Crime Uncovered: Antihero , livre ebook

Intellect Books

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

165 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

There are few figures as captivating as the antihero: the character we can’t help but root for, even as we turn away in revulsion from many of the things they do. What is it that draws us to characters like Breaking Bad’s Walter White, Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, and Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander even as we decry the trail of destruction they leave in their wake?

Crime Uncovered: Antihero tackles that question and more. Mixing the popular and iconic, contemporary and ancient, the book explores the place and appeal of the antihero. Using figures from books, TV, film, and more, including such up-to-the-minute examples as True Detective’s Rust Cole, the book places the antihero’s actions within the society he or she is rejecting, showing how expectations and social and familial structures create the backdrop against which the antihero’s posture becomes compelling. Featuring interviews with genre masters James Ellroy and Paul Johnston, Crime Uncovered: Antiherois an accessible, engaging analysis of what drives us to embrace those characters who acknowledge—or even flaunt—the dark side we all have somewhere deep inside.

Editor's Introduction

Case Studies

Tom Ripley and Vic Van Allen - Fiona Peters

The Punisher - Kent Worcester

Sonchai Jitpleecheep - Nicole Kenley

Lou Ford - Gill Jamieson

Tony Soprano - Abby Bentham

Ray Donovan - Gareth Hadyk-DeLodder

Walter White and Dexter Morgan - Katherine Robbins

Alice Morgan - Sabrina Gilchrist

Sarah Linden - Joseph Walderzak

Stephanie Delacour - Mary Marley Latham

Rust Cohle - Isabell Groß

Interrogation

Reports

Sujets

Arts visuels

Cinéma

Cinema

Literature

General officer

Cultural studies

Art

General

Informations

Publié par	Intellect Books
Date de parution	01 novembre 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783206315
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1248€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

AN TIHERO

intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
First published in the UK in 2016 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2016 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2016 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Series: Crime Uncovered
Series ISSN: 2056-9629 (Print), 2056-9637 (Online)
Series Editors: Tim Mitchell and Gabriel Solomons
Copy-editing: Emma Rhys
Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons
Layout Design and Typesetting: Stephanie Sarlos
Production Manager: Tim Mitchell
ISBN: 978-1-78320-519-6
ePDF: 978-1-78320-520-2
ePUB: 978-1-78320-631-5
Printed bound by Bell Bain, UK.
AN TIHERO
edited by Fiona Peters Rebecca Stewart

intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
C ontents
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION
CASE STUDIES
INTERROGATION
REPORTS
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES
EDITOR S INTRODUCTION
Rebecca Stewart
The antihero, a term that in itself may seem paradoxical, can be found throughout literature, film and television. In Notes from Underground (1864), Dostoevsky explicitly relates the word to the notion of the paradox when he subverts the idea of a hero within the novel, and throughout literature we encounter protagonists that are ineffectual, flawed and seemingly contain no qualities that relate to heroism. Although the chapters in this collection all focus on products of the twentieth and twenty-first century, the antihero is certainly not a phenomenon of this time, as seen, for example, in Dostoevsky s existential novella.
Indeed, even the tradition of the hero can be seen to feed into the role of the antihero of modern and contemporary fiction, with Achilles, Oedipus, Antigone, etc. all being capable of extreme violence in honour of their personal codes. However, what the antiheroes looked at in this book all do is critique the notions of heroism by disturbing and disrupting our expectations, and furthermore by enticing us to be complicit in this. We can begin to consider the antihero in terms of negation, of what they are not - honest, idealistic, courageous, honourable, noble. And yet they continue to appeal. The role of the antihero then, it seems, is to challenge the ways in which we see, or wish to see, ourselves, and whereas heroes are celebrated and revered due to their commitment to their honour and pride, the antihero, whilst possibly having their own code of conduct, requires no veneration; in fact, these characters refuse to bow to the expectations of society and rebel against the rules that bind us all, perhaps explaining why literature containing the antihero seems to blossom in reactionary times, such as films of the 1960s as Vietnam ended and the Cold War began.
The dualistic and divided heroism present in the antihero, a person whose moral compass is never firmly pointing north, is ever present in crime fiction. Like the tragic hero, antiheroes such as Tom Ripley, Lou Ford, Tony Soprano and Walter White allow the darker side of their nature to surface. We are faced with characters who seem to have an endless struggle with the society that would have them crushed, defeated or incarcerated, even those that on one level belong to this society as teachers, fathers and even law-enforcement agents. Focusing on both private antiheroes and those that exist within law enforcement and related social structures, the case studies and essays in this book all look to examine the specifics of the antihero s status and actions within a variety of familial and social structures in order to trace the role of the antihero in crime fiction, contemporary television and film.
Throughout discussions of the antihero in crime fiction, it is Patricia Highsmith who is often acknowledged as the main proponent of this archetypal character, and it is the character of Tom Ripley, Highsmith s most famous creation, who captures readers imaginations as the one who gets away with it . Whereas other heroes in her narratives suffer from a sense of guilt and, in the majority of cases, do not escape justice , either morally or legally, Ripley does exactly that. Fiona Peters examines Ripley s disturbing human nature , and analyses the ways in which he can be viewed as the exemplar of the modern antihero. Highsmith always viewed the writing of the Ripley novels as a form of escape from what she classed as the depressing nature of her other work, and indeed viewed him as her alter-ego: whilst Ripley was exceptional in his lack of developed conscience, her other characters were all too human. As such, it is Tom Ripley who is widely discussed in reference to the antihero. However, in setting up a definition of what the term antihero means, Peters goes further to look at another of Highsmith s protagonists, Vic Allen in Deep Water (1957). Whilst in many ways Allen can be seen in polar opposition to Ripley, Peters looks at the ways in which we can also classify him as a Highsmithian antihero . Whilst Highsmith in Deep Water examines psychoses in suburbia, with Allen essentially going crazy, she adopts a number of mechanisms in her writing in order to get the reader to identify with him. Peters looks at the manner in which this gives Vic Allen the same status as Tom Ripley as an antihero: you do not need to survive the narrative in order to be an antihero.
The superhero is one that is particularly interesting with regard to discussions of heroics, and by extension the antihero. Arguably we are drawn to antiheroes specifically because they are not superhuman and do not have entirely virtuous qualities; it is the flaws, the rebellious nature or immoral undertones of the antihero, that makes them more interesting, seen in the way we are attracted to Batman above Superman. Kent Worcester looks at the character of Frank Castle, better known as the Punisher. First introduced in the Marvel comic Amazing Spiderman #129 in 1974, this death-wish vigilante is one of the most popular of Marvel s characters; seen by some as hero and some as villain, Worcester looks on him as antihero. Responsible for the deaths of nearly 50,000 people in the Marvel Universe, why are readers, gamers and audiences so drawn to him? A vigilante with a remorseless campaign against crime, the Punisher displays a transgressive morality that Worcester sees as directly responsible for this attraction. The Punisher is examined here not as a flawed hero, in the vein of Spiderman or Daredevil, but as an antihero whose relationship with the mass audience has evolved, and whose role in the Marvel Universe as a one-man campaigner against violence is certainly formidable.
One of the recurring features of all the antiheroes discussed in this collection is the way in which they are difficult to define and that they often exhibit multiple identities, ones that do not always sit comfortably with each other. A clear example of this can be found in the character of the Royal Thai Police Detective, Sonchai Jitpleecheep, created by British author John Burdett in his Bangkok series: he is a member of a dirty police force, an honest detective, consigliore to a crime lord, devout Buddhist, monk manqu and papasan of his mother s brothel. Nicole Kenley in her chapter examines the multiple identities of Jitpleecheep in relation to globalization, justice and karma. Exploring the interplay between western and eastern cultures, these novels examine multiplicities of justice and focus on a character that straddles the role of hero and antihero. Examining the ways in which Detective Jitpleecheep embraces postmodern multiplicity of solution by way of his own hybridity, Kenley examines Jitpleecheep s dichotomy and fluid identity, as criminal/cop, western/eastern, hero/antihero, and considers the ways in which these narratives present a model for police globalization, a modernization of the classic detective trope of subjective justice.
Schizophrenic duality can be seen in many of the texts being analysed within this collection and certainly the duality of Lou Ford in Jim Thompson s 1952 novel The Killer Inside Me is no exception. This novel was described by the director Stanley Kubrick as probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind . In keeping with traditions of pulp novelists of the era, Thompson adopts a first-person narrator, and it is through the central character Lou Ford that this novel is narrated; however, rather than the hardboiled detective, Ford s Texan deputy sheriff is in fact a sociopath with sadistic sexual tastes. Despite the fact that this narrative offers us an insight into Ford s psychopathic mindset, Gill Jamieson examines the manner in which the reader becomes intimate with Ford, thus placing us within his dysfunctional worldview. There are multiple versions of The Killer Inside Me , including a 2010 film adaptation of the same title directed by Michael Winterbottom, and at the forefront of all these versions is deviance, and Jamieson utilizes theories of adaptation to consider the creative process of The Killer Inside Me from novel, through screenplay, to final film, focusing on the implications of adapting a book that invites readers to identify with an extremely violent antihero. Whereas in the novel we are invited to understand Ford, the limited voice-overs in the film version offer little explanation of the violence that we see, which is extremely erotic and sadomasochistic, something that critics typically reacted to with disgust. Jamieson s chapter specifically examines the adaptation process in relation to the antihero Lou Ford and looks to answer whether the cranked up violence portrayed in the movie was merely a