ENG 5070: MURDER MOST FOUL ! HOMICIDE AND CRIME IN FILM
ID Card of Dr Crippen, famous British wife murderer
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ENG/FILM 5070 May 10-June 29 /4 credits/Mon & Wed 5.30-9.20
State Hall 326
PROFESSOR: Kirsten Thompson, kirsten_thompson@wayne.edu, (313)577-3358
(my office)
Web Page: http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/thompsonk/index2.html
(Check for general links for film, resources online and other classes I
have taught)
Course Web Page http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/thompsonk/murder.html
Crime Links Web Page: http://www.english.wayne.edu/fac_pages/thompsonk/CrimeLinks.html
(many useful links to forensics, crime photography, serial killers etc)
Office Hours Mondays 4-5 or by appointment, Room 1252, Ground floor,
English Department 51 W. Warren
This undergraduate seminar surveys the genre of the crime film and
explores discourses of the law, forensics, criminology, psychiatry, and
psychopathology in popular culture and cinema. The class will introduce
theoretical tools that will critically, historically and formally examine
questions of genre and cultural constructions (insanity, hermeneutics,
sociopathy, the M’Naughton rule, the role of technology in forensics) in
the detective and mystery story, serial killer film, film noir and other
related forms in American cinema. Films include Badlands; Silence
of the Lambs; Se7en; Blood Simple; Shallow Grave; Heavenly Creatures; In
The Cut; CSI; Cape Fear and others.
Classes will consist of lectures and weekly screenings, student presentations
of readings (25%) short paper (25%) class participation (15%) final paper
(35%). Please note your attendance is required for this class and a roll
will be taken in each class. Please make sure you come to class ON TIME
as we will start classes promptly, sometimes with films. There will
be a break of 20 minutes in each class. Please WAIT until the credits for
each film are COMPLETELY FINISHED and the lights are turned on before leaving
the classroom.
CLASS TEXTS
REQUIRED: Thomas Leitch, Crime Films (Cambridge U Press, 2002)
Martin Rubin Thrillers (Cambridge U Press: NY 1999)
Recommended/ General Interest: Mark Seltzer, Serial Killers; Death And
Life In America's Wound Culture (Routledge, 1998) (fairly difficult
theory text)
Philip Jenkins: Using Murder: the Social Construction of the
Serial Killer (De Gruyter, 1994)
Philip Simpson PsychoPaths; Tracking the Serial Killer (Southern Illinois
Press, 2000) Most accessible
In addition there will be required readings on certain weeks on reserve
at the Undergraduate Library for certain weeks (marked by LIB). Please
photocopy and return as loan period is 1 hour only and many of the readings
are fairly lengthy. Articles will also be available for purchase
from University Printing (Photocopy store next to Marwils on Warren).
Please note you can buy all these articles in a course pack from University
Printing, with the exception of Seltzer, Jenkins & Simpson which are
available separately (in the event you have bought one of these texts).
Part I/ Week I : The Narrative of Murder /May 10
Introduction to class, Historical Overview of Crime Genre, Murder,
Mystery & thriller genres
Screening: Dead Again (Kenneth Branagh, 1991) UK
AMC Documentary on Cops in Film and Television
Readings: Leitch; chaps 1 & 2
Genre Development & Crime Scene Photography/ May 12
History of a Crime (Ferdinand Zecca, 1901) France
Regeneration (Raoul Walsh) 1915
Musketeers of Pig Alley (D.W. Griffith, 1912) First Gangster film
Martin Scorsese on Gangster Genre (clip)
Reading: Leitch chap 3; Rubin chap 1 & 2
Week II Formative Period/ Expressionist Cinema /May 17
Screening: M: (Fritz Lang, 1930) Germany
Crime Scene Photography projection
Reading: Rubin chap 3 ; Sandra Phillips ‘Identifying the Criminal”
LIB
Modernist Period & Hitchcock/ May 19
Screening: Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock) 1950 US
Reading; Rubin chap 4 (the Classical Period) & chap
7
Week III Film Noir / May 24
Screening: Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
Documentary Martin Scorsese on Film Noir
Reading: Leitch chap 6
Part II /CRIME SUBGENRES
Noir Homage /May 26
Screening: Blood Simple (Joel & Ethan Coen) 1984
Reading: Rubin chap 5
May 31 Memorial Day holiday
Week IV: Bad couples on the Run/ June 2
SHORT PAPER DUE
Screenings: Badlands (Terence Malick, 1973); clips Gun Crazy (Joseph
Lewis, 1949) & Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
Readings: Stephen Prince “Graphic Violence in the Cinema: Origins,
Aesthetic Design, and Social Effects” LIB
Murder amongst friends/ June 7
Screenings: Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle, 1995), Scotland
Readings; Recommended: Leitch chap 8 (the Unofficial Detective
Film)
Week V: The Erotic Thriller / June 9
Screenings: In The Cut (Jane Campion 2003)
Readings: Leitch chap 7 (The Erotic Thriller)
Television & Crime / June 14
Screening: CSI Episode
Reading: Cole chaps 1 & 2; : Ken Morrison “The Technology
of Homicide: Constructions of Evidence and Truth in the American Murder
