Appunti di Cultura inglese I

Cultura angloamericana

UNIT 1

THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER: THE HARD BOILED NOVEL

The word hard-boiled has to do with how hard an egg is boiled. It is a super cooked boiled egg. “The simple art of murder” →

quote by Chandler.

The hard-boiled novel typically has an American setting. If you think about urban settings, it is set in cities like LA, NY.

Some of the first authors: Cain, Chandler.

Detective stories are more British → Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle.

Hard-boiled movies were so successful as to develop in one of the most important genres in Hollywood?

Pulp magazines = mass production magazines which were very cheap and included stories who had popular audiences such

as western, science fiction, detectives

Dime Novels = ancestors of pulp magazines

CRIME AND DETECTIVE FICTION INTERWAR YEARS (1920s AND 1930s)

Interwars, that is to say between the two world wars.

Hard boiled fiction is a uniquely American form of crime and detective fiction. Some of the most famous authors are:

1.​ Dashiell Hammett

2.​ Raymond Chandler

3.​ James M. Cain

They all wrote different types of hard-boiled fictions

WHY IS THIS GENRE FAMOUS?

FIRST REASON: HARD BOILED AND COMMERCIAL SUCCESS AFFORDABILITY

Why were they so successful?

1.​ Hard boiled were bestsellers both when they were published in pulp magazines. Pulp magazines were cheap

and so were pocket books→ launched in the US in 1939, it was a revolution: books were cheaper and more

people could buy them

2.​ They were sold at newsstands (edicole), railway stations and drugstores (supermercati) and not at

bookshops. Readers were part of the commuting working class: books could be read everywhere

(bus,station, ecc…).

3.​ These stories were written for man, therefore women were portrayed in certain ways in stories and covers

Authors were able to create a niche of readers, a group of the audience that is attracted to that kind of product and will

immediately buy it.

SECOND REASON: SETTINGS AND CHARACTERS

1.​ The characters portrayed (the tough detectives) worked like a magnet for male working class fantasies. Male

working class readers wanted to identify with these tough guys.

2.​ Stories were inspired by gangsters and outlaws mythologies: the 1920s were the years in which gangsters became

popular (Lucky Luciano, Al Capone).

3.​ Filmic noir quality of night city life (L.A.):

Noir became the name of the movies of these hard-boiled novels (and it is also the term we use to describe hard-boiled

stories which are set in other cities such as Florence). Films take place at night and give us a dark view of the city.

THIRD REASON: REDEFINITION OF A GENRE

American hard-boiled books writers break the rules of classical detective fiction, which was mainly British.

●​ Books were predictable, there was a formula: names and details changed, however the mechanism and the narrative

structures were all the same. This DOES NOT happen in hard- boiled novels: detectives try to solve mysteries but

they don’t care about the author of the crime, it is not their final aim.

●​ No dandy detectives (Philo Vance, Poirot, Sherlock Holmes…) as in whodunit.

●​ No domestic places, no cabinets: detectives seldom have contact with the rest of the world, they live isolated. In

hard-boiled novels the detective takes the crime outside the little indoor places dandy detectives are used to.

FOURTH REASON: AMERICAN LANGUAGE

The language used was not genteel, it was not genteel English but American English: language which is very close to

journalism (ex. Hemingway).

Cain was inspired by the news he could read on tabloids of American papers. He basically took the stories and fictionalised

them.

HARD-BOILED: REDEFINITION OF A GENRE

The first author who explicits the differences between British and American style was Raymond CHandler in The simple art of

murder, 1944:

●​ U.S. hard-boiled protagonist is never aloof from action and danger: he is immersed in violent events and hostile

environments, such as being kidnapped

●​ For the first time he mentions Dashiell Hammet as the father of the hard-boiled detectives. What he does, according to

Chandler, is break the English tradition, he was the first one in american fiction to write a genre which breaks away

from the traditional british detective fiction.

Novels talked about people who were common. The language used is studied, is not something improvised, it is adapted to

the hard-boiled readers. Hammet also redefined the settings, the plots, the characters.

