The outlaw couple film: from World War Two to the present

• Main Author: Weekley, Katie Louise
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4684

Appearing periodically since the Second World War years right up to the present, the outlaw couple film (a relative of two more potentially liberal genres, the buddy and the road movie) has remained a deeply conservative genre, despite a glimpse of its possible energy in the 1960s. Unlike the male buddy film, which tends to invest both protagonists with equal capabilities and independence, the outlaw couple film almost always focalizes its narrative through the male character, and positions his female partner in a secondary role, where she can only act in relation to his goals. While the outlaw aspect of these films offers the potential to escape the more conventional requirements of patriarchy (as happens in the male buddy films), this escape is usually only reserved for the male characters, and the women of these films rarely move beyond stereotypical representations. After a general introduction to the outlaw couple in chapter one, I look at the idea of gendered "outlawism" in chapter two, where I discuss film noir, the Western and the male buddy movie (as it relates to Robin Wood's theories of "Home") for their precursory connections to the outlaw couple movie. In chapters three to five, I look at different examples of the outlaw couple, from the forties with their portrayals in film noirs, through to the sixties with Bonnie and Clyde (1967), to recent times with films made within the first half of this decade. These films demonstrate that the outlaw couple film usually remains part of a deeply conservative genre. === Arts, Faculty of === Theatre and Film, Department of === Graduate