Page 351 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 31: Umberto Eco’s ‘Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage’ (Deconstructing and Disciplinarising Hollywood)

reminiscent of Roland Barthes (see above, pp. 311-36). In the famous Humphrey Bogart- Notes
Ingrid Bergman movie. Eco Suggests, filmic archetypes (or cliches, as a more elitist critic
might call them) are multiplies to the point where they begin to ‘talk among themselves’ and
generate an intoxicating excess of signification. This process, by which kitsch, in its reception
by a finely attuned audience, can allegedly achieve something approximating the sublimity
of classic art, is a recurrent theme and subject of controversy in discussions of postmodernism.
• ‘Casablanca’, first published in this form in 1984, in reprinted here form a collection of Eco’s
occasional and journalistic essays. Faith in Fakes (1986) (published in the United States and
(as a paperback) in Britain under the title, Travels in Hyperreality)
• Casblanca is a cult movie precisely because all the archetypes are there, because each actor
repeats a part played on other occasions, and because human beings live not ‘real’ life but
life as stereotypically portrayed in previous films: Casablanca carries the sense of déjà vu to
such a degree that the addressee is ready to see in it what happened after it as well. It is not
until To have and Have and Have not that Bogey plays the role of Hemingway hero, but here
he appears ‘already’ loaded with Hemingwayesque connotations simply because Rick fought
in Spain. Peter Lorre trails reminiscences of Fritz Lang, Conrad Veidt’s German Officer emanates
a faint whiff of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. He is not ruthless, technological Nazi; he is a
nocturnal and diabolical Caesar.

31.4 Key-Words

1. Intentional fallacy : A term coined by Julia Kristeva to rfer to the fact that texts are constituted
by a ‘tissue of citations’, that every word of every text refers to other
texts and so on, limitlessly. Often used in an imprecise or weak sense to
talk abut echoes or allusions.

31.5 Review Questions

1. Discuss Deconstructing and disciplinarising Hollywood.
2. Give a intertextual analysis of Casablanca.
3. Critically examine Casablanca, as Cult Movies.
Answers: Self-Assessment
1. (i)(a) (ii)(a) (iii)(c)

31.6 Further Readings

1. Hutcheon, Linda A poetics of postmodernism, London: Routledge, 1988.
2. Kennedy, X.J., Dana Gioia, Mark Bauerlein, Handbook of Literary Terms:
Literature, Language, Theory, 1st edition, New Delhi: Pearson, 2007.
3. Lodge, David (ed.) Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, London: Longman,
1972.
4. Rice, Philip and Patricia Waugh (eds.) A Modern Literary Theory: A Reader, 3rd
edition, London: Arnold, 1999.
5. Sethuraman, V.S. and Ramaswamy (eds.) The English Critical Tradition, Volume
II, New Delhi, Macmillan, 1977.
6. Seturaman, V.S. (ed.) Contemporary Criticism: An Anthology, New Delhi:
Macmillan, 2008.

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