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Intertextuality and Allusion in Dead Man

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Intertextuality and Allusion in Dead Man Masaryk University in Brno FacultyofEducation Department of English Language and Literature Intertextuality and Allusion in Dead Man Diploma Thesis Brno2008 Supervisor: Written by: Mgr. Zdeněk Janík, M.A., Ph.D. Bc. Pavel Holý Prohlášení Prohlašuji, že jsem diplomovou práci zpracoval samostatně a použil jen prameny uvedenévseznamuliteratury. Souhlasím, aby práce byla uložena na Masarykově univerzitě v Brně v knihovně Pedagogickéfakultyazpřístupněnakestudijnímúčelům. Declaration I declare that I worked on the following work on my own and that I used only thesources mentionedinbibliography. I agree that this workbe filedat MasarykUniversityinBrno,inthe Libraryof Faculty ofEducation,andmade availableforacademic purposes. .............................................. signature 2 Acknowledgments I wouldherebylike toexpress thanks andrespect toMgr. ZdeněkJaník, M.A.,Ph.D., the supervisor of this thesis, for his guidance, immense patience and inspiration he providedme.Further on, I wouldlike tothankmyfamily,myfacultycolleagues, and myfriends: Mgr.Lucie Labajová,Bc.MiroslavLukáš,Mgr. Radim Toman,andBc. Pavel Tyc.Special thanks tomyemployer,namelyMgr.Dagmar Krystíková andMgr. Marta Zajíčková for their support andappreciationduringthe time I was writingthis thesis. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 6 CHAPTER ONE ClassicorAcid 9 A1.0AndreBazin’sViewsOnWestern 9 A1.1ÜberWestern 10 A2.0Jarmusch’sAnti-AmericanDoctrine 12 A3.0Let WurlitzersPlay 14 A4.0What IsAcidWestern? 15 CHAPTER TWO IntertextualityandAllusion 18 B1.0Intertextuality 18 B2.0TheCode 20 B2.1TypesofCodeAccordingtoRaymondChandler 22 B2.2Decoding DeadMan 23 B3.0AllusionAndReferencingAccordingtoR.F.Thomas 28 CHAPTER THREE InstancesofArtisticReferencinginthePlotAndSettingsof DeadMan 33 C0.1TheDivineComedy 33 C1.0ThePrologue 34 C1.1Alienation 35 C1.2TheFireman’sProphecy 36 C1.3TheRailwayInnuendo 37 C1.3.1Re-settingWilliamBlake 39 C1.4“StupidWhiteMan” 40 C2.0ACT ONE:Machine(Inferno) 42 C2.1TheDisillusioningInterview 43 C2.1.1 London in Machine 44 C2.1.2JohnScofield 45 C2.2Thel 46 C3.0ACT TWO:The Wilderness(Purgatorio) 47 C3.1Tobacco 47 C3.2TheThreeHarriers 48 C3.3TheBirthofBlake 49 4 C3.4ThisConstantChaseForBlake 50 C3.5Nobody 51 C3.5.1The NobodyGlitch 53 C3.6TheThreeBears 55 C3.6.1MusicalAllusionsin DeadMan 56 C3.6.2 Expect PoisonFromtheStandingWater 60 C3.7TheRitual 60 C3.7.1HallucinogensInIndegene Cultures 61 C3.8PoetryWrittenWithBlood 62 C3.8.1Crushingthe Icon 63 C3.8.2TheSonsofLeeMarvin 64 C3.9TheLoneHarrier 66 C4.0 DriveYourCart AndYour Plow 67 C5.0TheTradingPost 68 C5.1 TheVisionofChristThatThou DostSee 69 C5.2ThePoetryof Dead Man 72 C6.0ACT THREE:TheMakahVillage(Onthe WaytoParadiso) 74 C6.1TheVillage 75 C6.1.1OnNativesAndAuthenticity 76 C6.2TheMirrorof Water 78 C6.2.1BlakeIsDead 78 CONCLUSION 80 WORKS CITED 82 5 INTRODUCTION Prior toexposingthe reader to the verycontents of this thesis it is the author’s great honour and pleasure to express respect, gratefulness and thanks towards Professor DavidCrystal andhis wife Hilaryfor the helpinghandtheyhave providedinthe form of advice concerningthe manners inwhicha linguistic signmaybe treated.Despite the diminutive length of our interview its outcome has become one of the pillars of this thesis, andnamelyMr.Crystal’s guidance on Saussure’s Axis of Successions should be regardedaquintessentialexampleof linguisticmastership inpractice. Further on,the workof JonathanRosenbaum,whose precise insight intothe work of Jim Jarmusch and namely Dead Man has been used here as a platform for further analysis of the film,shouldbe givena special appreciation bythe author.Especially Rosenbaum’s 1996interview withthe director andhis book DeadMan have beenones ofthemostimportantsourcesofinformationbothonthefilmandthedirector. As the author of this thesis will attempt to find allusions in the film to works of art significant inwestern(mainlyliterary) canon,references tosome non-Englishwritten texts appear in the thesis. This applies especially to Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy the structure of which is used here as a notional scaffolding to the plot describingpart of this thesis.Insuch cases,the author(s) of translation are statedonly once, namely after the first appearance in the body of the thesis; all following translations of the same originare to be understoodas the workof the same translator HenryWadsworthLongfellow,inthecaseof The DivineComedy ). 