Hedges 1 Cinematic Memory and the Southern Imaginary: Crisis in The
Hedges 1 Cinematic Memory and the Southern Imaginary: Crisis in the Deep South and The Phenix City Story Gareth Robert Andrew Hedges A Thesis in the Department of the Humanities Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Concordia University Montréal, Québec, Canada June 2016 © Gareth Robert Andrew Hedges, 2016 Hedges 2 Hedges iii Abstract Cinematic Memory and the Southern Imaginary: Crisis in the Deep South and The Phenix City Story Gareth Hedges, Ph.D. Concordia University, 2016 This dissertation is a historical and theoretical study of the southern imaginary at the intersection of mass and regional culture. The focus is on two cinematic treatments of significant violent crimes in the region during the 1950s: firstly, the assassination of Albert Patterson, which prompted the clean of the “wide open” town of Phenix City, Alabama; and secondly, the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi, which played a critical role in accelerating the African American freedom struggle. The Phenix City Story (Allied Artists, 1955), and Crisis in the Deep South, an unproduced 1956 screenplay written by Crane Wilbur, were both products of the media frenzy surrounding these actual events and they each involved investigation and research into local circumstances as part of their development and production. Rooted in film studies, history and cultural studies, the method of this thesis is to look backward to the foundational elements of the texts in question (e.g., the ‘raw material’ of the actual historical events,), and forward to the consequences of cinematic intervention into local commemorative regimes. In this way, I chart how the overlaps and interconnections between these film projects and others of the era reveal the emergence, consolidation and dissolution of a larger “cycles of sensation,” a concept outlined by Frank Krutnik and Peter Stanfield.
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