Mystery, Violence, and Popular Culture

by John G. Cawelti

    Mystery, Violence, and Popular Culture is John G. Cawelti’s discussion of American popular culture and violence, from its precursors in Homer and Shakespeare to the Lone Ranger and Superman. Cawelti deciphers the overt sexuality, detached violence, and political intrigue embedded within Batman and .007. He analyzes the work of such famous pop-culture icons as Alfred Hitchcock, the Beatles, and Andy Warhol, and looks at a range of films, from Psycho and Dances with Wolves , and literature, from The Waste Land to Catch 22 .
    Examples from popular movies, television, literature, and music, according to the author, characterize the evolving psychological, sociological, and political state of a nation. The book explores the relationship between racial and cultural groups in popular media such as Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman .  Here also are new perspectives on mystery literature, the detective story, and twentieth-century mystery writers from one of the founders of popular culture studies.

432 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2004

Reviews

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of Cawelti’s essays written from 1969 to 2003, with brief introductory comments on his part. They not only reflect the range of his thinking and how it changed over time, but also what were the changing conditions and ideas that affected his views. There are twenty five chapters in four sections, plus an introduction and an afterword. The section with the largest number of essays is the first with ten. It is appropriately titled Evolving Views of Popular Culture. The next section with five chapters is called The Role of Violence in Popular Culture. The third section with three chapters is Multiculturalism and Popular Culture and the fourth section with seven chapters is The Mystery of Mystery. They are all fascinating. The first section deals a great deal with the western, even though the mystery is eventually Cawelti’s favorite area, he did start with the western. He moved into popular culture as it was being formed as a field by Ray Browne and he was part of that formulation. It is clear to see the evolution of popular culture through these examples. When he started writing about the western it was a robust form in both film and on television. However, by the 90s, the western was disappearing from its prominent position. The myth of the west was being challenged on so many different levels. However, its influence in the history of the United States is a powerful one. So much of the violence and the worship of the gun is embedded in this myth. When the Europeans came to the colonies, they did not see the actual people who lived on the land but projections of themselves as part of nature, a part that had to be conquered and destroyed. The myth of the male hero who has to be strong and silent and full of honor to redeem the towns and the cities. In many ways the hard-boiled detective emerges from this mythic hero. The vigilantes always work as a group like the Klu Klux Klan, but the hero works alone against a corrupt society. Cawelti talks about how Blazing Saddles destroys the myth with its pleasure loving black cowboy and its farting men around the campfire. He has a great deal of praise for all the ways in which Brooks films took apart so many of the American myths. The frontier was never what the myth proclaimed, but it persisted in the sense that the United States had that it was the savior of the world. Interesting, in his analysis of the spy story, Cawelti makes the point that it is usually not actual communists who are the enemy, but moles from within betraying people. The section on violence is deeply disturbing because the depth of our violence as a country is evident in the history of the killing of Native populations and the enslavement of African-Americans. It was industrialization and immigration that changed a great deal as despised groups such as Jews and blacks found a way to succeed through popular culture. The Anglos looked down on popular culture so that blacks and the Irish and the Jews could move in. The Jews with film, the Irish with vaudeville and theatre and blacks with music to find success in the country. Even though the Anglo was always the ideal even if it was a Jew who wrote White Christmas and Easter Parade and God Bless America. (That’s not from Cawelti, just an observation from Bob and myself). In terms of the detective story, the English detective story had the gentleman who observed and put clues together to solve the mystery. This was not the image of the American hard-boiled detective who often didn’t have a clue, but when he did he used violence to set matters right. Guns are the symbol of masculine strength, the conquering of the west and anyone who stands in our way. There are aspects of our popular culture that truly condemn us for the brutal, blind self-absorbed conquerors that our founders and pioneers were. Cawelti does talk about how the mystery changes when we have women detectives, as well as blacks, native Americans, homosexuals, and other groups. He has an interesting essay on the international detective story which is, as I have observed as I have been doing my journey around the mystery world, different than that of the United States. He also has some interesting points to make about regional mysteries, particularly in the south. He has a nice essay on Stuart Kaminsky who named a character after him. Kaminsky had four different series while also teaching and writing in his area of scholarship and teaching about film. Cawelti integrates a great deal about the new theories about mystery and its history and evolution. He postulates subsuming all the different subgenres into one including the spy story, the horror story and other such variations. He also talks about how the mystery is used in a great deal of modern fiction, not only because of some of the social issues with which mysteries deal, but with the identity issues of individuals where the detective and the criminal are different sides of the same person, eg. Holmes/Moriarty. This is an absorbing and instructive book both in its approaches and its specific content and insights. It is good the way he mixes the books, films and television in terms of dealing with the issues of mystery. One case will be solved, but crime will continue. That is somewhat like the myth of Sisyphus although again that isn’t Cawelti’s term. He says at one point that life is a mystery that only death will solve. What is interesting is how the genres reflect history and society as well as eternal human struggles with the issues of good and evil, justice and injustice. His contention is that the hardboiled mystery presupposes a corrupt society that like the western can only be resolved through the good man using violence to set things right again. I kept want to read more of women detectives and see how they changed the picture. The brutality of Kay Scarpetta isn’t encouraging in that direction.

[Cloud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of revised essays.
Very easy to read writing style.