MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In this paper, the full title of which is: “Down These Mean Pomo Streets a Contemporary Detective Must Go… Paradoxes and Parody in Recent Detective Films (and Their Antecedents),” the focus will be on similarities and differences of approach to their genre among three recent detective films, Inherent Vice (2014), A Walk Among the Tombstones *(2014), and *The Nice Guys *(2016). Figuring *Chinatown and The Long Goodbye as the leading contemporary prototypes for the two main differing approaches to the genre, namely that of the revisionist traditional reworking and the revisionist parody pastiche, these three movies – two of which are adaptations of contemporary detective novels and the other heavily indebted to detective literature — are a collective study in the paradoxes and contradictions of the detective film genre in the so-called postmodern era. They knowingly treat their genre’s fundamental elements with scorn and affection, disdain and delight, functioning as both critique and homage. My argument will be that this tension is what has enabled – and continues to enable — the detective film genre to remain viable and relevant in our era. Theorists on genre, like Rick Altman and Stephen Neale, will be referenced, as will theorists of film noir, such as James Naremore and Frank Krutnik.