Film” LIB
Week VI: Southern Gothic/ June 16
Screenings: Cape Fear, (Martin Scorsese, 1991) US
Readings: “Sacred and Profane” J. Hoberman Sight and Sound Feb. 1992,
LIB
Murder In the Family/ June 21
Screening: Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994) NZ
Excerpts from Julie Glamuzina & Alison Laurie Parker & Hulme
LIB
Part III: SERIAL KILLERS
Week VII: Serial Murder I / June 23
Screening: Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1992)
Reading: Philip Simpson Introduction, chaps 1 & 2
Serial Murder II / June 28/FINAL CLASS
Screening: Se7en (David Fincher, 1996) US/June 21; clips
Readings: Leitch chap 10; Jenkins chaps 4 & 5; Selzer
125-180
FINAL PAPER DUE
SUPPLEMENTAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Black, Joel The Aesthetics of Murder; A Study in Romantic Literature
and Contemporary Culture (John Hopkins Press, Baltimore) 1991
Clarens, Carlos Crime Movies; An Illustrated History of Gangster Films,
(Da Capo; NY 1997Coleman, James Abnormal Psychology (Scott Foreman
& Co; New York ) 1984
Cameron, Deborah & Elizabeth Fraser The Lust to Kill; A Feminist
investigation of Sexual Murder
Carroll, Noel The Philosophy Of Horror; or Paradoxes of the Heart (Routledge;
NY) 1990
Clover, Carroll Men, Women and Chainsaws; Gender in Modern Horror
Film (Princeton University P; NJ) 1992
Cole Simon A. Suspect Identities; A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal
Identification (Harvard University Press: Cambridge) 2001
Daly, Martin & Wilson, Margo Homicide (De Gruyter, NY) 1988
Douglas, John & Olshaker, Mark Journey Into Darkness (Scribner:
NY) 1997
Dyer, Richard Seven (BFI, London) 1999
Egger, Steven Serial Murder: an Elusive Phenomenon (Praeger; New York)
1990
Foucault, Michel (ed.) I Pierre Rivière Having murdered my Mother
my sister and my brother... a case of Parricide in the Nineteenth century
(University Of Nebraska Press; Nebraska) 1975
----------------- Madness and Civilization (Random House; New York
1965)
Gabbard, Krin and Glen O. Psychiatry and the Cinema (U Chicago
P: Chicago) 1987
Gilman, Sander Difference and Pathology; Stereotypes of Sexuality,
Race and Madness (Cornell University Press, Ithaca) 1985
Glamuzina, Julie & Laurie, Alison Parker and Hulme (New Women’s
Press; Auckland, NZ) 1991
Goodwin, Sarah Webster & Bronfen, Elizabeth Death and Representation
(John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore) 1993
Grant, Barry Keith (ed) The Dread of Difference; Gender and the Horror
Film (University of Texas Press; Austin) 1996
Halttunen, Karen Murder Most Foul; The Killer and the American
Gothic Imagination (Harvard UP: Cambridge) 1998
Hardy, Philip (ed) BFI Companion to Crime (University of California
Press, Berkeley) 1997
Hart, Lynda Fatal Women; Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression
(Princeton University Press; NT) 1994
Halberstam, Judith Skin Shows; Gothic Horror and the Technology of
Monsters (Duke University Press, Durham) 1995
Kaplan, E. Ann, Ed. Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Routledge:
NY) 1990
Jenkins, Philip Using Murder; The Social Construction of Serial Homicide
(De Gruyter, NY) 1994
Leitch, Thomas. Crime Films (Cambridge UP; Cambridge) 2002
Lessing, Wendy Pictures at an Execution; An Inquiry into the Subject
of Murder (Harvard University Press; Cambridge) 1993
Mizejewski, Linda, Hard Boiled and High heeled: the Woman Detective
in Popular Culture. (New York, N.Y.: Routledge), 2003.
Morrison, Toni & Claudia Brodsky Lacour, eds. Birth of a
Nationhood; Gaze, Script and spectacle in the OJ Simpson Case (Pantheon,
NY) 1997
Porter, Roy The Faber Book of Madness Faber; London) 1991
Prince, Stephen, Ed. Screening Violence (Rutgers, NJ) 2000
Rapping, Elayne. Crime and Justice as Seen on TV (New York University
Press: New York, 2003)
Revitch, Eugene & Louis B Schlesinger Psychopathology of Homicide
(Charles Thomas; Illinois) 1981
Sass, Louis Madness and Modernism; Insanity in the Light
of Modern Art, Literature and Thought (Harvard UP: Cambridge) 1992
Samaha, Joel Criminal Law (West Publishing;
St Paul) 1987 or latest edition
Sconce, Jeffrey “Spectacles of Death: Identification, Reflexivity and
Contemporary Horror”
in Film Theory Goes to The Movies (eds.) Tim Collins et al (Routledge;
NY) 1993
Sharrett, Christopher, ed. Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern
Media (Wayne State University Press, MI) 1999
Simpson, Philip L. Psycho Paths; Tracking the Serial Killer Through
Contemporary Film and Fiction (Southern Illinois University Press; Carbondale)
2000.
Tatar, Maria Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany (Princeton
U P; NJ) 1995
Taubin, Amy “Beyond The Body Count: Psycho to The Silence of
the Lambs; the Serial Killer”
Sight & Sound May 1991
Tithecott, Richard Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer
and the Construction of the Serial Killer ((University of Wisconsin Press,
WI) 1997
Wahl, Otto Media Madness; Public Images of Mental Illness (Rutgers:
NJ) 1995
W. White, Robert & Norman F. Watt The Abnormal Personality_ (John
Wiley; NY) 1994