The Philosophy of Michael Mann

An Introduction to the Philosophy of Michael Mann

1 An IntroduCtIon to the PhIlosoPhy of MIChAel MAnn Steven Sanders Michael Mann’s personal involvement as a writer, director, and producer has given him the reputation of being an unusually talented triple threat in Hollywood. He has been called “one of the most breathtaking cinematic stylists of his era” and “Hollywood’s foremost urbanist.”1 His ability to recreate the language and visualize the circumstances of the crime cultures he so often infiltrates is as uncanny as it is illuminating. His diagnosis of the circumstances of his existential protagonists in the alienated urban space of postmodern capitalism incorporates a film noir sensibility even as it investigates the cultural dilemmas of the twenty-first century. His numerous television-scriptwriting credits, directorial achievements, and executiveproducing expertise have earned him the respect of his peers and the gratitude of fans worldwide. Mann’s work bears the unique signature of his probing intelligence and aesthetic flair in many and diverse formats and forms: from documentaries to biopics, from period interpretations of classic literature to neo-noir urban-crime feature films; from socially conscious examinations of corporate misconduct to stunning automobile advertisements for MercedesBenz and Ferrari; from a network television series about undercover police work in 1980s Miami to one about mob turf wars in early 1960s Chicago, Las Vegas, and Central America to an HBO series about horse racing in Southern California. Add to these credits Mann’s new projects in development (about which there is always speculation), and it is easy to see why those who would take the full measure of his career achievements have their work cut out for them. The Philosophy of Michael Mann is the first collection of original essays by scholars in philosophy, film criticism, literature, 2 Steven Sanders and elsewhere to identify, describe, and open up for discussion some of the most interesting philosophical themes in Mann’s ten feature films, his early telefilm, The Jericho Mile (1979), and the network television series he executive -produced, Miami Vice (1984–1989) and Crime Story (1986–1988).2 The essays, some of which provide readings of Mann’s work inspired by existentialism, postmodernism, and film noir, keep faith with readers who have made the Philosophy of Popular Culture Series an important, admired, and accessible forum for the philosophical discussion of the work of such film exemplars as Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg and of such genres as neo-noir, science fiction, and the Western. Throughout this book, such themes as existential choice, evil and power, style and its discontents, justice, law, and ethics are introduced, elucidated, applied to Mann’s work, and evaluated. Rather than trying to pinpoint the philosophy of Michael Mann, as the volume’s title might lead some readers to expect, the contributors are remarkably eclectic in their approaches, areas of interest , and presuppositions. Some invoke historical figures such as Aristotle, Locke, Kant, and Rousseau, whereas others utilize contemporary European philosophers such as Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, and Levinas, and still others revisit recent film theorists and critics such as David Bordwell and Sean Cubitt to fashion an understanding of Mann’s work. Some of the essays emphasize Mann’s existentialist ideas, others focus on his aesthetics of horror , and still others discuss his critique of the corporatization of crime and his creation of a new noir that brings together images of relationships, work, and individual striving in the megalopolises of Los Angeles and Miami and the evolution of a wholly new model of criminal trafficking on a global scale. Authorship and the Rise of the Crime Auteur Mann’s well-known involvement as a writer-director-producer of feature films, television series, and documentaries as well as his transformation of the urban-crime genre from a redoubt of film noir into a contemporary commercial sector, which some have thought comparable to the work of his contemporary Martin Scorsese, would seem to put him in a strong position to bear the honorific auteur. In The Cinema of Michael Mann: Vice and Vindication, Jonathan Rayner discusses the question of Mann’s authorship and writes, “Mann’s authorship must be viewed in several chronological , industrial, and formal contexts: the post-classical context, inflected by television but still marked by the influence of experimentation in Ameri- An Introduction to the Philosophy of Michael Mann 3 can film of the 1960’s and 1970’s, in which his career begins; the brand name, commercial American auteurist...