“Next to the western, the hard boiled detective story is America’s most distinctive contribution to the world’s stock of action adventure stories, our contemporaneous contribution to the drama of heroic quest which has appeared in so many different cultures in so many different guises,” suggests John G. Cawelti in his essay, “Chinatown and Generic Transformation in Recent American Films.” How does Jake Gittes fulfill the idea of the hard boiled detective? Read the following definition before contemplating your response: “The hard-boiled detective invariably works in the city, the center of wickedness where every perversion seems to thrive. Grella names the setting as the urban jungle which has replaced the wilderness. The detective hero is a man of the wilderness but the wilderness has disappeared, replaced by the seaminess of the city. This is where the detective hero fights against the evils of society, and he is left cynical and disillusioned in the end, his strength remaining because of his own moral code, his own sense of truth and right and wrong. In this world of the hardboiled novel, the formal detective could never survive. The hard-boiled detective can never hope for full resolution of the crime, and restoration of society as it was before the crime because evil is too pervasive in his environment. The has only attacked a minute portion of the evil, while all around him the rest of the evil continues.” (Velardi, 1989). In what sense is the movie the story of a “heroic quest” by its central character? How does Gittes use his hard boiled traits in a “heroic quest?
Watch the movie “China Town” and use specific time stamps.
