Jellehavermans:thesis
In this thesis, I investigate the link between modern crime fiction, the apparatus of cinema and The Black Dahlia murder case. Writers like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain gave rise to the hard-boiled crime genre. In most of these novels, which reached their peak of popularity between 1920 - 1960, a male private eye is hired to solve a problem or a crime. These stories, which contain obvious male fantasies of heroism and use female victimhood as a plotmotif, later transitioned into film noir. In this thesis, I explore how this particular crime genre produces male fantasies that are still predominant in contemporary media culture and allows for the anonymization, the disembodiment and dissection of women through a process of forensic investigation. In 1947, the cut up body of Elizabeth Short - better known as the Black Dahlia - was found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. In the second part of this text, I place her notorious murder case into context and point out its correlations with film noir and the apparatus of cinema, which uses 'cuts' and other editing techniques to objectify and disembody female characters. Finally, I'll analyse two major motion pictures based on The Black Dahlia case in order to further show how the murder was used as a vessel for male fantasies and the disembodiment of women. This thesis was written as part of my graduation for Master of Fine Art: Lens-based Media at The Piet Zwart Institute in 2021.