Doctoral Dissertations
Movie as metaphor in contemporary fiction : a study of Walker Percy, Larry McMurtry, and John Fowles
Date of Award
8-1981
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Major
English
Major Professor
B J Leggett
Abstract
One connection between film and literature that has not been investigated fully is the impact of the film phenomenon on the writers of our age--writers who are members of a spectator generation in a movie-saturated society. For these authors, movies are a central part of their artistic perception and provide a metaphor for their views of existence in today's world. Movies are used metaphorically by many contemporary authors to probe the nature of reality, to analyze individual existence, and to comment on society as a whole.
Film offers contemporary authors a new way to explore the relationship of illusion and reality. The powerful ability of movies to induce spectator identification and imitation tends to blur distinctions between movie reality and real life. This tendency has dangerous implications for the viewers. Individuals are disappointed with their lives when they cannot live up to unrealistic movie ideals; movies oversimplify life, creating problems when one bases behavior on ritualized gestures; through imitative role playing, viewers alienate themselves from human communication and direct experience of life. The individual moviegoer's confusion of illusion and reality signifies a problem of Western, particularly American, culture since film affects so many people. Contemporary authors use movies, Hollywood, and moviemaking to manifest the social ills of our times. The artificiality, shallowness, and sexual decadence associated with the movie industry reflect the problems of identity and meaningful existence in our cultural wasteland.
This study examines in detail the movie-related novels of three major contemporary authors--The Moviegoer and Lancelot by Walker Percy, The Last Picture Show and Somebody's Darling by Larry McMurtry, and Daniel Martin by John Fowles--to show how the movie phenomenon has affected their overall artistic vision and how the film metaphor helps them express their views of reality, the individual, and society, A brief survey of David Madden's Bijou, Muriel Spark's The Public Image, Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays, and John Irving's The Water-Method Man reveals some of the same attitudes toward movies and illustrates the pervasive impact of film on the literary imagination.
Recommended Citation
Ward, Carol Marie, "Movie as metaphor in contemporary fiction : a study of Walker Percy, Larry McMurtry, and John Fowles. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1981.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/13548