The Genre as Barometer: Screenwriting and the Decay of American Trust

How Burnett, Towne, and Schrader Mapped the Erosion of Shared Fictions

Introduction: Mapping Decay Through Genre

Genres are dynamic frameworks that evolve in response to societal anxieties. This article examines how American crime and noir genres functioned as a barometer for what historian Daniel T. Rodgers calls the “age of fracture”—the late 20th-century disintegration of the grand narratives that once held American society together (Rodgers 4). The analysis frames this evolution as the collapse of three key “shared fictions”—collective beliefs, akin to Benedict Anderson’s “imagined community,” that enable society to function (Anderson 6).

From the 1930s through the 1970s, screenwriters mapped the unraveling of: the fiction of a just system (Burnett), the fiction of a benevolent state (Towne), and the fiction of a coherent self (Schrader). While seeds of cynicism existed earlier, these writers crystallized the shifts through formal innovations in screenwriting.

The Foundational Anti-Hero: W.R. Burnett and the Gangster as Capitalist Shadow

W. R. Burnett codified the classic gangster film during an era of systemic failure. Pre-Code Hollywood often depicted “social problems without social solutions,” highlighting the faltering authority of the state (Doherty). Burnett’s scripts crystallized this crisis through a specific narrative structure: the tragic rise-and-fall arc.

This structure mediates social contradictions, presenting the gangster as both a dark mirror of the American dream (as Robert Warshow argued) and a figure whose ultimate containment reassures audiences of a fragile social order (Warshow 85). Thomas Schatz notes that genres function as cultural forums for processing social anxieties (Schatz). Burnett’s films embody this principle: they acknowledge the outlaw’s allure while ensuring his ultimate destruction by the modernizing state.

Beyond Little Caesar (1931) and Public Enemy (1931), later noir-influenced films like The Untouchables (1987) demonstrate the enduring appeal of Burnett’s gangster archetype. These films adapt the same rise-and-fall mechanics for new contexts, confirming the gangster’s role as a cultural mirror of societal instability.

The System as Villain: Robert Towne and Post-Watergate Paranoia

By the 1970s, faith in institutional systems had largely evaporated, a casualty of what Rick Perlstein describes as a national “moral unraveling” (Perlstein). Robert Towne’s screenplay for Chinatown (1974) exemplifies this era. Its power lies in its labyrinthine plot and strictly limited point of view: the audience knows only what detective Gittes knows.

Towne’s script forces viewers to share Gittes’s disorientation. The crime Gittes investigates dramatizes real-world history, echoing the systemic corruption involved in creating a “hydraulic empire” built on water theft, as documented by Marc Reisner (Reisner). The final line, “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown,” signals the collapse of the shared fiction of a benevolent state.

Other examples reinforce Towne’s approach. Sidney Lumet’s Serpico (1973) exposes systemic corruption in the New York police department. Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973) maps the informal codes of organized crime against the failure of public institutions. Together, these films show the crime genre as a diagnostic tool for societal trust.

The Atomized Subject: Paul Schrader and the Collapse of Narrative

Paul Schrader’s Taxi Driver (1976) depicts the psychological fallout of systemic decay. Schrader’s use of voice-over narration immerses viewers in Travis Bickle’s fractured subjectivity. This reflects Charles Taylor’s concept of the “buffered self,” a self contained within its own psychological reality rather than sustained by stable social structures (Taylor).

Under Martin Scorsese’s direction, the screenplay’s subjective reality becomes the film’s total reality (Kolker 234). Travis’s diary entries represent a desperate attempt to construct coherence in a chaotic world. The film’s style reflects the deep influence of filmmakers like Robert Bresson, whose work Schrader himself analyzed as a critic, celebrating its ritualistic observation of human struggle (Schrader).

Contemporary global cinema illustrates similar concerns. Films like Le Samouraï (1967, France) and Infernal Affairs (2002, Hong Kong) use crime narratives to explore alienated individuals facing systemic and social collapse. These international examples confirm that the genre’s focus on fractured subjectivity is not solely American.

Conclusion: From Outlaw to System to Sickness

The trajectory of the American crime genre maps societal disillusionment through formal innovations in screenwriting. Burnett presents the outlaw as a contained mirror of the system; Towne exposes institutional corruption as the organizing principle; Schrader depicts the individual fragmented within a chaotic social world.

This arc continues in contemporary media. Walter White in Breaking Bad inherits Burnett’s tragic capitalist. True Detective extends Towne’s vision of systemic rot. Arthur Fleck in Joker embodies Schrader’s alienated, psychologically fractured subject. Crime and noir genres endure because they explore the ongoing struggle to construct shared fictions in a world that repeatedly undermines them.

This article was developed through an iterative collaboration between our Editor-in-Chief and multiple AI language models. Various LLMs contributed at different stages—from initial ideation and drafting to refinement and technical review. Each AI served as a creative and analytical partner, while human editors maintained final oversight, ensuring accuracy, quality, and alignment with AuthZ's editorial standards.