ABSTRACT TRUE CRIME DOES PAY: NARRATIVES of WRONGDOING in FILM and LITERATURE Andrew Burt, Ph.D. Department of English Norther
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ABSTRACT TRUE CRIME DOES PAY: NARRATIVES OF WRONGDOING IN FILM AND LITERATURE Andrew Burt, Ph.D. Department of English Northern Illinois University, 2017 Scott Balcerzak, Director This dissertation examines true crime’s ubiquitous influence on literature, film, and culture. It dissects how true-crime narratives affect crime fiction and film, questioning how America’s continual obsession with crime underscores the interplay between true crime narratives and their fictional equivalents. Throughout the 20th century, these stories represent key political and social undercurrents such as movements in religious conservatism, issues of ethnic and racial identity, and developing discourses of psychology. While generally underexplored in discussions of true crime and crime fiction, these currents show consistent shifts from a liberal rehabilitative to a conservative punitive form of crime prevention and provide a new way to consider these undercurrents as culturally-engaged genre directives. I track these histories through representative, seminal texts, such as Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (1925), W.R. Burnett’s Little Caesar (1929, Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me (1952), and Barry Michael Cooper’s 1980s new journalism pieces on the crack epidemic and early hip hop for the Village Voice, examining how basic crime narratives develop through cultural changes. In turn, this dissertation examines film adaptations of these narratives as well, including George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun (1951), Larry Cohen’s Black Caesar (1972), Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me (2010), and Mario Van Peeble’s New Jack City (1991), accounting for how the medium changes the crime narrative. In doing so, I examine true crime’s enduring resonance on crime narratives by charting the influence of commonly overlooked early narratives, such as execution sermons and murder ballads. I introduce the “bad man” archetype as a lens for examining how true crime has affected gangster and Blaxploitation narratives. In addition, I stress changes in the killer’s understanding of popular psychology as a commentary on how crime fiction continually prioritizes the lone killer and locale as a justification for criminal actions. Through applying a consistent, long-reaching history of true crime to a study of fictional crime narratives, this dissertation stresses an understanding of how fictional elements can affect culture until the two become inseparable and stresses a comprehensive view of criminality. As such, crime serves as a cultural barometer for deconstructing the sociological, psychological, folkloric, and musicological undercurrents driving the American mythos. NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY DE KALB, ILLINOIS August 2017 TRUE CRIME DOES PAY: NARRATIVES OF WRONGDOING IN FILM AND LITERATURE BY ANDREW T BURT ©2017 Andrew T Burt A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH Doctoral Director: Scott Balcerzak ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would never have been able to finish my dissertation, or even gotten started, if it had not been for the tireless support of my committee members and the faculty and staff at Northern Illinois University, fellow students and colleagues, and family and friends. I would like to express my deepest thanks and gratitude to my advisor, Scott Balcerzak, for his excellent support, guidance, patience, ability to provide effective feedback on numerous drafts, and his friendship as I fretted about the project. I thank him for his help at every stage of this project from drafting to defense and revision, providing directions for research that I might not have pursued. I would like to thank Dr. Tim Ryan for his helpful advice, enthusiastic chats about research while I worked on the project, and notes that improved the structure and content of my writing. I would like to thank Dr. Joe Bonomo for his patience when I sent him frantic messages, guidance on the direction of my research, and encouraging words during all stages of the project. I would also like to thank Dr. W. John Coletta and Dr. David Arnold for guiding my interest in Literature and Culture in my undergraduate and master’s work, encouraging me to pursue my original research interests. This dissertation would not have been successful without any of you. I would like to thank my fellow students and colleagues at Northern Illinois, especially Amanda Roberts, Justin Ness, Caitriona Terry, and Amanda Walsh who helped me maintain my composure and gave helpful advice and support, the indomitable John Laker for his spirit, Barry Grossman for looking at drafts and offering career advice, Adam Burgess, Tracy