Hollywood Crime

(Jewelry Store Hold Up, Los Angeles, July 23, 1932. Foteka.com)

In Literature of California, having wrapped up The Day of the Locust, we have moved into our Hollywood noir unit, having recently watched the classic film noir, Double Indemnity (1944) and students are currently reading Raymond Chandler's short story "The Lady in the Lake".

Chandler is quoted as saying, "Hollywood is wonderful. Anyone who doesn't like it is crazy or sober." In this, he perfectly captures the paradox of Los Angeles (and Hollywood) post-World War II. In her critical piece "The Dark Side of the Dream: The Image of Los Angeles in Film Noir", Tina Olsin Lent notes that, after the Depression and World War II, people could not ignore that the world they saw in Hollywood pictures was not really the world that they were living in and that "in the collective consciousness of the media, Los Angeles remains the contemporary icon for the dark side of American culture."

For many years, the image of California had been sunshine and beaches, warm Santa Ana winds and flowers in bloom all year round. With the advent of literary and film noir, authors and filmmakers began to explore those shadows in the sunshine that we have been concerning ourselves with all year. Additionally, as filmmaking became more popular and photography more available to the masses, a more realistic picture of what Los Angeles was really like came into view.

For this week's blog post, I want students to step back in time a bit and see the Los Angeles that Raymond Chandler and his literary noir counterparts saw. In recent years, photographers have gone through the LAPD photo archives and published photos from the time period in which "The Lady in the Lake" takes place. Please visit the Foteka website, which has an amazing archive of these photos (warning, some photos can be disturbing). Browse through the archive and then choose one picture that stands out to you. I want you to copy that image and paste it into your own blog entry and then write a paragraph on why you chose that particular image. What stands out about it for you? How does it affirm or challenge your understanding of Los Angeles during this time period? Please also note any connections you see between what is displayed in the photo and what you have read or watched so far related to literary and film noir.

Images of Loss

(image link here.)

As we continue our work with Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust, we have spent some time in class furthering our understanding of the Great Depression of the 1930's in order to better contextualize some of the themes of the novel. The glitz and glamour projected by Hollywood during this time, known as the Golden Age of Film, was vastly different from the fear, uncertainty, and poverty that most Americans were experiencing in reality. Did Hollywood serve a specific purpose by offering escapism through the films that were produced, or did they numb Americans, offering a quick relief from the pain of the Great Depression that only ached more once the shine of the film-going experience wore off? These are things West is thinking about in the novel.

For this week's blog entry, I want students to better understand the reality of America at this time as it will help them balance the typical Depression experience against both the fantasy and reality presented by Hollywood that West is examining. Students should spend some time looking through the photos on this website, which features over forty fascinating color images from around America during the Great Depression. Once you have looked through them all, copy and paste the image that impacted you the most into your own blog post and write about why you chose it. Also address how the image fits into our ongoing discussion about fantasy versus reality in The Day of the Locust.