HARD-BOILED AND PULP MAGAZINES

Pulp magazines were very cheap (pulp derives from the poor quality of the paper). They were immensely popular between the

1920s and 1930s (after that, they lost their popularity).

Black Mask in 1922 was the first one. Many tried to copy it. Black Mask was where artists such as Chandler published their

stories. Readers were mostly men from the urban, working-class audience. No middle class, no rich readers.

Covers usually have elements which represent violence, such as guns, women, men who save

women.

HARD BOILED < DIME NOVELS

Hard-boiled novels had a predecessor in dime novels (dime = 10 cents in American English). They were called dime novels

because they cost 10 cents.

Dime novels started around the 1860s and continued until 1910s, first they were very popular in the North-east US cities.

They were made up of different genres such as western, mysteries of the city, detective tales, tales of romance.

In the 1860s, 1870s, stories were set in deserted cities (for example in the middle of Utah,

Wyoming, ecc…) → they were frontiers, towns, in the middle of nowhere. Another super popular setting was life in slums

(bassifondi): for example at that time Manhattan was a slum.

HARD-BOILED HEROES

In Dime novels we find frontiersmen, outlaws, vigilantes as protagonists.

What happens with the hard-boiled is that we transplant these vigilantes, these guys in the wilderness and frontiers

were transplanted to an urban environment.

In the late 1920s, we also find the figure of the gangster: gangster movies, tragic figures.

THE 1920s

The 1920s was the decade of prohibition (of alcohol). In the end they were able to rectify the 18th amendment (1920) which

prohibited drinking and producing alcohol.

The 1920s was also the decade of gangsterism: criminal organisation became even more powerful thanks to prohibition.

They are also the years in which the FBI was born; from the very start one man was the director, J. Edgard Hoover, until his

death in the 1960s.

Consumerism: the 20s were the years in which cars, vacuum cleaners, in general products were sold.

The 1920s were the years of the red scare, a strike, the years in which immigration changed-

THE 1930s

The 1930s are also defined as the “great depression era” (1929 with the wall street crash-1941). On top of this, it was a

psychological crisis.American for the first time had to face failure, poverty, social and economical instability. Thanks to the

resources they had in the country, the president Roosevelt and special reforms and because of the war, they were able to exit

the great depression. Thanks to war, factories started to produce again.

During the great depression “the common man” became a national hero. Common men were poor people who had to move

across the country to find a job.

In the 30s we have new “bandits”: bank robbers and outlaws (Bonnie and Clyde): if you robbed a bank, you would become a

sort of Robin Hood, a hero.

We also had slick magazines, which were the opposite of pulp magazines. Slick magazines were meant for middle and

upper-middle class reader.They were thought for a female readership.

●​ Radio, cinema

1920s AND 1930s CRIMINALS

American liked the fact that gangsters were foreigners (mostly Italians) → they were criminals but they were successful, the

American dream: from poor to rich. No matter how illegal your business was, you had made it, you were respected.

In a few years gangster constructed their richness and success, but as rapid as their rise was, also was their fall, they end up

in prison.

One of the most famous representation is Little Cesar (1929, W.R. Burnett) → it was a success and Hollywood decided to

make a film out of it. This film became the father of many other gangster movies in the 1930s (ex. “Scarface” in 1930).

By the mid 30s (middle of the Great Depression), the most popular criminal figures changed: they weren't gangsters

anymore but small criminals. They were criminals out of necessity: economic situation was bad.

Hoover was a progressive president at the end of 1929: he stated that the U.S. economy was strong, that capitalism was a

strong economic strategy and it would heal itself. Roosevelt in 1933 made a bunch of reforms in order to help people.

THE 1920s

URBAN NATION

In the 1920s the U.S. became an urban nation: before the 1920s the U.S. was a rural nation. During the 1920s the population

lived mostly in urban cities, most people moved from rural to cities (NY, Detroit, LA).

CONSUMERISM

The 1920s were one of the most spectacular periods of affluence and prosperity in the U.S. As a consumer, you were

offered the possibility to “buy now, pay later”. The U.S. was the first country using this method of payment.

