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The Erotic Thriller and Its Fantasies

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The Erotic Thriller and Its Fantasies GETTING AWAY WITH IT: THE EROTIC THRILLER AND ITS FANTASIES By Aneta Karagiannidou A dissertation submitted to the Department of English Literature and Culture, School of English, Faculty of Philosophy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2006 i TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………….page iv Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………1 Part I: GENERIC CONCERNS Chapter 1 Slippery Terms: (Neo) Noir Erotic Thrillers………………………………………………14 1.1. Erotic (Neo)-Noir Thrills………………………………………………………………...21 1.2. Sexual Thrills…………………………………………………………………………….31 1.3. Beginnings . …………………………………………………………………………..36 1.4. and Endings…………………………………………………………………………. 42 Chapter 2 Groping for the Erotic Thriller . ………………………………………………………...49 2.1. The Hitchcock-De Palma Psycho-Sexual Tradition……………………………………..51 2.2. From Thrillers to Noirs…………………………………………………………………..54 2.3. Back to the Hardboiled Tradition 2.3.1. James M. Cain…………………………………………………………………...56 2.3.2. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler……………………………………...59 2.3.3. Cornell Woolrich, David Goodis and Dorothy B. Huges………………………..63 2.4. From Noir to Erotic Thriller Anti-Heroes………………………………………………..66 2.5. From Noir Thrills to Erotic Thrill(er)s…………………………………………………...71 2.6. Women’s Pictures, Fatal Women and Erotic Thrillers…………………………………..73 2.7. Action-Heroines Turn (Femmes) Fatales………………………………………………..79 2.8. Psycho / Avenging Femmes Fatales…………………………………………………….83 2.9. The “Paranoid Woman’s Films”, the Gothic Tradition, and Homme-Fatal EroticThrillers………………………………………………………………………………...88 2.10. Courtroom-Drama / Erotic-Thriller Hybrids…………………………………………...93 2.11. To Conclude . ………………………………………………………………………..96 Chapter 3 Sex and Hollywood: An Unholy Union…………………………………………………….98 Part II: THEORETICAL CONCERNS Chapter 4 Postmodern (Trans-Sexual) Trans-Spectacles……………………………………….…..115 4.1. Trans-Sexual Images……………………………………………………………………123 Chapter 5 Fantasy/ Sexual Fantasy: Film and Spectatorial Fantasy – From Freud and Lacan to the Erotic Thriller…………………………………………………………..127 5.1. Dark (Room) Fantasies…………………………………………………………………127 5.2. The Artist, his Fantasy and the Audience………………………………………………136 5.3. Hollywood as Dream-Machine…………………………………………………………137 5.4. Fantasy / Phantasy………………………………………………………………………139 ii 5.5. Fantasy & Desire: from Freud to Lacan………………………………………………..141 5.5.1. The Emergence of Fantasy as the Outset of Desire…………………………..142 5.5.2. Pleasure versus Reality equals Fantasy………………………………………146 5.5.3. “A Child is Being Beaten”……………………………………………………148 5.5.4. Dreams, Daydreams and Fantasies…………………………………………...152 5.5.5. Lacan and Fantasy……………………………………………………………154 5.5.6. The Lacanian (Desiring) Subject and the Three Realms……………………..155 5.6. Hollywood and the “Primal Scene” Fantasy……………………………………………160 Chapter Six Fantasy/Sexual Fantasy: The Desiring Spectator and the Fantasy of the (Sexual) Act………………………………………………………………………….169 6.1. A Couple is Always Already a Triple: the Oedipus Complex from Freud to Lacan………………………………………………………………………...169 6.2. Sexual Triplings………………………………………………………………………...180 6.3. The Phallus and the Penis: Same or Other?…………………………………………….181 6.4. The Phallus-as-Penis, the Penis-as-Phallus, and the Sexual Dream of Unity…………..186 6.4.1. Male and Female Subject Positions…………………………………………..187 6.4.2. The Monstrous Marriage and its Progeny……………………………………194 Chapter Seven (Un)-Veiling the (Sexual) Act: Hollywood and Sexual Representation………………...197 7.1. Sex as Comical: The (Sexual) Act Exaggerated………………………………………..198 7.2. Sex as Perverse: The (Sexual) Act Replaced…………………………………………...201 7.3. Sex as Pathos: the (Sexual) Act Interrupted…………………………………………….206 Part III: THEORY MEETS THE FILMS Chapter Eight Thrill(er)ing Primal Fantasy: The Screen of Erotic Thriller (Sexual) Pleasures………………………………………………………………………….211 8.1. Das Ding, Objet a, Jouissance and Desire: The Case of Showgirls……………………219 8.2. Is Genre the Problem?…………………………………………………………………..230 Chapter Nine Femme, Homme, and Homo Fatal(e) Fantasies………………………………………….234 9.1. (Femme) Fatale Fantasies………………………………………………………………236 9.2. Bodily Instincts and Basic Harms: Femmes vs Hommes Fatal(e)s…………………….240 9.3. Boundless Cruising: Homo Fatal(e)s…………………………………………………...252 Chapter Ten Basic (Instinct) Fantasies………………………………………………………………….262 10.1. Transgressing the Boundaries: Unified Fragments and Fragmented Unities…………263 10.2. The Myth of One: Fantastic Couplings/Symbolic Triplings………………………….273 10.2.1. (3)-2-1 ………………………………………………………………………274 10.2.2. 