"Marquee of mystery: Hollywood gets a clue, declares season
of the gumshoe" by Bill Muller of The Arizona Republic (Apr.
15, 2006.)
http://www.azcentral.com/ent/movies/articles/0415summermovies04161.html
"I see the mystery . . . as a direct extension of that whole
myth of the frontiersman, the white knight of (Raymond)
Chandler going out to correct society ills," says James
Sallis, a Phoenix author whose crime novel Drive has been
optioned to Universal, with Hugh Jackman to star.
"We're going to ride into town, fix the town's problems, and,
by God, we're going to ride out again, before it corrupts
us."
Sallis says that detective stories, by eventually collecting
all the loose ends, perpetuate the idea that there is a
design behind an otherwise random existence.
"It's trying to show that, yes, behind all this 'dailyness' .
. . there is a pattern, there is meaning," he says. "It may
be an ugly meaning, but there is a meaning. People are
looking for there to be more."
Sallis says this phenomenon can be found in The Da Vinci
Code, where
"there's this one great secret, and if we can penetrate that,
everything will start to fall into place, everything will
make sense. We still want everything to add up, even if we
sincerely believe that it doesn't."
Christopher Sharrett, a film-studies professor at Seton
HallUniversity, says mystery/crime stories appeal to a
culture that feels increasingly powerless and seeks escape
from a complicated world.
"Folks feel empowered in the thrill of taking part in finding
out what the truth is," Sharrett says. "That's the big
fascination behind The Da Vinci Code, which really throws in
basically every conspiratorial notion."
He adds that a detective story is "a way of providing closure
and a sense of assurance, which, of course, life itself
doesn't provide. At the end of day, you don't have easy
answers to life's problems."
Crime thrillers offer consolation, Sharrett says, because
"you have some really challenging and extremely threatening
problems, which are suddenly resolved by a skilled hero who
becomes a kind of surrogate for the audience."
Though Miami Vice is more about flash and panache than
crime-scene search, Crockett and Tubbs are still
detectives.
The most clear-cut example this summer is The Da Vinci Code,
based on Dan Brown's bestselling book. The movie stars Tom
Hanks as Robert Langdon, an American symbologist who follows
a string of clues found on famous pieces of art, such as Mona
Lisa, to solve a murder.
"These are really quest novels, and quest novels are the
oldest form of narrative," says Barbara Peters, owner of the
Poisoned Pen bookstores in Phoenix and Scottsdale and editor
of Poisoned Pen Press.
"Homer's Odyssey is a quest novel. It deals with how Ulysses
got home from the Trojan War."
Peters says the structure of such stories work well for
movies.
"The hero is moving across a landscape and he meets with
obstacles, either bad guys or it's roadblocks or it's trying
to decipher clues," she says.
"The Da Vinci Code is a quest novel, but it's more of a
treasure hunt with clues along the way."
Georgetown literature professor Maureen Corrigan says the
appeal of mysteries come from audience participation. She
says Poe, who invented the detective novel with Murders in
the Rue Morgue, called his mysteries "tales of ratiocination"
for a reason.
"What he's saying . . . they're tales about thinking," she
says. "All of the movies . . . we're watching the detective
figure something out. And we're figuring that something out
along with the detective. That's part of the thrill of these
stories. They suck us in because we get to put the pieces
together, too."
It also looks like a really fun job.
"You think about what the detective does," Corrigan says.
"He's autonomous. He gets to call the shots, names his price,
and he has this job that, as some of the scholars say, unites
head with hand. He does get to think and he does get to
act.
"It's also this fantasy of 'What would work be like if it
were really the greatest job?' And you get to save the
world."
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 Apr 2006 EDT