6 The purpose of this study is to find, identify and describe allusions in the motion picture DeadMan (writtenand directedby Jim Jarmuschin1997).Extra attention is paidto the intertextual influences of the western literarycanononthe structure and/or form of narration in Dead Man . The first part, Classic or Acid? observes the development of the cinema genre of Westernthroughout the 20 th century.The second part, Intertextuality and Allusion , provides explanations and examples of phenomena after whichthe chapter is titled,andthe thirdpart, Instances of Artistic Referencing in the Plot and Settings of Dead Man , is a description and analysis of the particular instances of authorial (sic) artistic referencingas they appear inthe plot of the film as a textual scaffoldfor the further analyses anddescriptions of artistic referencing.In order tooutline the terms that appear inthis text, let us mentionintertextuality(the influence of other texts on author’s writing), allusion (author’s deliberate using references to other texts or pieces of art),acidwestern(a branchof Westernfilms that is markedby psychedelic visual effects andcharacters’ alteredstates of mind),or code (or a set of culturallyqualifiedclues necessaryfor successful decodingof a linguistic signor a set ofthem). The plot of the film is quite simple: a younginexperiencedaccountant Bill Blake is on a trainfrom Clevelandtothe West of US,namelya townnamed Machine . Onhis way he witnesses white menkillingbuffalobydozens,his fellow-travellers’ clothingsuggests late 19 th century.Whenhe arrives he finds out the job has beentakenanddecides to spend his last money on alcohol. Outside the bar he meets Thel , a beautiful ex prostitute sellingpaper flowers.Theyendup inbedtogether andlater that night Thel ’s suitor appears unexpectedin Thel ’s room.There is anargument between him and Thel inwhichhe and Thel dieand Bill isdeadlywounded. 7 Bill flees on the suitor’s pintoanda chase for him begins.The owner of the townsends three bounty hunters and two marshals to catch Bill but eventually they all die. Bill meets a Native Americannamed Nobody inthe bushes andtheymake friends.When Nobody finds out Bill ’s name, he becomes absolutely sure that the accountant is the reincarnation of the English poet, sent back on Earth to shoot his way through the desolateWildWesttoHeaven(ortheMirrorofWaterastheIndegenenamesit). After a series of ill-fatedencounters with“crazywhite men” theyarrive ina Makah vilage from where Bill is todepart to Heavenona canoe.Just before he dies numb and paralysed, he watches Nobody ’s death from the hands of one of the bounty hunters, Cole Wilson ,whois shot bythe Indegene simultaneously.The film ends withthe view ofthecanoefloatingofftheshore. 8 CHAPTER ONE Classic or Acid? A 1.0 Andre Bazin’s Views On Western Tobe able todefine the characteristic features of a socalled acidWestern,the author should now attempt to define the qualities of the socalled classic Western. Unfortunately,there seem tobe as manydefinitions as viewers andfilm critics. In his Development of Western (1955), for instance, André Bazin, the famous French film critic andtheorist mentions (not unlike Jarmusch) the 1930s and1940s as the golden era of the genre. To provide some names and films, he notes especially the work of John Ford, namely his Stagecoach (1939) as an ideal example of classic Hollywood Western.AccordingtoBazin,inthis film anideal equilibrium of Westerningredients (social myths, historical evocation, psychological plausibility of characters and traditional themes) has beenestablished.Toaddsome more examples of the prime of Westernfilms,Bazinadds KingVidor’s Northwest Passage (1940), Dodge City (1939) and VirginiaCity (1940) byMichael Curtiz,Fritz Lang’s The Returnof Frank James and Western Union (both shot in 1940), Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), William Wyler’s The Westerner (1940), and Destry Rides Again (1939) by George Marshall. The following paragraph identifies common features of the Western films withregardtotheircultural background. 9 A 1.1 ÜberWestern All of these Westerns were shot in the Roosevelt era of national awareness inthe USA, their point incommonbeingthe glorificationof (North) Americanhistory–a feature that is intentionallycriticizedandnegatedinmost of Jarmusch’s films,andespecially in Dead Man , where the anti-American criticism is supported by (partly pseudo) historical reconstruction of a picture of WildWest seenas the window-case of America (see Jarmusch’s note on Fordbelow).Toillustrate the difference between the Roosevelt era of Americanself-esteem and the wayJarmusch(andother counter-cultural artists of America) perceive the Americanhistory(or the AmericanDream,sotosay),let us use a figurative depiction of “what is being sold”. While the classic Western shows the viewer polishedandimpressive Pontiacs andMustangs in the notional car sales,acid Westerndepicts dumps throughwhichthe maincharacters usuallycrawl onlytorealize that there is noescape (but death,as in DeadMan ).Suchshift inthe perception of one nation’s history,providedtothe viewer via the film medium andthe genre of Western, didnot,of course,happenat one
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