RARA-AVIS: msharp@binghamton.edu

From: Dixon H. Chandler II ( dchandler@nettally.com)
Date: 18 Apr 2001


>subtitling it "Punching America in the Mouth." -- it's all about

This is the most perfect title for a seminar of this sort I can imagine. I have taught university too, and wish I'd thought of this.

>disillusionment and the deflating of America's most cherished
>dreams/fantasies: The government cares about your well-being, the police

If you're talking undergrads, I would absolutely include movies, particularly American Beauty. You need a snag for them to hold on to. Other ideas: Gun Crazy (1950) or Kalifornia (even though it doesn't completely work as a movie).

I confess to not knowing Holding's The Blank Wall, or Cooper's The Scene. How do these fit your theme?

You might also consider forays into horror, since that subversive genre often breaks down the same walls that hardboiled does.

>We'll also listen to some Johnny Cash and somewhere in there will be a
whole

Inspired!

>section on America's love affair w/ the serial killer (featuring
Hitchcock's
>_Psycho_, Thompson's _Killer Inisde Me_, Westlake's _The Ax_, and the film
>of _American Psycho_)

Henry: Portrait of a Serial killer? But you might "get into trouble" for showing that.

Good luck--hope you keep us posted on the progress of the course, and the reactions to it.

-dc dchandler@nettally.com

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