-En-Scene ..................................................... 204 5.2.2 The Lack of Mastery ................................................................................. 207 5.3 THE GIFT......................................................................................................... 212 5.3.1 Answering the Call .................................................................................... 215 5.3.2 Genre: Horror and Maternal Melodrama .............................................. 222 5.3.3 On the Ontological Reality of the Supernatural and Genre ................. 228 5.4 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 234 6.0 CONCLUSION: TELEVISION AND THE FEMALE DETECTIVE ................ 237 6.1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 237 6.2 DECOY: AN ACTING JOB WITHIN AN ACTING JOB........................... 240 6.3 CAGNEY AND LACEY: A QUALITY INTERLUDE .................................. 260 6.4 VERONICA MARS: I WAS HOPING IT WOULD BE YOU ..................... 264 7.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................... 284 8.0 FILMOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................... 295 9.0 TV-OGRAPHY ........................................................................................................ 301 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My gratitude is impossible to overstate. I have had so much help, support and cheerleading throughout the process. First, I’d like to thank my committee