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Tattoos in crime and detective narratives: Marking and remarking examines representations of the tattoo and tattooing in literature, television and film, from two periods of tattoo renaissance (1851–1914, and around 1955 to the present). The collection reads tattoos and associated scarification, such as branding, as mimetic devices that mark and remark crime and detective narratives in complex ways. The chapters utilise a variety of critical perspectives drawn from posthumanism, spatiality, postcolonialism, embodiment and gender studies to read the tattoo as individual and community bodily narratives. The collection develops its focus from the first tattoo renaissance and considers the rebirth of the tattoo in contemporary culture through literature, children's literature, film and television. This book has a broad appeal and will be of interest to all literature and media scholars and, in particular, those with an interest in crime and detective narratives and skin studies.
This book aims to provoke increased interest in the work of the four directors: Dominique Cabrera, Noémie Lvovsky, Laetitia Masson and Marion Vernoux, although some of their early works have become more difficult to access, most of their films remain commercially available through French distributors. The four directors are not new arrivals and began making films in the early 1990s, yet they have received scant critical attention in both popular and academic film criticism. They share similar profiles in terms of box office success, number of films made and generational affinities and, shorts and feature films in France. They make films that straddle boundaries of categorisation and therefore escape the quickly established and self-perpetuating groupings that serve as powerful frameworks for popular access via DVD distribution, critical canonisation and academic curricula. Whilst Cabrera attests her sanguine awareness of the discriminatory treatment of women in all areas of the film industry she rejects the suggestion that the process of her filmmaking is determined by sexual difference or a gendered creative identity, asserting provocatively. The book discusses Masson's use of romance and detective narratives to debunk the former and subvert the later. The career path of Lvovsky remains distinctive from that of other directors. Vernoux's oeuvre maintains a coherent focus on the modes of transgression present within the generic conventions of comedy and romance in films which exploit the common narrative device of the encounter to propel narratives and characters across social boundaries within a dominant generic focus on romantic comedy.
THE TATTOO SPEAKS Focusing specifically on two periods of tattoo renaissance (1851–1914, and c. 1955 to the present), 1 this collection establishes the tattoo as a key genre convention and mimetic device that marks and remarks crime and detective narratives in complex ways. In choosing the subtitle for this book, we were mindful of Jacques Derrida’s concept of ‘re-marking’ ( 1992 ). 2 In his discussion of writing, Derrida uses the term to refer to a simultaneous act of difference and communality in writing
Sam display their badges and immediately become extensions of a familiar symbol, a badge of authority, that is associated with crime solving ability; thus their identities become firmly linked to the discourse of detective narratives. Their role as detectives is a layered one, both through the drive to solve these supernatural crimes and the masquerade of adopting FBI detective personae to aid this. In many ways, Supernatural carries on ‘detective fiction’s supernatural engagement’ (Cook 2014 : 179) that is evident in the early works of the crime and detective
NARRATIVES Representations of food, cooking and consumption in crime fiction have a long history and have been documented in recent fiction and criticism. 2 Indeed, the genre of crime fiction and its sub-genres can be viewed as a recipe – or recipes – made up of particular conventions and ‘ingredients’. Crime and detective narratives often reflect the dominant viewpoint of a particular culture, unmasking a society’s hierarchical structures and ideologies. In particular, the language used in such narratives can sometimes be found to reflect
any direct use of language’ (Sedgwick 1980 : 13) that is common to the gothic genre. Rather than exposing or illuminating, words only further mask and equivocate. This is precisely the presentation of language in the Alcott thrillers and ‘V.V.: Or, plots and counterplots’ in particular, which focuses upon the act of reading – and mis-reading. Cleverly, Alcott uses a tattoo upon the wrist of the villainess of the story to assay the limits of reference and determination from the framework of a detective narrative. TATTOOS AND TEXTUALITY
expect to find in a detective narrative. Chief amongst these are Joey Castle, the talking, gun-wielding kangaroo assassin, and Barry the ‘babyhead’, whose paternity is one of Metcalf’s main avenues of investigation. How these two outlandish individuals have come to be, and how they might disrupt the trajectory of the detective narrative, are central to understanding the text’s ethical orientation. With
approach is justified and is confirmed by the interpolated passages of generic reflexivity in which Lionel considers what is permissible or expected in detective narratives: ‘Have you ever felt, in the course of reading a detective novel, a guilty thrill of relief at having a character murdered before he can step onto the page and burden you with his actual existence?’ (Lethem, 1999 : 119). Such
), ‘Eliminating the Detective: Boileau-Narcejac, Clouzot and Les Diaboliques’, in Anne Mullen and Emer O’Beirne, eds, Crime Scenes: Detective Narratives in European Culture since 1945, Amsterdam/Atlanta, Rodopi, 37–47 Mayne, Judith (2000), Framed: Lesbians, Feminists and Mediaculture, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press McGilligan, Patrick (2003), Alfred Hitchcock; a Life in Darkness and Light, Chichester, Wiley 136 henri-georges clouzot Meurisse, Paul (1979), Les Eperons de la liberté, Paris, Laffont Moskowitz, Gene (1955), ‘Les Diaboliques’, Sight and Sound, 24, 172
templates and expectations are evident in Masson’s use of romance and detective narratives in order to debunk the former and subvert the later (as discussed further in Chapter 3 ). Altman’s seminal reworking of genre theory, which asserts the inherent hybridity, evolution and ideological functions at stake in the multiple investments in genre production and reception (Altman 1999 ), paved the way for