America as Wasteland in Detour
America as Wasteland in Detour
Film Noir and the Frankfurt School
Chapter Eight analyzes Edgar Ulmer's classic film noir Detour and its bleak portrait of America as a land of frustrated desires and lost dreams. It explores the affinities between Detour and the Frankfurt School critique of Hollywood as a dream factory. Detour deconstructs the American myth of the West, especially Hollywood, as a land of opportunity. The chapter argues that film noir is not a purely home grown American product, as many have claimed. Like Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Ulmer was a European émigré who looked at America from an alien perspective, and found himself alienated even from its landscape. This alienation surfaces in his characters, who drift hopelessly through a world empty of love, family, and companionship. Aspects of America that represent freedom to its citizens—like open roads—look like sources of disorder and chaos to Ulmer's European sensibility.
Keywords: Edgar Ulmer, film noir, Detour, Frankfurt School, Hollywood, dream factory, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno
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