PROHIBITION - THE 18th AMENDMENT (1920)

Alcohol was banned, but Americans kept drinking thanks to criminal organizations who illegally manufactured alcohol. They

were secret, there was a password in order to enter and they were hidden.

The 1920s were also the decade of cocktails and cocktail parties → many of the nowadays cocktails were invented during

this decade to mask the quality of alcohol: the alcohol produced illegally was not of good quality, that’s why they became

fashionable and likable.

PROHIBITION ORGANISED CRIME

●​ Al Capone called Scarface because he had a scare on his face (Chicago)

●​ Salvatore “Lucky” Luciano (NY)

They corrupted police, federal agents, judges, that's how they survived.

THE SCOPES TRIAL 1925 (also called the monkey trial)

In 1925 a Tennessee high-school biology teacher, John T. Scopes used a book in which the evolutionary theory of Darwin

(1859) was explained: we do not descend from God, we are the next link to monkeys, we are the result of biological

evolution. Scopes wanted to teach this theory, however he was in Tennessee, in the deep south, in a country in which

religion was an important part of life. A trial started and it became a national sensation. It was the first trial broadcast via

radio. Dayton was flooded with journalists. Mencken (critic) portrayed the trial as a circus and renamed it as the monkey

trial (monkey refers to Darwin but also the circus). Clarence Darrow (lawyer) defended Scopes → the national viability of

this trial was very important for courtroom stories/courtroom drama in literature and television. The courtroom became one

of the most popular settings in detective fiction.

●​ A battle: creationism v. evolutionism

●​ Anti-evolutions v. Modernism – bible belt v. Liberal america

●​ The trial sent across the nation the image of the south as a backward and benighted bible belt

THE RED SCARE (la paura dei rossi) - (1919-1920)

It was the fear that communists would take over America. The fear of communism had to do with the 1917 bolshevik

revolution in russia

General Palmer (bureau of investigation) organised the Palmer Raids: federal agents raided and arrested more than 4,000

alleged (presunti) radicals (communists or had sympathy for the communist coast) in 33 cities

This caused labor strikes: miners, factory workers. Workers were organised in association (sindacati) and were accused of

being communists. The fear of communist taking over came back in the 1950s (McCarthyism)

IMMIGRATION 1890-1914

More than 17 million immigrants came to the U.S. Mainly from Russia, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Germany.

Because of WWI, immigration came to a stop. After that, American decided to contain immigrant floods because they

feared immigrants were too many to handle and feared immigration would corrupt the American stock. This is where they

introduced in 1921 the quota act → it stated that only a percentage of each nationality could enter the U.S.

An event that came as the result of ethnic tension was the so-called Sacco and Vanzetti execution in 1927: two

Italian anarchists in the U.S. They were arrested with false accusations and were executed.

RACE RELATIONS 1915-1918

half million of african-americans left the south for northern urban-industrial centers because of segregation.

At the end of the civil war (1861-1865) slavery in the south was abolished, but the problem was that the South did not accept

this change. Therefore there were some unwritten rules that erased black rights (ex. they were obliged to use different buses,

read different books, different bibles, ecc…). The end of segregation started in the 1950s with a supreme Court ruling which

stated that schools needed to be disaggregated.

They went mainly to Harlem, Chicago, st. Louis, Detroit

MODERNIST VS. CONSERVATIVES

The 1920s was a decade of contrasts: we have the image of a nation full of creativity with the roaring twenties and the image

of a conservative nation (with the red scare, kkk, prohibition, racism)

GANGSTERS MOVIES

LITTLE CAESAR:

https://www.google.com/search?q=little+caesar&newwindow=1&rlz=1C5CHFA_enIT987IT987&sxs

rf=AJOqlzUxUxX0GMtJ5_jTe8MFJI7fwUHzcw:1676305595455&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved

