Moving Pictures and Spectacular Criminality inAn American TragedyandNative Son

Abstract

Two of 20th-century American literature's most naive murderers, Clyde Griffiths and Bigger Thomas, also happen to be avid moviegoers. This may not be as coincidental as it first appears. In 1933 — roughly halfway between the publication datesof An American Tragedy(1925) andNative Son(1940) — a number of sociological studies conducted at the University of Chicago claimed that there was a demonstrable link between watching movies and committing crimes. Indeed, these so-called Payne Fund studies set out to prove that watching too many movies could lead directly to criminal behavior. In light of such studies, the influence of movies on Clyde Griffiths and Bigger Thomas seems far from incidental. At the least,An American TragedyandNative Sonsuggest that the cultural ascendance of movies during the 1920s and 1930s was accompanied by widespread unease about the supposedly pernicious affects of moving pictures. The fact that both Clyde and Bigger become murderers after a healthy dose of movies suggests that Theodore Dreiser and Richard Wright were persuaded by the conclusion of University of Chicago sociologists that there was a link between “moving pictures and criminal conduct” (the title of one study). Yet Dreiser and Wright also perceived the way criminals were becoming celebrities through excessive media attention to their crimes and punishments.An American TragedyandNative Sonthus attest to the ways in which moving pictures and crime reporting conspired to produce a new discourseof spectacular criminalityin modern America.