This article looks at the role of two of the most iconic figures in American popular culture: the gangster and the westerner. Drawing on genre theory from film and television, the way in which the westerner has been displaced by the gangster as the most common signifier of American identity is explored, focussing specifically on the television series Justified (2010-). The southern location of the series further complicates the set of referents by mobilizing aspects of Southern Gothic. While the western and the gangster film have often been viewed as oppositional in terms of location, era and their respective musings on and articulation of American identity, this article argues that the hybridity of genres in popular culture opens up a wider space in which to address aspects of myth, history and social concerns.
'Everybody lies' is a statement that will be familiar to anyone who ever watched an episode of House, M.D. 1 The notoriously acerbic doctor based his approach to medical cases on the premise that every person, no matter how well intentioned or morally upright, would lie. Sometimes their deceptions were so small that the person telling the falsehood did not quite register their own deception. It could almost be the basis for a joke. Everybody lies. And if you are sitting there thinking 'Well, I don't,' then you are a liar. As human beings, in every language, we have myriad words for lying and we also have a sliding scale for the severity of the deception: 'little white lies', that by their very description hint at purity and innocence, harmless untruths told for good reasons; and at the other end full scale betrayal, words or acts that are a complete violation of another person or sometimes of an entire community. And yet, deception is more than just lying and the ways in which deception plays an active part in our day-today lives is far more complex than telling a few untruths to ease our way through awkward work or social situations. In his essay in this volume, Bariș Mete examines the role of the unreliable narrator in literary fiction, and the act of collusion between author, narrator, and reader that enables this particular form of literary deceit to function. Yet, each time we open a novel, are we not complicit in a deception? The worlds that authors create for us frequently speak to and uncover deeper truths but works of fiction are just that: constructs, that we willingly engage with. Both the historian Daniel J. Boorstin 2 and cultural theorist Ralph Keyes 3 have explored how contemporary society has become increasingly tolerant of dishonesty and deception: we live now in an era in which misrepresentation and believability can flourish at the expense of the truth. High-profile dissemblers vie for headlines: fabulist college professors, fabricating journalists, stonewalling bishops, bookcooking executives and their friends the creative accountants. They are the most visible face of a far broader phenomenon: the routinization of dishonesty […] The gap between truth and lies has shrunk to a sliver. Choosing which lie to tell is largely a matter of convenience. We lie for all the usual reasons, or for no apparent reason at all. It's no longer assumed that truth telling is even our default setting. 4 It is something that many of us are guilty of-that joke again: if you are thinking that you are not, you are probably deceiving yourself. Each time that we add a For most of us that 'Fine' is so ingrained as part of the ritualised formula that it does not even register as a lie. Given the extent of our own deception, it is strange Yet, despite the ease with which deceptions, even old ones, can be exposed, we still engage in deceptive behaviour as part of our being. Even when we are forced to face truths about ourselves, we frequently equivocate and justify, deceiving ourselves if no-one else. The study of deceptio...
The spy novel came into being in England and has largely remained a British preserve'. The assertion of American historian and political commentator Walter Lacquer (1983: 62) has received wide acceptance, such that American literary scholars Matthew Bruccoli and Judith Baughman have claimed the modern spy story a 'British genre'. 'If they didn't invent it', the critics claimed, 'they perfected it ' (2004: xi). Similarly, American cultural scholar Michael Denning has maintained that, 'The spy thriller has been, for most of its history, a British genre, indeed a major cultural export ' (1987: 6). The British spy story in popular literature has received considerable critical attention and authors such as Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, John le Carré and Len Deighton have been singled out for their importance and influence. 1 The spy picture has maintained a close relationship with the printed form, many films being adaptations of stories by popular authors; unsurprisingly, film versions have appeared of the best-selling novels and stories of the most acclaimed writers. This is evident with the spy thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock in the 1930s, which were adapted from such novelists as John Buchan, Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad (Burton 2017).Spies and spying became a popular, durable and significant topic for British film-and television-makers. Eminent American film critic Richard Schickel has even gone so far as to claim the spy picture to be the 'greatest of English movie genres' (Review of The Whistle Blower, Time Magazine, 7 September 1987). Surprisingly then, the spy picture in Britain has not come in for much critical attention. Following recent work on crime, horror, comedy, historical and heritage films, espionage is, James Bond apart, arguably the last remaining of the significant British screen genres to receive detailed attention. 2
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