Woody Allen and Theodor Dreiser: Paradoxes of Negated Affinity

Abstract

The paper is intended to explore the nature of the intertextual and intermedial relations between Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy and Woody Allen’s London “exilic trilogy”, including Match Point (2005), Scoop (2006), and Cassandra’s Dream (2007). Though little is in common between a socially oriented naturalist and a self-reflexive ironist playing with cultural constructs and mythologemes, the comparative approach, complemented with adaptation theory, intermedial and genre studies, allow to analyze cultural mechanisms working in this “negated affinity” (Allen never admits the influence of the outdated socialist writer). It is argued that in post-Dreiserian American culture the story of Clyde Griffiths, captured with extraordinary artistic power by the great naturalist, acquires the status of a mythologeme, and in this capacity sporadically emerges from the depths of the cultural subconscious. Woody Allen’s three movies of the early 2000s exemplify it in different media and genre modes. Match Point and Cassandra’s Dream stand apart from other Allen’s films about premeditated and self-justified murders (Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Irrational Man (2015) among them), featuring prota- gonists with manifest aspiration for social ascendancy. The findings of the research are relevant for literary history, clarifying the lasting significance of Dreiser’s oeuvre, for theory of adaptation, highlighting the complicated character of Woody Allen’s intertextuality, and for Culture Studies, demonstrating the work of mechanisms of cultural memory and their determinants.

Keywords

• theodore dreiser
• an american tragedy
• woody allen
• london exilic trilogy
• intertextuality
• intermediality
• adaptation
• mythologeme
• mechanisms of cultural memory
• comparative studies