Stevens, Erika iii Sparby, Robyn Byrd, Phil Case, Kyle Killebrew, Zach Killebrew, and Stephanie Opfer. Special thanks to Gail Jacky for helping format the final draft. I would also like to thank my family, especially my parents, Tom and Amy Burt, Aunt Alice Vincent, Grandma Sandy Vincent, and Uncle Thomas Vincent. My friends, Rebecca Conn, who commiserated with me over graduate school, Joe Hulbert and Jeremiah Zblewski, who listened to my stories and offered advice, Jerry Cooley, Peter Ebens, Josh Reineck, Steve Carriger, Matt Oley, Donny Abbott, Jimmer Fuhrer, Daniel James Opperman, and anyone else I forgot. I would also like to thank Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness and their podcast, Chillpak Hollywood Hour, for providing additional inspiration. Finally, I would like to thank my wife Carrie who endured crises of conscious and terrible hours. She was my rock, cheering me up when I needed it, and standing by me even when times were rough, and I thought I would never finish. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION: “A TRUE CRIME FOR EVERY DECADE” ................................................. 1 CHAPTER ONE CREATING CLYDE GRIFFITHS: THEODORE DREISER'S AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY AND ITS EFFECT ON POPULAR NOTIONS OF CRIME ....................................................... 33 CHAPTER TWO GANGSTERS, TRICKSTERS, AND BAD MEN: IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE AND THE GANGSTER NARRATIVE ................................................................................................. 80 CHAPTER THREE LOU FORD'S INTROSPECTION: JIM THOMPSON'S THE KILLER INSIDE ME AND THE KILLER'S PSYCHOLOGY ............................................................................................... 127 CHAPTER FOUR HIP HOP AND THE MARGINS OF TRUE CRIME: NEW JACK CITY AND THE BAD MAN REVISITED ............................................................................................................ 171 CONCLUSION “CRIME STILL DOES NOT PAY”: COMMUNITY AND THE FUTURE OF CRIME NARRATIVE .............................................................................................................................. 217 WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................................... 233 INTRODUCTION: “A TRUE CRIME FOR EVERY DECADE” After the publication of In Cold Blood (1966), Truman Capote told George Plimpton that few creative writers ever attempted journalism except as a side job when they were not feeling creative or wanted to make money. He claimed that “such writers say in effect: Why should we trouble with factual writing when we're able to invent our own stories, contrive our own characters and themes? – journalism is only literary photography, and unbecoming to the serious writer's artistic dignity” (qtd in Plimpton 25-26). He points out that another problem with adapting real-life situations for literary purposes stems from using real subjects who may be offended and possibly take legal action, given that “no one likes to see himself described as he is, or cares to see exactly set down what he said or did” (26). In developing his acclaimed “nonfiction” novel, which tells the real-life Herbert Clutter family murder story and focuses on the killers, Capote encountered unsympathetic critics who argued that his form was a short cut for writers who hit creative dead ends.1 Capote argues that critics thought the form used, “all the techniques of fictional art but was nevertheless immaculately factual, was little more than a literary solution for fatigued novelists suffering from 'failure of imagination'” (26). These concerns still affect some true-crime writers, but the genre is now more accepted, and readers more fully understand journalism’s role. Many writers do not separate the role of journalists, who Capote denigrates, claiming that it is “useless for a writer whose talent is essentially journalistic to attempt creative reportage because the form, by 1 Capote found inspiration in Argentine journalist Rodolfo Walsh's 1957 nonfiction crime novel, Operación Massacre. 2 necessity, demands that the writer be completely in control of fictional techniques” from fiction writers (27). Capote's argument underscores true crime's struggle for literary acceptance and stresses the genre’s complexity through its connections to journalism and the processes of reporting on and presenting real-life situations that have already been presented to the public in different mediums. The 20th century in American popular culture has been extremely crime focused, and Capote’s discussion points to its ubiquity, pointing to important questions concerning true crime's connections to fiction, film, and other media like music. For example, how do true-crime narratives affect fiction and film? Moreover, what do true-crime narratives say about American society? Is America becoming