KASquires

This was really informative. I enjoyed Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club, but I had no idea they were all written and directed by the same person. You can really see Hughes’ impact on new films in the genre, with Easy A’s nostalgia for 80’s movies, including all three of the films I mentioned above, and Pitch Perfect’s male protagonist urging Anna Kendrick’s character to watch The Breakfast Club.

You raise some interesting points. I especially liked the idea that even the “cozier” mysteries like Christie’s present an ambiguous view of the police and justice system. I would expect a noir to express such opinions, but I was surprised when you demonstrated that a Poirot novel suggests that “justice comes in many forms, not just arrests and trials”.
As a side note, I get quite a bit of enjoyment out of the setting in detective stories. for example, the juxtaposition of a city’s law abiding face and its criminal underworld can be fascinating.

I like your point that fantasy can highlight real-world concerns like hunger and sickness–that these concerns seem especially dire when they are juxtaposed with fantastic nightmare creatures and are revealed to be more distressing.
I’d be interested to know your thoughts about Gaiman’s Neverwhere. From my understanding the BBC commissioned a work about the homeless, resulting in the Neverwhere screenplay. Gaiman’s descriptions of London Below are incredibly realistic, gritty, and dark but in many ways the magical world seems uncomfortably close to a romanticization of homeless life.