This report summarizes the script development, pre-production, production, and post-production stages of making the short film Lost Pines. The short was produced as my graduate thesis film in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin in partial fulfillment of my Master of Fine Arts degree in Film Production. / text

published_or_final_version / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

The appearance, use, and philosophy of the disabled detective are latent even in early detective texts, such as in Arthur Conan Doyle’s canonical Sherlock Holmes series. By philosophy, I am referring to both why the detective feels compelled to detect as well as the system of detection the detective uses and on which the text relies. Because the detective feels incompatible with the world around him (all of the detectives I analyze in this dissertation are men), he is driven to either fix himself, the world, or both. His systematic approach includes diagnosing problems through symptomatology and removing the deficient aspect. While the detective narrative’s original framework assimilates bodies to medical and scientific discourses and norms in order to represent a stable social order, I argue that contemporary detective subgenres, including classical disability detective texts, hardboiled disability detective texts and postmodern disability detective texts, respond to this framework by making the portrayal of disability explicit by allocating it to the detective. The texts present disability as both a literary mechanism that uses disability to represent abstract metaphors (of hardship, of pity, of heroism) and a cultural construct in and of itself. I contend that the texts use disability to investigate what it means to be an individual and a member of society. Thus, I trace disability in detective fiction as it parallels the cultural move away from the autonomous individual and his participation in a stable social order and move towards the socially located agent and shifting situational values.

In his preface to The Moonstone , Wilkie Collins declares that his object with the novel has been "to trace the influence of character on circumstances", referring mainly to the conduct of the novel's heroine, Rachel.  In view of the other characters' similar function in this symbol-laden novel, this essay looks closer at the one character with whom Collins brings his extensive tapestry to a close, Ezra Jennings, thereby exposing the deeper significance of this 'detective novel'.  Ezra's added function in this novel, is to be the physical focal point, within the plot, for three crucial themes within the novel: 'Opium', 'Empire' and 'Sacrifice'.  Of course, the other characters incorporate these themes as well, but it is always Ezra who has the ultimate representational power.  He is, literally, the sum of the others' hopes and fears, and Collins's metaphorical 'third eye' of The Moonstone, presenting an alternative aspect of events.

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This dissertation investigates the emergence of detective fiction and film from 1994 to the present. The corpus appears during the government of Carlos Menem and its intent to insert Argentina into a globalized economy. Poverty, insecurity and violence prevail in the Argentine society and ten detective novels, based on real-life murders, appear in 1994. Consequently, I explore each murder case, beginning with the newspaper article, and trace its transformation into short fiction, novel and/or film. The articles about the homicides follow the tendencies of the sensationalist yellow press. The writers and film directors, however, transform those stories, following and also subverting the characteristics of the classic detective fiction or the hard-boiled. In doing so, these recreations of the murder cases aim to denounce or criticize specific aspects of Argentine society: domestic violence, discrimination, stigmatization and corruption, among others.

This thesis uses the popular genre of detective fiction to explore the context of the heyday of the crime genre: the Golden Age. This sub-genre, best known for producing Agatha Christie, spanned the complicated history of Britain involving the Great Depression, two World Wars and huge changes to class structure. It is for these reasons that the Golden Age is such a pivotal period for changing notions of British identity. Through the very British Christie and the less well known New Zealander, Ngaio Marsh, expressions of national identity are explored as well as how the colonial fits in. Focusing heavily on the authors and their own personal experiences and views, this thesis is divided into four chapters to further break down how the Golden Age period affected its citizens and why this detective fiction held such a wide appeal. Chapter one explores gender roles and how Golden Age authors both conformed to them through their choice in detectives, yet also how they naturally resisted some through their own public image. Chapter two then examines the issue of class and how Golden Age detective fiction portrayed the changes. Contrary to popular criticism, Christie and Marsh were surprisingly progressive and forward thinking on this subject. Chapter three considers how both authors employed setting to emphasise these changes. Both Christie and Marsh used foreign settings to highlight British society and its flaws, and Marsh used her New Zealand settings to consider the relationship between Britain and her home. The final chapter will consider why Golden Age detective fiction was so popular: what was the appeal? For a period of violence and uncertainty, why were people drawn to crime fiction involving sometimes gruesome death? The appeal lay, and still does, in the puzzle: the game that diverted readers from their own problems. Golden Age fiction may have been highly formulaic and predictable, but it was also highly artificial and self-referential. This was a clever and diverting fiction that has been constantly underestimated by critics and deserves further study.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 338-348)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of English, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 228-243).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1996. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 247-268).