=2ahUKEwj77bT89JL9AhVOi_0HHeXjCJIQ_AUoBHoECAEQBg&biw=1152&bih=523&dpr=2.5#fps

tate=ive&vld=cid:5afabfdf,vid:v9-X0hneIDA

SCARFACE:

https://www.google.com/search?q=SCARFACE+1930&newwindow=1&rlz=1C5CHFA_enIT987IT9

87&sxsrf=AJOqlzVuYxSDE6TpMBYmu-

WasxwtFcRcZQ:1676305713526&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiPwNu09ZL9AhU0

hf0HHZzBBsEQ_AUoA3oECAEQBQ&biw=1152&bih=523&dpr=2.5#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:d68f0cf1, vid:bwK-6utq2hM

The great depression (1929-1941)

There was an agricultural crisis: cotton and corn prices collapse. Another reason for the great depression was the real estate

bubble: a lot of Americans invested in real estate. The president of the US back then was Hoover who thought that the crisis

would pass because the American capitalistic system would overcome this crisis with no help from the government.

When the great depression exploded, it had terrible consequences for the poor. Another element were the dust bowls

(tempeste di sabbia) between 1931 and 1937: they swed Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, Teas, Oklahoma. They were

caused by drought. Farmers were the one who suffered the most from this depression.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was the governor of NY, he was in the democratic party. He wins the 1932 election. He

remained president until his death (1945). It was quite exceptional because now the president of the US can’t serve for more

than 2 terms and he served for 4 terms.

Roosevelt wanted to help U.S. by this crisis with a pack of reforms: the new deal. The reforms changed the face of the us.

They were federal, economical and agricultural reforms.

American novels in the 1930s

We can divide American fiction in 3 different groups: 1. the social protest novels (the grapes of wrath): novels of political and

social commitment, workers were out of work; 2. Commercial subgenres pulp magazines: fiction conceived for mechanic

working class people, mechanic accents, they have mainly a man audience.

3. historical/costume novels and middle class novels: it was mainly directed to female readers. The critical canon liked

something that was not what the real readers read. Critical canon: middle class novels, hard-boiled novel, proletarian fiction/

social protest novels. What America read: it was the other way round.

A worker would never read a social protest novel.

ESCAPISM IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION

The average reader would never read about poverty, strikes, the poor condition of workers. They didn’t want to hear about how

sad and desperate life was and this is way the middle class historical novels were bestseller in the 1930s.

Gone with the wind was a bestseller in 1936, Margaret Mitchell wrote a single novel that became an international success, a

blockbuster. It was a story set in the civil war, 1861-1865. It was fought by the southern states, where slavery was an

institution against the north, that was more capitalistic and anti-slavery. It is set in Georgia. In the south there were

plantation of cotton and slaves. The protagonist’s name is Scarlett Ohara that had deeply conservative ideas about women

and society. It was an extremely popular successful novel for two reasons: 1. It has a great, powerful heroine that lost

everything with the civil war. He still keeps fighting. The last sentence she says is tomorrow is another time. Even in the

hardest times, there is space for hope. 2. It was a parallel between the civil war and the great depression. The message is that

Americans have already been there, it was a national tragedy. In the civil war the country was divided in south and north.

The protagonist manages to survive through this hard situation and still gives a message of hope. Women wanted to read

something that distracted them. 3. It is a love story between the protagonist and Butler.

Gone with the wind was a historical novel because it was set in the pass. Middle class novels

weren’t set in the past but they had a melodramatic plot.

A STUDY IN CONTRAST

Social commitment and escapism. The 1930s were the decade where musicals were popular and commercially successful.

SOCIAL COMMITMENT:

●​ social protest novels

●​ social photography

●​ testimonial theater

●​ ballads

ESCAPISM

●​ escapism

●​ historical novels

●​ Gone with the wind (1936)

●​ advertising

●​ musical

CULTURAL CONTEST

Intellectual commitment: there were a lot of marxists, it was considered the red decade. We also have the press with pulp

magazines and photojournalism (like, look, fortune). There was also the radio, that played a fundamental part. One of the key

aspect of Roosevelt’s success were the fireside chats: discorsi del caminetto. They were informal speeches that FDR

broadcast everyday for Americans so that they could hear the voice of the president explaining what was happening, which

reforms were discussed. He really entered the hous