2-3-1 ………………………………………………………………………...278 10.3. Basic Veils…………………………………………………………………………….284 Afterword Not Getting Away With It: Basic Instinct 2………………………………………………288 iii Works Cited………………………………………………………………………………294 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The completion of this thesis would never have been possible without the help of my supervisor Dr. Ruth Parkin-Gounelas, who stood by me as a source of great inspiration, a guiding force, and a loyal companion. She has shown great belief in me and challenged me steadily throughout these years, initiating creative battles between her and me. Only recently have I realized that she probably knows me better than I know myself, which is how she managed to push without pushing and thus activate my creativity. Having worked with her on both my MA and PhD thesis, she taught me that as a researcher and writer I must take the responsibility and face the consequences for my writing choices, and I thank her for that. I’d like to thank my co-advisor Dr. Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou for all her constructive remarks on structural aspects of my thesis and for her patience to my compulsive omission of commas. She has always been there for me when I needed her, both as a professor and a friend, telling me what I really needed to hear and sharing her wonderfully positive energy and spiritual rigor with me. Many many thanks go to my other co-advisor Dr. Michalis Kokkonis for all his invaluable assistance in the filmic part of my thesis. Supplying me with books and films from his private collection, and sharing insightful discussions with me, he has really influenced my point of view. Also, his friendly assistance and encouragement at personally difficult times is something I shall never forget. I am mostly indebted to the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) for the research bursary they allotted me in 2005, which allowed me to spend two weeks in the British Film Institute in London and collect a great part of the press material I’ve used in my discussion of the films. I’m also grateful to Carlos Reygadas, the director of Battle in Heaven, for the time he took to answer my questions regarding his very interesting film. Unfortunately v I couldn’t incorporate the interview in the thesis as I initially thought I would, but it was a great gain talking to him. I would like to thank all my friends and relatives for their encouragement during this dissertation. A person whose influence has been decisive on this thesis is my dear friend Dr. Nicola Rehling. Supporting me both as a friend and a scholar, Nicola gave me important lessons in life and academic bearing as well as some of the most intriguing discussions I have ever had. I also want to thank her for her helpful reading and commenting on parts of my work. My long-life gratitude goes to Thodoros Giachoustidis. I don’t think I could ever have made it without his support, enthusiasm, and steady belief in me during all the times of crisis and agony. Everything he taught me around cinema and all the films he dragged me to changed my perception and affected this thesis. I also want to thank him for giving me the chance to contribute film reviews to “Exostis”, the local paper he edits, broadening thus my writing horizons. Also, I’d like to thank my dear friend Vagelis Siropoulos for coming back to my life when I needed him most. His encouragement, support, and insightful observations have made all the difference at a strenuous time. Many thanks also go to my friend Saul Myers for his patient reading and commenting on parts of this thesis, as well as for his support and friendship. I would like to address a special thanks to my parents, who have always stood by me even when they didn’t understand or agree with my choices. They have taught me the meaning of struggle, dignity, and accepting the difference in people. I would also like to thank my sister Pepi and my aunt Athena for their love and support, as well as my grandmother Despina for teaching me the meaning of unconditional love. I dedicate this thesis with my deepest gratitude and love to my two dead grandfathers, Nikos and Thanasis, whose generosity allowed me the luxury of this PhD. 1 INTRODUCTION Like Slavoj Žižek, “I never feel guilty about enjoying films that are generally dismissed as trash” (“Guilty Pleasures” 12). Erotic thrillers are definite candidates for the trash category, so that writing a PhD thesis on such a contested genre was a great challenge. I realized early on that unless I were very careful about the way I handled my topic, the fate of my thesis would be similar to that of many of my films; it would be dismissed as lacking academic seriousness, but without the alternative to come out in a Direct-to-Video version. So, here I was, trying to balance the same forces as my films and get away with it. That is how my title was born. But get away with what? What is it about erotic thrillers that renders them unworthy, according to some film critics and theorists, of “serious”
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