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

This project explores the ways in which film viewers engage with and respond to cinematic constructions of the female serial killer, focusing closely upon the story of Aileen Wuornos, who was executed in 2002 for the murders of seven men. Three key film texts - Monster (Patty Jenkins, 2003), Aileen: The Selling of A Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 1992) and Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 2003) - are used as the basis for this study. Arguing that the psychodynamic complexities of the spectatorial encounter are inadequately theorised by many existing Screen theory and cultural studies accounts, I conduct a series of in-depth free-association narrative/biographical interpretive interviews (Hollway and Jefferson 2000a, Wengraf 2001) with fourteen participants. In doing so, I demonstrate how individuals are psychosocially and biographically motivated to “invest” in the three film texts on both conscious and unconscious levels. Drawing upon object-relations psychoanalysis (and Kleinian theory, in particular), I explore the unconscious anxieties, conflicts and phantasies that also bear significantly upon my participants’ filmic investments. I find that these investments are made meaningful in relation to dominant cultural ideologies and “norms”, but that they are also powerfully informed by participants’ own biographical experiences. This thesis therefore makes a valuable contribution to the field of audience studies, by providing a more nuanced understanding of the film-viewing process.

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Frequently called the first American classic, and the only American classic never to be out of print, The Scarlet Letter has been indelibly marked on the American consciousness since Nathaniel Hawthorne published it in 1850. Generations have grown up with its characters and their profound struggle against each other, their community, and themselves. Since the earliest days of film, The Scarlet Letter has been re-presented to each of those generations in a series of diverse cinematic adaptations, providing audiences with an opportunity to re-evaluate those characters, their struggle, and the lessons implicit in them. This dissertation surveys those films in order to produce a production history—one that extends beyond the production details and critical reception to consider how the lessons of The Scarlet Letter have been made to contribute to the cultural conversations of the American twentieth century. Following Chapter One's presentation of the method and intent of the study, in Chapter Two I consider the most enduring film in this novel's cinematic tradition, Victor Sjostrom's 1926 production starring Lillian Gish. In Chapter Three I examine Robert Vignola's 1934 ' B ' movie version in the context of Depression-era sexual politics. In Chapter Four, I unearth two live television plays that come to terms very differently with the Red Scare and the social retrenchment of Eisenhower's America. Chapter Five also presents a comparison of two very different but contemporaneous Scarlet Letters, one an eccentric feature from Wim Wenders (1972) , and the other a prestigious PBS miniseries (1979 ) . Finally, in Chapter Six I examine the 1995 Demi Moore vehicle in the context of the Family Values debates. By identifying the specific re-presentation strategies as rhetorically motivated, and linking them with the most salient social debates of their times, I argue for the ideological flexibility of the novel as a key to its endurance. I also demonstrate the effectiveness of film study, and specifically of a film adaptation production history focusing on one novel, as a tool for understanding emerging cultural attitudes and values.

The central question this thesis is concerned with is the question of death: how do we make sense of it? Through philosophical examination, we discover we cannot make sense of death. Death is nonsensical because it cognitively and physically cannot be controlled via a binary context; death becomes something we fear. This fear we feel is, in turn, immune to true catharsis. To control the fear of death to some extent, we suture the fear we experience from physical punishment with our metaphysical fear of death. Thus, the meaning and experience of death become entangled in the binary of punishment and non-punishment. We tentatively argue that this suture is expressed in media texts, such as film; and further posit hypothetically that media texts such as film have the function of either alleviating, or controlling, the fear of death, both in production and reception.

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The thesis examines the nature of the "real" in the cinema; I overview the theories that are historically used, and offer some alternative models. First, I survey how the "real" has been traditionally theorized in film theory. The realist/anti-realist debate is addressed; the psycholinguistic theory of Jacques Lacan and Jean Baudrillard's postmodern model of the hyperreal are reexamined in light of their profound effect on film theory's model of the cinematic "real." I argue against these theories as models of spectatorship and the "real" because of their hermetic nature. / I then consider Walter Benjamin's Passagen-Werk and the "dialectical image" as an alternative approach to the problems of the "real." Benjamin's model takes into consideration both the epistemological nature of the image and the problematics of cultural context. In conclusion, I analyze the problem of mediation in any model of the cinematic "real."

This thesis deals with the image of the prostitute in four films: Klute (1971) Pretty Baby (1978) McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1972) and American Gigolo (1980). It includes a review of the image of the prostitute in art and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These earlier images are compared and contrasted with the images presented in the four films and used to analyze how women are represented through the role of the prostitute in Klute, Pretty Baby and McCabe and Mrs. Miller. American Gigolo presents male prostitution in a manner conventional to prostitution, but unconventional in terms of representing men. American Gigolo provides a contrast for the three other films in terms of both gender and the image of the prostitute.